Believe it or not, making big announcements during an industry conference may not be good timing.
I, like Michael Berkens, expect some domain industry news to be announced this week to coincide with the NamesCon conference.
That said, announcing news while a conference is taking place is not always a good idea.
I was speaking to a PR agency a couple years ago about a project, and the idea was to make a big announcement during a relevant conference. The PR people said that, in their experience, this is usually bad timing.
* There is lot of noise as well as other announcements during a conference, so yours is less likely to grab attention. This probably isn’t as big of a deal in a relatively small industry with smaller conferences like the domain industry.
* Lots of people aren’t paying attention. They’re at the conference or in transit. They’re meeting with people. They’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off. They aren’t reading press releases and blogs as much.
* By the time people find out about your news during the conference, it’s probably too late to seek you out and ask questions or learn more. This is why it was smart for Agreed and EscrowHill to announce their launches last week. Now people have time to set up meetings during the actual conference.
* Speaking from a bloggers perspective, I’m not going to have time during the conference to write about your news. If I do manage to get something up, it’s not going to have as much thought behind it. If you do decide to announce news during a conference, at least send it out early under embargo so I can decide if it’s newsworthy and write a good piece about it.
* An exception to this overall rule might be if you’re going to announce something in a dedicated time slot on stage, although I’d still consider sending it out under embargo.
Ron Jackson says
Totally agree Andrew. Covering a conference that is running 24/7 takes my full attention. As a result I usually have to limit anything announced while a show is underway to a brief mention at a later date or no mention at all.
Kevin Murphy says
I also agree. Announcing something on day one of a conference is a terrible way to get coverage. If a reporter is only going to file one story that day it’s going to be the keynote speech or whatever. A piddling product announcement is best left to a pre-briefing or later in the week.