The Story of PR, not PR and Something Developing in Between

Sharing is caring!

by Susanna Gebauer (@dreckbaerfrau)

When we started out as entrepreneurs with a vision and an idea, to say the least, we were naive. We believed that PR would be a good idea to help with making our new startup know to a larger audience. It could have worked…When we started out as entrepreneurs we believed that PR would be a good idea to help with making our new startup know to a larger audience. But is public relations really an alternative to marketing? #entrepreneurship #startupmarketing #smallbusinessmarketing #onlinebusiness #solopreneur #bloggingtips

Like so many other founders we loved our idea, and we firmly believed others would, too. Some did, but we obviously failed to convince the press.

There are rules (unwritten, but not really secret) of how to approach journalists.


Before you read on - we have various resources that show you exactly how to use social networks to gain massive traffic and leads. For instance, check out the following:

FREE Step-by-Step Twitter Marketing Guide
FREE Pinterest Marketing Ebook

We had no clue.

Looking back we did everything wrong – at least from the tech journalist’s point of view (sending press releases seems to be so old-fashioned or rather out of fashion).

[wd_hustle id=”twitter-cheat-sheet” type=”embedded”]

 

Learning our lesson and admitting idealism and commitment is not everything, we decided experience should do the trick: We thought we should employ people who knew how it should be done and hired a PR agency. Big mistake…

I am not sure what the (expensive) PR people actually did for us, results were even less than what we had achieved without them – apart from leaving a big hole in our purse – money we could better have spent on some new features for exploreB2B, an employee to help with our developing social media strategy … or even some great food and wine.

Thus frustrated, we decided that PR was not for us – and turned to building a reputation and a following in social media. We connected to influencers; we guest posted on their blogs. After the off balance relationship with tech journalists where we were advised to buy them drinks and to try to be their friends (don’t tech journalists have real friends? We believed that PR would be a good idea to help with making our new startup known to a larger audience. It could have worked…Do they need all founder’s worshiping to make them feel good?), it felt like being part of a community. We shared, we connected, we talked … and we built a loyal audience for exploreB2B.

The key lesson we learned was that we should rather trust our own strengths, than some false “friendships” and the fickle success of press coverage.

And then PR came back to us… on a small scale. Building a reputation and a name in marketing led to being asked for interviews, opinions and expertise. Not by the big names in the tech press, but by the smaller ones.


Hey, before you read on - we have in various FREE in-depth guides on similar topics that you can download. For this post, check out:

FREE workbook: CREATE AWESOME BLOG POSTS
FREE Beginner's Guide: START A BLOG

As exploreB2B is picking up speed and our social audience growing by the day, we decided that maybe it was time to give PR another try! But not with paying heaps of money for work some PR guys might or might not do.

Sharing is caring!