The following is a guest post by Rob Walling.  Rob Walling has been an entrepreneur for most of his life and is author of the book Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup.  He also authors the top 20 startup blog Software By Rob, that's read by tens of thousands of startup entrepreneurs every month and he owns the leading ASP.NET invoicing software on the market in addition to a handful of profitable web properties.

Imagine that you've just completed version 1 of your product and you're preparing for launch. You’ve greased the wheels with a few bloggers, targeted some keywords with SEO, created a bit of linkbait, and scheduled the press release to launch in the morning. At this point your co-founder turns to you and says: “What are we going to do with the $300 we have stashed away for advertising?” Consider this your lucky day. The goal of this article is to provide you with the core of what you need to know about cheap startup advertising as quickly as possible, so you can start spending that ad budget wisely. Let's get started.

Two Key Advertising Strategies The half-life of advertising traffic is zero. This means that the moment you stop shelling out cash, the traffic stops. The problem is that with typical conversion rates of 1-2% you're paying for 98 or 99 out of every 100 people to walk away and never come back to your site. To combat this inherent wastefulness of advertising, I have two key strategies I recommend no matter which method of advertising you use.

Strategy #1: Try to Get Permission

Seriously consider offering something in exchange for a visitor's email address. It can be a free trial, a free report, or maybe even a free book. But gaining the means and permission to contact that customer again will increase your conversion rate over time in most cases. There is great power in an email list.

Strategy #2: Use Advertising to Test

Use advertising as a testing tool rather than a long-term stream of customers. Very few startups can withstand the cash outlay required to turn advertising into a marketing activity with positive ROI. Even if you figure it out, advertising is a volatile marketing medium. Prices increase rapidly in online advertising as new competition crops up or prospects grow bored of your ad and your click through rate drops. When this happens, all of the time you invested in optimizing your ad campaign is *poof*...gone. So instead of relying on ad traffic as an ongoing stream, use it for what it's best at: the ability to generate a slew of visitors very quickly, and to be turned off just as quickly. This kind of traffic source makes it great for split testing and user behavior testing using tools like Clicktale and Crazyegg. It also gives you insight into how certain traffic converts for you. With properly tracked conversions and an ad on Facebook, you can determine that men from 35-45 convert at a rate 15% lower than women of the same age. This is valuable information, especially early in your marketing effort when you're still trying to figure out the ideal market for your application. Often this is not the largest market; it's the one to whom you can market for the lowest cost. As another example, with AdWords you can learn in a hurry which keywords convert for you, and which don't. This is insanely valuable as you invest the time and money on the long-haul of search engine optimization. Knowing the keywords that really convert for your business, as opposed to the ones that you think will convert, can save you piles of cash and many months of SEO effort. The "First Five" Advertising Options With the above strategies in mind, let's look at the first five advertising options you should consider.

Option #1: Niche Advertising

As a startup, there are hundreds of general advertising options available, and thousands more niche opportunities. Depending on the niche you're catering to you should be able to find a forum, blog, magazine or website in which to spend some ad dollars. The tighter the niche the better. Remember that niche sites tend to be cheaper to advertise on and drive more targeted traffic, which makes a huge difference in your conversion rate. (And if you're not targeting a niche because you want your audience to be the "whole world," you're going to need a lot more than $300 in your ad budget). In general, if you are marketing to a niche you will know the sites to target. If you don't it's time to pound the pavement and find out what they are. By "pound the pavement" I mean search on Google and contact people in the niche to find out where they hang out online. Two reputable niche ad networks I've worked with in the past are:

• InfluAds - With an increasing number of advertising "communities" covering design & UX, startups and entrepreneurs, work & productivity and web development, InfluAds can work with budgets as small as the $300-400 range. They sell a minimum set of granted impressions, and if more traffic is available during a month then existing advertisers receive it for free. Image ads only.
• BuySellAds - Though they've traditionally focused on the design & UX space, BuySellAds is in the process of branching into many other niches. This image-only ad network was the primary source of traffic for a design-oriented website I owned, and made the difference between a few hundred dollars a month in sales, and a few thousand. Advertising is purchased by impression or on a monthly basis from individual advertisers, meaning each offers different pricing. But the minimum buy is very cheap - in the $10-$20/month range.

