Stage Two's blog

I must say, I’m tired of the backlash against the entire PR industry. Are there “bad” PR firms? I don’t know. I’d say there are firms that probably aren’t a good fit for your particular needs. This doesn’t make them “bad”. Do they all “get” the conversations which ensue across the tech blogosphere? Nope. This too, doesn’t make them “bad”. To qualify the statement – a “bad” PR firm is one who doesn’t meet your expectations – end of story. Some PR firms will be perfect for you, some won’t. The best advice I can give is to try to find a good fit.

But there are a few occasions where you won’t need any PR help, maybe this list will help you (warning, heavy sarcasm follows):

1. You already know all the press in your industry – if this is the case, then guess what, YOU ARE doing PR! Congrats!
2. It’s all about word-of-mouth – hey, YouTube did it, Yelp did it (well, they did in San Francisco, but aren’t really anywhere else), Flickr did it (sorta, they got bought fairly early). I’m sure we can all list another dozen or two companies who’ve been very successful with nothing but word-of-mouth. If you are guaranteed to be one of them, then you do not need PR.
3. Growth isn’t really important – maybe you have some amazing new technology but don’t really need to build a user base (for whatever reason). Further, getting in front of the big companies you’d want to get in front of is not a priority. You do not need PR.
4. You have a blog – already blogging? Well then, why bother with drawing attention to it? I’m sure the traffic will just show up as long as you keep at it. You may want to use Twitter too, that’ll just seal the deal.
5. You have no marketing strategy whatsoever – if you aren’t really planning to market your product or service, you probably shouldn’t pursue PR. It won’t help.
6. Your product is inherently viral – this is kind of a rehash of #2 above, but since it comes up so often, I figured I could put it on the list twice. Also, I realized I forgot to mention Facebook in my earlier list of viral successes. Are we up to 20 example yet? If not, keep counting!
7. Don’t want to get ripped off – PR firms do tend to be expensive. Then again, so are good programmers. And good IT folks. And good CFOs. And good hosting companies. Probably shouldn’t spend on any of those things either, you might get ripped off.

Okay, I think that’s all my cynical little mind can come up with. Phew, ranting can be frustrating!

The reality check, again, is that there is no one size-fits-all solution. I’ve said this over and over again! Some startups will find success with internal resources only (hopefully you’ll keep reading our blog and find useful posts like these two). Others should get an external firm. Try to think for yourself and ask your advisers for their thoughts, and make a good choice for your own needs.

I will end with this thought: most startups fail. Yes, even here in Silicon Valley, the math says most do fail. If you need help getting the word out, you should figure out how a marketing strategy firm, PR firm, “social media consultant”, or other resource can help you increase your odds of success.

There’s always more startups launching than any of us can possibly keep up with. Some launch quietly, some launch loudly, there’s so many different ways to launch a company. One oft-recommended path is to use a conference. It’s a bit of a risky proposition, since you have to excel beyond just doing what you do well, you also have to stand out from the crowd, all of whom are trying to stand out from each other. When we launch a company, we evaluate these types of issues all the time, and our approach is to pick the best solution for the company’s needs, regardless of the events around them.

As I’ve blogged about before, there are two mega-startup-launch events occurring this fall (which I still hope will clean itself up, though I know it’s unlikely). But what about all those other companies who are ready with their products/services now, and don’t want to duke it out with 114 others? Enter the Under the Radar conferences, put on thrice annually by Dealmaker Media. I love these events, and now spend so much time there I’m lucky enough to be a “regular” moderator (along with my colleagues Rafe Needleman and Ellen McGirt). The events are well-attended by startup teams, accomplished industry experts, VCs, press, bloggers, and some fairly senior people in the tech industry.

The next event is on June 3rd, and features the following startups:

Jacked MovieSet Verismo Networks Vusion Jygy Nesting Vivaty Xumii Comedy.com Curse Hollywood Interactive Group PluggedIn AudioMicro GumGum Keibi Loud3r 33Across Kontagent MediaForge Sometrics CrowdSPRING ffwd Lil’Grams PutPlace Dizzywood Mochi Media Mytopia Pikum! Animoto Aviary Big Stage Overlay.tv

I’ll bet you don’t know most of them – what a great way to come take a look. The format of the show is highly interactive, with audience-wide topic discussions, text-your-vote-for-a-prize, and, the essential of all conferences, valuable hallway time for essential networking. Not convinced yet? How about $100 off your registration.  Also, if I hear from the Dealmaker Media team that we send in more than 10 people, I promise to do my infamous impression of “George Lazenby Performing Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Baby Got Back.”

See you on the 3rd!

DeviceVM is one of our valued clients; they make a software product called Splashtop.  Splashtop software enables users to browse the web, watch videos, check web-mail, chat with friends, share photos and more, just seconds after turning on their PC.  It’s an embedded Linux platform that integrates with the PC BIOS and runs in front of the operating system -you go from cold boot to browsing the web in seconds.  DeviceVM works with numerous manufacturers to incorporate Splashtop into computers.

The first manufacturer to incorporate Splashtop software is ASUS, the leading worldwide motherboard, components and notebook manufacturer.  On Wednesday morning DeviceVM issued a successful press release announcing that ASUS plans to deploy Splashtop across their entire motherboard portfolio. This is really exciting news for DeviceVM, as the motherboard volume is going to quickly ramp up to more than 1 million boards per month.

