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SaaS PR Agency: Onboarding & Expectations

POV: You know the importance of investing in brand, and you’re looking for a SaaS PR agency. Whether you are switching agencies or hiring your first one, there is likely a different onboarding process and expectations with each.

Every agency does things slightly differently, but the fundamentals of building a strong PR program should be the same: research, planning, outreach and results. If you’re like most SaaS companies, you’re anxious to jump to the last stage and see results (aren’t we all?). But without a strong foundation and time to build pipeline, your media relations program is doomed to fail.

So, what can you expect when you begin a new SaaS PR agency relationship? We believe in transparency through every step of the process, and we’re happy to share our onboarding process with you as a means of comparison:

Research

Every BLASTmedia program starts with a discovery call with the marketing team and, often, the CEO/founder. We tell you about our team and processes, and you tell us about your value proposition, competitive landscape, ICP, founder story and business goals. After this meeting, we get to work on our media landscape analysis and strategy foundation.

You want to work with a PR agency that understands your market. We work within the B2B SaaS industry, so we know the right questions to ask, who to speak to inside your organization, how to work with your customers and determine the most newsworthy stories from your execs. Even so, the media appetite for stories from HR tech companies vs. marketing tech companies is unique. That’s where our media landscape research comes into play.

We dissect months of media coverage and releases from you and your competitors to determine the following and more:

What narratives dominate your space? What isn’t being discussed?
Which spokespeople are most commonly quoted from your competitors? What are their titles?
Which media outlets most frequently cover your competitors?
What is the average news cadence in your industry?
Are there known thought leaders in the space? If so, what are their stances?

The research phase concludes with two key elements: story-mining calls and a product demo. You can read more about our process for story mining with execs from our VP of content, but it’s exactly what it sounds like. We chat with your sales leader, chief people officer and other identified SMEs to dig out ideas we believe will make a solid thought leadership campaign. Next, we get to planning.

Planning

The two biggest deliverables during the first month with BLASTmedia are the strategy foundation deck (SFD) and our 60-day plan. The SFD includes the results of our media landscape analysis, along with our top recommendations on target media and reporters, talk tracks to reach your buyers and speak to their top pain points, a SWOT analysis, a competitor deep dive, ideal cadence of news and bylines, trending news to watch in your space and established benchmarks.

With that research in hand, we set our sights on building your PR OKRs (objectives and key results). Based on the activity in the space and where you currently are in terms of output, what does “good” look like for you? What about “great?” And once we establish that objective, how will we get there?

Enter: Your 60-day plan — I know you’ve been waiting for it! This is where you’ll see all of the research put into ideas, established OKRs and our plan for getting it done. In addition to three “pillar” thought leadership campaigns for the quarter, we lay out topics for reactive opportunities, competitors we monitor for share of voice measurement, trends to latch onto, any customers we can leverage in media relations and what company news we can support with outreach. Then it’s go time.

Outreach

PR isn’t like a faucet — you can’t turn it on and off. It can take months of building a pipeline (like in sales) to consistently realize the fruits of your labor. At the beginning of any client campaign, we focus on quick-turn opportunities where we can — we know it’s crucial to showcase early wins to your executive team.

At the same time, we’re making introductions to key members of the media — those we already have relationships with and those we want to build relationships with on your behalf — to get that pipeline filled as quickly as possible. Every campaign is different, but in general, if you do not have news (a press release) in your first 90 days, you should expect to see the following:

Between months 1 and 2, you should start seeing interview requests come in
In month 2, you should get your first piece of contributed content for review
In total, you should see around 10 pieces of coverage in a variety of trade, podcast and (yes, sometimes even) top-tier outlets (if you have news, this number will be significantly higher)

Results

After the first few months, we’re off to the races. We’re an anti-black-box agency, so I will share our actual client result averages with you. Each quarter I look at all-up coverage across our client roster and average it out. We hand this to our teams internally to use as a guideline for performance. We also share it with our prospects so they understand what to expect when running a PR program with us.

After tracking KPIs and coverage types for 10,000+ pieces of coverage over multiple years, I am confident in sharing these numbers with just about anyone. And any PR agency that won’t (or can’t) do the same isn’t as data-driven as they might claim.

