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Would like to hear some tips & tricks about approaching related blogs, news sites and communities about our startup.

Is it better to first aim for small-medium sized ones and slowly scale to the biggest?

Should I offer free accounts for their surfers, or sponsor a giveaway or something along those lines in "exchange" for a review?

In the past we mailed tons of sites without much success, we believe our front end was kind of "weak", but it was mostly running on beta. Now we are revamping everything and would really love to get the word out.

Thanks!

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One of the 'classic' blog posts pertaining to this was Peldi's of Balsamiq fame. See section about sending direct, personal emails.

Personally, I have had much, much more success when you can find direct email addresses to people you can actually address by name and have a conversation with.

As for size, I haven't personally noticed much difference between the large and small sites. What I find is that if the person you can talk to is engaged and your offering is specific enough to appeal to his/her readers, they'll show some interest. Don't be disheartened when people don't reply though, just like signup and sales conversions it comes down to a numbers game.

An alternative you might look at is using a press release because, if you do it right, some publications may pick your news up and republish it on their news feed.

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+1 This was the blog post that I used as well. Must read! Take the good points and create your own message. – Jeff Epstein Aug 4 '10 at 12:00
Thank you very much for that great link, i love how everything is laid out and definitely have to say that this guy did a terrific job! Really enlightening! – S. Aug 10 '10 at 23:22
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It's best to develop a relationship with them that is mutually beneficial. This usually means you contribute something of value to them. This might be an article or comments to a post you particularly like. Whatever you contribute, it should in some way help the site succeed.

Once you have established the relationship, then you can explore promoting your website. I should stress that this effort does take time but if you genuinely want to help your target sites, it will pay off. Just sending out an un-targeted promotion blast is not worth much.

Another idea would be to cross link to your startups blog relevant posts from the blogs you want to target.

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This is valuable (and very helpful) but not necessary. Obviously, your chances of success are increased when you have a personal relationship. – Jeff Epstein Aug 4 '10 at 12:02
@Jeff. What other methods would you propose? I am curious since this question does come up a lot. – Jarie Bolander Aug 4 '10 at 12:45
Hi Jarie, thank you very much for your response. I understand your point of view and definitely agree that targeting the right crowd is the way to go. – S. Aug 10 '10 at 23:23
up vote 1 down vote

same question we had and some people did something about it. www.tomoson.com - check it out, they just started but idea is great! Right now they have about 800 blogers registered.

Thanks, Ivan

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