6 Public Relation Strategies to Grow your Startup
Public Relation Strategies are something that has always fascinated me. One common thread about startups is that most are pressed for time and money. They know they need to stabilise their brand, but lack the major funding of most established businesses. Many try to mess through in an attempt to stimulate the interest of journalists and secure media coverage.
They understand the longer it takes to create name recognition the longer it will take them to build sales and profitability, but they aren’t sure how to get the process rolling. Here are five publicity hacks for startups to quickly attract the attention of newspapers, radio and TV stations, and generate the needed publicity for immediate growth.
Top 6 Public Relation Strategies
1. Identify your UVP
The unique value proposition ( UVP ) is an absolute necessity that your business should discover. In other words, Create a short summary highlighting what makes the business different from others and what problems its solves for the customer as compared to the other companies in the market space. ( explained more below )
Point out interesting details and pitch the local business journal, daily newspaper, or a TV station announcing your company’s launch before it happens. You can put together an engaging summary with an eye-catching headline. Journalists like to break stories and are always watching for new businesses they can write or talk about.
Businesses can always issue and distribute a standard press release later after a major news outlet or two have broken the story.
2. Develop a short video for social media
Video, of course, is highly used in today’s highly digital world. A video can humanize the owners and team, and get people talking about it. Many people would like to watch something than read about it. A video can help cover all the bases. It can depict some emotion and show features of the business print cannot deliver. A company can also link to their video for added PR value when the business does send out its press release.
Dollar Shave Club is a similar example of the above point – The Video That Took The Razor World By Storm Generating Millions of View
3. Host a special event
A special event can create enthusiasm for the leadership, team and recruit. The right type of event can also have a lot of media value. Creating a unique event is where creativity kicks in. You can do something a little off-the-wall such as creating the world’s biggest cheeseburger or selling 50 dresses in 50 hours to build revenue for a nonprofit or repairing a house for a needy homeowner if you are a painting company or construction firm.
You can do something similar to computers if you are a tech firm. Many ways exist to perform an event and achieve your goals. Remember a business will need something visual if you wish to attract local TV stations.
4. Tie-in a charity
Community outreach can be a key part of a communications program. A new company can develop something at the outset that serves a local charity and gains the attention of the media. Editors and producers like companies that do something creative and give back to the community. Create a win-win situation for you and the media agencies as well.
Charity gains customer support. Serving back to your community will nourish you build stronger relationships with your existing customers — and gain new ones. A 2010 study by Cone Communications exhibited that 85 per cent of consumers have a better outlook on businesses that give to a charity that they care about.
5. Build connections with Journalists
Scout down the journalists that write regarding your industry find out their contact information, connect with them and pitch your idea to them. Keep a record of what they are writing about, what trends you can see in their writing and think about the way you can carry your communication to them. Whenever there is a significant milestone your company reaches, contact such journalists and persuade them to write about you. Getting featured by quality journalists and publications will increase your business’s credibility
Read almost any journalist’s advice to PR practitioners and context is likely to come up:
“Read the writer’s prior articles. Thoroughly.” – Cheryl Conner, Forbes
“If it’s something that’s generally not my beat, I’m just not going to respond,” – Melanie Eversley, USA Today
“It still happens too often that I receive info from PR agencies that is completely useless for me.” – Michel van der Ven, Freelancer
“Read a journalist’s work. This is PR 101.” – Abbi Whitaker, Abbi Public Relations
Harvard Business Review reports that major news outlets generally get three times the average amount of email in pitches alone. There is a lot of noise, and most of it is irrelevant to the topics that each journalist covers.
One of the most natural things to do is to become a fan of relevant journalists first. Also note that print journalists also tend to have digital responsibilities, have personal blogs, and may write short or long-form on social networks (examples of long-form being Google+ or LinkedIn). Reading a journalist’s work likely requires observing multiple sources.
6. Social Media Monitoring:
one of the important Strategies to Grow your Startup is to Look for the influential people in your industry and start following their posts on Social Media websites. Search for media and start drafting their stories, tone, content and posts on digital platforms. This way you can choose which media you can use to communicate what. After creating touchpoints, you can reach out to them by tweeting and sending them emails.
Sample twitter list for monitoring content:
So, What are your Thoughts on this ? Did you found this article helpful ? Drop a Comment if you have.
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