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7 Great PR Tips for Startups

Posted on Wednesday, January 11th 2012. Written by Michal Ugor

I am London based entrepreneur & writer on this website, you can follow my updates at @fortunepick

We’ve collated 7 of the best techniques and strategies used by early stage start-ups to achieve PR zen!

1. Hired Gun or Solo Slinger?

There are two sides to this coin – hiring a specialist doesn’t have to break the bank you know. Why not hire a quality part-time or small agency PR specialist for a really good price? But then again, cash can be an issue and the internet allows you to do so much on your own. Here’s a great article that should help you make up your mind - How to use PR on a low budget.

2. What’s your story

Lots of people have something to say, but let’s not kid ourselves that it’s always that interesting to listen to! Ever listened to someone blab on about how they’re ‘just like this’ and ‘things are fine at the moment’ and whoa, I just died a little inside. Try to think about how you would pitch your story to someone in a bar for example. Explain yourself using a niche approach, selling the engaging story and you don’t even need to think about PR!

3. No one likes rotten apples

You can’t flog a dead horse so once you’ve had the initial ‘whoop, whoop we’ve launched’ piece out of the way you need to think about new content. Start thinking about different stories or angles as soon as possible – think about new products, services, experiences or changes in the industry that you could add your two cents to. Think fresh, informative, different...just not repetitive!

4. Hug a Journalist and/or Blogger

It should be second nature to any start-up, but it’s very important to build good long lasting relationship with journalists and bloggers as early as possible! This doesn’t mean to you need to be all over them like a rash, but building a sturdy relationship will gain continuous coverage as opposed to one-off peaks of exposure. Not sure how to achieve this? Why don’t you attend local events or industry specific meet-ups where you can get some natural face time (relationships should often be built offline to effectively work online – makes sense to us!).

5. Chew the Fat

If you can throw some sentences together in a semi-coherent fashion then you’re onto a winner in terms of public speaking! Public speaking raises awareness of you, as a representative of your business, and gets the brand out there. But before you get too excited, make sure you’re actually getting the traction from public speaking – include your start-up in your speaker bio and anywhere else that might get attention.

6. Social Media

It seems like every man and his dog has a social presence, so that’s exactly why it’s important to think about it. Focus on building communities around your audiences, and then push the start-up messages once you’ve got a following and respect. No one likes a name dropper at the beginning of a conversation.

Also, think carefully about the best uses of social media for PR – YouTube, blogging, Twitter, Facebook etc. It’s worth mentioning that setting up social media profiles is easy, but monitoring them can be a pain in the ass so you might want to think about hired help here (either professional or minion). Social media is an awesome resource if utilised the right way so don’t be afraid to try some things – just always keep your target audience in mind.

7. Something different?

We’ve kind of touched on this already, but don’t always be tempted to do what others do. The road less travelled can be better in terms of exposure so don’t be afraid to venture. Why not sponsor a really niche event in a unique way or enter your product/service into a competition. Whatever you decide to, make sure that you write about the results and your interpretation – it’s all about the PR bait.

Hopefully there’s some food for thought, but if you have any additional tips you’d like to share why not leave a comment and share your glorious thoughts with the rest of us. Sharing is caring after all.