High Tech PR: Honing the Edge to Your Competitive Advantage

People waiting on lines for hours (days, even) to buy the latest offering from technology giant Apple… While others flood websites with requests for some new gadget or another… What’s going on? Why do some technologies succeed and others fail? Other than technological breakthroughs or improvements, high tech PR – of course, strategically executed at the highest levels – can mean the difference in winning or losing in today’s highly competitive technology world.

It should come as no surprise that telecommunications is one of the fastest-growing industries in the country, following in its wake is the discipline of high tech PR in support of the myriad of gadgets, apps and other such things making their way to the marketplace. Personal remote conversation alone accounts for a huge percentage of new telecommunications products that have recently appeared on the market, and to build consumer awareness of new technologies and advances in old ones, companies are turning with increasing vigor to high tech PR.

Business deals, classes, friendships, and romantic relationships are increasingly being carried out over long distances and products such as Skype, Jahah, and Lycos Phone to name but a few and the providers of these services are engaging in fierce market competition. Firms that specialize in high tech PR have a huge amount of influence over the outcome of these struggles, for they shape the public’s understanding and opinions of the plethora of services that are available to them.

A good high tech PR firm has the connections, industry perspective, and strategic know-how to make a company’s product or service visible. High tech PR professionals can analyze a company’s brand and figure out how to make it more attractive to the target audience. They can connect with editors, reporters, hosts, and other controllers of media content in order to make sure that their client’s news gets reported. When news-worthy developments are lacking, high tech PR specialists can even create news. Telecom consumers tend to be rather tech-savvy, so exploiting social media channels such as Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter is an absolute must.

Of course, high tech PR pros do not overlook traditional channels for disseminating news and information about their client’s products or services. A carefully orchestrated high tech PR effort should aim for product reviews in highly influential publications and inclusion in major media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times. One such mention or review could go a long way to establishing credibility for an upstart or provide a needed boost to an existing product or service.

High tech PR professionals truly understand the telecom industry, and are often indispensible when it comes to staying ahead of the curve. Those working in high tech PR understand competitors’ products inside and out and strive to anticipate their next moves before they are made. This helps high tech PR professionals ensure that their clients are always riding the tide of innovation, rather than struggling to keep up.

And as it has been said, “with great power comes great responsibility.” High tech PR firms have a huge amount of power to direct market trends and outcomes within the telecom industry. This power must be harnessed correctly, for telecommunications products will surely play important roles in both casual and professional relationships of the future.