It’s time for a fractured fairy tale: Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley, courtesy of the New York Times.  Once upon a time in a Sand Hill Road conference room, an entrepreneur, a VC and a PR consultant met to discuss the launch of Wordnik, a website about language and word usage. The PR person suggests a press tour of leading tech blogs (TechCrunch, GigaOm, etc.).  This suggestion is rejected by the VC as not a good match for a language website. Instead, they decide that they would have influential Silicon Valley entrepreneurs mention Wordnik in social media.  As so it came to be.  Digg founder, Kevin Rose, twittered that Wordnik was “truly amazing.”

From there, people started madly retweeting, which led to Wordnik becoming a trending topic on Twitter. Then, everyone in the Valley was abuzz about Wordnik. People will look back on these past few months as the “Summer of Wordnik.” And they all lived happily ever after.

Except that in the real world, the launch of Wordnik went virtually unnoticed.  As Michael Arrington reported in TechCrunch, Wordnik received a small blip in traffic and then quickly returned to its previous minuscule level. Since this is a fractured fairy tale, the frog doesn’t get turned into a prince.  But there are some lessons to be learned.

Hipsters vs. Word Nerds:  Before starting a launch plan, the first imperative is to determine “who is the target audience?” Then, look for the best way to reach them.  Here the target audience was …. Wordniks. The VC was correct that word nerds really don’t follow mainstream tech blogs.  But targeting hipsters using twitter is more about making a fashion statement than a viable launch plan for a language website.  

Something Old, Something New:  Much of the debate generated by the Times article is about whether social media is replacing PR. This is based on a false premise. The rise of new technologies doesn’t mean that the old technologies are banished to a virtual thrift shop. The new supplements the established. The old technology adapts to fit in with the new. At the time of the original Fractured Fairy Tales, PR people mailed press releases to the local newspapers. Today, the number of communication tools and influencers has increased exponentially. But press releases now incorporate SEO and still remain in the mix.

PR and Social Media, Better Together: Combining PR and social media into an integrated strategy can deliver great results. PR provides an efficient way to quickly gain traction with the targeted influencers and audience. Social media builds connections with these folks.  By social media, I mean participating in conversations on Twitter and Facebook, joining the blogosphere by writing and commenting on blogs rather than having Internet celebrities tweet on your behalf. You could argue it would be better to just use social media to gradually grow an audience (especially with a niche product).  But these days, VCs and board members want to see immediate results, as evidenced by Wordnik’s VC participating in the PR discussion. Though prior to launching a PR campaign, it is important that the product is ready for the attention (see: PR for Tech Start Ups – Are you ready for your close up?).

The Happy Ending: Completion of a product launch should be the first of many interactions with customers, partners, and influencers. There are many opportunities to build, even on a less than successful launch. After all, it’s more important where you end, than how you start. And this is where this post happily ends.

Brianna Schweitzer and I just left the Florida Venture Forum’s Capital Conference in Naples.  It was a fabulous event, and did an excellent job of connecting investors from all over the world with emerging companies throughout the state of Florida.  As you may guess, the buzz was all about the economy.

The keynote was Martin Schaffel from AVI-SPL.  He told a compelling story of true entrepreneurship and how he grew from a University of Florida graduate without a dollar to his name, to running a $400 million a year company.  For thirty minutes, we were captivated with a story that was lighthearted, interesting and inspiring, then ended abruptly with the message that things will be hard for a couple more years.

Even with the down economy, the people at the conference who were most inspiring were those with a positive outlook.  It was said more than once that the greatest economic times in our country were born out of the very worst times.  It was refreshing to be at a conference and see hopes high, business flourishing and deals being made.  The overall feel was uplifting, and reminded me of one of my favorite quotes that has gotten me through many times and has rung true everytime:

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”  -Harriet Beecher Stowe

My key takeaway from this show is the importance of staying positive and keeping focused on putting yourself in position to succeed.

Prime time television is full of makeover shows which feature people who are totally clueless about how they appear to others. Yet, businesses also do not take a sober look in the mirror and see how their customers perceive them.

