One of the biggest hurdles for small business owners and startup founders is getting name recognition in the media. We know the Googles and Facebooks of this world have no problem getting publicity because their brands are ubiquitous, pervading in meeting conversations with senior executives and brunch dates with friends. Not only that, but money talks. And these companies are the talk of the town because they’re worth billions.
So what if you’re a tiny niche startup company with no name recognition and three followers on Twitter, including you, your co-founder, and your mom? What’s the draw for a journalist to write a story about your business?
Instead of focusing on the question, “Who will pay attention to me?” focus on creating quality content that is newsworthy. Ideally, your marketing team will have created some brand recognition during the startup’s test phase and left an imprint on potential customers and investors. The rest requires the hard work of creating a media kit and monitoring the web for the latest news.
What to include in a media kit
When it comes to getting press coverage for your business, you have one of two options. You can hire a PR agency that has access to a network of media outlets and let the PR people be your mouthpiece, or you can write your own stories and be the voice. The problem with hiring your own PR agency is they charge an arm and a leg per month for access to their contacts. But once the money runs out, you’re left with zero connections, and you’re back to square one. The moral of the story is that you should build your own relationships. Don’t rely on outside resources to find you the next big press opportunity.
In the introduction of your press packet, there’s something called a “media advisory.” This should include nothing more than major points that the media needs to know about your company’s big news. It should include necessary background information about your company and the founders and have a strong one or two-line positioning statement. This is your chance to voice why the company’s announcement is important, not just for your business, but also for stakeholders and general public. Emphasize key details about what problems your company is tackling and have strong arguments to back up the solution.
The press release itself should include all of the following information, so journalists won’t be digging around or placing last-minute phone calls to try and reach you for the basics.
1. Introduction: This is your chance to explain who you are, what you do, and what purpose your business serves. In the media kit, you should include the name of your company, the year it was founded, who the founders are and their contact information, where it was founded, where it currently operates, how many employees you have, notable team members and names of prominent clients and principal investors if public.
2. Your mission: This is equivalent to your company’s manifesto. It should differentiate your business from the competition and explain what makes it unique when consumers have so many choices. Talk about your major products and services, and give a breakdown of their features and how much they cost. Mention when those products and services launched, and if applicable, where those products are made and what materials those products use. If locally sourced, make a special note of that in your writing.
3. Fact sheet: Prepare a fact sheet for investors or pitches, which have information about the market opportunity or potential and where your product fits into the ecosystem. If applicable, talk about fundraising and revenue statistics. The fact sheet should be digestible and packaged in a way where it’s easily accessible to the press. If your company doesn’t have a news hook, you want your fact sheet to give reporters easy access to relevant information that can supplement a story they’re writing. Instead of focusing on getting your company a front-page story, look for avenues where your company’s information can still be picked up through a media outlet referencing your company. You never know what traffic may cross over from a small name drop.
4. Photos: Journalists are always looking for art to accompany their stories. It would help a ton if you supplied high-quality photos that are not blurry and at least one megabyte. The basic shots include a photo of yourself and the founding team, your products and services, and company logo or building with the logo. Candid photos work well, depending on the news outlet. Try to provide a number of different options in your media kit. You may want to store them in a Dropbox folder or on Google Drive, so you can easily share them with journalists. As a bonus, these tools confirm whether someone has viewed the folder.
Who to engage
Trust me when I say do not waste a journalist’s time. I’ve been a reporter for several years, and I’ve rejected hundreds of requests from PR agency representatives who have emailed me numerous pitches, all of which were completely unrelated to my coverage area and beats. I actually made the extra effort of removing myself from the lists of many PR agencies, so I wouldn’t have to spend so much of my day by opening irrelevant emails. Hiring a PR agency can get you access to media outlets and coverage if the cards are played right, but you could also risk getting put on a journalist’s bad side if your PR representatives get too tenacious and don’t filter what information is useful to them.
Before reaching out to reporters, understand what stories they’re interested in covering. A fast way to find out is to check their Twitter account and read their profile. Often, they’ll clue followers in on what topics they’re passionate about covering. You can also log onto LinkedIn and read their profile to get a better sense of what stories they have covered in the past and what they are covering now.
Another way to figure out how to distribute your media kit is to start first with the people in your network. Kiran Chen, co-founder and general manager of CitySpade, a New York-based real estate search engine startup, said when she founded her business in college, she was able to get coverage from her school newspaper because she had friends on the staff.
“I definitely think it’s good to personally reach out to friends you might know,” Chen says. “I think connections are important even if they can’t get you directly to the media. It’s good in terms of getting advice. That’s how we started our press kit.”
CitySpade, which was founded in 2014, has raised nearly $500,000 from angel investors. And for a fairly young startup, it’s already on the ball in terms of creating an engaging media kit for tech-savvy New Yorkers on the hunt for affordable apartments. Since CitySpade’s service is a search tool, the format of its media kit is outlined in Q&A format, with the questions appearing in a search bar. This is creative ingenuity in action.
As far as engaging the media, CitySpade has been getting traction with New York-based Chinese media platforms. All three founders are Chinese, and they were able to grab the interest of reporters whose target audience is people in China who are interested in navigating the New York City rental market. Meanwhile, Chen’s team has been expanding its media presence by launching its own blog, which has been generating daily traffic through keyword searches and utilizing search engine optimization techniques.
“Don’t give up because there are various media outlets,” Chen says. “We’ve also looked to other sources like Facebook. If there isn’t a way to get help from other people, find your own way.”
How to get coverage
In an age where Twitter and LinkedIn notifications are the new methods of “cold calling” one another, let’s face it: everyone is on the Internet. And you’ll have journalists who don’t have that much time to spare as they’re running in and out of press conferences. They may even forget to pick up a media kit, so they’re definitely reliant on the web to find a lot of their resources and ideas. This is your opportunity to find out if a certain media outlet will be covering a story on an event that ties into your company, then show up to chat and exchange business cards. Even if they don’t write about you, they have your website for looking you up later on.
Most web-based media kits are broken up into categories under the About Us and Press sections. Some companies provide a PDF version of their media kit. The attention span of an average American is less than five seconds, so lose the verbose press release with five-line quotes from yourself and your co-founder. If anything, make your About Us page light and pithy. Include compelling statistics and facts to substantiate your claims. Take a look at this quote from GitHub’s press page.
“There are 9.9M people collaborating right now across 23.8M repositories on GitHub. Developers from all around the world are building amazing things together. Their story is our story.”
The question “Why should a journalist write about your business?” is answered in the last line: “Their story is our story.” The newsworthiness is not that GitHub has access to a lot of repositories, but that there are amazing things happening now, and it’s imperative to find out what projects its clients are working on. And from there, it’s an easy sell for GitHub to get publicity as reporters reference its products while writing about its clients.
Another way to attract media attention is infographics, photos, and videos. If your team has the design expertise and multimedia specialists, why not use those skills? Visuals increase the chance a user will stay on your webpage. A good example of such is E-complish.com. It publishes newsworthy infographics and attaches a press release that highlights all the key information about the business itself. Not only do E-complish’s infographics add a visual attractiveness to their webpage, but they contains valuable information that journalists can tap into and reference for future stories.
Photo credit: Impact Hub