The thing about tech PR is that it looks easier than it is. Many of the tasks associated with getting good exposure for tech firms are, on the face of it, pretty simple and straightforward – a couple of well written paragraphs of text here, a well-placed email there, maybe a blog or two, a call to a journalist. But the real trick to PR is identifying these jobs in advance, planning for them, getting them done properly, and following them through to their conclusion. This is why PR is a function that is taken so seriously by savvy tech CEOs. Every tech company has regularly occurring milestones that are great raw material for any PR campaign. Funding, products, new hires. And in the hand
Sometimes it has happened to me with start-ups that there is no client available for a case study, whether because of competitive advantage or for other reasons. It was in one such situation that it was suggested that instead of using a case study with ‘live’ client, that instead we followed the ‘use case’ model. 'Use cases' are more commonly used in a technology setting, to outline how a product’s features and functionality resolve a particular business or technical issue for the end-user. They were designed to provide a scenario for how a solution or product will achieve a specific business or technical goal for a prospective client. As a result, they are especially useful in describing
Of all the tools in the tech PR toolkit, among the best is the case study. Effectively a ‘review’ of your technology by one of your customers in which you participate yourself, case studies make for excellent sales collateral. They can also be offered to journalists as the bones of feature articles as they already tick many of the questions which tech editors and writers will often ask for – who is using your technology and how? 9 out of 10 people look at online product reviews before making a purchasing decision - this goes some of the way to fill that need. Case studies appear to have simplified over the years. This might be due to their desirability as marketing collateral leading to
