

Best PR strategy for a brand new startup? - botolo

Hello,<p>Our Team has been working very hard in the last few months to develop a new concept of social network. We have almost completed the beta testing and we are very close to the official launch of our project. We are eager to see if the public will appreciate our ideas.<p>Given that we are not experts of PR, I was wondering which one is, in your opinion, the best PR strategy for a brand new startup. Our guts tell us that we should prepare an press release, detailing the innovative aspects of our project, we should attach some screenshots and a demo link and we should send this email to the main tech blogs and websites, such as Techcrunch, Mashable, Venture Beat, Silicon Alley Insider, etc.<p>We wonder if this is the right approach or if it would sound unprofessional and if we should hire a PR agency to write press releases on our behalf.<p>What is your experience and advice?<p>Many thanks.
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vv
What's your goal for the press? To get users? Investors? Customers?

For a tech blog like you describe, don't bother with a press release. Best to
send a short email describing why what you're doing is interesting. Most
reporters prefer hearing from founders rather than PR people.

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botolo
Thanks a lot for the suggestion. I had the feeling that a full press release
could have been seen as pretentious. We are focused on creating a useful
product and we are not interested in getting coverage just for the sake of it.
Much better, as you say, to send a personal email from the founders to these
blogs. Thanks again!

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pedalpete
I'm going to take a bit of a different tact than just saying "here's how to do
it". The important thing may be "are you sure you're ready"??

You've been working hard, you're excited, but where are you really at? Have
you gone through beta? Have you got some users? Have you gotten the feedback,
is your messaging set?

I think you'll have a real challenge getting into the major tech blogs before
you've got a social network with activity, and the activity you get from the
publicity might not help your business to grow in the long run.

Specifically for a social network, if you get on TC and you have a social
network without activity and content, you're not going to get very far.

My advice, is get out there and build the base. Make sure you've got the right
amount of activity (you define that), find out what parts of your business are
really resonating with people, and figure out the message/soundbite that makes
a difference. When a few pieces fall together, you'll know, because writing to
the tech blogs will be a piece of cake when you say "[original angle that
resonates with users] provides [x]% growth over the last [x] time period" or
something along those lines. That actually isn't catchy enough.

Another tactic is to not go directly for the big blogs. I got covered by a
bunch of smaller blogs, and that's where TC and TechRadar found out about my
site.

Another way is for you to basically write the article for the blogs, and let
them basically edit it for print. The more work you do for the writer, the
more likely they are to just do a quick edit and then post it. I haven't done
this myself ,but I've heard of it done.

If you want to get some PR, you can also write an article about your industry
which is not directly about your business. You'll see lots of these articles
on TC. This may drive some people to check out your site, and help it to grow,
even though you won't have your name in lights.

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botolo
Thanks a lot for the great advice. Our main goal right now is to get some
users. The mechanics of our project work much better when we have a lot of
users and we need to build a big user base first.

I loved your suggestion to go with smaller blogs and provide them with a
description of the project ready to be published.

Thanks again and I'll keep you HN friends updated.

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dylanhassinger
startupbook.net

