Check out this email I got the other day. I get maybe two of these a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a great case study of what not to do. She talks about herself at least six times and doesn\u2019t mention anything about what\u2019s in it for me. Is she assuming that, out of goodwill, I\u2019ll take the time to respond, review her work samples, connect her with my editor and help her to get published? Sorry, not sorry, Juliana. You\u2019re going directly to my spam folder. I have other things to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might wonder why I\u2019m ranting about this and what this has to do with your startup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the typical pitch journalists and bloggers get from companies (yes, startups included) hoping to get a mention. This type of email pitch the biggest mistake companies make when trying to get PR mentions. Here\u2019s why \u2013 57% of top-tier publications receive between 50 and 500 pitches a week<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ll talk about the right way to do it in a minute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s make sure we\u2019re on the same page when it comes to how we think about PR mentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Public relations is no longer about just publishing press releases. A PR mention is when a publication mentions your company and<\/em> includes a link back to one of your web pages. This is what we call a backlink<\/a>. Backlinks are a cornerstone in developing your SEO. Good SEO improves organic traffic and discoverability. More traffic ideally means more leads and more customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That means PR = good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This means that more links aren\u2019t necessarily better. And a bunch of links from Forbes may not be ideal if the page isn\u2019t relevant to your company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So if you\u2019re in the fashion industry, you don\u2019t want links from a website about farming. You want links from a website about clothing or a fashion influencer\u2019s website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (If you want a deeper dive into backlinks and SEO, read QuickSprout\u2019s Advanced Guide to SEO<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Great. Now we\u2019re on the same page so we can talk about getting PR mentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re a startup, you shouldn\u2019t put your budget toward a PR firm. That means you\u2019ll have to do the work yourself, but you won\u2019t see results immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s a tough fact right off the bat: getting PR mentions takes time and effort<\/em>. (I\u2019m hoping my bolding, underlining, and italicizing get this point across.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n PR and SEO can be boiled down to two things: authority and relevance. With these two things, you can keep pushing the PR flywheel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With each cycle of getting mentioned, you get a backlink which leads to more buzz, more traffic, and more customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The flywheel gets more momentum with each loop and the longer you stick with it, the easier it becomes to turn that flywheel and get more PR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How does that sound to you? (This is where you say yes and cheer.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before we start getting too excited, keep in mind that PR flywheels have the potential to be devastating for your brand. For example, as of the time of this writing, a search for \u201cUber\u201d in Google News<\/a> will show this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are over 20 articles in the last three days about Uber\u2019s scandals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The PR flywheel is real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now let\u2019s get into how you can get a positive flywheel started for your early-stage startup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the first part, I\u2019m going to talk about mistakes and misconceptions about getting backlinks and PR mentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the second part, I\u2019m going to dive into how small and large companies get PR mentions and share a few examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the third part, I\u2019ll give you a step-by-step framework to get more PR mentions and backlinks without hiring a firm or extra person to do it. That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s easy but it\u2019s possible \u2013 and clearly worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you saw before, many companies try to get PR mentions and backlinks by giving a \u201cme\u201d pitch. They pitch their tech startup to publications and journalists and try to sell them on how exciting their product is. Or they talk about their latest round of funding. Or their new product feature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Check out this other email I got:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, I don\u2019t care, Cory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagine you go up to a person on the street and say, \u201cHey, will you tell everyone you know about me?\u201d That person is either going to ignore you, think you\u2019re an idiot, feel violated, or all of the above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But if you approach them with a compliment, have a conversation, learn about them, guess what? They might tell a friend about how they had a great conversation with a random stranger \u2013 you. (These types of principles are taught in the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People<\/a>. Highly recommended if you haven\u2019t read it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dream is to get a press mentions page that looks like Lyft\u2019s:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMe\u201d pitches lack effort. Companies that do this hope to achieve that tier one press mentions page without having to put in the time and effort of building relationships and truly doing something press-worthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These pitches assume that people actually<\/em> care about that company\/product\/news. In