24hourhomepage.com — Week 16 & 17 — Podcasts, Pitching and Paid media
tl;dr: Last week I focused on reaching out to bloggers and journalists. Had 3 podcast interviews, discussions with press release experts and an interesting opportunity came up to promote 24hourhomepage.com
# Overview
Over the last two weeks— in my effort to make the best 24-hour “movie” on the internet and get better at sales and marketing along the way — I reached out to more bloggers, podcasters and journalists. As I mentioned before, I aggregated a huge list of podcasts to reach out to but only pinged 25 of them. I wanted to wait until my talk at JS.LA was posted as I think it provides some good additional context in the cold email.
As I pitched more journalists, I learned more about the pitching process in general.
Also, in my research, I discovered a pretty cool podcast that led to my first paid promotion of the site.
Let’s dive in!
# Podcasts
I was interviewed on 3 more podcasts
- Digital Introverts — A show about introverts sharing their successes and failures and how they thrive in the digital age.
- Junior to Senior — A weekly show for junior engineers who want to level up their game featuring conversations with tech leads, senior engineers and CTOs.
- Thingz of that Nature—Rockshana Desances is a great host and chats with people all around the world about what motivates and inspires them.
Each of these experiences was great and reminded me that even with the laser focus I have on growing 24hourhomepage, there are loads of dimensions worth talking about on this journey.
# Update: JS.LA talk
Speaking of which, remember that talk I gave at JS.LA last month? Well, it’s now posted on youtube for you to check out again!
# Paid Media…a story
Apparently in marketing-speak there are 3 common types of media you’ll find:
- owned
- earned
- paid
Owned media is any content you, the business owner, distribute. Earned media is when someone else creates content about you without your participation. Aka “free press”. Paid media is content you pay to be created and/or distributed.
While I was researching interesting journalists to eventually reach out to, I discovered and followed Eric Johnson and his podcast Follow Friday. The show is great. Each week, Eric sits down with a writer/podcaster/comedian to discuss who they follow online and why. Some great conversations and learnings in there.
Anyway, Eric independently discovered 24hourhomepage, joined and later tweeted out these kind words:
At this point we’re both smitten with each other’s products. We set up a call where he tells me about sponsorship opportunities for his podcast and I jump.
I’ve steered away from “paid media” because I’m operating on a shoestring budget and hadn’t found the right channel. A show about interesting people on the internet? Well, that’s the Goldilocks zone for sure.
Check out Follow Friday anywhere you get your podcasts and listen this week for the 24hourhomepage sponsorship!
# Pitching journalists
So with 1% of the day sold, I figured now would be a good time to start reaching out to journalists. Bloggers, newsletter writers, reporters…anyone who likes to tell stories of internet culture. If you’ve ever seen a journalist’s twitter profile you may have read a call out to send them “tips”. Here’s what I’ve learned about the whole “tipping” process:
“tips” — can be anything a journalist can use in a story. Maybe some hidden dimension not yet reported, maybe some exclusive information only you have access to.
“pitches” — are generally more like a full story. The who, what, where, why, when and hows of a full story. Sometimes the full story is even written for the journalist in question.
“press releases” — are short articles regularly distributed in hopes of having a journalist repost or retell the news.
Some marketers had recommended I use the PR Newswire tool but it comes with too steep a price for this bootstrapper. For now, I’m hitting newsrooms and journalists directly.
# This week
I’m going to reach out to local newsrooms. Not just online journalists but local tv and radio stations. I’ll also reach out to the rest of my podcast list.
# How you can help
Question for you: What is your favorite podcast?
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Email: justin@24hourhomepage.com
Twitter: @justinprojects
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/higginsjustin/
Newsletter: https://tinyletter.com/higgins
Cell: (510) 393–6888
