How to Get PR for Your Startup: 6 Tips from Mat Beeche, Founder of Startup Daily
Matt Beeche, Founder of Startup Daily joined me to talk about his startup journey and how startups can get the attention of media sites like his. After five years of strategic growth, Mat has built a readership in the hundreds of thousands. His insight into what the media is looking for in a startup and how to do your own PR is invaluable. Even if you’ve created an incredible product, you still need to get people talking about you. This is where PR comes in. But for a small startup figuring out how to get press on your own can be a huge challenge. Mat shares his point of view as a founder and journalist about doing your own PR and creating content that will make the media want to cover you.
Make Sure You’re Newsworthy
What newsworthy means exactly changes depending on the publication. For Startup Daily, a newsworthy company is something that’s really disruptive, and it’s something that’s important for the startup community to know. Startup Daily won’t profile everybody. If you have a truly innovative business that they’ve never written about before, then you’ll make the shortlist. The point? The fact that you’ve launched your business isn’t news. That doesn’t automatically make you newsworthy. Craft your brand in a way that demands attention and stands out from everything else launching.
Do Your Own Press
“Everybody is their own media company,” Mat shared. Do your own press. Have a blog. Startups that do this the right way get a lot of press, but they don’t seek a lot of press. They’re being chased by the media. The idea is to build your own media company within your company. Produce your own content as a startup. That ‘s critical to doing your own press. Build a brand and build a story. Pick clever ways to make your brand stand out and create clever content around your brand.
POPSUGAR is a company that used this tactic in a smart way. On the one hand, they are a lifestyle media publisher. On the other, they are a shopping platform and subscription box startup. This combination of content and commerce is exactly the kind of strategy Mat recommends.
Create Multifaceted Content
So you’ve decided to create a media company within your startup. How do you sustain and profit off of that? Advertising is not going to make you a heap of money. Start off by having a clear idea of what space you operate in. Mat only creates content for startup and tech companies. Second, create variety of content. Blogging needs to be multifaceted with mediums including video, podcast, and live events. Content is anything that people can consume. It starts a conversation. It inspires them. It evokes an emotional reaction.
Join a Strategic Partnership
Early in Startup Daily, Mat connected with Vistaprint and said he wanted to leverage their brand. The two companies targeted a similar market. Interested in growing their market in Australia, Vistaprint agreed and distributed Startup Daily content and advertised the magazine on their website. Startup Daily gained its first 5K readers with this strategic partnership. This gave the magazine a solid readership base.
So who can your startup partner with to gain a solid audience base? What companies it naturally into your mission and your audience’s interest? U.K. startup Improbable joined in strategic partnership with Google Cloud. The startup’s massive simulated world fit nicely with developers who create virtual worlds on Google Cloud. Improbable will gain a lot of press out of this partnership in addition to feedback and collaboration.
Be Consistent
If you say you’re going to post twice a day on your company blog, do that every single day. Startup Daily posts four stories a day. Consistency gets easier once you’ve brought on a team, but from the beginning make a commitment to do it yourself. This is one of the most important aspects of content creation and not one to be missed if you’re doing your own PR.
Get Press Attention
Mat is used to hundreds of emails with the same boring press releases. What first stands out when approaching press is clever niched launches. For example, one startup sent Mat and his team free massages. Mat’s also seen a lot of free food. These creative pitches show products in unique ways. But beyond the creative pitch, it’s important to be real. Mat’s seeing a shift in journalism coming back to really well thought out, longer form, researched pieces. Journalists write about something because they are passionate about the story or are passionate about telling the truth. We’re seeing journalism in it’s most honest form again. Take time to think about how your startup speaks to this desire of journalists. Clickbait is waning and we’re seeing more and more media companies turn to the basics of journalism.
‘How to Get PR for Your Startup’ Checklist with Helpful Resources
On my website hellokatrin.com you can download a checklist with helpful resources on how to get PR for your startup.
