The Cobbler´s Children Have Shoes
So, HitTail was just covered by TechCrunch. That’s pretty awesome, and is one of the big hits people go for these days in the technology influencer space. Michael Arrington was just covered by the Wall Street Journal as Silicon Valley’s newest power broker.
I can definitely say that as an intrepreneur at Connors Communications PR firm in NYC, I am not a victim of “the cobbler’s children have no shoes” syndrome. We are already being contacted by other firms, VCs and potential clients asking how we got the coverage. Yes, we are sponsoring the NY party (and we hope to see you there), but our product has also been undergoing impressive “organic” growth for months now, without the benefit of this coverage. The purpose of this blog post is in part to take a snapshot of the Alexa-measured pre-crunch traffic levels.
We’re already in the Alexa top-10,000 sites, but I expect this coverage will have a huge impact. Why? When you look at sites that have been crunched, but have NOT had the equivalent organic growth, you have a case of isolated TechCrunch influence. It’s big, but this is a sobering reminder of what happens when you get the exposure when you’re not ready.
I am so glad we handled HitTail as an open beta program for several months before the big publicity push. It gave us a chance to improve the product, get a feel for the market and experience some gradual organic growth, which is always nice from an IT-perspective. It’s a great example of how you can integrate your marketing efforts right alongside agile software development so that by the time you’re ready to open the curtains, you’ve already got momentum.
For anyone with a product who is up to the point of looking for exposure through public relations or other methods, consider engaging Connors Communications in a dialogue. We are rapidly becoming one of our own best case studies.