Step by Step Guide To Get Real Press For Your Startup

Every founder on the planet knows getting press is an absolute pain in the ass.  Until you have any kind of credibility, nobody cares what you are doing.  You don’t know who to talk to, what to say or even how to reach the people you need to tell about your (insert another best idea ever here).

Press is absolutely vital for any startup and you can hear that preached in the walls of Y Combinator, TechStars, Seed Sumo or any other accelerator.  It speeds up everything and is like a loud megaphone screaming out what you are doing.  Plus if the press is from a large enough publication, it means more press, which means an even bigger megaphone. Real Press is normally very hard to get (consistently).  You might be able to grace the pages of TechCrunch or Business Insider every once in a while, but to get it when you need it, you have to take a different approach. Meet, Sumo Press Hack.

The Recipe:

STEP 1 - Target Individual Reporters

You want to find writers that have written about things in your space.  They are more likely to write about you.  This app uses the Google News API and searches for all articles with your keyword and pulls out the author.  This app is going to automatically put all of the results into a nice little spreadsheet (csv) for you and will include: Article Link, Title, Description, and Region.

Link to Google News API App

EX: If I’m building a door to door app, I want to search the app for “Mobile CRM Apps”.

Once you have a nice list of articles you think are relevant, the next step is to download them into a csv.  We will use that csv with mechanical turk to get all of the authors email address and reach out to them about our article or press we want.

STEP 2 - Download the csv

Download the CSV and save it somewhere that you can find it (on your desktop would work).  

STEP 3 - Register for Mechanical Turk

So I don't know if you outsource yet or not, but the following 2 steps alone are absolute GOLD.  Ever since I found out about Mechanical Turk it has been a game changer for Seed Sumo and our family businesses.  

Imagine being able to get 1,000 email addresses inserted into a spreadsheet from a list of domain names in less than 10 minutes of your own time.  Or send thousands of people to your website from all over the world to make a comment for under $30?  The possibilities are endless, but the bottom line is you have an army of "Turkers" at your fingertips that are waiting for small "Micro-Tasks" that can be completed in under 5 minutes.  Mechanical Turk let's you post the task you want completed, and puts the army to work all at the same time.  They each grab an individual task and complete it.  You have hundreds of small tasks being completed all at once.  Its beautiful.

Here is the link to login or register: Mechanical Turk

STEP 4 - Setup Mechanical Turk

The following video will give you step by step instructions on how to use Mechanical Turk for this hack.   This is the most complicated part of this hack, but I tried to cover each step.  

Don't make fun of me for still having the trial version of ScreenFlow (Which is why DEMO still shows up.  I'm just a cheap, cheap bastard.  Also, watch the video in 2X speed by clicking on the coggle wheel in the youtube video and click speed, then 2X.  I sound much smarter and you save a lot of time.

**Code Needed For this Step can be found here**

More detailed instructions with screenshots from the video above:

Login to Mechanical Turk and on the "Get Results" section click "Get Started" and login.

To follow along with this growth hack on how to get press for startups, you want to click "Create" and then pick "Data Collection".

Fill in the fields for Project Name, Title, Description, and Keywords. The title is one of the most important as that is what will attract people to your task. Consider using creative titles like "Great pay for 30 second task". 

To setup the numerical part of this HIT, you will select how much you want to pay for each assignment. The "Reward per assignment" is how much you will pay someone to do each HIT, or in our case, each email address collected. 

Number of assignments per HIT is how many people you want to work on each assignment. If you pick 2 instead of 1, then you will effectively double how much you spend on the project. We are picking 1 here and hoping that the info we get back is accurate. If you need to double check your Turk's work, or triple check, raise this number to 2 or 3. 

Select values for when the HIT expires and give yourself some time to auto approve and pay workers.

For this project, we don't need the workers to be Masters. This is easy mode.

Click "Source" and delete the pre-formatted stuff they gave you. Copy/Paste the code from this growth hack into the source code section, then click "Source" again to see what it looks like.

Your preview should look like this.

Once you click "Save" you will see your project dashboard and are ready to click "Publish Batch" which will allow you to upload the CSV.

Click "Choose File" and upload your CSV file.

Pick the CSV file that you want to upload.

Once the file uploads you can see if there are any problems that really need to be fixed. In our case, we had an extra column that wasn't listed in the HIT, but it will be ignored. This is just a warning, not an actual error. Click "Upload" to continue.

Once you are done with the upload you will be taken back to the main dashboard.

Now you can confirm and publish this batch once you review everything is correct. The price is listed as well as the number of HITs, which should be the same as the number of records in your CSV file.

Final step - click "Manage" to see the results of the task as it gets done. In our case we got 661 email addresses in less than 1 day, and we didn't have to do any of the work. Go TURK!!

