Getting Press for Your Event
How we got an article in TechCrunch in 15 minutes
[This is an e-mail I sent to the officers of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club in March 2013. We were organizing HackPrinceton and a few days before the hackathon we decided that we could use some press coverage. Enjoy and get press!]
Hey E Club,
In today’s lesson, we’ll look at how to get press for your event. Some context: we just got a writer from TechCrunch (the most popular startup/tech blog) to come to HackPrinceton this weekend. He’ll be there for the whole event, and hopefully we’ll get a nice feature in TC, something E Club has been yearning to get for a long time.
The whole process took about 15 minutes. No prior connection.
Step 1: Find your target
I googled “TechCrunch PennApps”. This article came up on top. The author was the target.
This is known as the Drafting Technique and is very useful. PennApps is Penn’s hackathon so the author is obviously interested in hackathons. I just had to make a point why ours is better.
Step 2: Stalk the target
I skimmed over a couple more of his articles. He judged PennApps, so he must really love hackathons. Also apparently he’s into hardware hacks. We have a special hardware track unlike many other hackathons, so there’s one great point for us. He also writes for the NYT, bonus points for him.
Step 3: E-mail
from: Momchil Tomov <mtomov@princeton.edu>
to: john@techcrunch.com
bcc: HackPrinceton Directors <directors@hackprinceton.com>
date: Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:09 PM
subject: Judging HackPrinceton Spring, Princeton’s annual Spring hackathonHey John,
I read your article about SparkTab on TechCrunch, and I thought you might be interested in HackPrinceton Spring.
Organized by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, this is bound to be one of the biggest hackathons in the nation. Tonight we’re closing signups at 200+, half of which are out of Princeton. We have groups driving from Harvard, MIT, NYU, Columbia, UPenn, Rutgers, and even as far as CMU. We have a special hardware track that is signature for our Spring edition of the event: last year we saw some truly amazing hardware hacks, and we can’t wait to see what teams will come up with this year!
We would love to have you judge the final demos on Saturday, March 30! Please shoot me an e-mail if you might be available.
Thanks!
Momchil
Breakdown of the E-mail
Let’s see how the essential components of this cold e-mail fit together.
Sender e-mail: .EDU
from: Momchil Tomov <mtomov@princeton.edu>
As usual, drop the .EDU bomb.
Keep the organizers posted
bcc: HackPrinceton Directors <directors@hackprinceton.com>
BCC the hackathon director so she knows what I’m up to. If I forget to follow up and the TechCrunch dude doesn’t respond, she’ll will bug me. Definitely BCC — this is a cold e-mail!
Subject — short and descriptive
subject: Judging HackPrinceton Spring, Princeton’s annual Spring hackathon
Lots of context. Just the subject says what this is about, what I’m asking from him, and there’s even a description. I chose “Princeton’s annual hackathon” rather than something else (e.g. “Princeton Entrepreneurship Club’s Spring Hackathon) because it sounds a lot more legit.
Important point: I never ask him to write about us. That’s true for the whole e-mail. Since he judged PennApps, he obviously enjoys attending those kinds of events and being actively involved rather than just passively observing them. So I straight up asked him to judge.
In a sense, if I just asked for an article, I would be “using” him without offering anything in exchange. By asking him to judge, I’m implicitly flattering him by getting him involved, putting him in a position of authority and respecting his opinion. People love to be asked to judge. In addition, this will allow him to get a much better feel of the event, meet the whole HackPrinceton crew, and potentially help us establish a long-term relationship with TechCrunch and get more coverage in the future. Also, by asking for something more than just covering us, I’m implicitly putting coverage as the default fall-back option that he would likely propose himself if he can’t come, which is what we’re going for in the first place.
Opening line — reference something he wrote
Hey John,
I read your article about SparkTab on TechCrunch, and I thought you might be interested in HackPrinceton Spring.
Similarly to sponsorship e-mails, always start with a line about something they care about. Writers love it when people complement them on their articles. In this case, I referred to the article he wrote after judging PennApps. I also went straight to the point — this is a cold e-mail to a reporter. He gets hundreds of those per day. Must keep it short. Also added a link for legitimacy and more info.
