Tag: tech pr

Search Techniques Will Fill That Tech or B2B PR Position Today

Posted on by Marijane Funess

Job needs in New York public relations firms can turn on a dime. You land a new tech or B2B project and after the celebrating, you ask who will staff it? Great employees are the lifeblood of any PR staff, agency or in-house. What can you do to ensure you get the most qualified candidates?

Ask yourself what you really need.  Don’t hire just because the office has a vacancy at a certain level. Hire to fill the position the account work calls for. For example, a piece of business that is primarily media placement can work quite well with a supervisor and two junior people, whereas an account requiring much more strategic PR counsel can  support a director level, a supervisor and a more junior staffer.

Forget the “usual suspects.” Well, maybe not forget – but certainly augment your list of job ad go-to’s. In addition to LinkedIn, PRSA, and MediaBistro, go where the techies go. Hit up your closest tech or B2B media friends for info on PR people they know and respect. Contact any former clients in the industry and ferret out info from them. Scan past PRSA Award winners and others for good prospects and see which PR pros are blogging on related topics.

Change up your writing test and other criteria. When was the last time you reviewed your writing test? Sure, there’s a press release writing assignment, but is it too generic to allow real industry knowledge to shine through? Does your test include any social media elements? Keep it current and relevant.

Provide a “real world” assignment. See how a candidate would perform in an actual account situation. Provide a client conundrum to solve or a stale pitch to punch up. (Bonus points if said candidate recommends smart media contacts!) Interaction with other team members is a good idea as well.

Make references relevant. When was the last time a candidate gave you a “bad” reference? Try “never!” How to make those polite reference calls actionable to your search? Probe for nuanced details by asking questions such as “Are there any projects you wouldn’t recommend Joe for?” or “In which situation would Joe perform best (provide two examples) and why?” Get past the niceties.

Tips to Whip Your Business Blog Into Spring Shape!

Posted on by Marijane Funess

There are an estimated 31 million people blogging in America. That is a lot of competition for your company’s posts. Now is a good time to examine your content with fresh eyes and make sure it is “lean and mean” and relevant to a discerning audience. Ask yourself these questions and then choose a shape-up plan that works for your particular blog.

Are your topics in need of a “cleanse”? Make sure your content is working hard for your business and your blog is optimized for search with the right keywords and industry terms.  Really take some time to look at the next 3-6 months with a keen eye to topicality, trends and annual posts worth revisiting. Use futurecasting to help you come up with fresh, dynamic themes. Consider assigning some “guest bloggers” to keep things interesting.

Are your titles worn out and tired? Don’t let this happen to you. Make sure you create lively titles have essential keywords – this is what search engines  will index and place on the results page when someone is searching. Read more here.

Does your blog have a strong “core”? You need sharper editing. If you are the sole assignment editor, writer and copy editor for your blog, you may have become too close to the content and need some outside eyes to do some incisive editing for you. It only hurts for a minute but the rewards for a new, trim blog are well worth it.

Having a hard time “fitting” in your blog? Get organized and set aside the necessary time to plan, write and edit each piece. This may mean blocking out writing time on Outlook or having Siri remind you “time to blog” – any way that you do it, make it scheduled and rigorous as you would any physical exercise routine.

Does your blog need a new look? Something as simple as a font change or additional graphics can help liven the look of your blog. Interesting and thought-provoking images  keep your blog fresh and appealing.

Whatever changes you undertake to improve your posts, make sure to share the results – tweet it to your followers, share it on LinkedIn and Google Plus, publish on Facebook and email to select associates and prospects.

Spring-Clean Your Tech PR Tool Kit

Posted on by Marijane Funess

Though much of the nation’s weather belies it, spring starts March 20th. With it comes a good excuse to examine how your PR firm is doing “digital” and do some sprucing for the rest of the year. Start with these five tips.

Define and declare. Everyone wants to jump on the tech PR bandwagon. If your firm genuinely knows the space inside and out, including the leaders in enterprise tech and other segments, shout it to the rooftops. Can you do a byline demonstrating your expertise, appear on a key industry trade show panel, or create a separate agency blog on the topic? At the very least, make sure your PR client win releases in the sector are out there.

Win at storytelling. While you’re waiting for Wired or TechCrunch to tell your client’s story – tell parts of it yourself. Today’s companies shape their own narratives via social and other owned channels, especially when they’re savvy enough to know the difference between what the tech reporters will jump on and what will make theme say “meh.” Don’t wait for validation from traditional and digital media to vet the smaller stories, run with them.

Don’t forget about the personal side. Are you sticking to your client’s new products and services for most of your media outreach? Don’t forget the human faces behind the devices or apps. There are many outlets focusing on scintillating personality stories, philanthropy angles, or up-from-nothing entrepreneurs. Delve into the people on the team and see what stories rise to the top.

