Sustained Efforts Deliver Best High Tech PR Results

PR requires sustained effort and periodic contact. We document your messages and positioning. You determine your spokespersons. Materials are prepared that let us explain why the spokespersons and your firm are well qualified to comment to the press. Media outlets (magazines, online news Websites, blogs, social networks, radio shows, and TV) are chosen that have a readership (listener/viewer base) that represents your target audience. We diligently connect with reporters, editors, and bloggers writing stories on the beat that covers your market and technology. We help them with material to fill the story, using your spokespersons, alliance partners, customers, analysts, etc. We write press releases that establish a long track record of success, on the subjects of your deals, new product or service offerings, hiring, and office locations. Unique is our tactic of writing issue-based press releases; these can cover today's most pressing problem, or are a vision of the future changes, or even an opinion today's business or technology news. Issue-based press releases create stories for reporters and editors or provide them with useful commentary.

Serving reporters serves your venture

We call reporters, send e-mails, transmit faxes, and, when the cost is warranted, use news wires. Our objective is to get you in the story. Sometimes you are quoted straight from the press release. More often, your press release gets your foot in the door, but the reporter wants an interview. At this point, you are responsible to be interesting enough to be quoted. We will coach you on what the reporter wants and give you ideas, but you must execute.

Reporting measures only what you want...results

The best measure of press coverage is seeing your firm's name in print, on the Web, and on social media. Therefore, we concentrate on creating results, not preparing reports. Also, we focus on winning awards for our clients and their customers, not ourselves.  Measuring PR placement is best is done by setting you up for an interview; the reporter lets us know when it will run. Plus, there are many online tools that measure press coverage and your executives' names across the Web, print, and social networks. Web-based search tools do a good job measuring of press coverage in larger publications, on the Web, or on social media.

Behind-the-scenes tasks identify opportunities and deliver

We maintain a list of the publications where you had an interview, with the projected future date on which your company and spokesperson will be covered. We also have tools that widely track the coverage that results from issuing a press release over the wire. This list forecasts results out as far as six months, because magazines have long editorial lead times. In addition, you need to leverage your great news, by e-mailing it out to a newsletter list or by sending a personal e-mail to prospects, customers, partners, and investors. Social Media is also effective in widely distributing good news. Lastly, your news must be found on your own Website. Web technology and search engine optimization (SEO) are changing significantly. The Semantic Web technologies that we use at MediaFirst, embodied in our open source Drupal content management system (CMS) software, blows other products out of the water. Make sure that people in your organization understand the extraordinary differences between Websites today. If you understand the PR process and maintain realistic expectations, you will be very satisfied and well rewarded with great press coverage.

Holistic Marketing Is Reshaping PR

Semantic Web, social media, Apple's iPad, radically changing online news sites, multi-user news blogs, and Web 2.0 technologies are driving radical shifts in how technology ventures generate awareness and educate markets. Key influencers, but also grass-roots followers can seed a viral dissemination of your cool new offerings, great news, or success. Coordinated programs of consistent, overlapping campaigns and that integrate PR, Web presence, social media, and the gamut of marketing tools are required today.