PR activities also need a good foundation

Before we study the specifics of how to do it, let's take a look at how to lay the groundwork for PR activities--to hold the right PR point.
Right PR point

When is the best time to start a PR campaign?

In Suster's view, the product development is completed, or has been generally designed, only suitable for the product launch PR activities.

Of course, in the current hot on the public platform, there are many teams have chosen to promote the edge of raising money, edge development and improve products. However, in any case, can participate in the public and get investment projects, even if not manufactured products, that at least in the design is also mostly to improve, with certain feasibility. Of course, there are also a number of companies involved in the fund-raising activities are not very interested, which may lead to the end of the fundraising period is still unable to complete the fund-raising, and finally smashed their own signboards.

The correct use of the public-raised platform method, can be completed after the product, the use of public funds to manage inventory, ease supply chain pressure, and further improve the product.

In the author's view, the time when the product is complete and is about to be marketed is the most money-making activity, so the campaign is actually better suited for seed financing or the acquisition of venture capital.

PR activities are the same.

Until the product is nearly complete, the entrepreneur can say really, truly understand their own products, the relevant PR activities because "heart bottom" will not be pompous and impractical. At the same time, the suspension of public relations activities will help to maintain the "pioneer" advantage, the relevant entrepreneurial content/technology/projects will not be exposed to the publicity and premature, so that opponents also robbed the opportunity to narrow the gap.

Therefore, Suster is also quite advocating "marketing in the present (harsh today is not Future)" concept-only the current implementation is the most difficult to predict, be disturbed, the future of the plan inevitably there are uncertainties.

Because of this, the author suggests "on the basis of better products, start the public relations activities as soon as possible." The "early" here is much earlier than the average investor suggests. Suster that when you have a perfect product plan and you're ready to put it into practice, you can start a PR campaign – knowing that the next stage of recruiting, financing, and initial user groups is dependent on the results of PR activities.

How to do PR without money?

In the determination of the appropriate time for PR, and finally to be able to glimpse the author's strategy, to see how no money/not much money in the case, is how to do PR.

Suster points out that there are a lot of PR activities that entrepreneurs can do for themselves-which means that the cost of these jobs is visually zero.

Indeed, most of the entrepreneurs who have challenged startups have tried to work together in the early days-from products to finance to operations to human resources. Therefore, if there is no money dedicated to people to do public relations, entrepreneurs may wish to try to spend some time to carry out research activities.

Take the author Suster own experience as an example.

In his view, the enterprise's brand building is very important, so many PR activities are suster their own organizations to carry out. As a result, his VC company Upfront Ventures PR year is only likely to be incredibly 0 dollars. Suster very seriously with the media reporters have a good dealings:

I also have a lot of things to do, so why make time to do a good job in public relations activities? On the one hand, because I like these journalists, their professionalism makes me admire, and on the other hand, maintaining a good PR relationship will someday help.

The point is that it is not feasible to prepare PR activities only at important times. PR is not something that can be done overnight, but it needs a long, uninterrupted effort-to maintain a good relationship with a journalist's partner and to continue paying.

As a start-up company, you can do not only unilaterally seek media exposure, you know, the news every day, the media are tired of listening to all kinds of good actually have no value of the "exclusive News". The start-up company may consider from the media angle, provides the news material for it, establishes a mutual cooperation relations for the two sides. In the long run, when your company has news, the media will also spontaneously interview.

Another point to note is who is responsible for the docking media and who is responsible for the interview.

Of course, as a start-up company, with the development of the company, the division of labor will be more clear, docking media, arranging meetings, writing PR manuscripts, preparing interviews, polishing speeches and other public relations activities will generally be entrusted to the special responsible person to carry out. That's understandable. However, some bosses are accustomed to let the relevant responsible person to complete the public relations activities, even the interview is assigned to the director, this is not a good idea-even as Salesforce.com Ceo,marc Benioff so far personally attended many interviews.

So what's the difference between a "surrogate" and a "ceo in person?

You know, the media always want first-hand fresh and authoritative information, what more than directly interview the founder, CEO of their taste?

You have to say that to achieve a good PR effect, you have to learn how to interview, how to interact with media reporters, how to frame the "story" you want to convey, and accept the fact that you have to spend a lot of time to get back to productive PR results.

A little money, how to do PR

After a quiet 0-cost PR period, you may have a small but sufficiently encouraging seed investment. At this point, you might want to ask, "If I want to do PR, how do I properly use this hard-won investment?"

How do you get a seed investment? Should we spend some money on PR?

In general, this should depend on the amount of investment that is received. However, if you are in urgent need of the pillar of the project, or are looking for VCs, and want to successfully promote product development and sales, then you really should move some money for PR activities. However, how to use this budget, is also fastidious.

If you have not started A round of financing, it does not suggest that you spend a fortune to hire a well-known public relations company to operate-a PR expensive, and two of these well-known public relations companies are also pretty pick partners.