reality, no one cares. Most people \u2013 including bloggers and journalists \u2013 are looking out for themselves. They\u2019re figuring out how to meet their next publishing deadline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll share a better approach with you below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The takeaway is that you should think of media relations as a long-term game, not a quick pitch-and-go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a clear challenge because one of the most common questions about PR and SEO is: how long does it take SEO to work<\/a>? The answer is longer than you\u2019re hoping. That doesn\u2019t mean you shouldn\u2019t think about it \u2013 it means you should have started working on it yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s talk about a more effective way to get PR mentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The HubSpot Sales<\/a> product used to be called Sidekick and we began as a completely separate brand. Our website was getsidekick.com \u2013 that meant we receive little benefit from the HubSpot brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To get PR mentions and backlinks, we created long-form, helpful, informational pieces of content that were upwards of 5,000 words. The product was all about email tracking so we wrote about email-related topics like how to write effective follow-up emails<\/a>, how to write magnetic networking emails<\/a> and email etiquette<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then we pitched the content to publications that wrote about similar topics, asking for them to link to that piece of content as a resource.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We did that for 10 pieces of long-form content, receiving over two dozen backlinks, and this resulted in a 13% increase of organic traffic week over week<\/a> for four months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you take a look at the 50 Most Upvoted Products on Product Hunt<\/a> and look at the number one hunt, you\u2019ll find Startup Stash<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you look at Startup Stash\u2019s backlink profile on Ahrefs<\/a>, you\u2019ll see they have over 42,000 backlinks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bram, the creator of Startup Stash seeded the discovery of this website by getting featured on Product Hunt. But he didn\u2019t get all the press mentions just by posting there. He got those press mentions because he created a comprehensive resource that hadn\u2019t been shared before. It was unique and worth writing about \u2013 especially for the startup community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to a solid website, Bram had a solid launch strategy for Product Hunt<\/a> and if you look at the Startup Stash Product Hunt page<\/a>, you can see that Bram was actively engaged on the day of his launch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Companies often run surveys or turn user data into benchmark reports for marketing purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First Round<\/a>, the largest seed-stage venture fund, releases its State of Startups<\/a> report every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their 2016 report has over 6,000 backlinks, 20% of which are from .edu websites (these are highly credible and authoritative websites).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that we\u2019ve taken a look at how other companies run PR campaigns, let\u2019s dive into how you can apply this to your company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your reason will determine which publications and journalists to target. Goals include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to build relevant traffic that could potentially turn into customers, you should aim to get featured on industry publications. Whereas if you want press mentions or social shares, a broad publication like Forbes or TechCrunch would be better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Start by finding websites that have already mentioned you without you knowing. They\u2019re likely going to be smaller publications, but it\u2019s a start. If you\u2019re lucky, you might have already been featured in a big publication. Either way, these people have already written about you so it\u2019s easier to ask them to write about you again than to pitch a new journalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Use Advanced Google Search<\/a>, Google Alerts<\/a>, and Mention<\/a> to find where you\u2019ve been mentioned and track future mentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To find publications to target<\/a>, create a list of publications you read and start there. Look at what other websites those publications link to and add those to your list too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Based on your goal, bucket your target publications into Tier 1 and Tier 2 publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether they\u2019re bloggers or journalists, writers write about specific things they\u2019re interested in. Co-founder and CTO of HubSpot, Dharmesh Shah<\/a>, says, \u201cto get press, don\u2019t pitch your product<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Based on keyword research<\/a>, find out which journalists write about keywords relevant to your company. Dive into articles of specific bloggers and journalists from those publications and reach out to build relationships with the ones who write on topics relevant to your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Focus on being helpful when you do this. Help journalists hit their next deadline by providing them the information you think they\u2019d be interested in writing about or provide a quote without asking for anything in return<\/em>. When you become a credible and trusted source of information, you\u2019ll be asked to provide quotes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, some journalists might specifically cover data about marketing technology in the United States. Others might only write about financial advice. Figure out an author\u2019s beat and find out how you can fit your company into her beat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ask the journalists what they\u2019re focused on writing about and find out what kind of information would be useful for them. There\u2019s are good ways to do email outreach for this and there are really