

Ask HN: Any recommended PR firm for (cash-strapped) startup? - jerryji

I'm seeking PR service to generate awareness for my social/shopping startup at under $1000<p>Any recommendations?
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orangethirty
That's not enough money for a anything worthy.

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jerryji
Thanks for the tip. So what should the budget be for something worthy?

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trekky1700
From my experience working for a web design company that also does PR, $1000
certainly won't get you much. A cheap PR firm will charge you at least
$100/hour which affords you ten hours. Once meetings, planning and strategics
are through, you won't have much left at all. My recommendation would be to
learn some basic PR yourself and implement it that way.

I'm guessing by PR you want marketing, and it would be far cheaper and more
valuable reading a bit up on it to get a grasp than hiring someone else to do
it. Read FastCompany or Inc., they regularly post great articles on that sort
of stuff that you can read quickly to learn some valuable base
strategies/ideas.

And if you think you don't have time, remember that a PR firm isn't just going
to open your website and work magic, they're going to want to spend hours
going over your brand, your goals and more. You'll have to have meetings and
explain a lot to them. In that time you could easily learn an adequate amount
of PR strategies to at least implement something decent.

And I'm guessing if your budget is $1000 you don't need anything major to
begin with, which means doing it yourself makes even more sense.

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jerryji
Thanks for the great info.

prserve.com just quoted me sub-$1K for one story on a major tech media news
site, pay only after the story goes live.

What I read from here so far makes the prserve deal a pretty good one, isn't
it?

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trekky1700
Hmmm,that sounds tempting. I suppose it depends on the type of story and the
site it goes on. A reputable site would (ideally) publish stories based on the
newsworthiness of a product (meaning they'd publish the story even without the
PR firm being the middleman), but I'm sure whatever contacts they have with
the news site probably help a lot. Getting on a major, widely read tech news
site for a startup I'd say would be worth that easily. I'm not going to guess
how they do it, but if they can do what they've promised for the price they've
promised, and it's all risk free, I'd say give it a shot.

