How to Ace Startup Branding and PR with Brian Wong

Brian Wong is the CEO and Founder of Kiip, a mobile app rewards platform that lets brands and companies give real world rewards for in-game achievements. We had the chance to sit down with him and he shared his tips on how to make the most of PR and branding for your startup.

Focus on Your Personal Brand

Ideas are a dime a dozen, what investors are really looking at are the people who came up with them. Have a good idea? Great. Have a good team? Even better. If someone is going to fund your idea, they want to make sure you can execute it, so pay attention to the image you portray to potential backers.

Stand Out from the Crowd

Find what makes you unique, and use it to your advantage. Whether it’s what you studied, what you do for fun, or just something interesting about you, if you can pinpoint something that makes you special compared to everyone else out there, people will want to talk about it.

Keep it Consistent

By describing your business in a consistent way when you talk about to the press and media, you are giving them something to hook onto. Align things around one objective, and as people hear the same key phrases more than once, they’ll begin describing your company in the way you want them to.

Be Unique

Avoid the temptation to use another company to describe your company. For example, Airbnb describing themselves as the Uber of hotels. Doing this will lump you into one category, and that makes it hard to stand out. Use your own words to describe what you’re doing and it will force people to think about you differently.

Make Content Easy to Share

Create things like articles, lists, compiled data, etc. and people will be able to spread the word about you without much effort. This does a lot of the hard work for reporters, and makes it easier for them to write articles on the latest happenings in your company.

Constantly Produce Fresh Content

As humans we get bored easily, and if you want people to pay attention to what you have to say, you need to keep it interesting. Try to write about the next big things coming up and not resort to the same old story everyone has already heard.

Less is More

When writing to journalists or the press, share with them just enough news to pique their interest. That way, they’ll be interested in listening to what you have to say and not drowning in information overload.

Don’t Underestimate Phone Calls

If you can get a reporter to talk with you on the phone you’ve won half the battle. By taking their time, they’re invested in what you have to say. A conversation gives them plenty of information to write an article on you, and they’re much more likely to do that rather than waste time trying to procure news on someone else.

Build Relationships with Reporters

From news exclusives to video content, there are tons of elements in a press release that you can offer up to reporters. Being able to share with them content no one else receives, will help you in building relationships. Just be careful not to overpromise – things can take a turn for the worse quickly if you guarantee something and can’t back it up.

Good luck trying out these tips! Weigh in with your own tips on Twitter at @startupsco. For the full video, watch here.