All You Need to Know About Public Relations for Startups

by Marco Genaro Palma SEO Consultant

Your business will expand with this guide to PR, allowing you to tap into techniques and insights from experts in the industry.

Public Relations Definition

Public relations is the practice of using communication campaigns and strategies to create a positive brand image for your company. Activities of the industry include any form of building reputations through any platform or format, for example articles, talks, podcasts, social media posts, etc.

PR experts will study an organization, find positive values and messages, and expose them by transforming them into stories. When there’s negative information surrounding a brand, PR can craft the most appropriate response and avoid heavy damage. That’s referred to as crisis communication.

PR for Startups

Startups need to secure a place in the media ecosystem and do so in a positive way. Thought leadership is a good indicator that that’s the case. Thought leaders are the name and face of a brand, and are associated with new and unique ideas that increase the visibility, credibility, and exposure of the brand.

You can read more information in PRLab's detailed PR guide for startups.

Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is a key feature of your campaign. In order to elevate yourself as an expert in the field, you will build trust in the organization by being present, and the more your character is associated with the field, the bigger your opinion’s impact is.

Content Marketing

Your marketing blend can focus on either product development or customer development. Oftentimes the former is prioritized, and the latter is harder to develop. Some things PR can help with to avoid the hardship of developing your audience include:

Ensuring funding
Acquiring the best talent
A customer base
Scaling your company to expand to new customers
Test attempts with products and services
Informing the public about what you do
Putting yourself on the map in your industry
Thought leadership

Unique Features of PR for Startups

Startups need to focus on short-term brand awareness because they start off clean. So they have the unique opportunity to clearly emphasize what their audience needs to know about them and how it will stand out from the competition. This can be possible by beginning with establishing thought leadership.

The Role of PR Experts

A PR specialist can succeed in filtering out media outlets and pitch stories and content to the right ones. That way the most relevant audience will be secured. It is the role of PR experts to ensure that businesses don’t rush into things and receive negative press.

The Process of PR

The process is clear and straightforward but each step is dynamic with a lot of space for doing things differently. The steps include (1) landing on the core values, beliefs, and goals of the business; (2) providing engaging content; (3) taking step (2) to a press release; and (4) taking the content to journalists.

Landing on Core Values, Beliefs, and Goals

Your initial values and beliefs forge the foundation for your brand. With a variety of options, consumers tend to be attracted to products and services that match their values and beliefs. Some values you can implement and follow include passion, trust, loyalty, diversity, innovation, quality, honesty, and many more. Sticking to these values will be helpful in creating consistent content.

Craft Engaging Content

To create content as a PR strategy, focus on (1) syncing your schedule with seasonal trends; (2) SEO optimization; (3) analyzing data about your target audience; (4) connecting your audience with similar users and customers by featuring important people who are relevant.

It is important to have insights from researching your industry, as well as social platforms you would expose your content on, the users you aim to reach, and any opportunities for guest blogging to generate traffic to your brand.

Press Release

Press release is the way to get your story out there. It needs to have news-worthy content so it will pass as worth sharing. Think about whether it fits into some of these points:

Is it a funding announcement?
Are you taking your business to another country?
Are you acquiring an important person?
Are you releasing new products or services?
Are you in the process of mergers and acquisitions?
Have you achieved something or won an award/endorsement?

Consider important features like elements of the press release (language, size), data-driven approach, body of your text (main substance), bigger picture, etc.

The structure of your pitch must present first a scenario, then problem, solution, and resources.

Working with a PR Agency

A PR agency will greatly improve brand awareness for your company and spread positive content to the right audience. Experts will work on identifying your organization’s goals, they will do insightful market research, and help with any questions you have concerning your image and relation with the public.

- This article was written by Matias Rodsevich, PR consultant and CEO of PRLab.