Wed, 2016-05-25 12:24
Sam Whitmore
Predictions: A Path to Coverage
Looking for a fresh approach for story pitches, contributed content and client media? Try predictions. They're not just for December anymore. According to Google Trends, interest in predictions as a "media genre" has never been higher. Forbes's 2016 prediction articles drew three times as many readers than the Forbes average.
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Perhaps the most respected tech publication in the industry has the highest bounce rate, the smallest number of page views per visit and the lowest time on site among all major rivals. Which is it? SimilarWeb can tell you, for free. Founded seven years ago this month, SimilarWeb data can reveal dozens of criteria that can help shape your pitch strategies.
VentureBeat will turn ten years old in September. If it's to last another ten, Blaise Zerega will be the guy to chart the course. Blaise began this week as VB's EIC. He won't write much, so don't pitch him an everyday story. Pitch instead the story of the year.
With 2016 now so close, we thought we'd package what we felt were 2015's most poignant PR takeaways from the many tech and business journalists we interviewed. We kept the list quite short and focused only on the counter-intuitive. Let's get right to it.
On Jan. 4, when Forbes announces who earned a spot on the fifth annual 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 List, at least two things will happen. One, readers will see what the faces of millennial success look like. And two, we'll see what a media brand can do when print, web, F2F and apps all converge in a single effort. 
After profiling his work last week, we circled back with Forbes chief insight officer Bruce Rogers to get his own take on how best to approach him. "The first thing for any PR person to know is that 1) I get scores of pitches daily 2) I am not necessarily looking to be pitched. That leaves the rare pitch to which I pay attention that have the following in common:
We've been studying CEO profiles lately -- because subscribers have been asking us to. Here's what we found. CEO profiles focus either on CEOs getting to the top, or the techniques they use to stay there. The getting-to-the-top pieces are almost always "Can They Do It" stories, portraying a CEO's quest to establish a new marketplace or vanquish entrenched competitors.
"I'm not really a grumpy journalist," says Forbes contributor Adrian Bridgwater. "I just play one on Twitter." The ambiguity suits Adrian well. Though he's most associated with Forbes, where he writes ten to 12 posts a month on enterprise appdev and data management, Adrian writes almost as often (about open source) for Computer Weekly, a TechTarget site.