Know your social media. Don’t roll your eyes! If you’ve let your client’s social media efforts become complacent – settling for likes and retweets instead of more actionable lead-generators, take a page from Marc Ostrofsky in his new book, Word of Mouse: 101+ Trends in How We Buy, Sell, Live, Learn, Work, and Play.  Ostrofsky counsels treating different social networks as different languages, with each network also offering its own demographic.

As an example, he says “I don’t want to market my book via Twitter as much as I want to market it via Linkedln.. Why? Because Twitter is much more a young person’s medium, whereas Linkedln is much more beneficial for promoting a book that’s business-related. More than ever, knowing who your customers are and what their needs are is tremendously important-without a deep understanding of their customers, brands will lag behind competitors.”

Keep on top of the sales cycle. Tech companies are bought and sold at the speed of light. Are you aware of where your digital client is in the cycle? Are they positioned for sale to the right company? Does your team know enough about the buy side to provide the most current counsel? Bring salient research and recommendations to the client ahead of being asked and position yourselves as in-the-know experts.

Top Tech PR Trends in 2014

Posted on by Chris Harihar

In tech PR, storylines change quite a bit from year to year. The rapid shifts are inherent to technology, with both products and software evolving swiftly and with frequent changes in direction.
So, it can be challenging for PR pros, or companies DIY’ing their PR efforts, to stick their finger in the air to determine the tech wind’s direction. Still, that doesn’t stop us from trying. Here are the top 5 tech trends I think will impact PR in 2014.

Wearable Tech
This one was all over CES. From smartwatches to Google Glass, wearable technology includes Internet-enabled products that are being integrated into previously routine daily human interactions. Can your product or application fit into the wearable storyline? Even for those products that aren’t a “true” fit into the category, it’s possible to link your offering to the trend/narrative with some creative thinking around potential applications and possible use cases.

The Internet of Things
The Internet of Things and wearable tech are similar, if not related, concepts. The Internet of Things, as McKinsey & Company would define it, is the idea that “the physical world itself is becoming a type of information system,” with everything from pacemakers to refrigerators being online-capable. By anchoring a product or service to this tech PR trend, even seemingly dull offerings can become sexy stories. Need proof? See these venetian blinds.

Man Versus Machine
Making complicated operational tasks easy at scale doesn’t sound all that sexy. But if you look at the coverage in 2013 leading into 2014, it most certainly is for both media and the enterprise industry. If you’re in tech PR—which often overlaps with digital ad/marketing PR—you’ve likely heard about programmatic buying and marketing automation, two tools that streamline project efficiency for advertisers and marketers. In reality, these two buzzed-about categories speak broadly to an umbrella narrative about automating previously human-driven functions through software and technology. It’s the timeless man-versus-machine debate, reframed, and it’s going to have staying power in 2014.

Growth Hacking
Growth hacking, as a concept, has been around forever in PR. TheNextWeb defines a growth hacker as someone who can “utilize analytical thinking, product engineering and creativity to significantly increase their company’s core metric(s).” It’s basically figuring out how to scale your startup quickly and creatively through tactics like email marketing, SEO, content marketing, paid acquisition, etc. Every tech PR pro has pitched a “growth hack” story, but the term has only recently come to the fore as a more compelling phrase for a common media angle. By incorporating it into pitches about your business, you can more effectively “growth hack” your coverage.

Open Source
I’m cheating here. Open source isn’t a new concept by any means, but it remains one of the sexier tech trends available to PR pros and the companies they represent. If you can highlight the way in which an aspect of your technology, marketing, business, etc. was driven externally, by end-users, you can develop a captivating and fascinating story for press. We’ve done this quite a bit for our client skobbler, which led to a recent $24M acquisition, as covered by The Wall Street Journal. Take a look at our skobbler: PR Case Study here.

These obviously aren’t the only tech trends we’ll see in 2014, but they’re some of the most compelling.

Simple Ways To Drive Tech PR Coverage Without Hard News

Posted on by Chris Harihar

In my work in marketing and ad tech PR, or even other B2B PR categories, I’ve seen too many agency teams rely on clients to supply news. That’s not a great strategy for PR success. While most companies have their share of announcements, partnerships and other milestones, unless the company is Facebook or Google, you will have to do more than wait for clients to offer newsworthy stories.

After all, that’s why clients hire PR agencies in the first place.

Clients want inventive minds that can generate and maintain a drumbeat of coverage, even during “quiet” periods. It’s easy to make something work when you’re being spoon-fed the assets. But, with some industry knowledge, a skilled PR agency can make things happen without placing constant pressure on the client to deliver.

It may be a heavy lift, but that’s what we signed up for. Here are a few tips.

