Talk is cheap, startup failure and how to avoid it. Advice for startups by Leanne Ross

By Leanne Ross Digital Comms for @utility_bear #PR industry blogger #TalkIsCheap author. “Talk Is Cheap: The Digital PR Your Startup Needs (But Can’t Afford)” is available to buy in paperback or Kindle ebook on Amazon now.

Startup was 2015’s business buzzword. In Belfast alone, 10% of the business community is made up of them.

Ireland has been dubbed the latest tech-startup hub to emerge outside of Silicon Valley. So much so that come November, up to 400 delegates will attend the global Startup Nations Summit in Cork, making Ireland the first ever European host country.

Yet despite the plethora of ideas, talent and angel investment on the island, very few startups succeed. Even fewer reach the bedroom-to-boardroom mythology of Facebook and Apple.

I wanted to change that. This month I released her how-to book “Talk Is Cheap” to enable startups to manage their own Digital PR.

The book takes the reader through each stage from the secrets to finding media contacts online, what to write in pitches, ideas for events and promotional desk drops, how to blog as a business, marketing on social media as well as evaluating the work for funders and how to outsource the best freelancers or agencies when the time comes to put money behind your marketing.

Exposing the ‘Dark Art’ of her industry could help startups avoid failure;

In CB Insight’s research on the top 10 reasons startups fail, number 2 on the list is running out of money. Number 8 is poor marketing. Hiring expensive agencies and consultants to help with that marketing no doubt eats into the vital funds needed to grow startups into successful businesses.

I don’t believe what I do is rocket science, and I know most business owners are capable of doing it, with a little help. If they try and find they can’t do it so well, at least they can feel educated about what we in the industry actually do and what it’s really worth before they shell out for it.

I want to support this exciting element of our economy and I’ve loved my time working with startups like UtilityBear.com, Titanic Creative Management, Cinch Corsets and the RepSelfie App.

But I’m in the service industry. We sell our skills by the hour, and we only have so many hours in the day. I tried to find how-to books but the most recent I could source was from 1998 (it had a section of faxing journalists!) Technology is moving every other industry forward but I felt that PR and Marketing was a bit behind in that respect, with old fashioned service models and pricing structures, so I went ahead and wrote my own digital guide.

Belfast has been dubbed the 18th Best Place in the UK to start a business. A 2015 survey by Tech Nation revealed that Belfast is one of the UK’s fastest growing clusters for technology, thanks to the burgeoning number of digital companies that have launched in the city since 2010.

“Talk Is Cheap: The Digital PR Your Startup Needs (But Can’t Afford)” is available to buy in paperback or Kindle ebook on Amazon now.

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