The managers of too many well-known PR companies take on a lot of start-up PR tasks and hand them over to the fledgling graduates and sit back and wait for the results – but don't expect the task manager to be responsible for your project. Of course, the ability of fresh people may not be bad, but they are too often with several projects, which leads them to not necessarily have the energy to thoroughly understand the concept of various start-up companies, and corresponding to the "most suitable" PR solution.

Word, if you don't have enough capital to hire a PR firm, they won't be able to offer you the best service. Please keep this in mind.

Suster suggests that the start-up team can hire individuals with relevant experience, or part-time or less well-known small PR companies. Specifically, you can hire someone with PR experience to take part in public relations activities on the way out of their job, or recruit an experienced intern or hire a part-time or full-time consultant.

In the methods listed above, it is most appropriate to recruit someone with a PR experience seriously. As regular employees, they can do far more than just planning activities, writing documents, and often doing a lot of extra work. At the same time, they are more than the external PR staff understand the company's philosophy, but also to devote themselves to the company's public relations activities, the start-up company is a rare boost.

Of course, it is possible to hire a small PR firm for a monthly salary of 5,000-10,000 dollars, or 5–7 million dollars to recruit a full-time PR person. But generally the latter works better.

The end of the money!

Not easy to harvest a round of financing, you finally have to emboldened external public relations company. What needs to be noticed at this time?

Whether you choose to cooperate with the public relations company is big or small, if your own company does not fit the business docking personnel, then this cooperation is mostly unsuccessful.

After all, you

Someone needs to be in time with the external company to update their company's current situation;

Need someone to follow up on blogs, social media, online forum information updates;

Need someone to be able to solve the reporter's problem in time and fitness;

Need someone specially for all kinds of exhibitions, meetings to prepare, let their company's display always creative to attract the media and people's attention;

And on all these foundations, the person you need has to really understand your company, your customer base, and your competitors.

How difficult it is!

So, despite our recommendation to get a VC after the external PR company, in the absence of a suitable business docking person, you are likely to face the dilemma of "throwing money in vain" and "trying to be useless"-and, of course, if you've hired a dedicated PR person before, it might be a lot better.

In a word, PR is a very effective method in many marketing methods. Enough marketing budgets and good PR companies are "golden Partners", able to extend the company's information to well-known publications such as The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and industry-authoritative reports, as well as to a variety of active tech blogs.

This is the company's image, the accumulation of influence has laid a considerable foundation. It is true that a lot of executives or investors may have seen the magazine's reports on the plane and decided on a partnership--enough to see the impact of PR.

And in the process of working with outside companies, you can not only stare at the short-term results, trying to use exposure to the cooperation of the work of quantitative reference. External PR companies take the time to get to know your company and promote your entrepreneurial philosophy to the right media ... Finally, when these media interests, your entrepreneurial story finally unfolds to the world.

All this takes time to catalyze. So please be patient.

"Well, I do not trust the external PR company, or I hired more than a few PR staff how?"

In fact, no matter how powerful the PR people you hire, they still have a gap with a professional PR firm. You know, as a professional PR firm, they have been involved in more conferences, more journalists, more information about what journalists want and how they like to write stories. In short, PR companies are more focused, more professional, and more strategically able to help you grasp the direction of the company's public relations--even when the crisis is over.

Finally, a summary of some of the public relations activities:

1. Show Humanization Point

As we all know, no one likes to listen to the mechanized repetition of the language, and preach the company's business including BlaBla ... Want to have a good PR effect, then please remember, the performance of the human point, speak well.

Of course, being humorous is also a good choice. Many of the CEOs ' tweets are a parrot-like repetition of the company's current situation, with no mistakes but a bit of boredom; other CEOs have a lot more fun than the occasional post-release message.

2. Have your own point of view

Many executives are generally less likely to express personal opinions or remain neutral in their media interviews to avoid risk. Of course, if you are an executive at a big company such as Apple, the media will be swarming to report and try to make all sorts of analysis from a few words. But! If you're a fledgling small company, it's best to show your attitude – of course, it's not equivalent to talking about cracking down on other companies, or making inappropriate statements. As an entrepreneur, it is best to have a sense of their own entrepreneurial industry, can give some reasonable and profound insights.

3. Public relations intensity

Frequent media exposure may not be a bad thing for startups. But not every step of progress should be vigorously publicized. If the public relations intensity, then people will probably get used to a company's how to Bluff, really have any important news, but no one will care about-this and "Wolf" story is the same truth.

Of course, this is not advocating "less propaganda, not propaganda." You can still choose to export a lot of information to your official website or official blog, but selectively part of the content, through different channels to promote. Avoid letting too much information bombard your audience.

4. Access to media skills training

Suster that the most useful skill he learned from a PR firm was "how to deal with the media properly". He himself is very seriously, every question likes to answer carefully.

I think I have an obligation to answer them carefully and make sure that the questioner can understand them clearly.

In interviews, however, answering too many details is likely to distract the interviewer's attention from the subject. The related media skill training, can help the author to control the interview the rhythm and the direction, smoothly "tells out own story without being disturbed".