The Public Relations Blog

If you are a startup or a tech company, your best bet for gaining positive publicity is to get yourself featured in Fast Company magazine, the publication of choice for those in the tech business. Fast Company covers the following areas: design, technology and sustainability.

Fast Company maintains a strong focus on evolution of business and the most creative industry thought-leaders and strives to bring change into the marketplace.

Fast Company magazine has a unique editorial focus on innovations in technology, leadership, and design. The target audience is entrepreneurs in the tech business. Frame your pitch as a story with a strong focus on lessons learned during your journey to completing your project, including your mistakes, frustrations, turning points, eureka moments and inspirations. Your story is your documented experience that you are happily sharing with others in the field, helping them to succeed.

Money magazine is the nation’s largest personal finance magazine. It helps readers take charge of their finances by providing trusted advice about how to spend, earn, manage and invest money. It provides in-depth coverage of stocks, mutual funds, the markets and the economy.

Money magazine is for anyone interested in managing finances wisely. The magazine covers a very broad spectrum of topics involving money for a large audience of anyone looking for information about money management: everything starting from articles helping investors maximizes their investments to information written to help with personal finances (taxes, credit cards and savings). Write your pitch so it would help your readers make better decisions about their money. Include personal examples in your pitch, so that  they can relate. Include facts and links into your pitch, proving that your information is accurate. A catchy title for your pitch is essential.

Harvard Business Review (HBR) is one of the world’s most respectable sources of information about the latest trends, people and practices that are defining the business world. Published monthly, HBR delivers entrepreneurial ideas and insights that help managers strengthen their leadership power. Every issue guides its readers through strategic decision-making processes in the modern world, introduces innovative leaders and offers suggestions on how to motivate employees.

HBR covers stories about strategy, leadership, organizational change, negotiations, operations, innovations, marketing and finance. Busy executives and business leaders, who are the key audience of the magazine, expect not only to stay on top of new developments in management, but also bring innovative changes into the way their businesses operate. The perfect HBR pitch is an authentic story, not published in any format previously before, written by an academic, who pulled a lot of research together to draw conclusions. The research part is the most essential part of the pitch.

PR helps you keep your CEO happy without sacrificing the company’s image

Your company just hosted a public event with news media all around and your CEO put his foot in his mouth – again. Perhaps he said something insensitive, appeared sweaty and uncomfortable, or gave statements contradictory to the company line. Whatever he did, the end result was that he made your entire organization look bad.

The CEO is most often the public face of a company, and sometimes that face is not the one you want to show to the world. Do you wish you could just keep your CEO away from the media altogether? There are right (and wrong) ways to handle this issue and PR can help.

Use PR to become a leader in your industry

We know the story well: Barack Obama went from a relatively unknown first-term politician to win the hearts and minds of the people and take the presidency of the United States. It was considered by many to be a major PR achievement and is featured in the recently published book Campaigns that Shook the World by Danny Rogers.

Do it right and you could form lasting and lucrative media relationships

Help a Reporter Out is a free service that enables journalists to connect with information sources. If you're an expert and have an interesting opinion or story to share with the media, you can sign up for HARO to get connected to journalist and get your story published, which will ultimately increase traffic to your website and get the word out about your company.

Strong media relations are important to your company’s earned media coverage

Earned media coverage is more credible and resonates with audiences more successfully than advertisements. Media relations is one of the key responsibilities of public relations practitioners. Any company can send out a press release; anyone can email a news correspondent. But building personal relationships with the media is what will make earned media coverage accessible for your organization.

Invite local bloggers to build awareness locally for your national brand

Firehouse Subs is one of America’s leading fast, casual sandwich franchise restaurants. Brothers Chris and Robin Sorensen founded Firehouse Subs in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1994, creating a brand out of their personal history as firefighters. Their company now boasts 903 locations in 43 states and Puerto Rico, with international expansion to Canada and Mexico planned for the near future. How did the franchisor build such an impressive brand and reputation?

Let PR show you how to handle the issue and still have a great event

Are you worried about members of the media attending your next event, shareholder’s meeting or public presentation? You should be; the media are a powerful component of our society. However, while you should be aware of them, you don’t have to fear them.

If there are media in the room, you should be thankful! They are trained and credentialed journalists who are there to get the story right. The truth is that, these days, there’s always media in the room – social media.

Hint: You may need PR more than you realize

Today, your time will likely be filled with meetings with your direct reports to discuss matters of company performance, sales and finance. You may meet with prospective clients, sit in on a team-building session and try to squeeze in some personal and family time. This doesn’t leave much time to focus on PR.

If you think your business-to-business tech company doesn’t need PR, you are missing out on key opportunities to boost your visibility and grow your business.