I have about 600 SMS Text News emails in my inbox from the last month or so that I haven’t yet moved to my ‘done’ folder. Just in case you emailed me and hadn’t seen me publish or mention it, I thought I should give an insight into how things run.
The background
My companies used to work very heavily in mobile. We came up with one of the world’s first internationally deployed SMS to screen services for nightclubs and entertainment venues. Getting press and awareness was really important to us — and since we were a small company, it was quite difficult to compete when we didn’t have a huge marketing budget. Ergo when the likes of Emily at Textually.org published and linked to our press releases and announcements, it was phenomenally valuable.
So I have a direct interest in writing about new mobile services, applications or devices — I want to give back. I was there on the coalface and know just how valuable just a public mention can for new business development, existing clients, funding and general industry awareness.
Thus: If you’ve got a new mobile service, application or device, I am an open book waiting to hear from you.
My default response to a ‘would you blog about my service/application/device’ question is yes. A wholehearted massive big YES.
If you’re a public relations professional, I’m absolutely interested to hear from you — and if you’ve a particular deadline or target publishing date, I’m happy to work with embargoes or publish a blog at a particular day or time. Equally if you’d like a quote, either feel free to lift directly from any text pubished here or email me and I’ll author one.
I’d like to help.
Publishing schedule
There isn’t one. The vast majority of my time is spent on my new company (a data centre migration related one). However now and again find myself with a spare 40 minutes during the day. If you happen to have emailed when I’m sat there in a blogging mood, then genuinely I’ll get your email blogged as soon as possible.
I tend to publish in the mornings before beginning my commercial exploits and in the evenings.
If your email arrives in the blackhole of stress, excitement and information overload that is the middle of my day, then it can fall behind until I get the opportunity to go back through my read-but-not-done-anything-about-it archive. It’s a little like the squeaky wheel getting the grease. Ergo don’t hesitate to prompt me. Seriously: A little ‘just a note to see what you thought of my earlier mail‘ email with the original mail attached can do wonders.
If I read your mail and, in my opinion, it doesn’t quite fit with a general mobile subject, I’ll say so. Readers of SMS Text News are expecting to see news and updates with a consumer bent — devices, new consumer applications/services and so on. This makes it a little difficult to blog really in-depth network layer style mobile announcements that are rather complex. I’ll give it a go trying to humanise it though.
If I’ve suggested we do an interview or a post or whatever — if I’ve suggested we do something and then don’t quite appear to deliver — it’s simply because I’ve forgotten or it’s right there on my to do list and I just haven’t done it.
Styling your Email
I realise we’re getting a bit anal now but I thought this bit could be useful. If you’ve got a press announcement — a straight forward bog standard press release — I generally like to quote a bit of it and link to it. I reckon it should be my job to announce it with a few salient paragraphs quoted and perhaps a brief comment, then I think it should be up to the reader to visit the site to read more. So don’t hesitate to include the URL of your press release. Now and again I’ll publish full release texts but generally speaking, I like to quote.
Bulk Emails
I don’t have a problem being included in bulk email announcements. Stick news@smstextnews.com on to your news distribution.