Ready for PR?
Before you hire a PR agency or public relations consultant to help you get publicity for your company, you’ll want to do a little self-assessment ahead of time to determine what you have to work with.
Spend an hour or two going over these questions with your management team and prepare a short list of answers.
When you come to an initial meeting with this information, you will impress the PR people you talk to and have a much more useful conversation with them.
They’ll be able to give you a much better idea of what they can do for you, what kind of results will be reasonable, and how much it will cost.
I. What do you have to work with?
Company News
1. What new product announcements are planned over the next six months?
2. Any new services (consulting. training, etc.)?
3. Are you changing the way you deliver products or services (such as moving to online training)?
4. Anything new with pricing?
5. Any new hires to the management team?
6. Planning to move to a new location?
7. Any new partnerships?
8. Any new deals?
9. Have you won any awards recently?
Trends
10. What are the current trends in your market? How do you fit in?
11. What current business trends are affecting your business? Are you outsourcing? Feeling the effects of a market recovery or recession?
Experts
12. Is anyone in your company considered an industry expert? What is their area of expertise?
13. Who at your company is blogging?
14. Who is tweeting?
15. Who manages your Facebook page?
16. Who is responsible for your company’s presence on LinkedIn and other social networks?
17. Do you have anyone creating podcasts or videos?
Clients
18. Do you have any relatively new case studies? For what companies? What kind of results did they achieve with your software?
19. Do you have any users at large or well-known companies who are willing to be quoted?
20. Is there anything unusual about any of your users?
21. Is any user doing something different or unusual with your software?
22. Is there anything highly visual about the way people use your software? Or what they do before or after using the software?
23. If you analyzed the purchase patterns of your users, would that show anything interesting?
Education Strategy
24. Is there a topic about which you are trying to educate the market? Do you advocate a particular strategy or point of view?
Personalities
25. Is there anything unusual or quirky about your founder, president, or management team? This could include their background, hobbies, where they live, what kind of car they drive, their work style, etc.
26. Do you have any unusual employees (background, hobbies, etc.)?
27. If you have investors, are any well-known or unusual?
28. Is there anything unusual about the way you run the company? The perks you offer staff?
29. Do you do anything unusual for holidays?
30. Are there any topics (not software or business-related) about which you feel strongly?
Giving Back
31. Do you do anything to support the local community? Contribute to or volunteer at charities?
II. Where do you want to get publicity?
· What websites are most influential in your market?
· What blogs?
· What newspapers?
· What newsletters?
· What e-mail newsletters?
· What magazines?
· What online communities/social networks?
· What columnists?
· What radio or TV shows?
· What analysts?
· Who else matters in your market?
III. What are your goals for your PR effort?
· Are you looking for lead generation?
· Sales?
· Recruiting?
· Impress partners?
· Build a channel?
· Investors?
· Partners?
IV. In what time frame do you need to see results?
- As soon as possible
- 6-12 months
- 12-24 months
- Ongoing
Ideas For Educational Articles
Need ideas for articles that you can use in an email newsletter, a nurture program (email or regular mail), a blog, or just to add to your website to provide keyword fodder for search engines?
Here’s a list I came up with for clients:
- What concepts people need to understand before they fully appreciate the value you provide
- What steps you go through when you work with people
- What your customers or clients should prepare before they start working with you
- Why your company is better than competitors
- What kind of clients you want (or don’t want)
- What kind of results people should expect from working with you
- Common objections you run into during the sales cycle (and how you deal with them)
- Common misconceptions people have about the type of work you do
- How people can get more out of what you do for them
- Legal issues they need to be aware of
- Financial issues they need to be aware of
- Top 10 reasons to work with you
- Worksheet that helps people figure out how much money they will save by working with you
- What is different about the way your company does things
- What kinds of things can go wrong with the type of work you do (and how you keep that from happening)
- What people don’t know about your company (that you wish they did)
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