Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers. – Daniel J. Boorstin
It was 120 minutes of pure awesomeness!
Rodinhooders from Delhi organized a casual meetup of entrepreneurs, thinkers and doers on June 28th, 2014 at Stirring Minds. The agenda of the meetup was: Hacking PR, and the location was a wonderful co-working space at the heart of Delhi.
Amidst thousand year old buildings and an historical ambiance, started a meetup of modern day warriors who wanted to win at any cost. PR or Public Relations seemed the appropriate tool to initiate this process.
The stage was perfectly set for some interesting presentations and debate and sharing of knowledge.
Karan Bhujbal from 20:20 Media started the first presentation wherein he discussed some professional and creative ways to achieve a good PR for any startup.
Key takeaways for an effective PR strategy, as shared by Karan:
- PR cannot be compared with allopathic medicines which gives instant results, but its more like a ayurveda system of medicine, wherein there is a gradual process of healing.
- PR success story of Evernote: In December 2010 there were just 20,000 users in India, which has now increased to 2 million just by doing pure PR. There is no advertising or marketing initiatives of Evernote (they don’t even have an office in India!) besides doing quality, result oriented PR.
- The six main ingredients of a successful PR campaign, as summarized from the presentation:
– Define your key message and stick to it
– Enhance your networking skills and make more friends
– Refine your business pitch and make it short, crisp and to the point
– Be bold and creative while creating PR campaigns
– Focus on partnerships and affiliates to make your PR even more effective
– Have a solid Social Media presence; the modern day PR is very much influenced by it
Being into the Public Relations world, and having professionally managed several large PR campaigns, Karan gave a realistic and practical approach to do awesome PR.
And, before finishing, he strongly suggested everyone to have a look at a presentation created by Alok Kejriwal titled: “PR for Startups”. This presentation is easily one of the most comprehensive and easy guide for doing PR, for a startup.
You can connect with Karan here.
Ramanuj Mukherjee from iPleaders came next to share how his startup hacked PR to achieve some great results. He shared his own real life incidents which happened due to his pursue of good PR, during the early stages of his startup. He expressed his displeasure over the fact that some people assume that a story in newspaper is a success, which actually makes the entrepreneur over-confident.
Giving an example of his own startup, he said that due to a mis-guided, unfortunate PR, new unexpected competitors sprung up overnight, making his company’s tasks even more difficult!
Key takeaways from his presentation of PR hack:
- Position yourself as a domain authority by speaking on events, hosting seminars etc.
- Do constant blogging. Every blog post is a potential landing page for your company.
- Identify those sites which are content hungry, and send them unique, original content. Be it blogs, images, videos or infographics. Being a content marketer myself, I can totally agree with this strategy!
- PR should be slow, gradual, in a neutralized manner.
- Once the organic, self-supported ways of achieving PR has been achieved, then startups and firms can go for professional PR agencies as well. Example during product launches, or introduction of a new plan/service etc.
He can be contacted here. Additionally, he is also behind a noble campaign against sexual harassment and sexual violence. You can support his campaign right here.
After this session of PR knowledge sharing, the meetup graduated to a phase where new entrepreneurs and startup founders discussed their new ventures and sought ideas to remove obstacles. Fellow Rodinhooder Anamika has written a well summarized story on the meetup, which discusses these wonderful startup ideas. You can read this story here.
Bonus: Killer Twitter Strategy from Amit Mishra
During the last leg of the meetup, Amit Mishra presented a scintillating presentation on Twitter: how can we use it effectively and efficiently.
He shared that success in Twitter can be summarized as a “140 character ki kahani”, which you need to conquer. Within those 140 characters, users need to express their thoughts, opinions and expertise, thereby making it an interesting challenge.
Co-working Space @ Stirring Minds: Offer For Rodinhooders
Special thanks to Pranav Bhatia, the founder and brain behind Stirring Minds for providing such an awesome location for the meetup.
While he explained and demonstrated the concept behind Stirring Minds, one couldn’t help but notice the passion and the dedication which he has for the startups and for the Rodinhoods community. A co-working space is the probably one of the most important support infrastructure for a new entrepreneur, freelancer or any creative guy; and Stirring Minds is providing that support in an amazing way.
Stirring Minds also announced a special offer, especially for Rodinhooders wherein entrepreneurs and freelancers can get some huge discounts for using their co-working space. Get in touch with Asha or Pranav to avail the exciting offer!
Tributes for the meetup would be incomplete without saying a special thanks to Amit Arora, who anchored the meetup in a supercharged way; and Tarun from Nailbites for taking those amazing images. And, a big cheers and thanks to Abhik for arranging this awesome meetup, with a useful agenda and impeccable arrangements.
A great, vibrant and dynamic meetup of thinkers, doers and entrepreneurs which taught several important lessons. Looking forward to the next chapter of Delhi meetup of Rodinhooders, very soon!
About Me: Writer, Marketer, Wanderer and Traveler! I blog at MohulGhosh.com . I am pretty such active on facebook.. My primary mode of communication is hello@mohulghosh.com. I am a proud Rodinhooder.