INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
In a world where nothing can be trusted and fake news abounds, ICO and crypto teams are further muddying the waters by trying & and often
failing & to pay for posts
While bribes for blogs is nothing new, sadly the current crop of ICO creators and crypto projects are particularly interested in scaling
fast and many ICO CEOs are far happier with scammy multi-level marketing tricks than real media relations.The worst part of this spammy,
scammy ecosystem is the service providers
A new group of media organizations are appearing where pay-to-post is the norm rather than the rare exception
I&ve been looking at these groups for a while now and recently found a few egregious examples.But first some background.Oh yeah, Mr
Smart Guy How do I get pressSay you&re trying to publicize a startup
You&ve emailed all the big names in the industry and the emails have gone unanswered
Your product is about to flounder on the market without users and you can&t get any because, in perfect chicken-or-egg fashion, you can&t
get funding without users and you can&t get users without funding
So isn&t it a good idea to pay a few dollars for a little pressNo.And isn&t most PR just pay-for-post anywayNo.PR people are consummate
networkers and are paid to reach out to media on your behalf and their particular set of skills, honed over long careers, are dedicated to
breaking down the forcefield between the journalist and the outside world
They are your surrogate hustlers, dedicated to getting you more exposure
A good PR person is worth their weight in gold
They can call up a popular journalist and make a simple pitch: &This cool new thing is happening
Can I put you in touch&If a journalist mission is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, a good PR person makes the
comfortable look slightly afflicted in order to give the journalist a better story
Also, like velociraptors, they are tenacious and will follow up multiple times on your behalf.A bad PR person, on the other hand, will
cold-call hundreds of journalists and read a script that is half the length of Moby Dick
They produce little more than spam and their efforts begin and end with pressing the &Send& button
It also interesting to note that many bad PR people, of late, have found new life as ICO specialists.Now meet the pay-for-post hucksters
As I wrote before, there is now a subset of the PR world that offers to get your press release or story on the top of various websites for
the low, low price of between $500 and $13,000
For example, one set of hucksters created a small business selling posts on Harvard.edu by creating garbage WordPress blogs and posting
press releases to increase SEO coverage
Further, I received a document that outlined the prices for placement in various blogs including this one
While it is impossible to buy a post on TechCrunch this way, it doesn&t stop many from trying.What the difference between that price list
and the job a PR person will do for you The difference is trust
A pay-for-post huckster is dependent on convincing poorly paid freelance writers to add links and other dross to their posts in order to get
a &placement.& I get requests like this almost every day and almost all the journalists I talked to reported the same.Some entrepreneurs are
savvy enough to avoid these scams
Even more aren&t.&I&ve never paid since I think it almost always a waste of money but I&ve been offered this type of coverage many times,&
said Rick Ramos, of HealthJoy.com
&The last offer was for Kathy Ireland Worldwide Business… A TV show that I&ve never heard of in my life
I&ve also been approached by niche publications like InsuranceOutlook and HealthCareTechOutlook that want $3,000 for a ‘reprint branding
package.& A quick Alexa.com search shows their rank as 1,725,207 and 1,054,501 globally
I think I get pitched at least every six months for one of these types of packages.Unfortunately, many of these organizations hide their
request for payment until the last minute
That said, how do you know when it someone selling pay-for-play vs
a real editor It usually obvious.&It usually pretty easy to sniff out based on their email blast
It pretty untargeted with no reference to what your company does or how it related to a story
Some people are up front about the payment but others want a &15 min call to discuss.& A quick LinkedIn search always shows them as a sales
person versus a reporter or editor,& said Ramos.It getting worseThis is a document I received from a company attempting an ICO
This sort of menu was quite uncommon until fairly recently when the &on-demand& economy melded with PR scammers
The completeness of the document is unique & you could feasibly plan your own PR efforts just by reaching out to journalists who work at all
But you&ll also note that each spot has its own price, often in the low hundreds of dollars, which means that those spots are mostly
pay-for-play anyway.ICOLists by on ScribdNo PR company can promise coverage
