Identifying Your Top 10

Posted on November 4, 2007

PR professionals constantly say that media outreach is about building relationships. For PR practitioners it is also about building trust. Ideally, you are letting a journalist know that the news you bring to them will always be fresh, exciting and something that their readers will care about. But we can't be all things to all newspapers and the reality is that your customers really only read a focused few pubs. So we recommend identifying your 10 most important publications and journalists. To do this you need to ask yourself a few questions:

Continue reading "Identifying Your Top 10"...

You Are What Your Customers Call You

Posted on November 2, 2007

The other day I spent a large amount of time working on messaging and positioning with a young and successful company. One of the challenges they were having was the comparison between the robust product they deliver and the simpler products on the market that solve only part of the problem. They are stuck because of this they were stuck between a bunch of simple “me-toos” and enterprise apps that took 12 months to deploy. So they decided it was time to create a new space. And our first response was NO!

Continue reading "You Are What Your Customers Call You"...

We launched. Now what?

Posted on October 31, 2007

So you had a successful technology launch. You were in TechCrunch and GigaOm and ComputerWorld. Even the Wall Street Journal covered you. And while the buzz was great and your still high fiving the PR team, the customer calls are not rolling in. So now what?

It’s time to move into the ongoing phase of PR. This is the phase where a good, creative PR team helps you connect with buyers on a regular basis. In between the big customer wins and product launches.

Continue reading "We launched. Now what?"...

Media Training

Posted on October 29, 2007

We all know - some people have the gift of gab and some folks just don't. This is just a quick plug for media training. It is essential that everyone in the organization go through the media training process. Not only does it force a company to develop and deliver a single coherent message, but media training often helps you find out which colleagues should not be spokespeople. And you never know - you may find your best spokesperson on the engineering team - It could happen!

While it is important to have several people media trained not everyone is comfortable with the job. Sometimes, even the CEO isn't up to the challenge. And while it is essential for senior staff to learn, they may need to be paired with someone who is more comfortable in front of an audience. Net Net, train a lot, train often and be prepared to tell even the most senior people they either need more training or might not be the best for media events.