Pitch something worth talking about!

While I was thinking and researching about pitching to bloggers, Eric Sink wrote an interesting post on similar topic, How to get people talking about your product. Here are some quotes from his post that resonate well with me.

Begging bloggers for links

In the last couple years, the most popular way of trying to generate word-of-mouth marketing is a two-part strategy that looks like this:

1. Make a list of all the top bloggers.
2. Send email to them and ask them to mention your product.

This won't work.

I agree with Eric statement. These tactics are very similar to bombarding journalists with press releases, how effective are they?

Instead, focus on a smaller group

The better approach is far less intuitive, but far more effective:

1. Find a Very Small Group of People that share common interests
2. Build a product that 100% of them will love

And most importantly, when your product does ship, you will have set the stage for buzz and word-of-mouth to happen. If your product is so perfectly designed to delight your customers, they will be dying to talk about it.

This may be the answer to my curiosity why am I being pitched (See, Why pitch to me?). I belong to a very small and niche group of data storage bloggers and readers demographic includes mostly people interested in data storage technology, products and services.

Build a product that is worth talking about

People don't talk about products because somebody asked them to. People talk about products because they're interesting. They talk about products they love.

The first step in getting people to talk about your product is to have a product that is worth talking about. Design something insanely great. Think about the folks in your Very Small Group of People, and build a product that they will love so much that they can't keep quiet about it.

This is the key to getting me to talk about you, your company, product, technology and idea. As a niche blogger, I am more likely to talk about something that will interest me irrespective of someone's relationship status with me. Relationship only guarantees you that I will read or listen to your pitch but only thing guarantees you coverage is whatever you are pitching is worth talking about.

You are more likely to succeed if what being pitched is innovative, at the cutting edge and pitched correctly. Asking me to highlight minute technical differences between you and others wouldn't get me out of bed to write a blog entry.

Hint: IMO, the best technology innovation to happen in data storage industry since SAN is Data De-duplication, and next in line, is Grid.

Final words from The 9 Most Important Words for Business Bloggers

A gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen.