Help me help you
As “America’s top gunblogger“, I get lots of emails from companies and people in the gun and gun accessories business. I get every thing, including product launches, press releases, fundraising requests, sales notifications, and the occasional “this is secret, don’t release it, wink wink”. Now, I do appreciate it and will, generally, mention new products. This is a gun blog after all. And, I’ve met a lot of you and like you and am happy to help get the word out.
The trouble with the emails is that, well, you could be more effective. So, some tips:
Don’t send them on Friday. People start wrapping up the work week and, often, leave early on those days. So, traffic is down. The rest of the week is when traffic is higher. Have a look. I’d avoid Mondays too since people are catching up at the office and have no time to waste on the company dime. And the people at work are, generally, who your audience is going to be. And the weekends are horrible. Midweek seems to work best.
Don’t send files. Put the info in the text of the email. Though, if you feel compelled to use a file, use MS Word and don’t send PDFs, which are hard to copy.
If you have images, host them somewhere.
Also, you could send me a link to the release hosted at your place. Then, I don’t have to host the files, copy and paste, or other stuff. As a bonus, I’ll drive traffic to your site.
If you really want some publicity, send it to me as an actual scoop. Getting the press release when I’ve already seen it in the X Wire pretty much means it’s not a scoop.
So, there you go.
I am posting this on Friday because, apparently, that’s when PR people read blogs.
January 6th, 2012 at 5:19 pm
I prefer the term “King of the Gunblogs” but YMMV.
January 6th, 2012 at 5:22 pm
I didn’t know you got to go shooting with John Lucas.
He is a great lawyer, a West Point grad, a Viet Nam vet and a fine man.
That must have been fun.
January 6th, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Interesting. I always tell people to send me pdf’s and not MSWord, as it is completely platform independant. I can open it at work, ipad, iphone, android, home ect.
I can’t say the same thing for all word files.
January 6th, 2012 at 5:55 pm
If you have a new gun-related product and you aren’t sending it to Uncle, then you aren’t interested in making money.
I either wait until lots of people have tried your product and say good things about it, or until somebody I considere reasonably competent and knowledgable tries your product and blogs about it.
January 6th, 2012 at 8:17 pm
PDFs are easy to copy if you open them with non-drm pdf readers.
A search for open source pdf reader will find a bunch.
January 6th, 2012 at 8:26 pm
@Kristopher, my family tends to use FoxIt’s PDF reader.
I use Evince, because it is available on my Linux distro.
January 6th, 2012 at 8:29 pm
PDF is definitely preferable to Word. I have Open Office, which should be able to read Word, but I wouldn’t necessarily depend on it. PDF is totally free. If you don’t already have it hooked into your browser/email, you must be some kind of idealogue.
January 6th, 2012 at 9:40 pm
>completely platform independant.
Hah, you haven’t tried PDFs on a Kindle yet I’d guess.
Then again PDFs and ebooks are like polar opposites. PDFs are designed to print exactly the same, regardless of what you print or display them on. Ebooks are suppose to be readable, regardless of what size display you try to project them on.
January 7th, 2012 at 12:05 am
According to this site, you’re #2, but I’d argue the point. Hell, I’m currently #9, which I find difficult to believe.