Public Relations is not easy to master when you’re doing your startup. Yes, you’d like to get press coverage. But you don’t know how to handle it and how to get in the mind of the journalist you try to attract attention. In one sentence: you don’t know how to hack public relations.
There are many public relations agencies out there, but most don’t tell entrepreneurs they shouldn’t hire a PR firm before raising a proper Serie A financing round. But so does Colette Ballou, a PR expert active for startups in a European level (with offices in London, Paris and Berlin) and who provides mentoring at famous startup accelerators like TechStars, Seedcamp and 500startups.
Colette hosted a workshop at NEXT Berlin 2013 (study and bookmark the Slideshare presentation above!), extremely insightful and with directly actionable advices.
She emphasized the value of networking, which you should already know:
“Good PR is about building and maintaining professional networks”
Public relation is not a magic and takes time (6 to 9 months in general – as raising money!). It doesn’t replace sales efforts: it support them.
But I let you discover the excellent stuff provided by Colette – which I’d like to thanks again for her energy and her support to startups!