Looking for ways around hiring a PR specialist or outsourcing your publicity? Take - and master - the DIY approach.
When Ross Mayfield was looking to spread the word about his new tech start-up Socialtext back in 2002, he didn't turn to a traditional public relations firm. He just turned on his computer.
Mayfield, who was paying up to $30,000 a month to keep a public relations team at the ready for his previous ventures, instead decided tackle the increasingly fractured environment of media outlets himself. He started reading journalists he thought were likely to write about him, writing blog posts about related topics in the industry, and actively sharing information through e-mail. The strategy worked, and his business — which creates a Facebook-like networking site for the workplace — has been mentioned in myriad publications from the Harvard Business Review to TechCrunch over the years.
"When you had to go through mass media, there's really a handful of media outlets or influential or important reporters. Because there were so few of them that had the ability to publish, there was this whole layer called the PR industry," he says. "Well, (now) everybody has the ability to publish. You engage in direct conversations with both traditional journalists and bloggers through the Web. As long as you were willing to be more open and sharing than in the past, now it's much more of a conversation."
The shifting media landscape, combined with the rise of social media and DIY Web publishing, has stoked an intense debate in the business community.
While some experts say trained public relations professionals still come in handy for large-scale companies, they also say there's no reason savvy entrepreneurs can't bootstrap their own publicity efforts. Doing so costs little to no money and puts a more personal face on your business.
Bootstrapping Your PR: Why Bootstrap?
Media have split into two segments: traditional outlets such as print magazines and newspapers, and the ever-growing field of bloggers, Twitter personalities and social networks that cover niche topics, says David Weekly, founder and chief product officer of PBWorks, which makes online collaboration software and is based out of San Mateo, California. Particularly in the tech industry, that second media segment is moving the conversation more quickly than the old formats, he says.
New-media outlets tend to be more accessible than a newspaper: Whereas a print reporter may work on one big story a week, bloggers post several times a day.
Mike Troiano, a principal at marketing firm Holland-Mark, which is based in Boston, recently sat on a bootstrapping panel where journalists and public relations people haggled over the need to hire a public relations team these days. The conclusion, at least from the journalists' standpoint, was that it's easy to reach the same effect on an in-house basis.
"What you need is to invest in the development of the relationship with these journalists, who are in the end human beings," Troiano says. "The era of professional PR is over."
Dig Deeper: How to Manage Your Own PR
Bootstrapping Your PR: Do Your Homework
Before you even try to generate your own publicity, you've got to become a savant at the kind of media you want to break into.
That means being a voracious reader of all the blogs, newspapers, magazines, freelance writers, and Twitter accounts that cover your industry or specialization. Opening a bakery in Chicago and want mainstream coverage? You had better — at very least — be reading the Chicago Tribune's food section every week.
Mayfield recommends subscribing to the RSS feeds of relevant media outlets and creating a Twitter account to monitor the ongoing conversations from publications and writers. Search for sources that are covering your competitors and comment on blog posts relevant to your business. This makes you part of the conversation, and gets you name recognition even before you pitch a story.
"You can have an entire movement mushroom up in months or weeks," Weekly says. "You have to be participating in that conversation. When you have a product launch or when you have a story that you want to get out there, you fit it into the themes they're already covering."
It's an incremental investment in strategy, but one that's free, and easy to learn, he says.
The new media structure has torn down the wall of anonymity between reporters, editors and their readers: most important media figures have public profiles, Twitter accounts and blogs that you can interact with easily.
"In the end, the way I was able to be successful in whatever I'm doing is relationship building," Mayfield said. "You form real relationships with them, not just calling up and offering pitch."
Grace Leong, managing partner for Hunter Public Relations, which is based in New York, says publications such as PR Week and similar industry outlets provide an inside look at how other companies are handling publicity, as well as providing examples of press releases and other announcements you can copy.
"The more case studies you read in how brands or companies ran a campaign, the more sense you get about 'How am I going to go about doing this?' " she says.
Consuming all this content will make you an expert on who, when and how to pitch. It'll also help you see past the blinders most startup entrepreneurs have.
"When they're dealing with editors, they need to think like an editor rather than think like a founder," Weekly says.
Dig Deeper: How to Put Together a Press Kit