Option #2: Google AdWords

• Ad Format: Text or image
• Ad Components (for text ads): 25-character deadline, 2 lines of body copy @ 35 characters each, 35-character display URL
• Approval Process: Automated, with manual review if you trip a filter

A few years ago, Google AdWords was great for startups. Many niches were untouched, and 5 and 10 cent clicks were commonplace. But these days, the vast majority of niches worth pursuing have ever-escalating click prices as more advertising dollars move online, including dollars from large corporations that don't blink an eye about spending $5 to produce a single visitor to their website. With a 1% conversion rate you need a $500 lifetime customer value to break even. This is more than a stretch for most startups who are scraping by on 0.5% conversion rates and sub-$100 lifetime customer values (at least to start with). But with Google carpet-bombing $75 AdWords coupons to every business in the civilized world, the number of advertisers, and thus the competition, is increasing. For the most part, the days of cheap clicks are over. The $1-2 per click I used to pay to advertise my invoicing software has become a negative ROI for me at $4-5 per click. But all is not lost. There is still a place in the backwoods of AdWords where the wild-west mentality (and cheap clicks) reign. That place is the content network. People traditionally think of Google AdWords as the ads that appear to the right of the search results. But the lesser known cousin of search ads are the ads that appear in every AdSense block you see around the web. These are ads placed through the Google AdWords content network. The content network is less targeted, higher volume, and typically much cheaper to advertise on, than the search results. While we don't have time here to delve into specifics of how to place ads on the content network, the most consistent approach I've seen that works over the long-term is to use their cost-per-action tool called the Conversion Optimizer. There's a great write-up of how it works from Patrick McKenzie of Bingo Card Creator fame, here. There are also some helpful tips on advertising on the content network here. And if you're willing to drop a few bucks, by far the best AdWords book available is the Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, which includes a section on using the content network.

Option #3: Facebook

• Ad Format: Text with required image
• Ad Components: 110x80 image, 25 character headline, 135 characters of body copy
• Approval Process: Manual (sometimes slow)

Facebook is still viable for startups with its ability to deliver 10-15 cent clicks under the right circumstances. But it's a bit like the Wild West: if you approach Facebook advertising incorrectly you will pay a premium, around 75-90 cents per click. The value of Facebook is its ability to show your ads to exactly who you want to see it based on information in a user's profile. You can easily segment on gender, age, location, relationship status and a number of other fixed parameters, along with thousands of interests and occupations you can target using keywords. The key to low cost Facebook clicks is having a high click through rate (CTR). The key to a high CTR is a combination of a powerful image, an engaging headline, and laser-focused targeting. Due to space constraints we're not going to cover the basics of choosing a powerful image or writing an engaging headline. Not when there are perfectly good articles already written on the subject for those who would like to know more: choosing an image / writing a headline. But once your ad is written, there is a trick to achieving those 10 cent clicks. Based on a tip from my friend JD, I now use the following method with Facebook ads:

1. Target your demographic information so tightly that you can write a headline that addresses them specifically. Example: if you are selling shoes online to the U.S. market, create 10 different versions of the ad, one for each of the major metro areas in the U.S. Also include the qualifying "interests" keyword: shoes. Now make each ad headline address its group specifically, using a formula like "Need Shoes in [city name]?"
2. Start the ads with a modest budget of, say, $5-10 per ad per day.
3. After 12-24 hours review the ads. Some will have high CTRs and costs per click around 10-15 cents. Others will have low CTRs and clicks in the 80-90 cent range.
4. Pause the higher cost ads and increase the budget for the low cost ads to whatever you can afford; $100 per day or more per ad.
5. For a few days you will receive extremely low-cost, targeted traffic. But since you've chosen a small group of people, they will start to tune out the ad rather quickly. At this point your CTR will drop and your cost will climb. Pause the ad, and start over with new cities, new images or new headlines.

This approach requires ongoing maintenance but if you can generate targeted, 10-cent clicks it's worth the effort.

