Dan Simon, founder of Qwoted — Dan Simon founded Qwoted as a matchmaking service for journalists and expert sources. He explains how broken the relationship is between PR people and journalists is, and how he’s trying to change it with technology. We also discuss how various PR agencies operate and how it’s highly offensive for most journalists.
The Problem with PR
To get their clients in the center of the conversation, PR agencies pitch news companies They hope to get their clients exposed to the masses, but there is often a major misalignment on goals. Companies wantto be featured in what is basically a long-form advertisement, whereas journalists want unique stories their readers will click on. Instead of PR agencies or PR people taking time to understand a journalist’s beat and consumer, most opt to just email blast tens of thousands of people the same pitch. It’s not effective, and this behavior has led to a strained relationship between PR people and journalists.
Simon believes Qwoted is more of a matchmaking service than a journalist database. Using tech, he believes that matching the proper experts with the proper journalist is better for both parties. He’s onto something. To get media coverage for your startup-or any company for that matter- matching an ideal story to an ideal journalist is the best strategy.
Resources
- Here’s my post on the FART Method and how to send the perfect pitch email.
- To try out Qwoted and list yourself as a source, go to https://www.qwoted.com/prs-sources/
