How to Get the Media to Care About Your Crypto Story - Samantha Yap

i'm samantha yap i'm the founder of yap global we're a pr agency specializing in blockchain crypto and web 3 and d5 organizations our mission is to be the bridge between quality journalism and emerging crypto d5 and web 3 organizations who are making a difference in the world we've been around for four and a half years and we're now a growing team of 25 pr advocates across eight cities around the world in five regions we are also the official pr partners for east denver so you'll find us in the press room at sports castle uh for the rest of the the weekend so that's a little bit about myself um i well and and something to know about my background i used to be a journalist so very much a storyteller and then combined my passion for crypto and this space and started the app global so let me get straight to the points so point number one why the media doesn't care about your crypto project well point number one is you're probably not engaging with the trends and what's happening in the industry and also understanding what the media want to write about ultimately we have to understand that media publications are writing for their audience they want clicks they want um more of their audience they want some subscribers to their paid you know options so you're probably not engaging with you know the relevant trends that that there are thinking about now it's worth noting that you know mainstream press uh the the top trends that they're defining might be different to what crypto press are defining but that's something to think about so i encourage you before you pitch your story to a publication check out what's top of their mind because to fortune magazine the you know top crypto trends to watch in 2022 might be you know metaverse gaming vc investments uh into the space but then perhaps with you know coindesk or decrypt it could be layer 2 solutions cross chain infrastructure and bridging or endows which have become uh big again because it's been a few years it's also important to stay on top of crypto twitter because we believe that a lot of the narratives that come out of uh that that hit the headlines come from the sentiment on crypto twitter just this weekend there was a super bowl and crypto twitter exploded with reactions to the crypto ads and i'm sure all of you had shared a few thoughts about what you about the ads that were uh played during the super bowl so staying on top of crypto twitter and being engaging with what people are talking about is how you can make sure the media care about your story and lastly being on top of the trends and referring to research sites like masara crypto who who publish top trends to to keep in mind for 2022 and uh yeah i've outlined a few in in the hashtags here so engage with the media and engage with your audience second point is you're probably not educating the media enough so these publications these articles that i just pulled out these came these have been published in the last month or so so you're seeing that wired is now writing explainer pieces about what is a metaverse exactly and the new york times recently published a explainer piece about web 3. the web 3 discussion has been around for several years now but it's only now coming to attention of the media so it's worth noting that we have to educate the media about our industry what we're doing and why there is a need for something for example web3 tooling has been growing um and and it's it's it's been exploding actually but a lot of journalists don't understand what why there is a need for web3 infrastructure tools so we have to explain that and if we haven't educated the media about it then they're likely not going to write about your wallet integration announcement or your partnership announcement with you know one of your partners because they don't understand what you're doing so you probably haven't educated them enough so educate and last point is elevate so before you're the founder of a of your project before you're the head of marketing or head of business development you are an advocate and you're a represent a you know representative of the of this industry so we have to provide something that adds value to what is happening in the space so if you've not elevated the industry overall then why should the media talk to you what are you doing to to innovate to to grow a certain ecosystem so you've got to elevate so here's an example of a article outlining experts and their thoughts on what vitalik said about cross-chain ecosystems this journalist was very interested to hear what the other what other experts and other leaders are saying about vitalik's thoughts and this captured media attention so elevate elevate the space elevate the industry elevate your partners and that's how you're going to get the media to care about your story so just to summarize key takeaways for today is when you're pitching your story when you talk to a journalist and you want to get get some coverage for your announcement engage with the trends be relevant educate the media educate the journalists and elevate the space so engage educate elevate if you're going to remember three things from this talk remember those three but you might be thinking how do you keep up and you're all busy building founders are busy hiring building out their teams you know marketing managers are busy managing the social media your twitter accounts your discord community so how do you keep up so we figured that we would create a newsletter that will touch on key headlines and key trends that you need to keep up with during the week and so yap global has launched his very first newsletter called the context and it's here to um we're not here to evangelize and we're not here to criticize but we're here to provide grounded perspective on the narratives in the space because ultimately in the crypto space you have to acknowledge that the mainstream journals are quite skeptical all the price action stories all the yeah scams and exploits so we we've we've also got a hard uh job to kind of explain why the protocols we're building is so important so we thought we would create this newsletter to keep keep you all posted on the top three trends of the of the week and these are more angles that perhaps the even the media might have missed um and so you can head to the context by app at substance.com and subscribe our target audience really is more of the marketing managers you know heads of comms as well as journalists but if you're interested you're welcome to subscribe as well but then lastly when in doubt trust a pr professional that's what we do and i'm going to give you we get approached all the time by a lot of organizations some of them come to us a bit too early for pr some of them come to us a bit too late for their announcements so i thought to kind of share a checklist for some of you who might be curious you know about what you need to do to engage a pr firm um so hope this is useful so just going to run through this so you need a strong product or service so back to what i was saying about elevating the space you know what solution and what service are you providing that's you know fresh and essential to development of the whole crypto ecosystem so web 3 infrastructure tooling is a great example like by economy pocket network those are some example companies then an established community so that helps build credibility so if you've got an active discord uh chat telegram you know community perhaps and twitter so twitter journalists do pay attention to your twitter activity and your twitter engagement sustainable growth plans what's your timeline what's what what are you trying to achieve in the next year but also the next five years so that helps and strategic backing it helps to have some you know investors strategic investors established partners that will position you for uh credible stories and then ultimately exciting stories to tell you need me we need meat to work with we need uh stories to tell so yeah that's that's something to think about and then uh lastly a roadmap so if you don't have a roadmap of say pr announcements that you want to push out the next three months then perhaps you need to speak with your team and think about how you want to communicate what you're doing and that's it we're the media partners of eat denver again and we are hiring so if there are any comms professionals anyone curious about telling the crypto and web 3d5 story please come and contact me i'm on telegram dms are open um that's my telegram as well as twitter and i'm on twitter um and then that's our twitter account as well and come say hi to the press room and that's it