Of course, there are exceptions to these numbers based on client participation, approvals and spokesperson availability. And, if you are a public company, these numbers could be wildly different. But, based on our data, here are the results you should expect from your SaaS PR agency each quarter:

Around 25 pieces of coverage
About half of all coverage should have a backlink to your website
The Domain Authority of the coverage you get should be around 60
15 of those 25 articles should be driving traffic to your website
Quarterly coverage breakdown
- 2 – 4 pieces of contributed content
- 1 – 2 podcast placements
- 2 – 3 quote inclusions
- 5 press release postings
- 3 – 5 features
- 5 – 10 other mentions or syndications

Choosing the right PR partner can be challenging. But taking your time up front to find one that will be open and honest with you about their process, team and results will yield dividends for years to come. As will taking time to properly invest in and trust their need for proper ramp-up time.

I’ll leave you with this. If I were hiring a PR agency and I wanted to know how they were going to get up to speed during the onboarding phase and what kind of results I could expect from them, these are a few of the questions I would ask:

On average, what kind of results are you generating for your clients each quarter?
Tell me about a time you worked with a client where you had never worked in the space before — how did you get up to speed?
What is the #1 thing that determines how much and what kinds of coverage you can generate?
How do we make the most of our onboarding process?
What is your process for monitoring competitors and trending topics?

And if you want to know how we’d go about building a successful PR campaign for you, reach out to me!

State of B2B SaaS Investing with Mike Fitzgerald, High Alpha

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In this special episode of SaaS Half Full, host Lindsey Groepper sits down for a fireside chat at BLASTmedia HQ with Mike Fitzgerald, Partner at High Alpha — a venture studio and VC firm specializing in early-stage B2B Saas companies.

2021 saw an influx of VC money poured into scaling SaaS companies and higher valuations than ever before. Fast-forward to Q1 2022, which saw a nearly 40% decline in investment deals in the sector coupled with signs of a pending economic recession. Mike visited BLASTmedia HQ to talk about what’s causing the changing B2B SaaS investment landscape and signals to look for in your SaaS business to drive decisions during an economic slowdown.

Then (2021) vs. Now (2022)

Before examining what has contributed to today’s downward shift, Mike delves into what drove the 2021 investment influx: cheap money and sky-high public-company valuations.

“[Those two things] are markers for our proxies in the way that we would think about investing in a company, because if public companies are valued at 20 times revenue, then I can justify paying ten times revenue for your new growth business when you have some revenue,” said Mike. “In an environment like 2021 with money being cheap and valuations being high in public companies…I’m making long-term bets.”

When valuations are high and interest rates are low, investors base their bets on what the portfolio company will do in the next 24-36 months in terms of growth, not immediate gains in the next 12 months.

On the flip side, the start of 2022 brought these two proxies down to earth. Valuations are now based more on profitability versus growth, and interest rates have soared. As a result, investors are looking at shorter-term gains and positive signals in the next 6-12 months from investment.

Don’t Panic

When signs of a recession surface, a natural reaction is to halt spending and cut costs. While this may help some SaaS companies get in front of a recession, Mike cautions against buying into the sky-is-falling mentality too quickly and instead advises you read the signals inside your business, starting with pipeline and closed new business.

Success in those factors is what Mike sees in High Alpha portfolio companies that he believes will perform well in a recessionary environment. And while he understands SaaS companies will have to make some cost-cutting moves, he also recognizes each business is unique.

“I don’t think you can apply [cutting spending] universally,” said Mike. “It’s going to be more difficult to raise money. It’s going to be more difficult to borrow money. You may indeed have some customers who go out of business. Those are all cautionary things, but you have to read the signals of your business in this particular economy.”

Listen to Episode 329 of SaaS Half Full for more of Mike’s insights.

PR to Reach a Product Led Growth and Developer Audience

Product-led growth (PLG) models have exploded into the SaaS industry, with tech brands like Slack, Airtable and Calendly becoming critical components of our new hybrid working environment. Defined by Openview Partners, who coined the term, PLG is an end user-focused growth model that relies on the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion and expansion. It’s no surprise, then, that PLG brands make up over half of the companies on the 2021 Cloud 100 list.

Developers are the backbone of this model, as these pros build, ship out and improve upon the platforms we use every day. As a marketer or PR professional, if you’re looking to reach developers, you’ll need to keep PLG’s tenets in mind to convince and convert this savvy (and skeptical!) audience.

