I attended a networking event that brought together the region’s venerable high-tech organization with the local Web 2.0 community. While mixing with the crowd I met a young entrepreneur who is cofounded new social media network Diditz.com. I encouraged him to engage in conversation with a journalist from the UK’s Guardian newspaper, who was standing adjacent to us. The young entrepreneur, Sohit Karol, replied, “No thanks. We don’t really see any traffic from (coverage in) newspapers. We do better with Mashable.”
What a succinct and blunt anecdote that captures the current state of traditional media. Just a few years ago, who would have thought that a blog would be considered a stronger PR outlet for high-tech companies than major national or international newspapers? But it’s true.
Mashable, which has a focus on social networking, draws 5 million monthly pageviews. If your company deals with social networking, what social-networking focused newspaper can you turn to for exposure? What about cloud computing, software as a service or voice over IP? Unfortunately, the people your company needs to reach probably aren’t reading the New York Times very often.
Instead, your audience has increasingly turned to blogs and other new media sources for their information, which is delivered faster and more concisely.
If you’ve been chasing print coverage, perhaps it’s time to be more like the young entrepreneur and give traditional media the brush-off in favor of new media sites that address your audience.
Hey Francis,
Thanks for writing about Diditz. Not that we wouldn't have loved to be covered by the Guardian, but being in a private alpha, we are a little too young for that kind of mention at this stage. For startups,niche blogs like Mashable, Techcrunch and Gigaom etc are doing a great job of providing the beginning audience who happen to be ahead of technology curve. Once the product is mature enough, a mention in mainstream conventional media would definitely not hurt!
Posted by: Sohit Karol | October 05, 2008 at 06:31 PM
Hey Francis,
Thanks for writing about Diditz. Not that we wouldn't have loved to be covered by the Guardian, but being in a private alpha, we are a little too young for that kind of mention at this stage. For startups,niche blogs like Mashable, Techcrunch and Gigaom etc are doing a great job of providing the beginning audience who happen to be ahead of technology curve. Once the product is mature enough, a mention in mainstream conventional media would definitely not hurt!
Posted by: Sohit Karol | October 05, 2008 at 06:32 PM