When your company is just starting out, you’re often so busy trying to meet with investors and finalize a working prototype on budget and within schedule that there is no time or money to generate PR. There certainly isn’t time or money left over for a major marketing campaign to generate good PR for the business.
Here are three ways startups can generate good PR for their business at a low cost or even for free:
Give Reporters Tips on What You Do That Is Newsworthy.
Ideally, your company can arrange good press by telling the press what it is doing. Not everything your company does is newsworthy.
You can arrange for press in response to the launch of a new product or release of a compelling new study. The press will always be happy to report in the business section when a new business opens or mention every hiring event. The business section will cover news of any high profile partnerships, facility expansions and mergers. Any person with an online public relations degree earned through an accredited online public relations program should understand what is and isn’t newsworthy. They will also know how to pitch these stories, as well as how to craft press releases you can send out through other channels, so it’s always better to have someone with the proper expertise on your team if you don’t have it yourself.
Volunteer for Good Coverage.
Startups tend to be tight on cash, so they cannot afford to literally buy good press coverage through a major donation to a charity. What they may be able to spare is time. If your employees are designing websites for charities, running marathons to raise funds for a good cause or spend an afternoon picking up trash or building a house for Habitat for Humanity, ensure that the local newspapers know that you’re doing this. You can improve the quality of the press coverage by volunteering for quotes and pictures of your team in company T-shirts, paid back with a mention of the company name and its website.
Do Interviews for Industry Publications.
Industry publications are often overlooked in the rush to get mentioned in big papers. Yet any news site is considered a high trust domain by search engines. Arrange for key personnel to be interviewed in publications specific to your industry or their area of expertise. Whether it is having your IT admin interviewed about the latest technologies your company works on for Extreme Tech or Computerworld, or seeking to have personnel featured in ethnic minority professional magazines, explore every potential avenue for good press. Featuring your key personnel in these interviews garners name recognition for them and brand recognition for the organization, as well as serving as an excellent low to no cost recruiting tool.
If you want to gain good PR for your company, give reporters tips on what you do that is both good and newsworthy, as long as you make sure the issue is newsworthy. Volunteer for a good cause and generate good press that way. Also, consider arranging industry publication interviews for key staff.
