There’s a few posts from Brian Solis, Loïc Le Meur, and Mark Cuban that I find very interesting. They’re all great bloggers and entrepreneurs but have strong differences about PR. Here are a few excerpts:

Brian Solis: PR Secrets for Statups

Your investors or advisors will tell you one of two things, usually starting with “you need PR.” From there, they’ll usually recommend that you either bring on an agency or consultant, one that they’ve worked with and can highly recommend. Or, they’ll suggest that you need to do it yourself (DIY) in order to build relationships with those who are highly respected in your target markets while conserving cash.

While DIY PR sounds good, you’ll quickly learn however, that it takes more time than you think to reach those people. Besides, you have other things to focus on and any good PR program will place you in a position to build relationships with the influencers that matter to your business.

Loïc Le Meur: PR secrets? bullshit

Not a secret #1
who cares about stories, you can get traction and users if you have a good product

There aren’t only bloggers and journalists looking for stories, there are also users with passion about a product that can just spread the love as the power equation between journalists-bloggers on the one side and happy users spreading the word with blogs, twitter etc on the other side has completely changed. In fact, I think startup CEOs should care more about the community members than the journalists and professional bloggers. If the product gets traction, it will get coverage anyway.

Mark Cuban:A Couple of My Rules for Startups

11. NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm. A PR firm will call or email people in the publications, shows and websites you already watch, listen to and read. Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them an email introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communications with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you.

First, I find it hard to believe that establishing communications with top bloggers and journalists today is as easy as sending them an email. This might be true for Mark ten years ago when blogging was still new and startups were still interesting to the media.

Second, if Loïc has a good product, doesn’t he want to spread the word and gain ten times more traction faster?

I think if you can afford it, do hire a credible PR firm with a good startups portfolio and let them do what they are best at and go back to building your product and business. Your time is better spent on doing something you know and good at. Sure, your users will spread the word for you if the product is great but why not spend a little money and grow the users base faster?

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