Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

    The high-profile bloggers and reporters
    (think Alexia Tsosis, Sarah Lacy, Robert
    Scoble) can spend most of their time on
    investigative journalism and analysis

haha, seriously? Investigative journalism?

Edit: OK, seriously, this is where you lost me.

    Robert Scoble, for example, is a sucker 
    for anything involving Google Glass or
    fine alcohol

ahem: http://valleywag.gawker.com/robert-scoble-in-recovery-going-...

Alexia Tsotsis (you misspelled her name in the article) has gone off to business school, and Scoble is in AA. I find it hard to give any credence to anything you say after this.

Also to be clear: I don't find Scoble's work particularly interesting. I think he's uncritical and offers little more than naked PR opportunities to companies hoping to tap into his ravenous mob of tech enthusiasts. But, it's not like I dislike him as a human being. I just wish he was more critical about the companies he shows off on Facebook, or wherever he's posting now.

Yeah, that paragraph was really just a couple of examples to point out the fact that reporters are just people at the end of the day. This was written a few years ago and was recently ported over to Medium, where it started taking off, hence mentioning Scoble and Tsotsis. I should update, but I wouldn't read too much into it.

The process definitely works, I've used it for a dozen companies when I used to work in marketing, and it has worked for my company as well.

"and was recently ported over to Medium"

Wouldn't it have made sense to update it prior to porting to Medium then?

Sure, I just didn't think about it.

...or at least updating it before knowingly posting dated info to HN.

While I am definitely not a fan of "influencer culture" either, the examples given are a bit ad hominem. (Scoble is back to doing newsletters)

Sorry, what about my examples are "a bit ad hominem"? I mention Scoble joining AA not to mock him, but instead to strongly dissuade anyone from trying to give him booze.

Ah, that makes much more sense.

I made these same points below.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10440046

It's all about knowing the reporters. Form emails can't address that.

While I agree, not everyone knows reporters. That's like saying "knowing VCs is the best." If you are Jack Dorsey and know a bunch of VCs then great, but the vast majority of people have to pound the pavement and hustle.

Right. And I'm not saying you need to know them personally because they partied on your yacht. I'm saying you should do your research. Study them. Know who they write for and what they like. Anyone can do that.

Based on that knowledge, you can give them something they care about, and that gift may move them from their default setting of indifference toward a willingness to engage. You build relationships with them over time, even if it starts with a cold email.

But this conversation is about what should be in that cold email. I'm arguing that it shouldn't be a form pitch. Personalized at scale, for me, sounds like an oxymoron.

I don't know, I get the sentiment but at the end of the day you're pitching your company. It will vary a little, but not that much. When you pitch VCs 95% of the pitch is the same VC to VC. When they ask questions it becomes different, of course, but you don't have to recreate your pitch from the ground up going from person to person.

This process works. You may have a better one with no scale, but I've used this dozens of times and it works every time, even at big publications, and have developed many relationships using it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com