Skip the buzzwords and go straight to the results

Software developers are experts. They’re deep into the complexities of their own software and will undoubtedly be aware of the challenges and opportunities available to others in their field.

If marketers are building external copy for a dev audience, take a red pen to any mention of buzzwords like world’s first, unprecedented, life-changing, or new paradigm. We’ve all seen late-night infomercials make outrageous promises. The importance of avoiding this dials up to a ten for developers.

Instead, author Adam DuVander told TechCrunch how successful messaging to developers includes, “clear documentation, help getting started and use cases to spark creativity.” The quicker we are to the point, the faster devs will dive in and tinker.

This means one of the common aspects of PR strategies today, contributed thought-leader content, might not be the best approach to getting in front of your developer audience. These types of pieces might be too wordy or read as promotional.

But I’m not saying devs don’t want to hear your thought leader’s perspective. We need to reevaluate where the messaging is going.

Involve yourself in the (real) community

Look beyond the go-to channels to find your dev audience.

Press release wires have their own value, but issuing through PRNewswire and sharing a post on LinkedIn isn’t going to be enough to drive engagement. We’re not talking about underground, Matrix-style hubs, but whether on Twitter, in subreddits, Stack Overflow or DZone communities and Discord channels, you’ve got to dig deep into these communities to understand the day-to-day. This is where you should start having conversations.

And, once you’ve found your niche, your SME’s own voice won’t be enough to check the box. To alleviate any concerns about messaging being overly promotional, put your own customer use cases front and center and have them speak candidly.

This could look like coordinating a webinar where your core buyer sees and hears their problems unfold from the experience of another. You could also tap your customers for media opportunities where they talk about the best practices and tools, like your own tech, that help them do great work. Do this time and time again, though, as your dev audience is going to need proof.

Take the feedback in stride

If you’re a PLG company trying to reach developers, you already recognize the value of feedback on the path to improvement. But, it’s easy to forget this mindset if your team gets negative feedback. Celebrate that as a win too.

Be mindful of what worked and what didn’t: Was the use case clear, or did we offer value? Are we engaging in the right channel? Do we have a community of partners who can help us educate and amplify the initiative?

And, like a developer does, it’s time to move forward and improve.
Want to know how BLASTmedia can help you determine your product-led growth PR strategy? Contact Lindsey Groepper for more details!

3 Creative Ways SaaS Companies Position Marketing and Advertising For Growth

While it has been more than ten years since the U.S. was embroiled in a recession, it can be easy to forget the destruction it entailed. In recent months, COVID-19 has caused distress and confusion, leading many to believe we are entering another economic recession. Businesses fear slipping revenue, one of the many factors that can trigger a domino effect of economic collapse within the business landscape.

As businesses reprioritize their remaining 2020 budget, advertising and marketing are typically the first on the chopping block. This is because they’re often viewed as non-essential costs, and when times get tough, businesses pick salaries and benefits over marketing. Yet, marketing and advertising hold the key to long-term growth — it just requires creative approaches to succeed.

Here are three ways SaaS companies are positioning themselves to thrive in the current market:

1. Do More With Less

Creating a tailored message at scale can be intimidating, especially when companies consider the impact it can have on their advertising and marketing budgets. What slows down brands, however, is that they create the concept of an ad and then pass the template to other markets to replicate the design at a local level. This can create excessive duplicate work, which in turn, increases hours and costs.

Anna Luo, VP of Customer Innovation and Engagement for Jivox, believes Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) can help brands automatically generate all types of ad formats faster than humans can manage, maximizing the customer experience through personalized ads. In a world where things are very uncertain, brands can turn to DCO to continue catering to customer needs, even with a reduced budget.

2. Implement Interactive Experiential Content

The phrases “the new normal” and “in this uncertain time” have become a part of daily conversations in both our professional and personal lives, says Ryan Brown, head of brand strategy at Ceros. While these messages are top of mind, digital marketers are struggling to cut through the noise and reach their audience.

Research from PwC found 59% of global consumers felt companies had lost touch with the human element of customer experience. In a recent article for 60 Second Marketer, Brown discusses how brands can create memorable experiences for their customers by leveraging experiential content to improve overall engagement while using visually-compelling components like graphics, interactive content and videos.