Option #4: StumbleUpon

• Ad Format: not applicable
• Ad Components: just your URL
• Approval Process: Manual

I recently advertised my developer's guide to launching a startup on StumbleUpon. The plus side of StumbleUpon is that all clicks are 5 cents. The downside is the bounce rate is high since people are basically channel surfing. I achieved a 96.88% bounce rate in my experiment, with an average stay of 2 seconds. I wonder if it was something I said? In my test, only 25 visitors stayed longer than 5 seconds. I paid $50 for 1000 clicks, but since only 25 of them stayed long enough to read anything, I effectively paid $2 per click. Your mileage may vary, but through this and other experiments I've gathered the following tips for advertising on StumbleUpon:

• Your #1 goal is to get stumblers to stay longer than 5 seconds. Your #2 goal is to get them to up-vote your page. Paying $50 for 1000 clicks is one thing. Having it go viral and receiving 10,000 clicks for the same price is another.
• Don't send StumbleUpon traffic to a landing page that asks for an email address. StumbleUpon users are notoriously fickle about providing their email.
• People stumble to be entertained, so if your page doesn't have the potential to go viral or turn into linkbait, you will not likely fare well.
• Blog-like content and videos seem to work best. Anything that resembles a traditional landing page will bomb.

Option #5: Reddit

• Ad Format: Text with optional image
• Ad Components: 70x70 image, title, URL
• Approval Process: Manual (two-day lead time)

Reddit uses an interesting approach for their ad pricing: advertisers bid a certain amount per day, all of the money goes into one big pot, and each advertiser receives their share of the impressions based on the percetage of funds they contributed. It's a simple system, but it means there's a bit of uncertainty about what you're going to get for your money. However, Reddit has the potential to provide some very cheap clicks - I've seen as low as 3 cents - if you play your card right. Similar to StumbleUpon, Reddit provides your ad with the potential to go viral. Gabriel Weinberg has a great write-up of the 20,700 clicks he scored for 3.14 cents each for his new search engine Duck Duck Go. His eye-catching image and tech-focused startup served him well with the audience. As he says:

First, a search engine ad is a good fit for reddit ads in general. It has broad market appeal and redditters in general like trying out new technology. Second, I think the ad is particularly well structured. The circular duck icon draws your attention, is contrasting to site colors, and sticks out because it is a circle (as most images are square). I believe the title also has appeal.

Gyutae Park also has a nice write-up of the 434 clicks he purchased for 9 cents each here. One of my recent experiments was a bit more pricey: 187 clicks at 40 cents each. My lackluster performance was a combination of landing on a competitive advertising day, and using a poor-quality header image. In retrospect, I have no idea what I was thinking using this unreadable image: Reddit ads are so simple (just two visible components) that the only tip I have is self-evident: your image has to rock, and so does your title. It's all about choosing an image and headline that makes people click. Conclusion To conclude, I want to reiterate what I said early in this article: unless you have deep pockets think of advertising not as a long-term traffic strategy, but as a testing tool to improve your website and find out more about your ideal visitor. Few bootstrapped startups can withstand the cash outlay required to turn advertising into a marketing activity with a positive ROI, but that shouldn't keep you from testing the waters to find out for yourself. I look forward to hearing about your advertising experience and recommendations in the comments.

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This article is a bit out of the ordinary.  But, it's a Friday so I'm hoping you'll cut me some slack. 

For some reason, I like wordsmithing and trying to make phrases smaller (but still have some meaning).   So, late at night, I tried to come up with some of my best startup advice and see if I could reduce it down to exactly three words (which is why I call them "triplets").  One thing led to another, and I became obsessed with it. So, then I made 47 before I had to make myself stop.  And, to ensure that you didn't take this too seriously, I included a photo of some puppies.  You will now find the article irresistible and will share it with the entire world.  

In any case, hope you enjoy them.  It's likely not the most brilliant startup advice you've ever read -- but it has a decent chance of being the shortest.  Oh, and please be sure to add your own in the comments. 

