Getting Good PR for A Small Company?

watanabe asks: "My company, Ybos, is a small Open Source software firm. We are a major partner to a larger firm that has just started to receive some decent PR thru C|Net stories and the like. It's clear that we need good press. It's also clear to me that I don't know the first thing about good PR, like: getting to know the journalists, getting them to cover us and our story, or abuot driving the interest in us. We hired a PR firm for a while, but they were a major money drain, and provided almost zero value." So what is the key in getting good PR? Is this all about well-written press releases or is there more subtlety involved?

"Before I go any further, here's the short version of our story: We provide enterprise level database backends for web sites at one fifth of cost of our competititors, (those that are still around) and with a fast rollout. We use the ArsDigita Community System to help corporations roll out next generation integrated application community sites in very short timeframes -- under two or three months, usually, and sometimes in as little as two weeks.

I think we have a great story, and a good product, so how do I tell the rest of the world? I'm sure there are some post-IPO types who know all about the press, managing them, whipping them into a frenzy, etc. This must be a question that every small software firm struggles with, and I hope the community finds it of interest. Thanks in advance for any and all advice offered."

Comments

Read the IPG Guide

[Roblimo]

The Internet Press Guild has a piece called The Care and Feeding of The Press that every PR person (or anyone who plays a PR person on TV) ought to read.

- Robin

Articles help

[stevew]

One way that my company has used to get PR is to write technical articles in the appropriate journals to illustrate our expertise. (We do chip design consulting.)

Another is to appear at trade shows in discussion panels.

This gets the name of the company out there in subtle ways, and hopefully provides a good impression at the same time.

Re:This is such spam

["Zow"]

I don't think so - By the time I was done reading the question, I totally forgot who the company was - the tone was very different from the "This is the greatest thing since sliced bread, everyone should have one in their grage, and the people who are bringing it to you are Blah, Inc." type of spam that we've seen here on /. before.

I think this is totally relevant to /. - what we have here is a small, open source reliant company made up of a bunch of geeks that want to know how to get better press. My intuition tells me that there are lots of other geeks around here on /. that are facing the same problem. What's more, this is one of those types of problems that other readers can provide real insight and experience to - I think it's much better than the usual Ask /. fare that can usually be categorized into either:

1. I need a lawyer - what do I do? or
2. I know I could figure this out if I just RTFM, but I'm too lazy to do that, can you tell me?

I see that RobLimo's already posted something useful - I think given /.'s background pre-Andover that Hemos would probably have something insightful to say, and, like I said, I'm sure there are other geeks around here that have had to face this situation before.

-"Zow"

PR tips for small companies

[doom]

1. Learn to manipulate the slashdot editors.
   
2. Jakob Nielsen just wrote a column about
   making sure that journalists know how to
   use your web site: www.useit.com.
   
3. Do your best to annoy the hell out of the
   RIAA and MPAA. You can't buy the kind of publicity
   that Napster got.
   

4. Post lots of places with a self-promotional .sig,
like: "The author of this piece does not speak for
Emusic, which is
still a cool company, even if it has been bought
by one of the Big 5".

You Already Know the Answer...

[Puk]

Submit a story to slashdot!

-Puk

Think from the reporter's perspective

[raju1kabir]

Here's what a reporter wants:

• To go home early at the end of the day.
• Not to look like an idiot in print.
• Not to be mocked by his peers for blatantly rehashing pure ad crap with no news value (unless he works for a pure ad crap publication).
• To have people think he's clever.
• To accumulate clips that will help him get a better job.

Okay, so keep all those in mind. Now, how can you help? For starters, take this press release and throw it in the trash:

New York, April 12 - XYZCorp, an online content enabler specializing in the revolutionization of digital synergies through client-focused paradigms, announces the release of SchismThrasher 1.0, a self-contained abstract solution management system.

...because the people who receive it are going to do exactly that: throw it away.

A press release that actually gets picked up has to provide the basis for a story, which more or less means it has to relate directly to things that the reporter knows about and would otherwise be writing about. Reporters do not write about marketspeak crap, except to make fun of it.

So find a trend that's popular but not overplayed, and figure out how you relate to that. Or find an angle the reporter can work with toward a story about how to do something, how to avoid something, how to make something, and build on that. Don't be afraid to mention your competition - having the story appear in print with you as one of three is better than not having it at all. And if your contact info is on the release, your spokesperson is going to be the one who has a quote in the story.

Approaches like this have you doing half the reporter's work for them, without it looking like he just licked up whatever you fed him. That meets his needs and yours too.

And nurture personal relationships with reporters. Get them drunk at conventions (they're the poorly-dressed ones, so they're easy to spot). Find the bar near the local paper where they hang out. Donate some equipment to your local college newspaper.

One last tip - if you don't know how to write, find someone who does. Go outside your office, find someone in grad school, or someone who writes accessible materials for a living. Do not under any circumstances use your neighbor or your mom or your brother-in-law unless this person is actually gainfully employed for his/her writing ability (next week's lesson: Do not use these people for graphic design either, just because they happen to own a copy of Pagemaker and once did their church newsletter). Everyone knows at least one person in such a capacity. Someone who is laughing at your typos or overuse of the thesaurus or weird grammar is not going to be writing a story about your product.

The art of a good Press Release

[NewtonsLaw]

As a commentator and publisher, I get dozens of press releases floating across my screen every day and most of them take a pretty quick trip to /dev/null

You have to appreciate the fact that there are literally hundreds of new products, services and companies launched every week -- and if journalists were to publish a story on every PR they received then the newswires would become flooded with the stuff and readers would complain.

The secret to getting a PR turned into a story is to wait until you've got something truly newsworthy before you issue a PR.

There are some companies whose PRs automatically get fined in /deve/null because they send out two or three a day announcing the most mundane and trivial things: "Our website is now listed in Yahoo's dierctory", "Our new sales manager is wearing a brown tie today", etc, etc.

Unfortunately for them, even if they come up with the answer to life, the universe and everything, I doubt anyone will be listening.

The secret to good PR is to figure out ways to become newsworthy. When you do something that is truly of interest to the wider industry (or world) the the journos will beat your door down trying to get a story.

Also -- pick your timing carefully. Every editor and reporter knows (and hates) slow-news days. There are some days when absolutely nothing is happening out there and those are the days when we tend to reluctantly start paying more attention to the PRs that come across our screens.

What's not newsworthy on a day when Yahoo buys the NY Times and Dell files for Chapter 13 might well be a lead-story on another day when yours is the only story happening.

Of course achieving this eye-catching status is not easy - or everyone would be doing it -- right?

As far as PR companies go -- it's been my experience that they're really good at spending your money but don't gain you a lot of ground. Let's face it, if you're not newsworthy then no amount of PR-spend is going to get your stories run in a reputable publication.

And as for the format of a PR -- keep it very, very short. If you haven't convinced the editor/reporter that you're newsworthy within the first paragraph they'll never read the rest anyway.

If you've sparked their interest -- they'll contact you for more information anyway. Best to leave them a little curious than drop a weighty tombe on their desk that tells them the whole story.

I hope this helps!