Your Website: The Press Room

Back in the day we stuffed hundreds of press kits – folders with backgrounders, press releases, company founder biographies, photos to accompany the articles the reporters were writing. We brought boxes of them to trade shows and events, mailed them to reporters and analysts and carried them on press tours.  As our technology use increased, we started putting press kits on CDs.  Today, we’re killing far fewer trees because everything in that press kit is now online, emailed and downloadable […]

How to Get Major Media Coverage for Your Startup

If I had a dime for every startup who told me they wanted to “get major media coverage for their launch”, I wouldn’t be working for a living.  In general, major media coverage comes from a sizable investment in marketing, public relations, and product development.  You get major media coverage when you deserve it.  However, here are just a few tricks and tips to try.

How to Create a Media Alert

Over the past few weeks, we’ve suggested the use of a media alert more than once; time for some basic info on what one is, how to use it and how to create one.  First off, what it isn’t:  a short press release.  In general, a media alert is used before an event and a press release is the actual news.

Hey BostInnovation, Over Here

Again?  Really?  We’re having this conversation again?  Hey BostInnovation – here are some of the posts and people’s thoughts from September 2009 when a Web Innovators Group panel made a similar suggestion to entrepreneurs (i.e. do PR yourself.)  For the rest of you, BostInnovation is suggesting early stage startups try to do their own PR.

Best Public Relations Books and Quora

There’s a new social media platform or tool born every 23 seconds (totally made up statistic but it sounds about right, doesn’t it?)  When you make your living in the social media and marketing world, you need to be aware of the new but also beware of the distraction factor that could pull you off-course.  Is this tool a potential time waster instead of a useful tool?  Quora is coming into its own lately and so I’ve started investigating it […]

Shocking Public Relations

When sleep doesn’t come right away, I often watch movies on TV, catching bits and pieces of them, rarely watching a movie from start to finish.  Hence, it often takes months before I see all of a movie, if ever.  I’ve seen snatches of the 2008 film Bottle Shock, the mostly true story of how Napa Valley took on the French wine industry in 1976.  It makes for an entertaining take on the vintner wars, even when you know it […]

Hand-building Media Lists: Media Relations 101 Part 1

Yes, yes, there are media databases and it is possible to start this kind of a project using one but frankly, you are just going to have to go back through it and do this work anyway.  Plus you are paying big bucks for that database access and the temptation is to not do the research to confirm that the names that turn up are really your best targets.  (And then you can find yourself in the embarrassing situation of […]