Knowing your aaS from your elbow

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that holds true in technology PR as with other professions. Calling journalists and then not being able to explain what the client does or articulate why they should be writing about them is a definite no-no. Yet there are always cases mentioned of PRs pitching incoherent stories. Here are some key things to bear in mind that can ensure you are a help rather than a hindrance to journalists.

1. Do your research

Working in B2B technology PR requires that you make an effort to understand your clients and the industry they work in. To effectively pitch your clients to the media properly, you first need to understand their business and what it is they are looking to achieve through PR. This means gaining an intimate knowledge of past press announcements, key product offerings, customers, events and social media activity. Basically, the more you know about your clients you will be better able to explain their work to others and think creatively about them.

2.  Know the media

Once you have the client knowledge, understanding your key media is also of utmost importance to get the message out there. The title and the types of stories it covers, whether it has planned features and its core audience are all essential to pitching the right story. This can also help to avoid an unwitting ear bashing on the phone (e.g. being pitched product stories is a particular bugbear for channel press, especially if they have no relevance to their channel audience whatsoever). On top of that, building a solid working relationship can be helped by knowing the journalist’s editorial beat, personal areas of interests, hobbies and even favourite food and pub to go to. Knowing which journalists don’t mind a call and which work best on e-mail is also good knowledge to have - a quick call every now and then is actually not as bad as some would have you believe. While journalists are time sensitive and can’t spend all day on the phone, a quick call to flag an emerging story of the day or discussing a recent piece is a good way to get some useful information. Journalists can always be trusted to give a wholly unbiased opinion which ultimately helps to offer more relevant content.

3. Keep it simple, stupid

Working in technology PR doesn’t mean you can disassemble and reassemble an IBM X3500 blindfolded and so there is no point trying to use the language of a hardware engineer. The most interesting points of a technology story are often going to be the end user benefits rather than the technology itself. You will be expected to be able to process large amounts of complex information and distil it into simple messages. One of the hardest things to do in technology PR is translate a complicated technical story into one that a layperson would understand. PRs should consider this before picking up the phone or even putting pen to paper. As Albert Einstein said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

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