CaddieThe bottom line
Reporters cover an app only when it gives them news, so every pitch needs a real reason beyond the fact that the app exists. Pitching casually, with a fresh hook and a top-down plan, turns one big write-up into coverage everywhere.
Key takeaways
- Existing is not news, so every pitch needs a reason to be written. 2:25
- Valid hooks include being first of a kind, reaching your first 1,000 users, hitting a metric, or adding a feature based on feedback.
- Dann Berg often got pitched the day after he covered a competitor, and that alone did not make him write about the sender.
- Each app change is a new chance to pitch again. 4:00
- Track the last contact date for each journalist in a spreadsheet, and expect most emails to get no reply.
- Mention any press you already won, so they see you are not a random sender.
- A casual pitch works best because journalists love their topic. 5:59
- The best response rates came from solo developers who simply shared what they made and why.
- Offer a preview or sneak peek and ask for nothing in return.
- Start early and aim to appear everywhere at once. 7:00
- Begin at least three weeks before launch, because some people reply slowly.
- Embargoes suit top-tier outlets, which honor them, but smaller blogs often do not.
- Give your top-choice site an exclusive, then use that coverage to win the smaller ones. 8:55
- Smaller sites choose stories based on what the bigger ones run, and often copy the same post.
- Those copies link back to your site and add SEO value.
The best way to frame this entire thing is to think of it as sharing something that you think is cool with somebody else who probably is going to think it's cool too.
Dann Berg
Chapter summaries
0:00 Why a launch alone is not news
Reporters are buried in pitches, so a launch or update only stands out when it comes with a reason tied to something happening.
- Hundreds of pitches compete for each reporter's attention. 1:47
- Dann Berg writes as a former editor at Laptop Magazine and The Verge.
- A launch or an update is not always newsworthy enough on its own.
- The advice comes from the reporter's side of the inbox, not from a marketer.
- Knowing how editors read pitches shows what to change in your own.
- Tie the pitch to a current story or trend. 3:19
- A news article reports a growing trend of people using phones in their cars.
- An app adds a driving assist utility in response.
- The pitch links to the study and to the app, saying "we just added that".
- Working out why you are emailing also pushes the app forward.
4:47 Why a casual pitch works
Journalists are enthusiasts at heart, so a pitch reads best as one fan sharing a project with another.
- Write to the person, because journalists chose this work out of passion. 5:29
- They researched their topics in depth long before they became journalists.
- They keep going because they love learning new things and sharing them.
- The question was what to do with no social proof. Dann says new solo developers get responses "all the time".
- The casual note simply explained what the developer was doing.
6:01 Pitch like a fan sharing something cool
Reporters cover apps in categories they love, so a pitch works best when it reads as one fan sharing with another.
- A pitch lands when it shares the problem behind the app. 6:11
- Your app sits in a category the reporter already loves.
- Say why you made it and why they might like it.
- A pitch can be as simple as "I just made this because I have this problem, I think you would like it too, here it is."
- Journalists are people too. They think what they write about is awesome, which is why they write about it.
- An embargo can protect a major launch, but it is not for everyone. 7:15
- An embargo is an agreement not to publish until a set time.
- Many developers dislike embargoes and doubt they work.
- Smaller blogs often lack the journalistic integrity of the bigger outlets, so they may break the agreement.
- Embargoes are worth exploring once you aim at top-tier publications, which honor them and allow a bigger launch.
8:02 Be everywhere at once, from the top down
Seeing an app in many places makes it credible, and one big feature can open the door to the rest.
- Seeing the app name in several places makes people trust it. 8:07
- A reader sees it in an RSS feed, then on Facebook, then on Twitter.
- Repeated sightings serve as proof the app is valid.
- Seeing it from different sources makes people at least click the article.
- If they are in your target demographic, they will most likely download.
- A top-site feature proves you are newsworthy to larger publications. 8:58
- Pitch the number one site first, then tell smaller ones this big site just wrote about us.
- Big outlets that might never look your way take notice.
- Berg says coverage in a TechCrunch-level site is very effective for winning smaller blogs.
- He calls the approach extremely powerful, though he first called it "bottom-up" before correcting himself to start from the top.
In the growth library
Dann Berg (interviewed for Steve P. Young), Former editor at The Verge and Laptop Magazine; host of Novice No Longer. A former Verge editor explains what makes an app launch or update newsworthy and how to pitch reporters so they actually cover it. He says existing is not news, and shows how a casual pitch, an exclusive and a top-down coverage ladder get you into bigger publications.
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