The story was picked up and covered by quite a few publications, which was exciting and drove a tremendous amount of traffic to the Splashtop website.  Sal at Geek.com wrote a nice article that has been Dugg more than 1000 times.  The story also got onto Slashdot; thank you to whoever submitted that.  Sol from DeviceVM also blogged about announcement on the excellent in-house Splashtop blog.   DeviceVM’s announcement got stories on Engadget, Webware, PC Magazine, Linux Today, Tech World, ZD Net, Tech Gage and others.

This was a great story to tell and a lot of fun to pitch.  Thanks to everyone who covered the news, and congratulations to DeviceVM for all their great work.  It’s clearly paying off.

If you were visiting last week, you saw a barebones version of the Stage Two website.  It wasn’t great, clearly a homeburger approach to things, but it had a client list, bios, services, etc.  Today, bupkus.  What’s the deal, you (didn’t) ask?

First, we are in a transitional state – our awesome design firm is building a whole new site, and we’ve got fresh new content for it.  New and improved, 2.0, it’s just plain betterer than before.

Second, since we’re currently using WordPress, we learned that anytime WordPress encounters a glitch, it reverts the site to its original, plain blue template.  Which happened every 37 minutes (or so).  This looked even less professional than the crummy Web site we built ourselves.

Third, well, I didn’t have a third.  The first two were good enough.   In the meanwhile, if you would like to learn more about what we do (marketing strategy, outreach and communications, etc), get in touch anytime.

My good friend, colleague, pseudo-competitor, fellow blogger, and much better photographer Brian Solis put a guest post up on TechCrunch today entitled the Evolution of the Press Release. If you are in marketing, I’d call it a must-read. I’m pretty sure his inspiration for the post is what Elliott refered to as “PitchMeme“, the minor brouhaha which occurred around Gina Trapani’s controversial “bad PR people’s wiki“. I call it controversial because I don’t like the “lumping in” of all PR folks into one big batch – the same way bloggers don’t like to all be looked at the same way (think about it!). The topic’s been pretty well covered already, and my thoughts on how bloggers should address things were in my blog post Friday.

I thought it would be prudent to put up a note on how we recommend our clients write and structure press releases (UPDATED: DON’T FORGET TO NOTICE THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT (FROM THE ORIGINAL POST) – for when they are necessary, that is). Some of this is very traditional, some of it’s a bit “two-oh-ish”, and it’s an evolving, living process. When dealing with marketing strategy and outreach in today’s high tech world, it’s important not to get fixated on what worked yesterday as it may no longer be relevant. UPDATED: IF YOU THINK I AM SAYING “DO THIS ALL THE TIME”, PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING SENTENCE (YES, IT TOO WAS IN THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE): Further, there’s no true “one size fits all” approach, you must tweak your strategies to meet your clients’ specific needs. That said, here’s our rough template:

Opening
Title – should communicate in a “non-tricky/clever” manner the message. No need to be cute here, just summarize your news in one sentence (which is why I’m so bullish on the importance of positioning).
Subtitle – optional, use if a 2nd sentence helps fill out the details.
Opening paragraph – 2 or 3 sentences that quickly get the info out. Assume your audience won’t read any further than this, so if you can’t figure out how to be interesting this briefly, odds are pretty good you either have (1) too much story, or (2) not enough story. Both are bad, consider either making multiple releases or not doing it at all, respectively.

Supporting Details
Okay, this is your time to give some background, help flush out the rest of the story. Stats, market size, demographics, details details details all belong here. I recommend being to the point, again, keeping away from the “cute” factor. 4 sentences max, and if you have a lot of details, consider making a bulleted list instead of a paragraph.

Quote
The simplest reason to have a quote is this: it will inevitably get copied-and-pasted into an article somewhere, and it saves the journalist from having to email you for a quote for their article. Your quote should sound like a human being said it, and not be jargony robot-English. Also, there’s no reason to deviate from the “standard quote” format of:

“I said something cool,” said FIRSTNAME LASTNAME, the TITLE of COMPANY. “I’m excited about that cool thing I said especially because it’s so cool.”

Focus on the business implications, and/or partnership details
This is a good time to explain why the story matters SOOO much. Either there’s a huge opportunity for the company to expand, or possibly a big deal with a big partner/customer is being announced (if so, make sure you’ve referenced this earlier!). Think about the business/industry implications of your announcement, and make them clearly comprehensible.

[optional] partner/3rd party Quote
IF you are working with a partner, give them their quote here. If not, but you have a *very well known* fan of the company, they can make a quote. It’s absolutely not necessary otherwise, and should fit very naturally – if not, don’t include something just to fill in space (shorter press releases are always better than longer ones).

Background
This is a good place to wrap it up, either by including some broad background info on the company (such as a boiler plate) or some content you generically use to describe the company/service/product/market. It’s okay to reuse this content, it’s helping out those who may be new to hearing about you.

Useful Links
In “social media PR” style, we’ve begun including a bulleted list of relevant links. These links could include a company home page, blog, product details/specs/pictures, partner home page, useful resource, Twitter URL, RSS feeds, or anything else. In my opinion this section should have every link a journalist would want to be able to find other details that complement your release.

Contact Info
Phone number and email is a must-include, and I’m generally recommending having IM information here as well. If you use Twitter or other means of near-real-time communication, you should have this included as well.

That’s it for the Stage Two-styled New-Meets-Old-Media Press Release (as of May 11, 2008 – who knows what this will look like a month from now!). Hope this is helpful, and I welcome/encourage feedback via comments.

UPDATED: I’ve added two very large callouts in the beginning of this blog post.  This is because I want to make sure that anyone who is just ’scanning’ the post instead of reading it fully notices that I am not advocating a strategy of “always write press releases, and always make them the exact same.” Sorry about the big, bold text, it felt necessary.