great ways. Focus on doing email outreach the best way<\/a> so you don\u2019t ruin your chances of building relationships or getting mentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here comes the difficult part \u2013 creating something worthy of being written about. There\u2019s a balance: it needs to be different enough to be newsworthy, but similar enough to other things so you know there\u2019s potential for it to be covered by journalists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dmitry Dragilev<\/a> of PR That Converts<\/a>, suggests you:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Think about how much time you can dedicate to creating this piece of content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When creating content<\/a> there are various ways to make it more likely to get mentioned<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The important thing for you: layer in SEO with some basic keyword research<\/a>. You\u2019re hoping to get PR mentions which means you\u2019ll get backlinks. It only helps to do some keyword research and make sure you end up ranking in the search results for relevant keywords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This doesn\u2019t mean sharing on social media or sending it to your email list. This means doing the hard work of pitching journalists to cover you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Create a pitch on why the content you created is interesting and worthy of being written about and linked to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Refer to your list of journalists and publications and send them emails about this thing you created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember, you should have already built relationships with journalists and reporters and they should be open to hearing your pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Can you utilize any channels to make the distribution of your thing more scalable and not have to email every journalist one by one? Think about how Startup Stash used Product Hunt to seed attention within a specific community. What communities, like Quora, can you tap into?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are some tools to help you with your outreach:<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Bad](\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/OEYKKHEtSwlBL2cMxNFpkYFEPgsdD9XWYsJmYYkwh9bFZa82TY4VHIJWbDDTiEWinbsTfWwiMp4F0FyO3Fiqxuemug6_O9fFAOje2sITgJ2_QSKMdPOoLTZs39q_assgv2ZnQVCs\")
Do. Not. Do. This. Ever.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
There are three big factors when it comes to your website\u2019s credibility:<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
More <\/strong>relevant and credible<\/em><\/strong> links are ideal.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s what the PR flywheel looks like:<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lh5.googleusercontent.com\/LczqZxENwjKaEsA52Iq2nmho4bAnuGnjXOZe8dRUY2EOHYFauO6SGgweeWryqAjUXQwS4mZ3zq3H3J2oGAdLxEuyr3luOp4UYDOIPNljuqbdwD8p9Ufne8CT42YBpk28otBCzvjV\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/LAVu5sy9J5Ozqh46R22kNPfLLIvscFUAXAmcrKM3gEHWHj1zfQMUuRLN1RD7mTMU2LJ2-95iUrh4PeE2bj1YPKXOCBfFBTur2wbYjye43WeGh0z4F0o7pDLxtuQd_H4IKLMmvuqq\")
Part 1: How Most Companies Approach Backlinks and PR Strategy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/yJTp-3qgJOD5AGkwAyoohwaq6KZzKsrjhh8PNvQz2AhAnWuHgf3VPO7KCII3anDbGu8HrCBQI4MEmU7SvrOvHIVhAhYXkbbngbUtrFSKRudPZ9GNxpvkM9RTPFtV3gk4W78HG8uN\")
These aggressive pitches completely ignore the fact that journalists are human.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"Lyft](\"https:\/\/lh4.googleusercontent.com\/tCIuGx5cub4vkagSdq5v4M4Iy0IW4ozjUO8cqHIbhJrbNGfgjln1RNz3ZZobjhzFwt6K8nUJR1jeS9o_urJ1doxhgs_AaK0Yh9zZGnzUWMxLviPk52uPY-7hNq2UETa4wWOJNhJJ\")
The problem with the \u201cme\u201d pitch approach is the belief that \u201cme\u201d matters.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Part 2: 3 Methods Companies (Like HubSpot) Use to Successfully Get PR Mentions<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Well-Researched Informational Content<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Create a Comprehensive Resource (Then Use Another Website\u2019s Popularity to Get Found)<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"StartupStash\"](\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/4EnSsVBKy6sQ6fG2l_nUsqN5FP0FQIlMUt2ED9SK9-FJcjtlTVkMVpKvMEfB6WLhHIVeOZeyVb2MeOlCWH6L3hbSU4AqVFpqs-Ei2biHvDWCMjEY92OtfMIfuCG0Cc5M-Xga0jeF\")
![\"Startup](\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/HzOTZ3vAUz7SkLaryvt52B5lhDI6kwofn1KP8L_irL6jEAI2jXss4xzpQXnJ0Uw_fIxM7LVJqcdpp9S1oSMv8GxR5HrzT5XTJHkFldoo_N-Jhps2eaxKydJ5gWJMSLIGnHjek2D1\")
3. Release Exclusive Data<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"First](\"https:\/\/lh4.googleusercontent.com\/FXv4N7XipulKI1omNIhQboacOGHF_vI4yijlOopyP5-O4Ue9lzvp7AryC7tRRLV8dcH0YB3HUFmvE-x6X4jZG-VkVV9m44h0GFpXYq5jo6q-eVAFsk5FtUDaU7RU0EasG-H_6Wki\")
![\"First](\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/xiU50dRoIOewtvqSY-7yv8HXrjKgXyidNAPXFxul0Rfhtzo3N-IJ2Eb9eTaWzgTa50DDBkRVhTXlzkc3X9IwO0APAFMB8kotSNc_TUAD0e83oX01Bodum2BwSDVgTeIwQE-X_jKB\")
Part 3: Startup PR: How to Get Media Outlets to Notice Your Brand<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Define your reason for getting mentions in publications<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Create a list of publications to target<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
3. Find out what journalists want<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Simply stated: <\/strong>Know what journalists want<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
4. Brainstorm valuable content ideas for those journalists.<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
You can start by going with one of the options above that other companies have successfully pulled off:<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"First](\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/BrsB0LTn7HTOQtFjWbXJq7WtSKbNj_ekwFBdi88J-eB6tfyZYql5rJ49m29WulcqOUZepM7TyG_wh4htF-VWwT8qJ1XqmJiiS3WidrKj0ZWfl8w-ca8BMWpPCU5gxJpNTwfYuy4X\")
5. Create the Content<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
6. Promote Your Content<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Get Started Now With Our Startup PR Playbook<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n