Startup Triplets:  Startup Advice In Exactly Three Words

1.  Watch your cash. [tweet]

2.  Pick founders carefully. [tweet]

3.  Hire generalists early. [tweet]

4.  Hire specialists later. [tweet]

5. Invest in culture. [tweet]

6. Avoid tempting distractions. [tweet]

7.  Support customers maniacally. [tweet]

8.  Avoid business plans. [tweet]

9.  Write a blog. [tweet]

10. Never fudge numbers. [tweet]

11. Encourage diverse thinking. [tweet]

12. Guard your time. [tweet]

13.  Defer renting space. [tweet]

14. Get enough sleep. [tweet]

15.  Delay raising capital. [tweet]

16.  Persist through downturns. [tweet]

17.  Decide with data. [tweet]

18.  Improve product daily. [tweet]

19. Recognize revenue consistently. [tweet]

20. Start charging early. [tweet]

21. Reward early adopters. [tweet]

22. Sell something today. [tweet]

23. Say “NO” often. [tweet]

24. Accept imperfect data. [tweet]

25.  Recruit with zest. [tweet]

26. Nurture your best. [tweet]

27.  Treat vendors well. [tweet]

28. Believe in yourself. [tweet]

29. Respect your competitors. [tweet]

30. Try something new. [tweet]

31. Build a brand. [tweet]

32. Focus, focus, focus. [tweet]

33. Iterate more often. [tweet]

34. Use your product. [tweet]

35. Live your vision. [tweet]

36. Encourage rational debate. [tweet]

37. Make decisions swiftly. [tweet]

38. Face harsh realities. [tweet]

39. Don’t break laws. [tweet]

40. Protect your health. [tweet]

41. Celebrate your successes. [tweet]

42. Cancel unnecessary meetings. [tweet]

43. Improve emloyee's resumes. [tweet]

44. Beware big bullies. [tweet]

45. Share the experience. [tweet]

46. Maintain your relationships. [tweet]

47. Keep it fun. [tweet]

Update:  Guy Kawasaki (yes, the Guy Kawasaki) was kind enough to post some of his own triplets. Here are some:

48. Sales fixes everything.

49. Ship then test.

50. Do not partner.

You can see his full list here: Guy Kawasaki's Startup Triplets.

Challenge:  You're way smarter than I am.  Please come up with your own startup triplets and share them.  Leave a comment or post it to twitter (with hashtag #StartupTriplets).  I think you'll find it fun -- and addicting.  I'll take the best ones and pull them together into a future post -- or even a book.  You could be famous!

Ready?  Go!

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The following is a guest post by Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer, a smarter way to post on Social Media. [Note: I'm an angel investor in Buffer and love what they're doing]

The Complete Guide to Getting Press Coverage For Your Startup

Whoa, this guide was long, long, long overdue. Over the past few months, a lot of people reached out for help on how to best get press for their startup. I could help them with a quick email response, but it never felt quite appropriate.

So from now on, just a link to this guide will hopefully be useful.

Over the past 6-9 months, I am extremely thankful for the amazing stories lots of great writers from news and tech sites have written about Buffer.

To put it into perspective:

Mashable featured us 6 times, TechCrunch twice, over 10 articles in The Next Web, plenty of write-ups from ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm, LifeHacker, VentureBeat, Inc. Magazine and others. In total, there were over 40 stories by these notable sites written about us, each one based on the tips in this guide.

It is up to you to judge how good or bad the above outcome is and there are others who have done better of course. And one of the things I still fail on, is getting covered by mainstream media, such as CNN, Forbes,and FastCompany and co.

Yet, I wanted to share my experience with you on what we have achieved with Buffer and spill all the knowledge I have for getting covered. Literally everything, down to the tiniest detail.

First off, I don't want to fool you and need to emphasize the nature of our product, Buffer. It is a tool for Social Media, making you more efficient and productive. It is a consumer product, helpful to anyone using Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

That's pretty helpful if you want to get featured by tech sites. So, please bear in mind, that any results below, are biased towards and tied to the nature of Buffer. It might not make any difference to your approach, but just in case.

Secondly, don't be overwhelmed with the info below. A lot of these things took me a long time to figure out. Trying to follow all these points right away, might leave you frustrated and with too much to do at once. I would suggest:

• read one section,
• do it,
• get back to the guide at a later time to do the next step.

I believe, getting your startup covered, is one of the most important things you can do to get your product out there. It can help with and did so for us with a lot of things, such as new signups, getting investment, partnerships and biz dev deals.

Especially if you are a first time entrepreneur, who can't rely on a huge personal network, that helps you get the word out, press can be an amazing way of doing it.

All set? Let's get started:

1) Have your own startup blog, learn to tell stories

Yes, I can't stress this first point enough. Especially as it seems quite unclear at first. A lot of the success I have had with getting covered comes down to us having a very active blog.

