So you’re running a crowdfunding campaign (through Kickstarter, Indiegogo, ICO, etc.) and at some point, you need to spread your message to the masses. The message is packed into a press release and ready to be shipped to the keepers of the informational channels: bloggers, vloggers, media channels and news websites.
The problem is that the media space is over-saturated and your message might (a) be lost among other applications received daily by the informational gate-keepers (b) be not well-constructed due to the lack of emotional investment of the authors (c) receive an expensive proposal in response.
While this guide may not be a panacea to the existing informational pollution, it offers a comprehensive strategy towards building your Media Networking Capital.
Media Networking Capital is a category of the Main Business Networking Capital which consists of all of the first level connections with the gatekeepers of the informational channels.
😇H2H is for Human to Human
First of all, you have to understand that the communications with the media and bloggers are still the social interactions with the real humans. Treat them accordingly. Asking to publish a story about you right away is like forcing your date to have kids within 2 minutes of knowing them.
Sure some writers have their price tags to deliver the quick standard solution, and if you have no time to build the relationships, you can always follow the fast lane. The framework of social interactions I want to present is time-consuming and requires social skills, but as a result, you’ll gain long-term relationships with more effective outcomes.
Following this road, you won’t need to pitch any blogger with a cold email ever again, and the overall writing quality will be improved through the genuine emotional investment towards your project.
👀Social interactions
Start building your networking capital by gaining social currency.
Social currency can be described as all of the social transactions (think: likes, comments, DMs, emojis) that you exchange with your contacts. Positive transactions add up to your overall budget of social tokens, while negative transactions subtract from it. Note: the tokens may also burn with time in lack of constant activity.
🤞Social media effect
Think of social media as the sandbox for generating the social media currency and start playing the game of relationships. If you have a feeling that your email will miss the target think about reaching out on social media platform where people engage with each other 24/7.
🐥 Twitter is a great icebreaker. People have intellectual and contextual discussions with strangers all the time. The great thing about Twitter is that you can simply pop up at any conversation and fit in smoothly. You'll find a lot of writers and media personalities on Twitter communicating directly with their audience.
🐝 Blogging platforms like Medium, Steemit, and Youtube all have the comment sections which is the right place to get onto anyone’s radar. Yes, I consider Youtube to be a blogging platform, why not? Make sure your comments are smart and add value to the original content or provoke a further discussion. This way you have better chances to be noticed.
🐙 Lastly, let’s not forget Facebook and its fantastic blogging opportunities. If your contacts have public pages where they actively blog or share company news make sure you tap that opportunity to get noticed by participating in the discussion. That’s what you would do on your regular Tuesday Night Networking Meetup anyway, right? I personally don't like Facebook as much today, but I'm researching the platform and will be publishing my guides on it too, this Spring.
🤖Setting up the CRM
Whether you're going to use a notebook, spreadsheets or an actual CRM software, it’s a good idea to set up your workflow process before you start your networking campaign. Otherwise, you might quickly end up with a lot of lost contacts, missed opportunities, and forgotten skype calls.
I use Hubspot CRM (because it’s free and highly efficient). No advanced functionality is available in the free version, but still, you can do things like:
- logging the notes on every contact, company, and deal
- integrating your email to assign the correspondences with the contacts automatically
- creating custom sales pipeline and its stages
- adding new users to your team (with the various rights)
- scheduling calls and adding tasks to the accounts
- tracking your sales and activity performance on the Dashboard
I’ll post a link on the note with the detailed instructions on how to set up the CRM workflow once it’s published.
After you’ve exchanged some likes and meaningful conversations in public it won’t be awkward anymore to develop your relationships in the DM or Email format.
🚴🏻Following through
Once you feel like the time has come proceed with the private conversation.
Make sure your first email or DM is more about them and their field of interests and not about your pitch. Focus on giving before asking. It's psychological. You can mention your business but only briefly and in the context of the email, not as a separate promotional module. A signature section is also a great spot. Your goal at this stage is to establish the connection and open the meaningful discussion.
I’ll place a link on how to make a killer email signature here once the article is out.
👨💻Collaboration
A great way to build relationships is to collaborate on a project together. Try to work with your contacts, helping them first. Maybe you can be their industry expect or have a clever opinion on the current market problems/situation. This will help develop the productive experience.
Finally, once you have enough social currency to ask for a favor, you should pitch your product or ask for the coverage. I’d recommend coming up with a clear and concise proposal in the form of 3 paragraphs, with two sentences each.
👏Maintaining the relationships
Don’t forget to maintain the relationships after you get what you want. In fact, make it your competitive advantage, be helpful to people and follow up with them even (especially!) after your original request was fulfilled. You never know when you’ll need to ask them for another favor or be of use to them. Always think about tomorrow (it takes shape today).
🙏Invest in potential
Lastly, make sure you invest some of your time into researching the uprising talents. Some of them may become significant players in the field only 3-16 months from now. Being an early believer both motivates the creators to keep up the great work and grants you with a unique level of personal relationships. Search for the people who are hustling hard despite the low number of followers. The most important numbers you should be looking at are the number of posts, comments, images and videos they are producing daily/weekly/monthly. Likes can always be faked and manipulated. Quality is the ultimate measure!
😕Ethics
Lastly, I foresee people arguing about the ethical side of building the transactional relationships and their validity. I’d like to argue that if you strip down all of the cosmetics from any relationships, you’re left with the transactions. There is nothing wrong in them!
In fact, I believe that transactions are a much necessary product of the Time. Without transactions, the World will be static, and thus transactions can be seen as the cornerstone of the Universe’s dynamics. Or at least in our 4-dimensional perception. On a more earthly level, business is nothing but transactions and the communication of value between the Economy Agents. It's organic, dude. Transactions are organic!
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📬Feel free to open up a discussion in the Comment section down below. I am a big fan of those!
With much respekt and love,
-K.