After guiding so many through the process over the last 2 years, I have a pretty good overview of things those launching an ICO or other blockchain/cryptocurrency project need to avoid when posting and submitting their project's announcements.
Many, possibly most of projects that contact us started by making one of these mistakes first. I know i'm a member of a 'rival' organization - so I encourage you to question what i'm saying, see if it all adds up and look for yourself.
Poor targeting:
The first big misstep is going with a service that distributes it to 'all major news outlets'. Frankly, none of them are going to cover your start-up.
When's the last time you've seen a cryptocurrency/blockchain project like yours on CNN? If you have it's been one of the big players, companies doing $100 million or more in annual revenue. Hopefully one day, but that probably isn't you today. So don't pay someone to contact the mainstream media.
If you're willing to pay some insanely high prices you can get in some of them. The one I hear of most often is Forbes, and sure it's great bragging material for a couple tweets. But if your budget matters i'll save you a lot of time and money - their readers invest in stocks, and few crypto investors read it.
That site you think would be great, may not be...
The other very common waste of money is some of 'biggest' cryptocurrency news sites.
Like I said, don't trust me - look. Go to whatever site you see as the biggest for crypto news, I won't name names (and it doesn't matter because the top 3 all do this) then without using Google, find where they publish the press releases.
Now ask yourself - would have ever clicked there if you were't told to? We both know the answer is no.
Let's think about this logically, who's more likely to get a larger response? Someone in the 'press release' section of a site getting 100,000 hits a day, or someone on the front page of a site getting 50,000? A site may be getting 100,000 daily visitors - but i'd be shocked if even 5000 visited the press release section.
But they'll make you pay like you're going on the homepage, that's actually part of why it works. It's a popular site and their rates are expensive, so you feel like you're about to get some big-time exposure. By the time you realize what actually happened it's too late, they already have your money.
What you should be looking for...
I'm biased, but i'm not saying "use us or you'll regret it" and i'm sure there's other quality services out there for your ICO/project announcements and press releases. I've only heard about what other places do wrong, obviously no one contacts us to say they're happy with someone else.
But the advantages we offer are worth noting, and really you should look for these factors anywhere:
- Make sure your press release isn't just being 'sent out' - it needs to be PUBLISHED. Your press release sitting in the e-mail inboxes of various news site staff member's does nothing. We make sure it's published, on several great crypto-centered sites and newswires.
- We're syndicated! So what we publish here also gets published elsewhere. By working with a syndicated outlet you're paying for exposure on 1 site, but actually getting many. In our case, this includes several great crypto sites and the Google News platform and app, we are an approved publication there. This this will impact the search result of someone looking up your company too, as Google puts news results with the search results.
- Focus on sites specific to cryptocurrency, every person who sees your announcement should be potentially interested. Of course, this is unless you have a product with a wide use-case already built and available.
I think that's about it. If you need to get the word out about your project, visit our page on submitting your cryptocurrency press release.
Author: Mark Pippen
London News Desk