I have written before about why your startup needs a blog. This point is different to anything mentioned there. That's great right? On top of all the good things that happen through having a blog, it also plays a major role when getting covered. Here is why:

If you learn to blog, you will learn to become a better writer. You will understand why one headline gets shared more than others. You will understand, why one piece of content attracts more readers than others. You will understand that no one wants to hear about your product, unless it provides a focused insight on which problem it will solve for your readers.

So once you run your own startup blog, 2 things will happen:

 

a) Once you submit stories to tech writers, you will be on the exact same level with them. You will understand their struggle. See, a writer doesn't care about your product. But they care about providing value for their readers. Once you understand that, the door to getting loads of write-ups is wide open. You will be a writer suggesting a great story, not the marketing guy trying to get his startup featured.

b) Being a blogger and knowing how to write, will give you an immense pull. You can provide your own coverage on your own blog. Let me give you an example. Recently we added Buffer for LinkedIn. The write-up on our own blog, got well over 500 shares, brought more sign-ups than the tech coverage we reached out for AND without any further emails triggered 4 more write-ups from notable blogs, just because it was getting shared so wildly.

So the first step to getting coverage for your startup is to build an active blog, that teaches you about writing and telling stories.

2) How to get to know writers via Twitter and Facebook

Mashable doesn't cover you a writer does!

Here is one of the biggest mistakes I made at the start. I thought if I had something news-worthy, I would pitch that Mashable site or that TechCrunch blog with a story. Not surprisingly, we never got any write-ups from it.

Then I realized something, it's not the news-outlets that write about you, it's individual writers that do. Sounds stupid and obvious right? Yet, it changed my approach completely.

So, in order for your startup to get covered, you need to know those writers and you need to know LOTS of them.

The first thing I did is follow them all on Twitter and subscribe to their Facebook updates. Here is a list of the about pages from Mashable, TechCrunch, and ReadWriteWeb (these are just examples, make a much bigger list, than just those 3). Go ahead and find the most suitable writers covering the industry your startup is in.

Now that you follow them and are subscribed, become interested in what they do. I don't mean to make this a big task, do it very casually and make it a habit. Browse your Twitter and Facebook stream and you will come across them.

The best part? Those writers are all great people. It's a lot of fun to read their stories and hang out on Twitter and Facebook with them.

Answer some questions if they ask, reply to Tweets and Facebook posts, retweet their stuff, comment on what they write about. Do it, because you are interested and they write about your industry. One more time:

Become genuinely interested and understand what they like.

Your pitch will be ten times better once you email them. You will be able to relate personally and they will have seen your face before. When they see your name in their inbox, they are much more likely to at least open that email.

So the second step is to start connecting with those writers on Social Networks.

3) Do your best to avoid the Alexias and Sarah Lacys

So, we have added this great functionality to our product. And there is that woman Alexia, who writes about startups. What a great match, let's get in touch!

Oh boy, was I naive, when I started out. Later I understood that it is not enough to just submit a news tip and realized I had to reach out to writers themselves.

Armed with lots of courage through this newly gained knowledge, I would email Alexia, Ben Parr, Sarah Lacy and MG Siegler, with my fantastic story for them.

And yet still, no response. Here is the thing:

These writers are the busiest of them all and most exposed to pitches all day long. They get literally hammered with hundreds of them every day. The chance that they will pick up your story is very slim. Do yourself a favor do not reach out to them.

Instead, be laser -focused on writers, that cover your industry. And look for people, that are young and new and don't get hundreds of emails every day.

This is very easy, just go to the front page and browse through the latest stories. You will easily and quickly find the right person, after you have seen 3-4 stories from them over the past few days.

So as the third step, avoid to reaching out to the most prestigious writers. Narrow your focus and find the rising stars. as much as you can.

3) Crafting that email pitch for reporters an example that got us on Mashable

With anything you do in life, expect to have a 25% success rate. ~ Auren Hoffman, CEO Rapleaf

We have come a long way by now. You know it is all about your story, not your product. You know you need to build personal relationships with writers and you know you need to reach out to younger writers, who actually write about stuff related to your product.

If you have come that far, you have probably already increased your success rate of getting featured by a large multiple. The road to getting covered is still a tough one.

