Takeaways from Pitch, Don’t Spin: How to Create Buzz Around your Start-up
Rae Wang, TMMBA Class of 2003
TMMBA sponsored an MIT Enterprise Forum Northwest entrepreneur meet up last night, the topic was Pitch Don’t Spin. I was very excited that the TMMBA program reached out to the community to connect with other tech enthusiasts, meanwhile making such events available us, the alums, to attend. I have a two years old startup and customer acquisition through new media is always on my marketing agenda, so this topic caught my interest right away.
The panel consisted of the co-founder of GeekWire, Founder of Newsvine, editor of Seattle Business Magazine, Seattle Times Technology Columnist, and the senior editor of Xconomy. They gave us a wide range of opinions on how to approach media in this new media age. General challenges in the tech media today are:
- Too much information is flowing around
- A lot of people are writing
- New media and old media provide a lot of choices for entrepreneurs, it can get overwhelming
The panel presented very interesting points and suggestions on how tech entrepreneurs can effectively tackle these challenges:
- Be authentic, be honest, and be yourself
- Sell your true story not your credentials
- Have a story: just because you have an app, it does not mean you have an interesting story
- Explain your technology in layman terms
- Get the reporters interested in you
- Know your audience and use the correct channel to pitch: no need to do Twitter etc if nobody reads it
- Get your interesting nuggets of news prepared ahead of time before meeting the press
- Rethink press release and don’t be afraid to use new media, such as emails
If you would like to learn more about this event, my fellow note taker over at fireundereverybutt.com posted a visual note from the event. Check it out at http://fireundereverybutt.com/visual-note-taking/.
