Press Release for startups
I attended the communication ninja workshop last week by Alex B of Press42, and it has inspired me to write this blog post about writing a press release in form of a story. These methodologies are more geared towards startup companies with low budget. Also, to get the startups thinking about the press and media at an early stage since most of us are much focused on showing off cool technologies we are using in building our products.
As startup founders, co-founders we always wonder that we are building such a cool product, and yet we are not getting any press and as much as we had hoped that our idea would be all over TechCrunch and CNN – no one is talking about us. I have always been wondering about this myth as well. We all need help to get published somewhere in order to get the word out and especially as a startup it really helps to get come VC love as well.
We all think that tech bloggers are the people with a lot of technical background, to your surprise some are not technical at all and they really don’t care about what cool technologies you have used to make your product sexy. One thing they want to know is that what problems have you solved by bringing this product to life – and above all what’s your story?
What we have always been taught about press releases, they are boring and dull; often people don’t even care to read them but most of us love to hear/read a good story because we can relate to it. In the startup world, you need to sell the experience not the technology because people can relate to that. Start crafting a story, whether it is about your company or the product. It will catch people attention and don’t use all the technical buzz words in your story that your grandma cannot understand, and same goes for your pitch.
Often people ask the question when to contact the press.
It’s not about contacting the press; it’s about building relations with them. PR is simply branding and branding is about relationships whether it is with your customers or the media. Ask yourself, how many bloggers/influencers do you know in your industry? If answer is none, then you got some serious work to do.
Social media is a powerful tool if used correctly and efficiently. Use it to your advantage and build relationships with the influencers in your industry.
Here is a list of things you can do on twitter, we have actually used these methodologies at Qurtaba for one of our mobile app Urdu Writer and in a niche market we have had 10,000 downloads within a span of 90 days without any Press Release.
- Put your twitter/Facebook on your site in the “contact us” section
- Market the marketers – write stuff that they value but don’t spam
- Create a list of people (bloggers/influencers) in your industry and interact with them often – RT their tweets with comments
- Put your twitter handler everywhere (email signatures, personal blog, company blog etc.)
- Share interesting articles/blog posts and cc the specific bloggers, journalists in your industry – This will catch their attention and is a part of building relations with them
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