If our first press release at Pocket Tales has taught me anything it’s that the press:
- Doesn’t read closely
- Is not as concerned about facts as you might think
Okay, that’s not entirely fair. I only have two data points to speak of and they’re both online publications. No offense to my fellow bloggers, but your average print publication does a lot more fact checking than your average blog.
Our first press release was announcing our participation in the 2010 SXSW Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator Competition (we finished as a top 3 finalist if you were wondering.) I’ll admit the only reason we bothered to write a press release is because we knew we would very likely have our story picked up by Inside Indiana Business and if you follow IIB then you know for the majority of their stories they just publish the press release.
Except, IIB wrote a short introductory paragraph to our press release with a few mistakes. Here’s what they wrote:
Two former Orr Indiana Entrepreneurial Fellowship winners have been asked to pitch their new online reading video game at the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator Competition, next week in Texas. The developers of Pocket Tales say the game helps children develop critical reading skills.
Here’s what’s wrong:
- The Orr Fellowship isn’t something you win. It’s a program you’re admitted to, a lot like a fraternity or a sorority
- Pocket Tales is not a VIDEO game. Not even close.
- We’re not developers in the technical sense of the word. Founders would have been a more accurate word
The second news outlet that picked up our story was a casual blog called Tech Cocktail. In their story they misrepresented our launch date and misspelled my name multiple times.
We’re grateful for the coverage and if anyone from Inside Indiana Business or TechCocktail is reading this I hope you don’t blacklist stories about Pocket Tales, but it was an important lesson for me to learn about working with the press - no matter what facts you provide them, they still might make their own assumptions and get your story wrong.