3. Utilize Emerging Critical Technologies

The current economic distress isn’t entirely preventing investors from evaluating new opportunities. Instead, they are seeking out what they think will be requisite technologies once the world emerges from the pandemic. President of Audio OOH and CSO at Vibenomics Paul Brenner recently announced a $6 million Series A funding round, with plans to use the capital to expand beyond retail stores and into essential businesses such as convenience and grocery stores. Once the pandemic abates, Vibenomics plans to continue utilizing Audio OOH within these verticals and connecting with customers in locations where they shop and are ready to spend.

For more information on how SaaS companies are responding to the current pandemic, please visit our BLASTmedia COVID-19 resources page.

24 SaaS Companies Offering Tools to Help Businesses During the COVID-19 Pandemic

There are plenty of examples of SaaS businesses doing what they can to help customers, employees and communities navigate these uncertain times — including offering free products and services to help the communities who need them most. Here area few SaaS companies with offerings to help businesses during the COVID-19 outbreak:

Adzooma
Adzooma is making its tools for managing digital ads on Google and Facebook free of charge until June 1.
Atlassian
The company’s flagship products, including its Jira issue-and-project-tracking software, is now free for teams of up to ten people.
Aware
Aware is offering its Spotlight product, which allows employers to leverage a single, centralized view of all collaboration networks, for free through May.
Bill.com
The cloud-based payment processing solution is offering a free, three-month subscription.
Boardable
Boardable is offering its board engagement and management platform to nonprofits everywhere for free for up to 90 days in order to help board members communicate and continue board operations.
Box
The business edition, which offers things such as unlimited storage and data-loss protection, is now available for free for 90 days.
Breezy HR
The recruiting software company has made its live video interview and assessment capabilities free to all organizations for at least 60 days to ease the transition to virtual work.
Ceros
The experiential content creation platform is providing free access to the Ceros platform and ecosystem through Ceros Gives.
Enable
The rebate management software provider is offering its Essentials package, which lets users do things such as set up deals and create a central repository of them, free of charge.
EZ Texting
The SMS marketing software company is providing free emergency text alert services to municipalities, government organizations, and schools.
LogMeIn
Making “Emergency Remote Work Kits” designed for nonprofits, schools, and health care organizations available for free for three months.
Loom
The video messaging service is offering unlimited videos under its free plan through July 1.
Mediafly
Mediafly is offering a free, 60-day trial of its essentials sales enablement package, providing content management, reporting and analytics and live content sets.
Mindsay
The company, which focuses on the travel industry, is offering a complimentary three-month COVID-19 customer support chatbot for companies looking to help ease customer stress and reduce support costs by quickly answering customers’ virus-related requests.
Moz
The leader in search engine optimization technology is offering free access to Moz Academy through May with promo code “wegotthis.”
Lavu
Lavu is offering MenuDive, the company’s white-label online ordering and delivery solution for restaurants, for free to U.S. restaurants.
Okta
The security-focused cloud software provider is offering access to Okta Single Sign-On (SSO) and Okta Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).
RedMonocle
IT tools rationalization and consolidation solution provider is offering a free, rapid tools assessment for IT teams searching for ways to eliminate unnecessary software tools and save jobs.
Slack
Offering free upgrades to paid plans for teams working on coronavirus pandemic research, response, or mitigation.
Vena Solutions
The company’s newly launched Vena Agile Planning Quick Start package offers a four-month free subscription to the Vena FP&A platform.
Clarity Wave
To aid businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, Clarity Wave is offering a three-month free subscription to its employee engagement software.
airfocus
To support small teams, the collaborative product management, and roadmapping software is offering 6 months of their airfocus Starter plan for free.
Howuku
The website optimization tool is offering a discount on it’s paid offering to help businesses better understand website user behavior.
iAuditor by SafetyCulture
The company is offering 6 months of its health and safety inspection solution, iAuditor premium for free.

Even More SaaS Companies Lending a Hand

A number of publications, like Entrepreneur, Forbes and Inc., recently published lists of companies — including SaaS brands — offering free and discounted tools to help ease the burden of remote work. Here’s a quick round-up of some of those lists:

Is your SaaS company offering free or discounted services to help aid businesses? Tweet us at @BLASTmedia!