Rich Tehrani of TMCNet.com recently wrote a brilliant blog post that is built around a very simple question: “In This Recession, Would You Buy From Your Company?”  According to Tehrani, businesses need to “put yourself in the customer’s position. Do you think they want to buy from companies they aren’t familiar with and those who do not invest in their customers? No – they don’t… If you think just wining and dining decision-makers is enough to win the business, you are wrong.”

On the makeover shows, before the intervention,  people think that others somehow will see the  ”inner beauty” that lies beneath a slovenly mess. Similarly,  in tough times, tech companies think that their products will sell themselves because customers will  see their underlying engineering brilliance. So when money gets tight, they cut their marketing, and stop communicating their successes to their customers. The result is that these companies are not making their best cases at the time when their customers are making decisions about what needs to be to cut.

I am not just making this point to carry the flag for marketing in a tough time. Fortunately,  when the economy started changing at the end of 2007, the Vantage team did take a hard look at how we were perceived by our customers. We saw room for improvement. So, we re-branded the company. To highlight our thought leadership, we started this blog. We now regularly communicate our successes with press releases on new clients and practice areas. We are becoming leaders in social media such as on Twitter and Facebook. These actions led to an extremely successful 2008, and positions us well for 2009.

At the end of the post, Tehrani provides some very important advice: “Ask yourself this question – are you spending your dollars as wisely as you can? What are your goals and are you altering them to suit a rapidly changing economy?…Yes, now is the time for prudence and now is the time to cut unnecessary expenses. But remember – be careful where you cut from – after all, your customers are trying to find a reason to cut you.”

Like on the makeover shows, your business may need some outside unbiased assistance to improve its appearance. If you need help to answer the tough questions that Rich raises at this critical time, please do not hesitate to contact me at radler [at] pr-vantage.com.  There are no obligations or strings attached. So what’s the benefit to Vantage? We get to make a connection with a group of companies that know they need a change and that are more likely to succeed over the long term.  As we have been in business for 20 years, this is the company we like to keep.

The decision as to when to launch a PR campaign is more about determining your marketing goals than about picking a date. When you launch a PR campaign, you are shining a kleig light on your company and inviting the world to take a look. Typically, this means that your product is available, with website and marketing materials ready.

However, we are starting to see a trend where companies are now looking to raise awareness in advance of having an actual product. These companies tend to be in developing areas of technology where the start ups want to establish themselves as thought leaders and experts in their emerging fields. It is especially important for a start up with products that have long purchase cycles to get on the radar of their potential customers as early as possible.

Another reason to get started with PR early is if the start up is looking for financing. Coverage in publications followed by VCs and angel investors can expand the universe of financing options and create the opportunity to finance on better terms.

When people ask what Vantage Communications does, we answer that we are in the third party recommendation business. We mean that we liase with the people that influence your customers, partners, VCs, etc. This has two key benefits. One is that your audience is getting information about your company from someone that they trust, which increases its credibility. You can talk about yourself (aka advertising), but people tend to discount or even ignore people saying great things about themselves. After all, what else would they say?

The other benefit is extreme efficiency. By interacting with a small number of editors, analysts, and bloggers, you can reach millions of people. That efficiency also applies to a B-to-B start up that is not trying to reach millions. By targeting the right publications, you can open the doors to potential customers and partners that are unwilling to deal with companies that they never heard of. We had a client that was trying in the worst way to directly contact a potential customer. After an article about them ran in a trade publication, the customer contacted them and became a flagship customer!

One thing that start ups underestimate is how many people are part of the buying decision in a business. We had one potential client ask why he needed PR when he knew someone at all of his potential customers. So I asked him how much product he was selling at one of the larger potential customers. The response: “Nothing yet. The guy I know is in sales and he needs to speak to someone in engineering who needs to speak to……”

Implicit in the PR process is identifying your potential partners and customers and determining where they get their information. This universe is expandig rapidly, with the rise of blogs and web publications (and the decline of mainstream media). Since start ups have limited resources, they need to be efficient in their PR efforts. If your customers are reading Engadget or Light Reading, it makes sense to focus your efforts there. But the assumption that getting on the cover of a business publication is going to make your company does not really hold water unless your audience reads the publication. And the wasted time and cost can divert valuable marketing resources.