
Can anyone recommend a cut rate PR firm? Or, how do you do your own PR? - rms
PR is incredibly valuable for startups, but I can't afford a real PR firm. Can you buy anything resembling PR for $1000? Is it ever worth paying money for SEO?<p>Outside of firms, how do you generate your own PR?
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brand0n
Contrary to what the first commenter says, it is smart to use proper SEO
techniques in the beginning.

You're going to get what pay for in relation to a PR Firm. $1000 will most
likely give you Low-Level coverage for a term of 1-Month or less. Low-Level
coverage is generally looked down upon as it often involves commenting on blog
posts and submitting spammy topics to various social networks. While you'll be
looking for results, the Low-Level PR Firm will value quantity over quality...
and as you may receive a good amount of traffic, the spammy trail of how your
service was introduced will always show as a black mark on your reputation.

Mid & High-Level PR Firms will generally charge an hourly rate based on
Industry and the Mediums that you want to be advertised through (web,
newspaper). It will cost you well over $1000 during the research/consultation
period in which the PR Firm sits down with you and discusses how you/they want
your product/service to be portrayed...

You can very well do your own PR by establishing your service and then
generating creative copy that doesn't seem spammy/cookie-cutterish. You should
then pitch articles to A-List Bloggers and Editors of websites such as Yahoo,
CNET, TechCrunch, etc. Contrary to popular belief, editors are very easy to
get a hold of if you construct your initial emails to them in a professional
manner. Every time I've shot an email off to Michael Arrington I've gotten a
response in less than an hour (and I'm nobody). Remember, you never want to
come across as spammy or else your service will never see the light of day.

If you are unfamiliar with how creative copy should look, you should peruse
through some startup reviews on <http://mashable.com> to see what type of
content they are looking for.

Questions: confidential.forwarder@gmail.com (forwards to my personal email)

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webwright
I can't repeat this quote enough:

"Marketing is a tax you pay for being unexceptional".

(holds for PR too).

I'm not saying you shouldn't do it when you have a great product... What I'm
saying is that companies spend too much money/effort trying to get people to
talk about them and not enough making their product worth talking about.

Why isn't your product worth talking about? Once you conquer that (much
harder) problem, you'll have the budget for a great PR firm who can start
pouring gasoline on your fire.

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mrtron
Regarding paying money for SEO...(you should pay me 50$ to save you thousands)
SEO is extremely easy to do and you are obviously technical enough to do it.
It is just boring, it involves making sure everything is setup. Don't pay a
cent for SEO.

I worked for a company that has massive sites, and they employed a few SEO
folks. They did absolutely nothing except for check pages (probably with a
script...I hope with a script or that is a boring job) for flaws and then they
would just request those get fixed. Hell, those scripts probably exist or I
should write one.

One fundamental thing for SEO is go after a keyword. I assume this is for the
HIV gene testing stuff, so really go after something like 'genetic testing',
or 'CCR5 test' (or both). Since you are already #2 on google for hiv gene
test, you are doing something right.

Don't fall for stuff like 'you should have hyphens not underscores in your
url' or similar bogus claims. You really think that someone like Google
doesn't treat these the same? I would.

As always, email if it goes out of the scope of this conversation.

