As someone who has been writing an almost-weekly Web Informant email newsletter since 1995, Sam asked me to comment on the current state of the art. It seems as if newsletters are having a new lease on life. Up until last summer, I wrote one of the Inside.com newsletters on IT security…
The usual wisdom when it comes to pitching a conference or webinar session is to offer up someone from your marketing department. I want to give you a counter proposal: find the most technical person in your shop that you can give your talk and try to avoid pitching your CMO at all costs.
RSA Conference (RSAC) has come and gone, and hopefully the email flow has finally stopped. As usual, the conference and its associated 300 or so emails shows what the best and worst PR practices are. This time I asked Sam if I could share with you my analysis of these inquiries, in the hope that we (we being the trade press) can work better with you.
YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
Steve is a longtime friend of SWMS and worked at subscriber LaunchSquad before moving on to IBM, Salesforce and now Anthropic. Steve knows exactly how to harness Claude’s power for comms purposes. Follow him and learn.
Press Gazette has a great story about Google reintroducing AI summaries into search results — less so in queries about breaking news, but definitely when someone searches for trend or how-to info. Convenient for users, maybe… but publishers stand to lose a ton of long-tail traffic because of this. No wonder the vast majority of publisher “innovation” is about commerce or consulting and no longer builds upon journalism.
CNBC Make It had a popular video franchise called My Biggest Lessons, in which CEOs shared something valuable that they learned along the way. No new segments have appeared since May 31. We’ll monitor this for you.
Great reporting from Mark Stenberg at Adweek. Two departures on the sales side seem to have hurt. The story also suggests that former Fortune CEO Alan Murray — who said he was retiring — may turn up at WSJ. Fortune is said to have released Murray from his noncompete, taking his word that he was ending his career.
Adweek subscription required.
Ten months ago SWMS spotlighted five up-and-coming Fortune reporters, suggesting that PR get to know these rookies. Where are they now? Jane Thier continues to excel in the Success section. Ruth Umoh now edits Next To Lead. Kylie Robison split for The Verge. Rachyl Jones is a fellow at Semafor. Alexandra Sternlicht this summer won a Knight-Bagehot fellowship at Columbia. Competition for this is brutal — congrats Alexandra!
