Wed, 2019-05-29 10:38
Sam
For Your Next B2B Speaking Opp, Tell It Techie-Style
The usual wisdom when it comes to pitching a conference or webinar session is to offer up someone from your marketing department. I want to give you a counter proposal: find the most technical person in your shop that you can give your talk and try to avoid pitching your CMO at all costs.
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Last week's Techonomy NYC 19 event attracted a small, passionate audience that heard brilliant and inspirational speakers. Amid the topics of IoT, 5G and AI were appearances by social media pioneer Jeremiah Owyang, Bank of America chief operations and technology office Cathy Bessant, and two presidential candidates, Andrew Yang and John Delaney.
Wired EIC Nicholas Thompson steers one of the most venerable brands in publishing. That being the case, Wired tends to be tough to pitch successfully. That’s why PR pros will want to read what Nick had to say to us last week in New York City.
Myth: B2B IT publishers sell advertising to tech vendors. Their media brands employ dozens of reporters and editors who weigh pitches about emerging companies and technologies. The best pitches bring the best coverage. Reality: B2B IT publishers are digital manufacturers, mass-producing behavior that signals buying interest. Here's what's really going on.
eWeek (formerly PC Week) is well into its 36th year and never has it been more different. Under the leadership of EIC Chris Preimesberger and QuinStreet top management, eWeek this month pulled back from news and analysis and refocused on helping buyers decide what to buy. PR folks won’t like that.
Lewis DVorkin, the man who transformed Forbes.com, is inventing again. Now an adjunct professor at Cal State Northridge and the CEO of a startup called Newsroom.ai, Lewis has built a content management system -- Newsroom Studio -- designed specifically for smartphones. Its storytelling capabilities -- in the form of tap stories -- may amaze you.
Context and emotion aren't just coming -- they're here. The New York Times has begun classifying its articles by the emotions they generate. Sirius/XM recently launched several new audio channels programmed for listening while partying, barbecuing or working out. The newest clean-slate industry in America, cannabis, sells its products by context and emotion, too.
What makes Techonomy different? Founder and EIC David Kirkpatrick asks himself that every day. When David launched the brand in 2010, few event producers addressed how technology was transforming society. In 2010, President Obama finally got around to sending a Tweet. In 2016, candidate Donald Trump averaged 375 Tweets a month.
TechCrunch Extra Crunch this week posted a pair of articles containing admonishment and advice for tech PR pros. The top portion of the posts does appear for free in regular TechCrunch. The full text is available only to TC EC subscribers. We hereby excerpt (in fair-use fashion) what our readers most need to know.
Here's the debut of something we hope you like: a quarterly review of all the content posted here on the SWMS site. (You'll need your login and password.) "SWMS in Review" is ideal for your smartphone, thanks to Adobe Spark technology. Please let us know what you think of SWMS in Review and how we can make it better. 
Which publications still accept one-off contributions? Of the 114 titles in our contributed content Google Doc, roughly 100 still accept standalone articles. Unfortunately, the most attractive venues -- Forbes, TechCrunch and WSJ to name three -- want ongoing commitments. Inc. and Entrepreneur already have hundreds of contributors and don't hunger for more.
Financial Times opinion and analysis editor Brooke Masters this month produced a short video -- and companion article -- explaining how to contribute content to the publication. Brooke offers five basic points that every executive author should consider before pitching -- to the FT or for that matter anywhere else.
