Het beste pr-bureau voor de IT

PR stands for public relations and is often referred to as press relations. However, this last statement is not entirely correct. PR includes all the actions you take to increase brand awareness of your company and to transform the opinion of your stakeholders. This is possible with more than just press relations. The big difference with marketing is that marketing is purely aimed at promoting the sale of your products and/or services.

IT organizations mostly offer software and services. That's pretty hard to sell, because you can't show something tangible. First of all, this means that your target group must know you. After all, people have to know your brand to admire your products and services. Secondly, you must have a reliable image. You can shout out loud that you sell fantastic solutions, but that does not mean that your target group will believe you. In fact, the Dutch don't believe that at all. But if journalists write about you, it suddenly becomes a completely different story. Because they are seen as more objective. And you can use that to generate awareness and steer your image in a smart way.

Public relations is purely focused on profiling a company's image. Marketing is used to increase sales. So it should be clear: if you combine public relations with marketing, you're sitting on a goldmine.

Nice to know: public relations is a lot cheaper than marketing.

• Sending a press release
• Supply a ready-made article
• Supply a blog.
• Through a case study, also called a customer reference article.
• Pitching journalists. That is, you try to interest them in an interview.
• Organizing a press event. This can be done both online and offline.

We'll start with something that will appeal to you: the relatively low cost. With a good text, you can assume that several media will publish your message. So you get a lot of visibility for a small price. Another advantage is that you keep the exact message of your content intact. A journalist will not copy your text literally, but at the same time cannot change too much.

For the SEO experts: sending a press release can also be a good move for search engine optimization. If organizations start looking for a solution online, you can be found quickly via IT or business media. However, it only helps a small part to get your website to a higher position in the search engines. That's why link building is important. And publishers still want to include the link to your homepage, but subpages are excluded from free publicity (with a few exceptions).

Are you a relatively unknown company? Then the chances are pretty slim that journalists will pick up your press release - unless you really have something spectacular to report. And version 3.2.1 of your product is not (sorry, don't shoot the messenger). Besides, journalists obviously don't really get to know your organization. If you receive a lot of press releases in one day, little of the news you have to bring will stick in their minds. Especially since they don't receive the news exclusively, as a press release is widely distributed.

Also know that with press releases, you'll often get fairly small news articles as a result. So do you want your target audience to be well informed about the challenges you can solve for them? Then a press release is not the right tool.

Journalists are inundated with press releases every day. For good reason, they scan most of those releases cursorily. They don't read the messages from front to back - unless they are stimulated at the beginning to read on. Therefore, make sure in the first instance that you have real news to offer and that the press release is the right vehicle for this. After all, you don't want to bother them with useless news.

Then you come up with a catchy headline and introduction. If that part goes wrong, your press release will quickly end up in the virtual wastebasket. Avoid especially words like "leading supplier" and "unique solution". Journalists get really annoyed by this kind of texts.

A press release is relatively short and to the point (exceptions are possible). Use a logical structure. First report the core news and then elaborate on peripheral issues. A memory aid for this is to keep the 5W's and 1H in mind: Who, What, Where, When, Why and How?

Finally, we give you the tip to use headings. Because: it brings structure to a text and is good for SEO. Are you looking for more tips for writing a press release? Let us know and we will help you on your way.

Not all media accept articles for free. It's also logical that you have to pay for it, because a publisher has to make a living. And that is quite difficult in an advertising market that is dominated by the Google's and Facebook's of this world.

As with a press release, a journalist doesn't really get to know your company if you provide an article. With an interview, he or she will learn much more about your company and that information will stick longer.

In terms of content, an article should be editorially drafted. So it is not about what kind of IT company you are and what kind of IT products or services you offer. It is about, for example, tips you can offer readers, a vision or opinion you want to showcase or how companies deal with their challenges and how they solve them (reference article).

Many people think of PR in terms of free publicity that you obtain by, for example, journalists writing about you. The biggest advantage of this is that if journalists write positively about you, this is many times stronger than advertising. However, this is only a small part of your public relations. Getting likes, shares, comments and retweets are also possibilities to increase the attention for your company or brand.

Paying for media publications has become increasingly popular within the public relations world in recent years. Unfortunately, the publication fees for most business media are high. However, that is not the case for IT titles. For an often reasonable price, you can have your editorial published. And the best part: you can include several links to subpages of your own website. This means that you can immediately work on your link building, so that your website will be found better in search engines.

Mind you: we are talking about media articles here, but paid media can just as easily include Google Adwords, media banners or Linkedin ads, among others.

Countless PR agencies will tell you not to choose paid media. Logical, because they earn much less from it. At Co-Workx we are big fans of this way of working. We want our clients to be found well in search engines and we want publishers to have their share too.

Some IT journalists occasionally call companies they have written a reference story about. Not every project turns out to be equally successfully in the end. As you probably already know, negative news scores significantly better than positive news. So you get the idea: when a customer is not so satisfied after all, they sometimes go crazy on a journalist. All positive PR is thus converted into negative PR.

Als je als journalist iedere dag persberichten naar je toegestuurd krijgt, gaat alles op een gegeven moment erg op elkaar lijken. Maar leuke, interessante interviews met woordvoerders van bedrijven blijven wel beklijven. En bleek het te gaan om een sterke woordvoerder, dan willen ze deze persoon nog wel eens vaker bellen om te vragen over zijn/haar mening over een specifiek onderwerp. Dat levert dan mooi weer free publicity op.

Sometimes a spokesperson turns out not to have a good story. Journalists remember these situations better than if they did have a good conversation. So what happens next time you have really interesting news? Exactly, then journalists are more likely to slam the door on you. They are then also less likely to pick up your press releases.

And oh yes, also important to mention: not every interview leads to a publication. That means you put a lot of time into it and don't get any results out of it.

This is a difficult question to answer. A public relations agency can be very expensive. For example, they sit in a fancy office or are part of an international concern that uses high hourly rates to make as much margin as possible. Of course, there are also PR agencies that charge normal rates. But because the IT market is not a very simple sector, knowledgeable PR consultants are not up for grabs. This makes PR for the IT industry more expensive than for example the fashion industry.

By the way, don't focus too much on the hourly rates themselves, but ask especially how much time an agency expects to spend on PR activities such as writing a press release or article or pitching interviews.

Om even een grove schatting te geven: voor circa 2.500 euro per maand, kun je al de nodige resultaten behalen met pr-activiteiten.