A Brief Note on A/B Testing…
July 19, 2025
3:43 pm
Do you practice A/B testing in any aspect of your business? A/B testing has been around for roughly a quarter of a century.
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SWMS ‘Sound Thinking’: Rafe Needleman’s AI Advice For AEs and SAEs
July 9, 2025
3:44 pm
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Marker Collective Bets on Software
November 11, 2024
5:05 am
SWMS tends not to cover the business initiatives of its subscribers, but the Marker Collective has embarked on something revealing. The parent org of Archetype,
SWMS Analysis: John Edwards, Informationweek
November 5, 2024
9:39 am
A veteran tech edit freelancer one told SWMS that freelancers are entrepreneurs like any other. Time is money. Profit beats all. Few PR pros pitch with this in mind — but they won’t be able to break through with John Edwards unless they do.
Test Your Pitch With AI
April 26, 2024
12:38 pm
Ever use AI to test pitches before sending them to reporters? Try it sometime. It’s a fun way to improve them. For the proper horsepower, you’ll need a paid subscription to a Gen AI service such as GPT-4 or Claude 3.
Deep Dive Part 1: When Gen AI Writes The Pitch
March 23, 2024
1:02 pm
Just for fun, try creating the story pitch after the story is written. We did that this week, using generative AI. We pasted an already-published story into each of three GenAI tools and asked it to write a compelling PR pitch based on that article.
Deep Dive Part 2: Your New Job? VP of Pitch Analytics
March 23, 2024
1:01 pm
It’s 2026. You’ve got a new job, earning $250K a year as “VP, Pitch Analytics.” You’ve got a modest budget to retain freelance tech reporters. You manage an intern.
SWMS Diagram: The Tier 1 Edit Process
January 12, 2024
4:35 am
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that when you’re pitching Tier 1 reporters, you are pitching their bosses at the same time. That’s why it’s helpful to understand the entire editorial process in the publications you’re pitching — not just the persuasion part.
The New TechNews, and a PR Pitch Model for 2023
April 18, 2023
9:51 am
Search platform TechNews last month introduced features that let users spot trends deep within tech editorial. Launched as IT Database in 2007, TechNews is widely used within tech PR to learn who is writing what.
SWMS Notes on Broadcast Pitching
October 5, 2022
4:58 pm
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YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
Nieman Labs 2026 Predictions for B2B Media
November 11, 2025
Good vision here from Jay Lauf. Interestingly, Jay suggests that B2B publishing will become a service business to B2B pros, providing value directly to individuals and organizations. Static content is dying very quickly. This is the point of the analysis from this great media organization.
SWMS ‘Sound Thinking’ Topics: Literacy Rate, Ad Trends
November 9, 2025
America can’t read anymore. The good news: advertisers can advertise against different kinds of emotion in the copy. So even if the numbers of readers drop, there are more ways to attract ads. So perhaps the bad news will get cancelled out by the good. Sam Whitmore and David Strom discuss.
Xania Rockets Up the Charts
September 22, 2025
Can you imagine not needing to be a human being to be a superstar? You may remember Max Headroom. There’s plenty of examples of technology personas, but AI is a different world altogether. Is there a tech media angle to this item? Not really, but here she is — Xania.
BI, Wired Tricked By AI Freelance ‘Author’
August 21, 2025
This is a must-read article about both Business Insider and Wired being tricked by a phony freelance reporter writing phony stories. If BI and Wired can be fooled, everybody can be fooled.
SWMS ‘Sound Thinking’: David Strom on AI
July 21, 2025
Veteran tech journalist David Strom is working with a couple of AI developers to understand exactly the nature of his writing as it has unfolded over the years. In this edition of Sound Thinking, David shares his learnings and where everything might go.