A common concern for tech startups is how to build a brand with limited resources and how to balance the effort required to develop great technology with the effort required to develop the brand.  Both can be major points of differentiation for an emerging company so I checked out a workshop called “PR and Marketing for Early Stage NYC Startups” last week and invited those interested from Dogpatch NY to come with.   There were a number of interested companies here in the Dogpatch that couldn’t make it but asked that I shoot them my key takeaways which are also the basis of this post.

The session was one of the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s initiatives to support the media and technology industry here — more info on their mission and schedule here.

The three PR/brand specialists who presented slides and took a few questions were Colin Nagy from Attention USA, Noah Brier from the Barbarian Group, and Mike Duda from Deutsch.  The notes below are pretty straightforward but always good to spend time thinking about, I tried to grab examples for the points they were emphasizing.

Brand needs to be a consideration in everything we do – perhaps right down to your email signature…

• Mint.com – a story 100% about brand and UI and not technology
  • The Mint brand always appears buttoned up
  • For Mint especially, given what they ask users to share with them, it was worth spending for the well branded and credible domain name
  • Mint ads, messaging and interviews are always referencing 3rd party validations of the service’s trustworthiness (magazine reviews, security reviews)

In promoting the Brand – start in the space right around you, with an audience that’s gonna get your value proposition and then move out in concentric circles.  Those in your space will get the message more quickly and will help you refine it.

• Snooth.com — started in the wine community, then promoted within the broader Gourmet community…
• There was more traffic to a design firm’s site from one article in a small design magazine  than from a feature in NY Times Styles section.

Reinforce your Brand on your About Us page – tell your story here, be authentic

Work on your customer feedback loop:

• Ask yourself — “how can we learn from our users?”
• Ask your users to “tell us something”
• Ask yourself “what have our customers been telling us”

Other Notes from the day:

• Allow your brand to be reinforced through community effects.  Tumblr emphasizes community heavily.
• When someone Googles you – what do you want them to be seeing from a Brand perspective?
• If your product is used in different ways, consider having different portions of your homepage speaking to those audiences.
• There is power for your brand in “powered by” statements by partners — it reinforces what you’re good at.
• Relationships with journalists:  It’s not about the big pitch (in fact releases with “for immediate release” on them may be filtered to spam).  Consider mini updates in quick, personalized emails on a recurring basis just to let them know the latest.  Share tips on related items that they’re interested in so that your emails aren’t construed as streams of pitches.

Hope these takeaways are helpful, would love for you to share your own insights or comments below.  You’re also welcome to ping me at mike <at>> collecta dot com .

But the Lab certainsly hasn’t! We’ve been busy beavers and the place is humming. The Lab itself has grown from 5 desks to 20, going to 35 by September 1. Amongst our current residents are EtherPad, Mr. Tweet, Foul Play, Umamibud, and some as yet unnamed projects. And a bunch of cool new startups have joined us down here at Pier 38, including Automattic, Threadsy, Poken, Social Gold and CoTweet, just to name a few.

Lots lots more lies ahead over the next couple months, starting with a blog redesign.

A new member of the Polaris team, starting Monday, will be based at the Lab — more on that next week.

And, we have a really exciting new project, called theStartProject, coming this fall.

Stay tuned!

To help welcome them to our ‘hood, we are hosting a “pitch day” here at the Dog Patch Lab. We are looking forward to having them here!

Collaborating with the various start-up “accelerators” is something we plan to do lots of, so expect to see more similar functions here at the Lab.

Stay tuned for content, if we can think of any. In the meantime check out what Dog Patch Labs is all about, and who we are.