So lets work on that pitch. That's what will likely actual part that will determine, whether a story about your startup goes live or not.

Here is an email that got us written up by Mashable:

———————————————————-

Hi Sam,

Really loved your post yesterday on how the fan managed to get a job with the team, this is priceless and amazing example of how passion can help us succeed!

We have some big news for you. With the new release of Twitter.com, we have just released a way to post retweets via Buffer right from Twitter.com at a better time. It works seamlessly via installing our browser extension. You will have now, next to "reply" "retweet" and "favorite" a new option to "Buffer".

I believe this will allow anyone to spend very little time, glancing over their Twitter stream and retweeting everything they find interesting - yet without ever flooding their followers with too many Tweets in a row. It should be a great way to Tweet interesting content at the best times, well spaced out over the day straight by using Twitter.com. A bonus tip here is to use this in connection with Twitter lists, where most people have a lot of great content aggregated, but a hard time sharing from there.

You are the only newssource I have approached with this, do you think this could be an interesting story for you and your readers?

Best,

Leo

——————————————————-

Let's go through it paragraph by paragraph:

Really loved your post yesterday on how the fan managed to get a job with the team, this is priceless and amazing example of how passion can help us succeed!

The opening is not at all about myself or anything related to our startup. I have been following this writer for a few weeks. I really love his posts and Tweets, I still follow him and enjoy reading his posts today. So I thought of opening with a note to one of the posts I enjoyed the most.

We have some big news for you. With the new release of Twitter.com, we have just released a way to post retweets via Buffer right from Twitter.com at a better time. It works seamlessly via installing our browser extension. You will have now, next to "reply" "retweet" and "favorite" a new option to "Buffer".

Now, the first paragraph is about your product. What has changed, how does it work. I found making this very descriptive can help a lot. There is no talk about how it will change the world (yet), just what it does. Concise and easy to understand.

I believe this will allow anyone to spend very little time, glancing over their Twitter stream and retweeting everything they find interesting - yet without ever flooding their followers with too many Tweets in a row. It should be a great way to Tweet interesting content at the best times, well spaced out over the day straight by using Twitter.com. A bonus tip here is to use this in connection with Twitter lists, where most people have a lot of great content aggregated, but a hard time sharing from there.

This part is only about the value for the reader. Why would anyone care? Which use cases are there? How can this be interesting for a reader? Think of this part as the one, where a writer can scan his brain for headlines and imagine a story about this written up.

You are the only newssource I have approached with this.

Do you think this could be an interesting story for you and your readers?

The last part is as important as everything else. Be sure to always give the story away as an exclusive. Then, ask one clear question, that the writer can respond to.

Triggering a thanks for thinking of us, but I will pass on this story. Can be as important as getting a yes. You will be able to either move on or work with that writer on the story.

A lot of my pitches get declined or no response still, it's completely normal. Make that your expectation. Never expect that writers don't like you or are annoyed by you. It's not true. They are just super busy. Move on, fire off the next pitch and learn.

One more thing on this. As you grow, your bargaining power grows too. You can add deadlines to when this will go live on your own blog/emailed out. If you start out, just try lots of different pitches. It is a great way to learn what works and what doesn't.

Oh and here is the end result of that pitch as a post: Buffer App Lets Users Schedule Shares Directly From Twitter

4) The art and timing of sending that pitch off and getting in touch with reporters

You have crafted your pitch, and are ready to hit that send button. Hold off for just a little bit.

You are facing tough competition. Not only from other startups, but also from plenty of PR firms, who want stories written up for their clients. The one great advantage you have, is that you can add that extra bit of personality.

Here is what I normally do:

Before I send that pitch off, I would send a Tweet to the writer saying: "could I drop you a quick line on an exclusive story?" I've found that Twitter is a much quicker medium and triggers answers much faster. So once, I get a reply, I can hit send and it will be much easier for the writer to recognize my name and at least look over the email.

You can do the same thing by sending a Tweet after you have emailed. Mentioning them with a simple "Just sent a quick email over on an exclusive story, I hope you will be able to take a look." It again gives you a differentiating element.

Your messages often get ruled out as a mass email, so you need to take that extra step and add personality to your approach. I have had great results doing this.