Earning SaaS Industry Awards: 4 Honors Pluralsight Won Before Going Public

Over the past few years, we have seen many longtime SaaS companies go public, including industry leaders, Slack and Zoom. According to Gartner’s latest Cloud report, analysts anticipate the SaaS industry to hit $116 billion in revenue in 2020. As the SaaS industry continues to grow, companies need to align on strategies that can help increase their awareness. Which, in turn, can help companies stand out amongst their competitors. One way to increase awareness is by winning business or industry awards.

For any industry, awards are a way to celebrate those who have achieved remarkable results. They offer a different perspective in terms of looking at competitors and how your company stands out from the crowd. While awards may vary in terms of categories and praise, for companies looking to IPO, awards provide third-party validation to venture capitalists and private equity firms possibly looking to invest.

Awards to Consider Ahead of Going Public

While applying for awards should be a part of every company’s marketing strategy, it is also a way to boost a company’s reputation. An example of a company that developed a successful awards strategy and increased its awareness leading up to its exit is Pluralsight.

Let’s take a look at a few awards Pluralsight applied for and received before going public:

Pluralsight’s award strategy was likely intentional. Although the company was founded in 2004, Pluralsight didn’t receive its first award until December 2012. Since first presented with an award, Pluralsight has been named on the Great Places to Work and Forbes Cloud 100 lists for multiple years in a row.

Forbes Cloud 100 – Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures produce the Forbes Cloud 100 in partnership with Forbes. The Forbes Cloud 100 recognizes the best private cloud companies in the world. The companies included on the list stand out for their growth, sales, valuation and culture. Forbes Cloud 100 recognizes companies for their reputation score derived from consultation with 540 CEO judges from their public-cloud-company peers. In 2017, the year before the company’s IPO, Pluralsight was No. 20 on the list, up from their No. 36 ranking in 2016. This award is still around today and many Cloud 100 alumni have since gone public.
American Business Awards – Also known as the “Stevies,” Pluralsight received a gold American Business Award in 2015 for Most Innovative Tech Company of the Year. This award recognizes the achievement and positive contributions of organizations. Pluralsight received an award for its innovative approach to providing an affordable online learning platform. This award is great for companies to show their customer retention as well as highlight previous acquisitions.
The SaaS Awards – In 2016, Pluralsight won the Best SaaS Product for Web Development. This award recognizes solutions that clearly meet the needs of developers. The SaaS Awards accepts entries worldwide and celebrates SaaS solutions across public clouds, as well as alongside private, single-tenant solutions, off-premise or on-premise.
Great Places to Work and FORTUNE Best Workplaces – Great Places to Work routinely awards companies for outstanding company culture with a variety of workplace-focused lists. Ahead of its IPO announcement, Pluralsight was included on the Great Places to Work Best Workplaces list three times. Pluralsight received recognition on two other Great Places to Work Lists: Best Workplaces for Women and Best Workplaces for Technology.

The value of winning an award can increase your brand awareness amongst prospective customers. so it is important to have a variety of general business accolades as well as a few industry-specific awards. Awards focused on company culture and the advancement of products can help catch the attention of investors and stakeholders.

To learn more about how an awards strategy can benefit your company, reach out to Lindsey Groepper.

SaaS Marketing Perspectives: Isabelle Papoulias

For our latest installment of SaaS marketing perspectives, welcome Isabelle Papoulias, CMO at Mediafly. Isabelle leads marketing strategy, awareness and demand-gen initiatives for sales enablement software company, Mediafly.

KIM: Explain Mediafly in a few sentences.

ISABELLE: Mediafly provides sales enablement technology – a combination of content management and sales presentations tools – along with advisory services that create dynamic, interactive, value-based selling experiences. B2B sellers use our tech and services to engage prospects with tailored, relevant insights in every interaction.

Common challenges we solve for our clients revolve around making the right content more easily accessible to reps at pivotal moments in their conversation to influence prospects into action, as well as giving marketing teams visibility into how the content they create is used by reps and whether it helps close deals.

KIM: How does Mediafly currently market itself?

ISABELLE: We are the typical B2B high growth marketing engine with multiple personas in the buying process, a range of Entreprise to SMB prospects and a long sales cycle. We use a combination of brand building/awareness and demand gen efforts that consist of both inbound and outbound. Although there’s been progress in the last two years, the sales enablement category is still growing and not well known. In fact, 93% of companies are still not using sales enablement technology, according to CSO Insights, so education and awareness-building is still needed to successfully feed the funnel.

KIM: Your background is in advertising and sales. How does that inform your role as CMO?

