Tips for Getting (Follow-Up) Press Coverage for Your Startup

When it’s time to launch your startup, you probably know to have the press release ready to go out to the various publications you hope will give you coverage. But after you launch, how (and when and where) do you go about securing follow-up coverage?

The obvious answer is to simply continue the PR push. Keep trying. Although you might feel as though you are filling reporters’ inboxes with email (and yes, yes you are), we are always looking for stories. So even though we might not write about you every time you send us an update, that doesn’t mean you should rest on your laurels. New features and new partnerships are clear-cut reasons that you should contact us.

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Offer Your Expertise

But even when – or even if – you have no major updates to tout, it’s still good to stay on reporters’ radars. As we’ve written many times before, one of the best way to get our attention here at ReadWriteWeb isn’t necessarily via email – it’s by RSS. In other words, update your blog regularly.

Blogging helps in other ways as well. It can help establish your domain expertise, and as such, when we’re looking for quotations from experts for a story, we’re more likely to think of you.

Stories you pitch to reporters needn’t necessarily be about new features. You can offer research or statistics that you’ve gleaned, giving insight to a particular market or trend, for example. And if there’s a current event or news item that relates to your business, that’s an excellent opportunity to drop a reporter a note.

Build Relationships

It helps, of course, to build relationships with reporters. Your emails are much more likely to be read that way. But in your quest for follow-up press coverage, it helps too to look for new and different publications beyond just the typical tech blogs. Woo bloggers, particularly if they have influence over your customers.

If you have any other advice for startups looking for ongoing media coverage, please let us know in the comments.

Image credits: State Library of New South Wales

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