Play around with this. I have also tried sending no Tweet and it worked. It is really up to you judging based on the situation. If one thing doesn't work, try the next one.

In any case, be sure to make it personal, from writer to writer, not from startup to Mashable.

Timing of your email and Tweets

Timing is also a very important aspect for getting you covered. The best days for traffic for getting coverage of your story I have learnt are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Monday is way too fast to get you written up, the inboxes of reporters are full it's just not a great day.

If you launched something, what I would do is, get that email over to reporters in the morning, before 10am.

Make sure you check with time zones. Most reporters live in either SF or New York. 10am PST can be a very poor timing for an EST reporter. They will see it early afternoon, when they have most stories for the day already on their to do list.

At the same time, I learnt that, whilst Fridays aren't as good for traffic, the news is slower. So your chances of getting covered on that day can be higher. With a recent story about Buffer on Mashable, I took advantage of this. I followed up on a story I had pitched earlier in the week. Since it was extremely busy, I wouldn't get a response, yet a quick follow up email on Friday would receive an immediate response.

Play around with timing and the approach through Social Media, in either way, focus on getting your pitch out before noon.

5) A story about your startup is written and published now what?

Yes, yes, yes! You finally managed to get your story written up. A great tech blog picked it up, and wrote about your latest feature. Especially if it is your first time and you are only slightly similar to me, you are jumping around in your room, opening that bottle of champagne.

Yet, now is the time to show up, roll up your sleeves and make the most of your success. It is something that a lot of people forget, yet, the results of doing the following 7 steps can be immense:

 

• Monitor the comments on the post, be lightning fast in responding to feedback and support if readers ask for it.
• Write a comment yourself. Be grateful, thank the writer for the story, and highlight something you liked.
• Share the story, again, by emphasizing the writer. Mention their Twitter handle when you Tweet. Mention their G+ name when you post.
• Monitor the Facebook posting from the blog on your story. Do the same thing as with the comments, reply to them, jump in and offer your support.
• Monitor the Twitter stream, thank people for retweets of the story, pick up responses and conversations. Again, jump in, be grateful for feedback and offer support.
• Send a follow up email to the writer, thanking them for the story and truly appreciating their work.

One big point here, if you get hammered in the comments, don't try to defend yourself. Instead, be appreciative, say thanks and look into the problems. Make yourself vulnerable, it's amazing how this works to build a community of raving fans. I have seen this go bad a few times with other startups and it just ends in a pointless, opinionated argument.

So really, why are you doing all that? The answer is very simple: To get more press in the future. Remember, this is not a one-off event, you want to get featured many, many, many times.

If you go that extra mile, by really showing how grateful you are, appreciating the writer's work, chances are you will be remembered and make it have it a lot easier next time you want a story written up.

For our first Mashable story, we did exactly that. Check out the example here:

HOW TO: Space Out Your Tweets Without Being Online All Day

When I sent a follow up email that day, I received a reply mentioning how great it was that we were in the comments and how well the story sat with their readers, and that I should please keep them posted on any new features we release.

You bet I did!

6) Four completely different types of stories you can pitch

The goal when getting covered by the press, as I have briefly touched on above is to get covered again and again and again. In order to achieve that, you need to have a few different types of pitches up your sleeves.

Here is a list of 4 very distinct ideas you can use for pitches alongside some examples that got written up for each of them.

Big disaster happened your product is there to help pitch

This is something very powerful and also difficult to detect. It demands quite a bit of creativity from your end and again, the mindset of a writer. If you are not convinced to have a blog by now, head back to chapter 1 and check it out again.

Let me give you 2 examples of this:

When CoTweet, a popular Social Media tool shut down their free version recently, I thought that a lot of people must be annoyed by this. So, I realized, they will definitely be looking for a replacement.

I reached out to Mashable and suggested them a story to them on this, titled CoTweet Gone: Here Are 7 Great Alternatives. I didn't even have to ask whether they could include Buffer.

When Summify, popular news aggregation tool was scooped up by Twitter and announced it would close its services, News.me did the exact same thing. They reached out to news sites and said they are a great replacement for Summify. There were lots of posts written up about them.

Again, the key for me was to always think about how you can provide value for readers, not how you can get your startup covered. If you do that, you will have a great amount of new opportunities to get features about your startup written up.

