6 Reasons You Need Personal PR Now
A lot of entrepreneurs and executives shy away from PR and using the press to create their own personal brands. This is a huge mistake. Getting personal PR is extremely important for entrepreneurs and executives' careers. Here's why:
1. PR Can Show Your Vision
Every entrepreneur and executive loves to talk about vision ad nauseam. And although they talk about vision every chance they get to subordinates and investors, there is a chance the general public, potential customers, and future employees and investors may not know what your true vision is. If you are in the early stage of your product this could hurt you, especially since best practices are to launch a minimal viable product and iterate, despite your dynamic vision.
2. PR Can Land You Your Next Investment
Serial entrepreneur Ben Way knows this better than anyone else. He started a business when he was 15 years old as a computer consultant in Bath, England, in 1995. At 16, a local reporter interviewed him impressed with his computer acumen at such a young age. What happened next he can only describe as a "pinch me moment." After a headline of "School Boy Has £60,000 A Year Business," Ben had a flood of phone calls, talk show engagements, and soon a £25,000,000 investment offer for one of his ideas. This, of course, is unusual. But a slide on your pitch deck showing that the press has taken notice shows your investors you know how to handle press, get publicity, and tell your story in a way that's compelling to reporters.
3. PR Scales Your Career
Maybe your product gets bought. Maybe it never launches. Whatever the case may be, there will always be life after your current opportunity. Good, solid, and consistent PR will show your next business parter, boss, investor, or whomever you are the right person to bet on.
4. PR Makes You Look Good on Google
You are an entrepreneur and/or executive. You are now going to be Googled. What are your clients, investors, potential employees, press, and industry colleagues going to find when they Google you? Managing your personal brand on search engines tends to be a low priority, but getting PR automatically fixes the problem without much effort. You can even buy your own name and get a site going that links back to your press and help build your personal brand's SEO. You will legitimize your own brand instantly for a relatively cheap rate, and no one will see those embarrassing college photos your buddy won't take down.
5. PR Helps Recruiting
Anyone and everyone looking to get hired does some investigation online of the company they're going to work for. There should always be an internal initiative to make sure you and your brand look good online. "You'll having a tough time recruiting the top talent if you can't even get a few articles about your company written," says Craig Rayner of SEO.io
6. PR Gets You More Sales
Nothing is more impressive than A-List publications endorsing you by writing about you and having quotable verbiage by professional wordsmiths. Sometimes they even explain your product and messaging better than you can, and if they talk about you in a very positive way, people will want to do business with both you and your product. People buy from people they like and in the early stages of your business, press has the ability to make you look like a great visionary and someone to work with.
Personal PR often gets a bad rap, but there are many benefits to this kind of publicity. What other benefits have you experienced from personal PR? Please feel free to share in the comments below.
