Can anyone recommend a cut rate PR firm? Or, how do you do your own PR?
12 comments
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: [email protected] (forwards to my personal email)
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: [email protected] (forwards to my personal email)
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Those scripts do exist and can easily be found on the web. You simply input your URL, and they tell you stuff.
So now I REALLY hope those SEO guys weren't doing this manually :) Sadly, I think they were.
If you're looking for a cut-rate PR firm, what you really want is the web.
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).
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).
This is probably a moot point for web startups but some PR people also help you get the right "message" across to analysts (e.g. Gartner) which may make sense if you're selling stuff to people who subscribe to them.
> I'm not about to give them up
Why not? Would it be detrimental to you to tell us?
Why not? Would it be detrimental to you to tell us?
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!
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.
$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.
How will press releases 'jumpstart your SEO'?
Exhibit A for SEO FUD.
Exhibit A for SEO FUD.
Mrton, this is not FUD, this is fact, and I speak from experience rather than conjecture.
When a release goes out on the wire, there are a multitude of sites that will pick it up automatically from the wire. On the order of thousands, including Yahoo! News, Google News, simultaneously That being said, if your press release contains a link to your site or other relevant keywords in conjunction with your site or product name, you WILL get a siginificant boost (aka, jumpstart) in your rankings immediately.
In addition to that, if a particular publication finds significant interest in your business, product, or service, they will call you for a more in depth interview, or op ed piece, or in some cases, a full feature. It depends on the relevance and interest level of the publication.
I don't claim this to be a panacea, and ultimately the effect has a very short halflife, but traditional press releases can be used very effectively in conjunction with non traditional PR. They both have their place.
When a release goes out on the wire, there are a multitude of sites that will pick it up automatically from the wire. On the order of thousands, including Yahoo! News, Google News, simultaneously That being said, if your press release contains a link to your site or other relevant keywords in conjunction with your site or product name, you WILL get a siginificant boost (aka, jumpstart) in your rankings immediately.
In addition to that, if a particular publication finds significant interest in your business, product, or service, they will call you for a more in depth interview, or op ed piece, or in some cases, a full feature. It depends on the relevance and interest level of the publication.
I don't claim this to be a panacea, and ultimately the effect has a very short halflife, but traditional press releases can be used very effectively in conjunction with non traditional PR. They both have their place.
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.
[deleted]
prleap.com is great for press releases
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.
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.
news.ycombinator.com i think this firm can get the word out faster than you can imagine
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'.
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.
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.
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.
I'd go for PR over SEO at first.
Outside of firms, how do you generate your own PR?