Awesome data - pitch

News sites love, love, love data. Especially if it is in some way related to the biggest Social Networking sites. Why do they love data so much? Because it spreads like wildfire on Social Media and is a very interesting insight for readers.

Let me give you an example of how we got over 5 stories written up about one data set we collected:

We looked at 1 million Tweets that were sent through Buffer and realized, we are adding a lot of value for users. Basically, we could show, that if you start using Buffer, you will get 200% more clicks on Tweets, double the number of retweets and an increase in your Klout score by 3.5 points.

This was absolute gold and the news sites loved it. How could any site not want to write about a tool that increases clicks on your links by 200%? We could use that data on many occasions even in future write-ups, when the study was no longer the focal point.

Dig up some interesting stats from your users and find out, what might be an invaluable insight for readers. It will again open up lots of great opportunities for sites to write about.

Brand new features to make users awesome - pitch

This is the most well known pitch startups use these days. You have a new feature added to your product and think it's worthy of getting covered.

The point I want to focus on with new features pitches is to keep it to 1 feature only. I have made the mistake plenty of times in the past, that I would send a pitch saying: We have added this feature and this feature and also this and this and that.

If you remember the email pitch in chapter 3 you will find, that I have only focused on one single aspect. Just that one thing, nothing else. And in fact, it was a tiny thing. Yet, by working out exactly how it will be helpful for readers, I could give a very compelling pitch.

Try and do the same, only pitch one iteration or addition of your product. Not 10. It will make your pitch a lot clearer and easier to understand. Writers have a very short attention span, and if they need to figure out how they can add up all your different new iterations in a story, they will be a lot more likely to just move on to the next pitch that sits there in their inbox.

And it will also give you an opportunity to pitch lots of different stories, as you are adding different features.

Hit big milestone - pitch

The last type of pitch that has worked well for us is the Milestones pitch. This is a great one, not only for signups, but also for branding. People will see you are still around, you have grown, you are worthwhile to get a proper first or second look.

I learnt that this is also a great one for news sites, as they get a unique insight into your startups background, that no one else has access to, like for example a feature.

In our case, we had an early story once 1,000 000 Tweets were sent out using Buffer. The key here is to pick a big number. Oftentimes, signups won't be the one. It can be any number that shows great usage of your app and makes readers curious to check you out and writers curious to cover you.

With this type of pitch, it is particularly up to you to show why the mentioned figure is relevant. Klout for example, made a big deal out of the fact that they had 100 million users scored with their algorithm. It didn't mean that they had 100 million users, yet sure enough but it helped them to trigger a huge amount of press around their milestone.

7) How to make getting covered a habit, not an accident

Whoa, we have gone a long way. I tried to go into every detail I could think of to help you get your startup written up. And yet, I have one last point, that I think might be as important as every other one mentioned here.

You don't want your startup being featured once, twice or three times. You want it to show up in the news in a cycle. Every 2 to 3 weeks, you should pop up again. With a cool new feature, with some interesting data, a big new milestone, you name it.

If you make this your goal, everything you do, will be much more focused on the long run. And I learnt, I will be able to motivate myself a lot better for things that wouldn't make sense as a one-off.

The relationships are easier to build. Writing your blog is easier to do. Being grateful once you get one story is much easier to focus on.

Everything mentioned in this guide, should set you up for making it easy to get into this cycle of constant coverage and news mentions. Of course, the development of your startup needs to clearly follow that path.

Given that you have launched with a true MVP in Lean Startup fashion, and are iterating like a madman, you shouldn't run into any troubles to come up with a new story ever two to three weeks.

If you do, work with your team and push yourself to release more stuff, more frequently.

Work on different stories as mentioned in the previous chapter, and set yourself a schedule for reaching out for write-ups. If 2-3 weeks is too tight at the beginning, make it once a month, but have it as a consistent and recurring point on your to do list.

Are you ready to rumble? Get yourself out there and get that startup covered. By following the steps from this guide, I have no doubt you will manage to do so.

If you still have any questions, just let me know in the comments below or shoot me an email leo@bufferapp.com.

What do you think? How have your PR efforts gone? Had any big hits you'd like to brag about? If so, please share in the comments and teach us a few things.

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