Description — exaggerate, but not too much
Organized by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, this is bound to be one of the biggest hackathons in the nation. Tonight we’re closing signups at 200+, half of which are out of Princeton. We have groups driving from Harvard, MIT, NYU, Columbia, UPenn, Rutgers, and even as far as CMU.
“Organized by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club” — the hackathon is part of a bigger initiative geared towards entrepreneurship, not just an isolated code fest.
“one of the biggest hackathons” — a bit of a stretch. We said that last time too lol…
“200+” — lots of folk. There’s tremendous demand for our event. Supports the “biggest” claim above which by itself is not worth much (anyone can say that… like we did last time)
“half of which are out of Princeton” — this is not a local phenomenon. We’re talking the whole East Coast tech scene here. This is big.
“groups” — not just individual students.
“Harvard, MIT, NYU, Columbia, UPenn, Rutgers, and even as far as CMU” — namedrop namedrop namedrop. Also supports the above claims, makes it look legit
Personalize, customize, differentiate
We have a special hardware track that is signature for our Spring edition of the event: last year we saw some truly amazing hardware hacks, and we can’t wait to see what teams will come up with this year!
The guy loves hardware hacks. So we’ll give him hardware hacks! And that’s not an empty promise — we already had this last year. I try to support each claim with evidence — these people see lots of bullshit every day. Must be convincing that this is legit stuff.
Ask and follow-up
We would love to have you judge the final demos on Saturday, March 30! Please shoot me an e-mail if you might be available.
Finally, asked him to judge. It’s up to him whether he will write about us after he sees what this is about. There is absolutely no pressure on our side for him to commit to writing. And we definitely won’t mention it until he brings it up when he starts asking for more details.
Of course, if the reporter has no other role to play in the event, this is the place to ask for a feature article. If you do, you should definitely reiterate why this is a unique event, why the TechCrunch audience would care about it, how it fits your bigger vision and the vision of their blog, etc.
Notice that I never apologize for the last minute notice (the event is in three days). This would give the e-mail an apologetic tone with a sense of neediness and desperation. Rather, similarly to sponsorship e-mails, it sounds more like “hey, here’s an awesome opportunity, you seem cool — we’d love to have you involved”.
Step 4: Tweet
Immediately after sending the e-mail, I followed him on twitter (he will obviously click on my name after seeing the tweet) and sent the following tweet:
@johnbiggs interested in judging HackPrinceton? 200+ participants, half out-of-town, special hardware track. www.hackprinceton.com
The most tempting information: 200+ people (lots of demand), out-of-towners (relevant way beyond our orange bubble), special hardware track because he loves hardware, link for more info and legitimacy.
Always, I repeat, always tweet at reporters. These folks are social media junkies — this is their job. And they prefer it a lot more to e-mail — it’s shorter, cooler, and is a natural filter for bs-ers. Chances of response are much bigger than just e-mail.
I did it after e-mailing for a reason: he may have glimpsed my e-mail if not read it, so this will make him remember it and probably (re)read it for more info. Also shows dedication on my part.
Outcome
This whole thing took around 15 minutes. 30 minutes later, he wrote back (both e-mail and tweet) that he can’t make it but he intro’d us to this other dude from TechCrunch who will not only judge but also attend all of Saturday.
So while this is not a textbook example (we’re asking him for active involvement in the event), it shows some of the main points to consider. You can also see parallels to the sponsorship example I sent earlier.
Which of those little details made a difference? Would I have still gotten a response with half the words, or with a compltely different approach? Probably yes. I’m just giving you the thought process that I went through. It worked for me, but you should definitely feel free to experiment, try completely new things and see what happens. What I hope this example does is show what you should be thinking about and the level of detail to consider when drafting those.
Also I got lucky and got away with only one e-mail but if I didn’t have class I would have probably done five or six of those.
Happy hustlin’!
[end of e-mail]
Final Result — we got covered!
The event was a huge success, and of course we got our article in TechCrunch :)
Hope this guide is helpful!
