It’s been just five weeks since the soft launch of Marker, the new business publication from Medium. Based on an analysis of the 36 articles published so far, the content is predominatly business advice for startups — and not appreciably different from what readers can find elsewhere.
If you’re interested in state-of-the-art storytelling, look no further than last week’s special report from the New York Times. Titled “The Office: An In-Depth Analysis of Workplace User Behavior,” it’s not necessarily something to read — it’s something to play with.
Every CEO profile counts these days. Every enterprise software story does, too. So when we saw Financial Times west coast editor Richard Waters dedicate more than 1,000 words to PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada, that was a big deal. How did that story come about?
By now you know about Axios and its “smart brevity” (which an Axios comms pro once described as “going deep, writing short”). More than a slogan, smart brevity is a bullet-based, easily scannable writing style designed to convey information clearly at a glance. And now it’s more than a writing style…
Former Forbes and New York Times SMB expert Loren Feldman is preparing to launch 21 Hats, an SMB community platform designed to be a vital resource for business builders nationwide. Loren says “21 Hats” reflects what all SMB execs must wear day in and day out.
Voice of America Silicon Valley bureau chief Michelle Quinn has a pitch opp for you if your newsmaker works within 100 miles of San Francisco and if your story can be told well in video.
B2B platforms never got a lot of love from tech PR. Agencies don’t track them because they don’t revolve around “targets.” Clients tend to discount them because their content carries little prestige. Meanwhile, B2B readers are voting with their feet.
G2’s contributed content guidelines are refreshingly explicit and perhaps a bit demanding — you really need to know your SEO. Still, it’s worth it: submitting to G2 may land you a surprisingly effective hit while revealing how trade editors see their jobs these days.
Just when you think that AWS and Azure have all but monopolized Tier 1 enterprise tech edit, Bloomberg’s Nico Grant publishes 318 words on a new pricing structure from Atlassian. Study the edit approach in Nico’s Sept. 5 — it’s a strong news piece and also what PR success looks like.
The Enterprisers Project, described by owner Red Hat as “a community of CIOs discussing the future of business and IT,” may represent a contributed content opportunity for you. Content director Laurie McLaughlin (yes, formerly of IDG and UBM) explains why.
YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
Registration is now open for the ‘Bloomberg Tech’ F2F event, being held Jun. 4-5 in San Francisco. With the current early-bird discount, a ticket runs $1,500. There is no better way to build relationships with Bloomberg’s notoriously elusive tech reporters.
Well, for now it’s Jim Jordan… but such news illustrates the kind of world we seem to be headed for. Adweek has the details, subscription required.
No “predictions” post will appear on this site. That said, quite a number of subscribers have asked for a Zoom/MS Teams presentation on what 2025 will bring. A conversation is precisely the right tool for the job. After the election — and with AI transforming publishing and life — “2025” is best discussed among peers, not predicted. So if you’d like to have a confidential group exchange on what stands to unfold, and why, and how comms pros can come out on top in spite of it all, drop a line and we shall schedule something.
According to Adweek, Omnicom CEO John Wren and IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky were in merger talks for eleven and a half months before the transaction was announced this week. Amazing that it didn’t leak.
Should PR pros stop visiting X, with all its lies and hate? It’s only going to get worse. Or are tidbits from targets too important to walk away from? Click here to watch tech edit vet David Strom and I disagree (at high speed) about this, as one compelling visual after another pops up on your screen. In 2025, SWMS will officially launch “SWMS Sound Thinking,” designed to be “argumentative insight in six minutes or less.” Each segment will explore a timely and controversial topic of interest to tech comms pros. This prototype runs 5:25. Hope you enjoy it — feedback vital and welcome! –Sam
New EIC Jamie Heller has asked her reporters to start going on camera — for the BI TikTok channel — to explain the big, deep-divey story they just published. Other publications do this — especially archival Fortune. BI is now on that too. Game on.