STEP 5: Monitoring your MTurk Progress

After a day or so, you should get almost all of the authors contact info.  If you don’t, cancel your HIT project, adjust what you are paying by a few cents, and relaunch it with just the articles you don’t have contact info for.  You should get the remaining emails you need.  Just keep relaunching and adjusting price until it’s complete.  I usually pay $.04/per 45 second task and never have an issue.  

*Update - Lately I have not had to relaunch any of the campaigns and they are all being completed on the first run.  God I love MTurk.

STEP 6: Prepare Emails

    Email One Example (A Week Before Launch)

    Email Two Example (3 Days Before Launch)

    Launch Email      (Day of Launch)

What’s an Embargo?  I didn’t include in these email examples, but I suggest you state an Embargo Date so the reporters are not allowed to write about you until your launch date.  FYI: Some large web publications hate this, but if you don’t do it then the story will be released prior to launch and will not be covered by any other reporters.  

The way around this…If you know an author is big-time, just send him/her a revised Email One Example the night before launch (make sure to adjust the dates in the email so it makes sense though). This has worked dozens of times for me and keeps everyone happy.

STEP 7: Make an Epic Press Kit

This will take some time, but it is absolutely essential.  Unless you have a cure for cancer, these journalists don’t have time to email you and gather all this info.  They will just move on to the next best startup to do a story on.  

Here is an example of Balsamiq’s Press Kit, one that is not over the top, but has all the essentials.  If your press kit is not at least this good, keep going.

Also, post it to your website with a link.  Now that other journalists are going to be hearing about you, make it easy for them to create a story too.

STEP 8: Email’s Go Out

You have 2 options here to do this

1. Send 1 email at a time (Time consuming, but works really well)
2. Create an email campaign in (MailChimp, Constant Contact, or SendGrid), load up all the emails and save a bunch of time.  If you go this route, choose the most generic template they have so it looks like a normal email coming from you.  Don’t send a fancy designed email, they won’t open it.  (MailChimp Instructions) (SendGrid Instructions)
3. DO NOT SEND TO YOURSELF AND BCC EVERYONE.  This is lazy and is not an option.  You will show up in most of their junk emails and never be seen by any of them.  Spend the time and do it right.

Step 9: Watch the Press Roll In

Set up Google Alerts, which makes it easy to be alerted while the press is released.

Source/Inspiration: http://customerdevlabs.com/2013/09/24/google-news-api-mturk-press/

 

For more hacks like this visit SumoHack.

ALL THE STEPS TO CREATE A VIRAL SIGN UP FORM

If you have a lead capture on your website, then you understand the value and what that means to your business. But, what if there was an easy way to turn that one email address into 2, 3, 5 or more?  If someone is willing to give you their contact information, then they might also be willing to tell their friends.  This could me 5 sign ups for every 1! 

So the key point here is you need to incentivize them and give them more of what they want, and this needs to be a small value to you (dropbox gave away storage, which was low cost) in exchange for them referring their friends/contacts.  This is potentially a viral combination.

Collecting an email address from your website is easy, but how do you build an auto-responder that encourages your newly acquired user to generate referrals, track the progress as they go, and reward them at the same time?  And do all of this without breaking the bank or spending tons of Dev time building on your own? It’s simple, just use one that is already built. Untorch has done an excellent job and their tool is the only one we could find that works with Squarespace, Wordpress, Weebly and any other platform where you can add your own Javascript code. 

Recipe:

STEP 1 - Sign Up for Untorch

Sign up for Free

Enter Email & Password (You should be automatically Logged In)

STEP 2 - Create a Campaign

Name: Name of your campaign should be (The Thing they are signing up for).  Tomorrow or next week they are going to forget they signed up for this, so you need a good campaign name that will remind them and make sense tomorrow.

Offer: Benefit or what they get once they reach the goal below.  Make sure you explain the offer (Get this when you refer X number of People).  For a huge list of ideas used by some bad ass companies Click Here

Number of Signups: This is up to you (Higher Value, Higher Number of Referrals you should request)

Webpage: Enter Your Website

STEP 3 - Setting Up Emails

This is what is going to be sent to people that sign up.

Color: Make sure the color matches your brand (Here is the tool I use)

From Address: I typically put in my email address, larger companies might have [email protected] or whatever you want to appear.

STEP 4 - Save

STEP 5 - Get My Widget

STEP 6 - Install on Your Website

STEP 7 - Install on Wordpress (if necessary)

1. Install plugin:

Shortcoder Wordpress plugin

2. Create a new shortcode

Using Shortcoder, create a new shortcode and call it: "untorch"

3. Open the Shortcoder plugin

Most likely under the Settings tab on your Wordpress side menu, and have the shortcode contain the code below (Make sure to replace "###" with your own id!):

<script type="text/javascript" data-untorch-campaign="###" src="https://untorch.com/js/untorch.min.js"></script>

Note: Copy paste the script code under the "text" (not "visual") tab in the plugin. Failing to do so may result in your script being read as text and not Javascript.

