for W3c validation

In baseball, it’s tempting to wait for the big fat grand slam to solve all your problems by putting 4 runs on the board with a single swing. But should rather be focusing on stroking single after single after single in front of the right fielder?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say 99% the baseball teams that can consistently hit singles will beat the team that relies on the grand slam to solve all their problems. A team full of Ichiro’s will beat a team full of Mark McGwire’s (there are VERY few like Barry Bonds who are good at both).

Why do I say this? Well, Phil shared some bad PR advice for startups today, which I absolutely agree with. The advice that is commonly shared by “experts” is something to the tune of

Find writer(s) who covers your industry at Techcrunch, Mashable, The Next Web, GigaOM, etc. and pitch them your product or press release.

Instead, he advocates focusing on cutting fewer trees and plant more seeds by engaging with your most passionate users. Like WellcomeMat, this is the approach we took at Zillow early on. I encourage you to read his whole post if startup PR is a topic of interest to you.

Do you want to keep waiting for that grand slam to come along? Or do you want to focus your time on hitting single after single after single? I have a pretty good idea which approach will win out over time.

As a side note — I met Phil for the first time at the same Real Estate Connect conference he mentioned back in 2007, likely at the exact blogger happy hour that Joel invited him to.