ISABELLE: While my background is from ad agencies, I joined Mediafly as a sales rep. That helped me uniquely when I was asked to lead marketing because I knew first-hand the Mediafly sales experience and what I felt worked and didn’t, and whatwas missing from the marketing/sales relationship. So, I was able to hit the ground running on the immediate priorities to support sales. The way this has influenced me for the long run is to always strive for a “sales first” mentality. Yes, my role is to build the brand and do all the marcomms things that marketing does, but the North Star for me is – will this help the sales team? How am I creating markets for sales? Am I doing my job as Chief ‘Market’ Officer? I won’t say we have everything figured out – there is still plenty to do – but we have certainly made a lot of progress and the collaboration between sales and marketing is getting stronger every day.

KIM: How is your success measured as a SaaS marketer?

ISABELLE: Pipeline, pipeline and more pipeline…and revenue. No surprises here.

KIM: How does PR fit into the SaaS marketing mix?

ISABELLE: PR is big for us. It goes a long way in building awareness and credibility, and ultimately, the perception of Mediafly as a leader in the category. Per my previous comment, because we are playing in a nascent category, we need to create awareness of the problem as well as the Mediafly name so that when sales (back to sales support!) reaches out to a prospect they have already heard of us. PR is the air cover. We want them to have a positive predisposition of us as a company in our space to want to engage and take the conversation further. I should say this is important across target audiences beyond prospective buyers – like potential investors too. Two years ago the Mediafly brand was not known – today we often hear “I have heard of you, I know who you are.” What PR can do has exceeded my expectations.

KIM: How do you measure PR’s impact on Mediafly’s success?

ISABELLE: Sales enablement technology is a crowded, confusing market, so we use PR to stand out in the crowd. Because of the stable of competitors we race against, we track share of voice (the sheer volume of coverage vs. our competitive set). Share of voice tells us a lot about market perception.

We also track average Domain Authority of coverage, traffic driven to our website from coverage and key message penetration. So, we’re answering the questions: Do the stories we earn impact our SEO? Do they drive demand? And, do they reach the right audience with the right message?

KIM: If you could market any other business, what would it be?

ISABELLE: Something related to fitness or dance – because these are my passions. In the tech space – I really like what HubSpot, Uberflip and G2 are doing.

SaaS as a Recruiting Agent: 3 Ways HR Can Utilize Tech for Recruiting Efforts

According to ManpowerGroup, 75 percent of companies struggle to find skilled candidates even with the record-breaking of job openings. To stay ahead of competitors, many human resources professionals see the need for technology to aid in recruiting efforts.

How HR departments can leverage technology to stand out

Companies and their human resources departments have many opportunities to use technology for recruiting and hiring. Tools include applicant tracking software, job search engines, and even social media. HR tech can also incorporate artificial intelligence to automate processes and enhance human efforts by reducing time on mundane tasks.

Here are three tips HR departments can utilize to use SaaS as a recruiting agent:

1. Simplify the application process

As Jason Carney, director of human resources for WorkSmart Systems, recently shared in an article for SmallBizDaily, “It is important to streamline the application process in order to prevent top talent from becoming disinterested.” According to a stat shared by Hireology, up to 60 percent of job seekers drop out of the application process. This is due to lengthy and complex applications. Making the overall process easier by limiting the application can help create more efficient use of time and keep a potential candidate’s interest in the company.

2. Humanize the experience

Breezy HR’s CEO, Darren Bounds, believes that HR technology can be used to humanize the application experience. “As reverse as it sounds, automation can help make those processes more humanized for both you and the candidate,” Bounds explains in a piece for HR.com, “Anything that can be automated through AI and technology helps to put time back in your hands in order to spend more time with candidates and less time filling out those documents.”

3. Relate with the younger generation

Technology as a whole can be used to entice younger generations. Companies can leverage their technology to relate to this tech-savvy workforce while they are looking for jobs. In a recent interview with The Lead Pedal Podcast, Jeremy Reymer, CEO of DriverReach, explains how outdated industries are implementing technology to relate with younger generations. He describes how the trucking industry is taking action with “more and more semiautonomous functionality, and all of the spaces that technology is being outfitted into the truck today, is a lure for drivers and attracting some of the younger audiences.”

Do you have a perspective that you would like to share about human resources technology and how to best use SaaS as a recruiting agent? Reach out to Lindsey Groepper to find out how BLASTmedia can help you join the conversation.

