A Crazy Week Getting Noticed By The Tech Press
Finally, tech journalists are paying attention to what i’m doing.
It reminds me of London buses. You don’t see any for ages, then three you need come at once.
So, this week has definitely been the week of the tech press for me. I’ve never had so much attention from tech journalists and bloggers. This will really help move forward my show ‘The App Guy Podcast’ and many of the projects I’m working on.
How ironic, all the attention is on a website that has yet to become an app.
Let me give you the highlights of the week (last week in October 2015).
First, I managed to secure interviews with leading tech journalists and bloggers in the industry. The editor-at-large at The Next Web and a leading tech journalist at TechCrunch. Full interviews will be in future episodes 375 and 378 of The App Guy Podcast.
I asked my tech journalist guests many of the questions suggested to me such as:
- how to get the attention of the tech press?
- are smaller startups / solo entrepreneurs and indie developers able to compete with companies that have large internal and outside professional PR agencies?
- any interesting and unexpected trends from readers of tech articles?
- how is Apple News making an impact?
- should the tech press promote more diverse role models and a more balanced view between success and failure?
It’s definitely worth tuning in to these chats which go live in about three weeks on The App Guy Podcast.
Next, Mike Gurevich and I are working on the launch of ilys — short for i love your story (I used it to write this article). It enables you to free your creative mind to experience pure writing flow . This biggest event for our launch was appearing on the home page of Product Hunt. We ended up 8th overall on the day. This drove 5,000 views to the ilys website within 24 hours.
The story really starts to take off. I showed ilys to The Next Web and TechCrunch. TNW loved it and wrote about it almost immediately. It was amazingly quick. After getting the heads up, Mike managed to create a special offer for readers of TNW within 30 minutes.
Now, we had about 10,000 views over the week and some great links for SEO.
Next, I was given a tip to reach out to a writer and blogger for TechCrunch in New York. Within a few hours, we received an email from Bloomberg. That’s right! Bloomberg. I remember these guys from my days working on a trading floor. Ilys was perfect timing because the journalist happened to be writing about creative writing block and the tools to get into a creative flow. This is so totally ilys.
There you have it! After struggling to get into big tech publications over the years, three opportunities come at once.
The lessons I’ve learnt from this crazy week are:
- really don’t be afraid to leverage your network
- talk about your big challenges (mine was connecting with the tech press)
- most importantly keep plugging away
