March 9, 2010

The best form of advertising for your startup is free publicity via editorial coverage. This can grow your company's credibility, business relationships, user base, Web traffic, and revenue. It can also help you raise money or even sell your company.

So how to get more press? Obviously, you could hire a PR firm, which specializes in this. Eventually, that's probably going to be a good idea -- or at least you'll eventually want to hire people to do this in-house. But for small startups that want to conserve cash, here are six ways to get started:

- Start a blog and write about this industry. Don't just write about your company, but write about the broader industry you participate in. This will help you get quoted in news coverage, or will help you get linked to from startup industry message boards or news aggregation Web sites, such as Techmeme or Hacker News.

- Start publishing metrics about your company and industry. Any sort of data that you collect can be helpful for identifying industry trends. Journalists can use these metrics as data points in larger stories, or sometimes, your metrics reports will justify news coverage on their own. Make sure you're clear about what the metrics data means and doesn't mean, and any potential limitations in your data or methodology. (And for competitive purposes, if you're worried about this sort of stuff, make sure your customers or clients or secret business practices aren't completely revealed.) Companies that have done this especially well include Monster.com, comScore, AdMob, Panjiva, and others.

- Start an informal email blast list of industry journalists and/or thought leaders. After you write a good blog post, shoot it out to reporters so they know it exists. When there's news in your industry, send over a few sentences with your raw thoughts, making sure they don't read like a sales pitch. Maybe include some more material, such as an update on your company with key metrics, an updated "40,000-foot view" of the industry, or other story-angle ideas for reporters. This will help you get more coverage, either because of what you're doing, or because you have an interesting take on what your peers are doing.

- Participate in industry chatter on Twitter. Reporters are now increasingly looking at Twitter for stories and quotes. It's an easy way to join the conversation and get your way into a story.

- Start hanging out with reporters, and arm yourself with story ideas for them. Find out what networking events that key journalists in your field attend, and make sure you're there at least once a month. The best journalists are always looking for interesting stories that their competitors are not aware of. Don't be annoying; just be casual and have interesting things to talk about without sounding like you're on a sales pitch. This will help make sure you're the first person they call when they have a question about your industry, which could help increase your editorial exposure.

- Throw a party at your office! It doesn't have to be big or expensive. But getting reporters and cool industry people into your company's office, where they can see what you do firsthand -- and have a couple free drinks -- can open doors for future coverage. Reporters will often attend parties at companies they don't think are worth a formal briefing, only to find out they're more interesting than anticipated. Just make sure the place is clean and your air conditioning is working. You don't want to be known as "that gross, sweaty startup." 

Join the conversation ( 3 )

• John Blue 1 year 10 months and 30 days ago

  

  What is not explicitly stated in this post is that the time investment is a serious one for blogging, twittering, tracking down all the journalists, etc. Time is an expense that will need to be budgeted.
  
  Does your startup have the capacity to spend 2 to 3 hours per day for six months straight to commit to building a brand on social media and blogging sites? Are you ready to spend time calling writers and media people, pulling together the blog post info, or "hanging out with reporters"? What will that time cost you? One reason you hire an experienced PR firm is that they have spent the time developing strong bonds with key journalists in your specific target market. Do the business math on cost of time vs. hiring a firm.
  
  One problem I have observed is that senior staff wants all the PR, marketing, and advertising "stuff" to take place but are not willing to put trained and serious expertise on the task.
  
  Yes, given time, all the items above can work. Yes, you can get traction. And yes, you can get journalists to your party, sometimes. Are you ready to spend the time?

• Bryan Bruce 1 year 10 months and 30 days ago

  

  Dan, I could not agree with you more! This advice is perfect for any small start up. With blogs, tweets being indexed on the search engines - if properly orchestrated with the right targeted key words these tools will allow you to show up quickly in relevant search results. Soon it will appear as though you are paying a full time PR agency for the exposure. The comment above about not having proper metrics as a startup just simply don't make sense. Everything starts small and slowly builds steam. Share it, blog it, tweet it and reach more for less!
  
  Bryan Bruce
  www.bryanbruce.com

• BONNIE HARRIS 1 year 10 months and 30 days ago

  

  I'm sorry Dan but this is poor advice. I agree you don't need a publicist but here's why these don't work for the most part:
  - a new blog will not get attention until it has traction - subscribers, comments and a good groundswell - this won't get you press unless you're incredibly lucky
  - how can you publish solid metrics if you're a startup with no history? ...especially metrics that mean anything? monster is a well-established leader in its field
  - journalists *** *** *** email blasts that are not targeted specifically to them - this will get you on a spam list if you're not careful
  - participating on Twitter is a good idea but like a blog it will take a LONG time (unless you're really lucky or your startup is really unusual) to get the notice of a journalist
  - they don't have time to go to parties held by people they've never heard of. even well known companies have a hard time with getting media to their events. journalists have no extra time (unless they're unemployed)
  - as for hanging out with journalists....that's kept secret for a reason good luck finding out where their watering holes are (if they even have them...most work at home or don't really hang out anymore)
  All of these ideas are passive and either take too long or don't work. The best way to get press for yourself (without a publicist like me) is to read what the journalist is writing about, craft a pitch that is something they'd be interested in (based on your research) and send it. Then nicely bug the writer until he knows you won't give up.