SaaS Media Connections with Moira Vetter, Forbes Contributor

Next up in our series of interviews with media: Moira Vetter. Moira is a longtime Forbes contributor, covering entrepreneurship and other stories that catch her eye. We talk with her on lessons she’s learned as a contributor and how PR pros and brands can maximize Forbes coverage.

KIM: What types of stories do you like to cover on Forbes?

MOIRA: My area of coverage, what Forbes calls a “swimlane,” is how entrepreneurs raise capital and manage money. Although this is typically what I cover, I try to diversify coverage with: stories of interesting entrepreneurs and their capital, stories about interesting methods for raising capital, operational realities of scaling businesses and capital/money challenges, or businesses specifically that provide capital/banking/financial services/etc.

KIM: In your four years as a Forbes contributor, how has the role changed?

MOIRA: Forbes has had a few different leadership changes in terms of editorial oversight, but they give us a wide berth in developing stories once we have met their initial test. My role hasn’t changed but my perspective on “what is interesting” has.

I wrote about many of the fundamentals of raising capital, scaling financially, etc. and have come to realize how much of this content exists and gets rehashed. I look for the stories others aren’t writing. This might include industries people don’t cover, non-traditional entrepreneurs, obscure aspects of money management like salary strategy, and other things. Ultimately, I’m looking for stories and there are many things that make one interesting. Sometimes it’s the entrepreneur’s own story and the money part is incidental to what is interesting about them. Sometimes, the entrepreneurs are entirely uninteresting but their sector or situation is fascinating. I also appreciate learning about business people in cities/regions that don’t get covered all the time — for example, as a Southeast/Atlanta business person I try to ensure that I get coverage for Southeast businesses.

KIM: How can PR people create working relationships with contributors?

MOIRA: It is important to understand what contributors write about, but not get into a formula. For example, if I’ve just written about a fintech startup, I may not be interested in immediately writing about another fintech business. Or, if I just wrote about someone’s Kickstarter campaign, I may not want to immediately follow that with another crowdfunding piece. It’s important that PR people don’t overly typecast the writer. The best relationships I have start with a message like, “I found the greatest story…you won’t believe what this founder has been through…or what this founder’s background is.”

KIM: What are your PR pet peeves?

MOIRA: We are all doing what we do to increase visibility for the clients and subjects we pitch and write about. My biggest pet peeve is when I’ve written an article and the PR person does nothing to share or amplify the coverage to help me increase my own viewership of the piece. Some PR people believe that “coverage in Forbes” is the end goal. To me, a story on Forbes is a “means to the end of visibility.” Getting your client covered in Forbes and having 300 people read it, isn’t really a success. I appreciate when PR people coordinate closely regarding when the story should appear and when/how they can help amplify coverage. I work with them on this to help me maximize the exposure my piece has to readers.

KIM: Can you give an example of a story you pursued based on a PR pitch?

MOIRA: Here are several stories I pursued because I was provided with great access to leadership, the stories were edgy enough to garner interest/viewership, the PR team was communicative about how/when I might publish based on an exclusive I had or other “breaking” trends that might signal to “go now!”

Also, here are a few stories I’d call failures, where a PR professional facilitated a story lead, interview or provided background information. There was enthusiasm in advance of the writing and once the story went live there was no further communication. The stories still took work, and I enjoyed writing them, but they did not gain the readership they might have if the PR person continued collaborating with me.

KIM: If you could be a fly on the wall in the boardroom of any company, which would it be and why?

MOIRA: I am interested in the companies — and people — that don’t ordinarily talk to the press. I want access to something or someone rare. I’d rather interview billionaires than millionaires. I want to interview serial entrepreneurs over entrepreneurs. In terms of boardrooms, I want to hear what the powerful companies are doing. My top 5 list is:

Berkshire Hathaway – Who are they buying and why? How do you keep growing when you’re as large as you are?
Exxon Mobil – What is the future of energy and who is your competition?
Fannie Mae – What are you going to do about this bubble and what happens if people stop going to college and borrowing student loans?
GE – What is going on around here? No one ever thought someone could fill Edison and J.P. Morgan’s shoes until you got Jack Welch. Now what?
Dupont de Nemours – I grew up in Delaware and I’m fascinated by all the things Dupont.