I’m currently attending BarCamp Stockholm and just finished listening to Musa Okwonga talk about how to promote your great ideas.
This is a quick and dirty roundup of his presentation.
4 principles
1: Who is the messenger?
- Lots of competitors/What makes your “product” special?
- Who are you? Your network is the messenger, friends, family, alumni, etc…
- Bulletpoint EVERYTHING wbout you.
2: Who is the audience?
- Detail the audience and target them aggressively.
- Put yourself somewhere NEW, or with someone totally different from you, who has a similar audience.
3: What are the messages?
- Work out different messages for different audiences.
4: Method of delivery!
Different delivery for different audience.
Work out ALL the audiences.
PRIORITIZE
- Primary audience: Demographic, where, age, interests.
- Secondary audience: Network
- Last audience: Rest of the world
Map out HOW you approach them.
- DON’T advertise at first.
- Word of mouth, journalists, radio/magazines.
- If I’ve heard you, I’m more likely to like you.
How to get coverage!
- Look at someone you like to cover you.
- Look at their work, ALL the work.
- Get an angle.
- Contact and ASK for a meet.
- Mention THEM, focus on THEM and THEIR work.
- Grab their attention, they get thousands of mails.
Baby steps in the “pyramid”
- Small/local paper, get an interview.
- Chain reaction “look, we’re covered here and here”
- Get more coverage from recent coverage.
- Make your way up.
“The cool kids hate not being cool.”
If Wired/Next Big Thing/Huffington Post don’t write about you, make smaller channels cover you, work your way up and have them say “Why aren’t WE covering them?”.
