A Brief Note on A/B Testing…
July 19, 2025
3:43 pm
Do you practice A/B testing in any aspect of your business? A/B testing has been around for roughly a quarter of a century.
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SWMS ‘Sound Thinking’: Rafe Needleman’s AI Advice For AEs and SAEs
July 9, 2025
3:44 pm
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Marker Collective Bets on Software
November 11, 2024
5:05 am
SWMS tends not to cover the business initiatives of its subscribers, but the Marker Collective has embarked on something revealing. The parent org of Archetype,
SWMS Analysis: John Edwards, Informationweek
November 5, 2024
9:39 am
A veteran tech edit freelancer one told SWMS that freelancers are entrepreneurs like any other. Time is money. Profit beats all. Few PR pros pitch with this in mind — but they won’t be able to break through with John Edwards unless they do.
Test Your Pitch With AI
April 26, 2024
12:38 pm
Ever use AI to test pitches before sending them to reporters? Try it sometime. It’s a fun way to improve them. For the proper horsepower, you’ll need a paid subscription to a Gen AI service such as GPT-4 or Claude 3.
Deep Dive Part 1: When Gen AI Writes The Pitch
March 23, 2024
1:02 pm
Just for fun, try creating the story pitch after the story is written. We did that this week, using generative AI. We pasted an already-published story into each of three GenAI tools and asked it to write a compelling PR pitch based on that article.
Deep Dive Part 2: Your New Job? VP of Pitch Analytics
March 23, 2024
1:01 pm
It’s 2026. You’ve got a new job, earning $250K a year as “VP, Pitch Analytics.” You’ve got a modest budget to retain freelance tech reporters. You manage an intern.
SWMS Diagram: The Tier 1 Edit Process
January 12, 2024
4:35 am
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that when you’re pitching Tier 1 reporters, you are pitching their bosses at the same time. That’s why it’s helpful to understand the entire editorial process in the publications you’re pitching — not just the persuasion part.
The New TechNews, and a PR Pitch Model for 2023
April 18, 2023
9:51 am
Search platform TechNews last month introduced features that let users spot trends deep within tech editorial. Launched as IT Database in 2007, TechNews is widely used within tech PR to learn who is writing what.
SWMS Notes on Broadcast Pitching
October 5, 2022
4:58 pm
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YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
Right-Wing Podcasts: Dare You Pitch Them?
November 24, 2025
The day is coming that you will not be able to avoid framing the targets in terms of red or blue. So far you’ve been able to do that. Those days are coming to a close: large swaths of “the audience” are headed in this direction. If you don’t believe it, read this from Bloomberg. You will never see better reporting than this.
GEO and AEO: Be Careful of What You Promise the Clients
November 19, 2025
Superb reporting from Business Insider on what comes after Google Search. All the experts quizzed. The gist: these technologies and techniques are borderline mythical at this point.
AI-Driven Security Threats: A Threat to Edit ‘Shelf Space’ Too?
November 18, 2025
In the latest installment of Sound Thinking...David Strom, a well-known IT reporter and security expert, discusses the threat of AI tricking security systems and luring them to catastrophe. What will that mean to editors? When will it happen? It’s not an if, it’s a when.
Nieman Labs 2026 Predictions for B2B Media
November 11, 2025
Good vision here from Jay Lauf. Interestingly, Jay suggests that B2B publishing will become a service business to B2B pros, providing value directly to individuals and organizations. Static content is dying very quickly. This is the point of the analysis from this great media organization.
SWMS ‘Sound Thinking’ Topics: Literacy Rate, Ad Trends
November 9, 2025
America can’t read anymore. The good news: advertisers can advertise against different kinds of emotion in the copy. So even if the numbers of readers drop, there are more ways to attract ads. So perhaps the bad news will get cancelled out by the good. Sam Whitmore and David Strom discuss.
Xania Rockets Up the Charts
September 22, 2025
Can you imagine not needing to be a human being to be a superstar? You may remember Max Headroom. There’s plenty of examples of technology personas, but AI is a different world altogether. Is there a tech media angle to this item? Not really, but here she is — Xania.