Skip to content

>> Strategies & Pitch Opps

Forrester’s ‘Technology Iceberg’

So you have a compelling “thought leadership” concept, eh? Can you draw it? If not, the pitch may not be imaginative enough. Enjoy our interview with Forrester Research founder and CEO George F. Colony and his tale of the “Technology Iceberg.”

Read More »

The Community Co.: A Ticket to Contributed Content and More

Agencies and clients face a reckoning with contributed content. The latter still assumes that opportunities abound. More than 100 entries in the SWMS contributed content gatekeepers list proves them right. Then again, when it comes to Tier 1, it just might be best to pay whoever lifts the velvet rope.

Read More »

Deconstructed: A Contributed Piece that Drew a Big Audience

What makes for a smart approach to contributed content? Answer: something that you know has worked. A Sept. 25 Enterprisers Project piece called “Beware the dark side of agile project management” drew more page views than anything else TEP published that month. Let’s deconstruct why.

Read More »

Contributed Content Coaching from the Financial Times

Financial Times opinion and analysis editor Brooke Masters this month produced a short video — and companion article — explaining how to contribute content to the publication. Brooke offers five basic points that every executive author should consider before pitching — to the FT or for that matter anywhere else.

Read More »

Secret Weapon: The Community Company

Is the Forbes Technology Council worth the money? We hear that a lot from PR pros looking to place contributed content. In our view the answer is ‘yes’, though there’s actually something bigger going on, which we’ll get to in a sec.

Read More »

Analysis: Here Come the Unions

Fast Company editors voted to unionize last week. So did the New Yorker’s. Should PR care? Not directly. Unionization does affect the editorial environment in which you pitch. Over time, if the economics of publishing don’t improve, the best journalists may well seek to work where editors are “protected.”

Read More »

Our Fellowship with MuckRock

In partnership with MuckRock — and to celebrate our 20th anniversary — SWMS has donated $20K to help fund the Sam Whitmore Media Survey Fellowship. MuckRock serves journalists, researchers and citizens by requesting, analyzing and sharing government documents as obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). 

Read More »

SWMS 20: What We Did and Why

This week marks the 20th anniversary of Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey. No business can survive without the loyalty of its customers. We call them subscribers, and we thank every one of them. In this piece we revist the various looks of the SWMS web site over the years.

Read More »

Axios and ‘Smart Brevity’

When Axios launched in 2016, its founders described its goal as “smart brevity,” or more colorfully, as “Twitter meets The Economist.” Take a look, for example, at Sara Fischer’s most recent Media Trends newsletter and you can see that Axios has succeeded. Observe the form, not necessarily the substance.

Read More »

Even More Narrative Story Types

Where are all the company profiles? They abounded when the IPO window was wide open. Not anymore. Back when he wrote for Forbes, Dan Lyons told us that PR people always wanted him to write “book reports” — here’s who we are, and we’ve done this and that. That sounds like a company profile, doesn’t it?

Read More »

YOUR ACCOUNT

FRIDGE NOTES

BI Lets You Advertise Against Emotion

Using NLP software, Business Insider assesses how readers will react to its content emotionally, and then sells advertising based on that info. For example, an advertiser can choose to advertise against a story (or video) that makes you feel good or optimistic or pessimistic. This is where content is headed; and this trend may someday affect the way that you pitch.

YOUR ACCOUNT

For subscriptions and other inquiries, please Contact Sam.