Shel Israel over at Naked Conversations says he’s “convinced” that early stage startups are better off forgoing professional PR agencies in favor of DIY blogging, at least until their businesses are further baked:
“I have now become convinced that if you are a Web 2.0 early stage company, you are better off going with blogging and NOT using a PR agency until you are further along in your development.”
He also points to a handful of new companies that have recently risen from total obscurity to near-instant ubiquity (at least within tech circles) relying primarily on blogging and in some cases, involvement in influential tech shows like DEMO. And he caps things off with a six point breakdown of where traditional PR continues to fail and where blogging continues to succeed.
Honestly, this post stings a bit…partly because it hits on truths that admittedly go against my better interests as an employee at a PR firm, but also because it seems a bit misleading at places, to the extent that it warrants a few counter points, just to balance things out. Bear with me, this is longer than my normal stuff:
“Traditional PR will tell you to keep in stealth mode, then get the word out at an imaginary moment which is the technical launch. The blogging strategist will tell you to get pieces of your story out early and often and to ask people who care about what you’re doing to to help you make it better.”
Yeah, this is true, most PR firms will advise young companies to keep quiet and get their shit together before they start talking about who they are and how they’re going to change the world. I’d like to think this kind of counsel stems less from old school command and control PR tactics and fabricated launch events, and instead shakes out of lessons learned in the last decade and an understanding that hype and hyperbole around an early stage startup — even when well intentioned — can be the kiss of death if it supersedes a sound business model, a solid product strategy and a longer term game plan for how the company story is told.
“Traditional PR tries to control message, to get a company to speak with one voice. Blogging strategy argues that it is more credible and more human to speak with many voices. These voices may be in harmony, but a little discordance just makes your story all the more interesting.”
I suppose this is true too, although I think “control” in this context (i.e., among startups) is often confused with focus. Like it or not, young companies need to focus on how they tell their stories, which means they need to stick to some sort of message about who they are and what they do. To Shel’s point, harmony is important, but consistency is too and I would rather see 10 employees talking with different voices but sharing the same consistent message, than each sharing 10 different messages.
“Traditional PR pushes messages through media to reach customers, considering both to be “targets.” Bloggers have ongoing two-way conversations. The company talks, but customers talk back. It’s out in the open.”
Understood, but keep in mind too that each “target” or audience you pursue will likely require a different communication tactic and tool. To assume that one method, one tool (a blog) will reach your entire audience is a bit short-sited; it’s like saying you only need a mitt to play baseball. A good PR program will take a mix of tools and use the best one to communicate things to each audience. Sometimes that will be a phone call or a meeting or a blog post, and yes, sometimes it’s a press release — even for startups.
“PR programs cost a great deal of money, usually North of $10 k a month for at least six months to be effective. Blogging costs a great deal of time, but almost no money. What you save by blogging can be put into R&D, or customer support or investor’s pockets.”
Guilty. I have many “expensive leather-bound books and my [cubicle] smells of rich mahogany.” Seriously, PR services ain’t cheap, I understand that, so if you’re a bootstrapping startup you really have to decide if PR is the best use of your money. Or put another way, you have to decide if blogging is the best use of your time. Also, while blogging can meet certain needs, it can’t, for example, help you figure out what to do when acquisition rumors are running rampant, or when somebody builds a hate site around your brand or an industry A-lister says your product will “die in 2006.”
“PR spends a great deal of effort pro-actively pursuing press….Bloggers assume the best editors will find what customers say about you in the blogosphere by using search engines. No advertisement, PR campaign or PR pitch can possibly come close to the impact blogging as on search engines. I would argue that a new company with disruptive technology will get more ink, faster, with less effort and money through blogging, than through a PR campaign.”
Okay, first things first, if you’re indeed a company with truly disruptive technology, congrats, you’ll get more ink. Period. For the other 90% of startups with “mildly disruptive” technology, you’ll need to work a little harder. To assume you’ll get more ink, faster with less effort through blogging alone is, well, a gamble. I guess I’ve been on the back end of too many good stories to know that the best ones take *a lot* of energy and effort (from everyone involved), and rarely just fall into place perfectly. Now, search engine rankings, that’s another story. Hands-down, blogging improves your listings, but again, be careful on relying too much on this because search engines can’t discriminate — and others may not blog so positively about your company.
“Traditional PR’s philosophy is top-down. They determine the biggest and most influential in your category, then they target them. Blogging assumes that good news distributed at the grassroots level will emerge very quickly.”
Truthfully, the best PR programs aim for the middle — meaning they use top-down strategies to push news, well, down and bottom-up strategies to bubble news up, with the hope that a multi-directional approach and a combination of tools will reach a broader audience. Unfortunately, to Shel’s point, I think too many firms, for too long now, have kept with taking uni-directional approaches and using a limited mix of tools within their programs, to the extent that it’s becoming increasingly tired and ineffective. The smarter PR firms get this and they’re acclimating their mindsets (and their services) to keep in step with change.
All this said, I know that Shel and I have similar ideologies when it comes to the changing media landscape and I’m pretty certain we share an appreciation of what it takes to do PR the right way, where it’s centered on transparency, trust and inclusion instead of obfuscation, control and exclusion — irrespective of whether or not it’s a PR firm executing things or an entrepreneur taking the DIY approach. Simply put, there’s a bigger discussion to be had here and to say that blogging equals PR and agencies don’t have a role with startups is only half the discussion. Hopefully what I’ve touched on better explains the other side of things.
BTW, if I was a startup reading this, the question I’d still have is, “okay, so *when* do I consider bringing in an agency?” But I’ll leave that for another time….
Also Read:
Blogging Should Be a Part of Some PR Campaigns (Kami Watson)
Related Posts:
Mike Manuel is the founder of the award winning Media Guerrilla blog. Media Guerrilla is an insiders take on the practice of technology public relations with a focus on the issues, tactics and trends that are specific to the tech industry.
Visit Media Guerrilla …