Know your industry. And make it your job to keep relearning it, because things change quickly.
If you know the space, you can pitch your client to speak to key developments, current/future trends, and more. You can focus on thought leadership, promoting your client’s expertise during times of little or no news announcements.

For example, PR pros sometimes struggle to understand the advertising and marketing space. We’ve encountered ad tech or marketing clients who say, “our agency team didn’t know what an ad exchange is,” or “their bylined articles were too basic.”

Try to organize your research into three or four key trends that you take advantage of when news is lacking. The beauty of hot-button issues and trends like native advertising and programmatic buying is that you can be either “pro” or “con” a controversial new technology or development, since any reasonable point of view or smart forecast can be included in trade roundups or profiles.

Go vertical. Whatever your client’s story is, it likely has multiple audiences.

Most companies can discuss their offering with ad and marketing trades like Adweek, Advertising Age or MediaPost. But that’s only part of the story. Why not tell business press about the client’s overall success, or work with tech media to more deeply explore platform functionality? Also, don’t forget your client’s key customer verticals; each of those categories have trade media to connect with.

In non-news moments, this strategy can really pay dividends. There will always be an audience for your story, and there will never be a time when you’ve spoken to everyone. If you think you have, you’re either 1) not trying hard enough, or 2) you don’t know enough about your client or their business.

Revisit and recycle. Over a period of time, you’ve probably received dozens of documents, whitepapers and case studies from your client. Many of those documents languish on your server after review, as they were most likely intended for background information during the onboarding process.

In moments without news, though, you can revisit these assets, determining new ways to leverage them while also identifying value where you previously hadn’t. In PR, nothing is thrown away; anything and everything can be used to create opportunities, so make sure no asset is wasted.

These are just three ways to stoke the media coverage machine without any hard news in the queue. In PR, it’s important to strike a balance between a client having news and “manufacturing” something credible that’s rooted in the client’s brain trust or content resources.

More often than not, it’s up to us do the heavy lifting. But those muscles get stronger over time, until it becomes an automatic exercise. You’ll be surprised at your own ability to generate powerful earned media results, even without the client’s help.

PR Tips For Talking To Top Tech Bloggers

Posted on by Cliff Maroney

As an account person at a New York PR agency focused on tech accounts, I spend most of my day trying to reach some of the world’s most savvy tech bloggers and influencers. Bloggers are important in nearly every sector, but those who cover technology are particularly crucial to launching a new product or service, or to building a personal brand for a company executive. Some have deep technical subject knowledge, and all offer strong opinions about their category or product area.

These bloggers can also be some of the toughest cookies in our business. Here are a few tech PR tips I’ve picked up along the way that may help you crack the tech media code.

Do think in context

When pitching tech, it’s easy to be overly focused on your client’s announcement. News is always important, but instead of relying on it as your sole pitch, consider offering context. Provide links to pertinent headlines about similar topics and trends, or offer someone from your client’s end to discuss the trend beyond their news. Media are busy, so regardless of whether you are doing a hard B2B PR push, or just trying for some digital brand PR maintenance, keep your pitches to the point, but set the scene for offering insights, trend data, or forecasts.

Don’t get bloated by buzzwords

Nowhere are buzzwords more prevalent than in tech, and often PR people think loading up their pitch with jargon will give it a “hip” edge. It doesn’t; if you don’t believe me, check out this witheringly critical post of a buzzword-filled PR pitch by David Pogue. Instead, craft your pitch in a way that’s catchy and relevant, and get to the point in the first sentence of your verbal or email approach.

Do offer exclusives

Don’t be afraid to offer an “exclusive” – a first crack at a newsworthy story— to get the conversation started in advance of a company announcement. By responsibly teasing exclusives and off-the-record conversations prior to your news, you establish your client as a go-to source for future coverage. In addition, it gives you ample to time to get all the details ironed out prior to the story’s publication date. Skillful use of the media exclusive is also a great way to build relationships among influential bloggers and journalists.

Do keep it honest

Mistakes happen. And while it is frowned upon to continuously reach out in order to micro-manage a reporter’s coverage, following up with corrections is a must. No one likes to learn they got it wrong. Reach out in a friendly way with correct information (e.g. company background, titles, company claims, product information, etc.). Journalists are generally quite receptive and will appreciate the follow-up as they don’t want to spread misinformation. Consider pairing these requests with a “thank you for the great coverage…” in order to leave no question about the friendly nature of your request.

Think about the long term

Be considerate of tech bloggers or any journalists. Send them what they need, when they need it, and if you don’t have the answer they seek, do your best to get back to them with it. The right coverage is about more than just a pitch, and acting in collaboration with your contact is a great way to not only build bridges but also spawn more positive attention.