Glenn Kelman, president of Redfin (where I work), wrote the following article about do-it-yourself public relations:

 

This is a pretty good summary of a brown-bag talk he gave in the company last week, along with our one PR person: Cynthia.

 

Being a developer, and having worked at Microsoft for most of the last five years, I've never had to think that much about PR.  I always had a vague notion that you need to be careful about what you say to the media because your quote can be taken out of context, used against you, and there might even be something in your job contract that could get you fired for it.  So it was refreshing to find out that Redfin doesn't have a formal policy on what to say and what not to say to journalists (other than financials, which makes sense as we're a private company).  Redfin is big on honesty and transparency, and this affects both how we interact with home buyers/sellers and how we interact with the media.

 

For me the most interesting part was to hear Glenn describe how to approach journalists by always suggesting a story, one that doesn't begin with "my company is so great because..."  The idea is that journalists have zero interest in making you famous, but every interest in writing a good story that gets noticed (thereby making themselves famous).  So, you need to get inside their heads, figure out what sort of cultural trends they find interesting enough to cover, and then identify the ones that you are a part of, the ones where your role as an "insider" makes you a quotable domain expert.

 

I'm not sure if I'll ever apply this advice directly -- it's possible the rest of my career will remain squarely on the tech side of technology.  But it's great to learn something about other aspects of running a business.