In fact, many pay-for-play folks mention this in their communications, hiding it in plain sight
This snippet of text appeared in a contract for work from one of the pay-for-play providers
In short, you&re paying for something they cannot guarantee to get
Interestingly, the PR company below calls their product an IO & an insertion order & which is language used in ad sales
Further, they take great pains in explaining that it is almost impossible to achieve what they promise.None of the pay-for-post folks I
mentioned here would respond to my requests for comment.Counter-point: Journalists are also at faultJournalists should never expect money
for coverage.Yet many do.&Lately I have worked on a number of blockchain technology pieces and I have encountered a wide variety of these
asks,& said Brittany Whitmore, CEO at Exvera Communications
&A lot of the new, smaller blockchain-focused outlets seem to do a lot of pay-to-play, likely trying to capitalize on the ICO gold rush
The strangest request that I received was that the outlet would do a an article about the news for free but only if we paid them over $1,000
to promote the article with ads
I did not proceed.&In one very detailed article on The Outline, Jon Christian explored this world and found that many writers received small
sums for a single brand mention in a story, a sort of SEO flogging that rarely helps
He wrote:An unpaid contributor to the Huffington Post, also speaking on condition of anonymity because, in his words, &I would be pretty
fucked if my name got out there,& said that he has included sponsored references to brands in his articles for years, in articles on the
Huffington Post and other sites, on behalf of six separate agencies
Some agencies pay him directly, he said, in amounts that can be as small as $50 or $175, but others pay him through an employee personal
PayPal account in order to obfuscate the source of the funds
In a statement, Huffington Post said &Using the HuffPost Contributors Network to self-publish paid content violates our terms of use
Anyone we discover to be engaging in such abuse has their post removed from the site and is banned from future publication.&
The Huffington
Post writer also described specific brands he&d written about on behalf of one of the agencies, which ranged from a popular ride-hailing
app, to a publicly-traded site for booking flights and hotels, to a large American cell phone service provider.
&This is a classic example
of payola,& he said of the brand mentions, invoking a term that been used to describe radio DJs who accept payments from record companies in
order to play certain artists on the air.Further, many influencers & folks who sell their Internet fame to the highest bidder & masquerade
as journalists, asking for outrageous sums to flog an ICO on their YouTube channel or Instagram page
Pay-for-play services can also put out organic content like this in hopes of appearing in the news.The rule of thumb Paid posts and native
advertising are not journalism
Ultimately, journalists who charge for coverage are marketers
No one at any reputable news organization will ask for cash but, sadly, there are a number of disreputable news organizations making the
rounds.ICO spamming/Don&t do itAll this still doesn&t answer the question: Should you pay-to-post&The short answer is no,& said Kevin Bourke
&I get asked all the time, and in fact, turned down another request just today
And I advise my clients to decline these offers as well.&Pay-for-post disrupts journalism in a way that should be familiar and desirable to
any modern-day entrepreneur
Middlemen are being knocked out everywhere and brands are approaching consumers from every angle including native ads in Instagram and
But the value of coverage & real coverage & from a journalists perspective is the opportunity to explain complex ideas to a ready audience
While posting a picture of a blockchain on Facebook and hoping for clicks is one strategy, explaining your views, opinions, and insights is
far more important even if you approach it from a mercenary position.&When you start paying for placement, you remove objectivity and
credibility, and in my opinion, this is the reason you look for coverage of your company/products in the first place
That what influences readers/viewers
But I understand the temptation for startups
You come to believe that ‘all visibility is good visibility.& I just can&t agree with that,& said Bourke
&I see the trend toward paid placements (now called sponsored content), paid awards and I can&t stand it & especially with the trade show
They&ve completely devalued the Best of Show awards in so many cases
Typically, only the big companies with budgets can afford them, so many of the smaller guys with no money but amazing products get left out
I understand that the publishing industry needs to figure out new revenue streams & these are very difficult times for them
But they need to figure out smarter business models and maintain the integrity of editorialized content, built on the opinions and
perspectives of journalists and influencers.&