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mattmaroon
Those scripts do exist and can easily be found on the web. You simply input
your URL, and they tell you stuff.

~~~
mrtron
So now I REALLY hope those SEO guys weren't doing this manually :) Sadly, I
think they were.

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pg
If you're looking for a cut-rate PR firm, what you really want is the web.

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tptacek
Having been directly involved with multiple first-tier PR firms in my career
to date: you can spend $1000, $10,000, or $50,000 in a year on a PR firm and
still get nothing.

Here's the thing. PR firms are not magic. If you have something interesting to
cover, you can get it covered in the trade press (or Techcrunch or whatever)
without a PR firm. On the flip side, if what you have is not naturally
interesting, the trade press isn't really going to cover it even with a PR
firm.

In my experience, the "value" PR firms offer includes:

* Two-hour long meetings about company positioning and the values you want to communicate to the press

* Press training (note: actually valuable)

* A PR landscape assessment where they tell you that you care about Techcrunch, ComputerWorld, Wired, and Slashdot, and your competitors were mentioned N times last year

* A snippet service wherein a human being will do the job of Google News Alerts for you, mostly by means of using Google News Alerts

* A filing service for your press releases

Apart from press training, which you don't _need_ and can only use if you're
getting in front of the press, there's nothing that a PR firm does to get you
covered that you can't do just as effectively yourself, regardless of what PG
says.

My company has gotten pretty good coverage in the press, by which I mean that
my company has gotten more coverage in some trade pubs than successful public
company competitors. Here's my take on what to do:

* Blog. Many trade press reporters skim blogs for leads.

* Court controversy. Take sides on every issue you can reasonably take sides on.

* Figure out things to do with your product or service that will be newsworthy. Your product or service is itself probably not newsworthy.

* Court Reddit aggressively. I kind of doubt Reddit has any trickle-down effect into paper PR --- or even Slashdot --- but if you're reading YC, the people you want to reach are probably easiest to address with Reddit votes.

* Secure speaking opportunities. Make a calendar of every event in your space throughout the year, put together a set of abstracts, and cold call. Short of having printable intel on the most recent Apple security vulnerability, nothing gets press hits like speaking slots. (Imagine a PR person trying to allocate a slot for you at a technical conference --- they actually try!)

* Figure out who the people who actually write stories in your space are, and make friends with them. More on this, but not much more, in a sec.

Here's what I think doesn't work:

* Press releases. There may be value in getting into the habit, but we stopped doing this real quick. Remember: the only reason for you to issue press releases is if you honestly think someone will write it up. If you want to do it, you can get a PRNewsWire account for cheap (or use a "free press release" service). The advice you will get is, look at an Apple press release and copy as much of it as you can, so that yours looks professional.

* Cold pitching stories to editors. This doesn't even work for PR people (witness all the companies who drop $50,000 for 200 printed words a year and, if they're lucky, an pay-for-play "op-ed").

In the past few years, we've figured out a bunch of things that have gotten us
closer to the press. I'm not about to give them up, but I'll tell you the
(obvious) theme: be helpful to the writers. Writers are (a) on a deadline and
(b) looking for interesting stories. What you have to say is probably not
interesting, but that doesn't mean you can't help with both (a) and (b).

~~~
jgrahamc
> I'm not about to give them up

Why not? Would it be detrimental to you to tell us?

~~~
tptacek
How you know that there are tricks to getting written up that actually work
is, I won't publish them. ;)

A beer and a solemn promise would do the trick, if you're in Chicago.

~~~
thorax
Heh, going to PyCon by chance?

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shafqat
We haven't spent a dime on PR at NewsCred. I've found the best way is to do it
yourself, and make it very clear that you are NOT a PR person. When I
correspond with bloggers, journalists or any other 'influential' types, I'm
always up front and honest. Telling them you can't afford PR might mean
they'll spend an extra minute or two on your story. At the end of the day, you
better have a good story to tell. But even that can be worked on! Good luck!

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tirrellp
I recommend eggmarketingpr.com. You can get a couple press releases for under
$1000, which will definitely jumpstart your SEO, traffic, and overall buzz.
But as tptacek noted, it is not magic.

$1000 is not a lot to work with in the pr world, and might be better spent
with a PR consultant who can show/help you how to work the machine yourself. I
have a contact if you are interested.

~~~
mrtron
How will press releases 'jumpstart your SEO'?

Exhibit A for SEO FUD.

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tptacek
A dollar spent on blogging is worth 10 dollars spent on SEO, if our Google
stats are predictive. Got $1000 to burn? Hire an intern (BTW: interns --- a
best-kept-secret) and have them write blog posts for you.

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chris_l
I've had good experience with users blogging and twittering about my search
site, and this is probably not only cheaper but also more effective than
paying for PR, especially if you're in the Web business.

Here is the "buzz" in the blogosphere:
<http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=terraminds> And here on twitter:
<http://terraminds.com/twitter/query?query=terraminds>

Getting started is probably the hardest part, get all your friends to talk
about your site etc., and if users like your service it should grow
organically.

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rokhayakebe
news.ycombinator.com i think this firm can get the word out faster than you
can imagine

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mrtron
I was just talking to a friend about the same issue, and was reminded that
referral programs can cause a lot of people to do this legwork for you for
'free'.

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jakewolf
Write up your own press releases and send them out to niche publications. Also
work on the copy of your website so things are a little more clear.

~~~
tptacek
A freebie tip is, yes, definitely target the smaller and niche pubs; don't
spam Wired. The more helpful you can be, the more influence you have, and
honestly, you're just not that helpful for Kevin Poulsen or Chris Anderson.

A press hit anywhere conveys an irrational credibility; think about it, it's
not most people's job to parse which pubs have a reputation for editorial
integrity. That's why the "Top 10 Pick" awards from places like SC Magazine
(in my field) work so well. So, if "bang for the buck" is the goal, you'll get
80% of the value of a press hit by sniping at the small fish.

The obvious point to make about "the long game" in PR is that reporters and
editors have ambitions too, and some of the smartest people in the trade are
writing for the small fish; they'll be editors at Computerworld tomorrow.

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cyberhill
I'd go for PR over SEO at first.