4. Issues with the input field getting disabled? 

Create a new shortcode with the following code and name it enable_input:

<script type="text/javascript">setInterval(function () {document.getElementsByClassName("untorch-email-input")[0].removeAttribute("disabled");}, 500); </script>

5. Add the following text

On the page you wish to have the capture form: [sc:untorch] (and [sc:enable_input], if necessary)

Source/Inspiration: http://blog.forkly.com/a-viral-launching-soon-form/

 

For more hacks like this visit SumoHack.

Email Pre-Targeting Hack to Warm Up Leads

At the end of the day, using email is all about leverage, and to get the leverage you want, you have to follow the process. The more you trust and work the process, continually refine and avoid rushing it, the more leverage you’ll have.

Don’t fall into the trap of rushing things by saying “I don’t need to pre-target” and just send a blind, cold email. You’ll burn your list and not get the results you want or need.

It’s a process – just like everything else in marketing – and you need to work the process to get the desired results.

STEP 1 - Get list of email addresses in a CSV file

We will be creating another hack in the very near future that shows how to get a large list of emails.  Once completed, I will link here.

Facebook Pre-Targeting

Video Tutorial: Don’t judge my free demo mode for ScreenFlow, I actually did end up buying a license...

STEP 2 - Open Facebook Ads Manager

Login to Facebook and click “Ads Manager” in the top left hand side of the screen on the main page.  From wherever you are, you can always click the F for Facebook in the top left and usually find Ads Manager.  If you have never created an ad before, just click "Create Ad".

STEP 3 - Create Ad

Click “Create Ad” in the top right hand corner of the screen. 

STEP 4 - Choose Objective

In our example we are sending people to our website, but you can choose to boost a post, promote a video or other options. In each of these, the hack is to target a specific list of people, so the specific objective isn’t as relevant.

STEP 5 - PICK YOUR COMPANY

From the drop down list on the right, select your company.  If it doesn’t show up, you will need to be made an admin for this Facebook Page (if sending people to website you won't have a drop down menu, just paste in your website address). Don't worry about Pixels for this hack.

STEP 6 - NAME YOUR CAMPAIGN

Name your campaign and click “Set Audience and Budget” in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. 

STEP 7 - CLICK CREATE NEW CUSTOM AUDIENCE

Pick “From a Customer List”

STEP 8 - Select method to import customer list

To import the list you can upload a file, copy and paste, or bring them in from MailChimp if you use that tool.

STEP 9 - Name your Audience

Once the list is created, verify the count of email addresses is correct and name your audience with a description.

STEP 10 - Set Budget and Duration

Complete your ad campaign with budget and duration. We are using $5.00 per day for a week in this example, but you can go as low as $1.00 per day since the audience size will typically be much smaller. 

STEP 11 - (Optional) 

You can set the “Call to Action” button to “No Button”.

Removing the button will keep people from clicking which will save money on your ads. This is more of a branding approach since we are warming up your email list for an upcoming email campaign.

At this point you have now created a custom audience that you can select when doing any kind of ad in the future. 

LinkedIn - Pre-Targeting

Video Tutorial:

STEP 12 - Add Contacts

Login to LinkedIn and click “My Network” then “Add Contacts” at the top of the page.

STEP 13 - Import File

Click “Import File” on the bottom right side of the page and select a CSV file with your email contacts, then click “Upload File”

STEP 14 - Add Selected Connections

Click “Add Selected Connections” and you are done.

Now these people will have the opportunity to connect with you on LinkedIn. If they do connect with you then they will see updates. You also will see the groups they are a member of which will give you some insight and groups to join for further hacking.

STEP 15 - (Optional)

These steps will send a generic connect message which says: “I’d like to add you to my professional network”. Previously that was more of a big deal, but recent changes in the way LinkedIn connections work make it less relevant. However, if you’d like to do group invites AND send a custom invite message, you can use Rapportive. 

STEP 16 - Install Rapportive

Open the Chrome browser, and in the extension store search for “Rapportive” and install it. 

STEP 17 - Open Gmail

In Chrome, open gmail and click “Compose” to create a new email.

STEP 18 - Connect on LinkedIn

Copy about 10 to 20 email addresses and paste them into the “To” line of your email, but don’t click send. 

Click on each one of the email addresses and in the right hand side of the screen you will see their contact info. One option shows if you are connected on LinkedIn. If you are not connected, click the “Connect” button on the right and then enter in a personalized connect message without having to leave your email program.

Repeat this step for each name in the list. 

When you have finished with each batch of emails, highlight them all and delete them, then copy paste another batch of 10 to 20 email addresses until you are done. This program works better if you are connecting with smaller amounts of people, but adds a nice custom touch if you want to send a personalized invite message to each contact.

STEP 19 - (Optional) 

Export your LinkedIn contacts and use this list to do other email pre-targeting hacks!

Source/Inspiration: http://sixteenventures.com/saas-growth-hacking-email