News during a conference week can be a bad idea — Why releasing
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 disclosed this stretch to coincide with the NamesCon conference.
That stated, 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 regarding a project, and the idea was to make a big notice during a relevant conference. The PR people stated 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 modest 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 regarding 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 the prior 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 regarding 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 regarding 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.
