The media landscape has changed and continues to change at a rapid pace. This transformation has by extension changed the way we conduct PR (or rather should have changed PR).

We now have a wide arsenal of tools at our disposal to make people "pay attention," which has also blurred the lines between marketing, PR and advertising.

Embrace the ambiguity, because all three disciplines are aimed at building buzz for your company.

It is important to have a defined PR strategy from the outset.

One can think of attention as market share. Attention is a finite resource. To effectively capture it you must have a message and a strategy.

PR is a commonly neglected area when it comes to starting businesses, whether it be a high growth startup or a more conventional type of business.

From day one it is important to think about how your brand and your story will relate to users, to journalists and to investors.

A lot of businesses suffer from "shiny objects syndrome." It's easy to get distracted, which is why you need to strip your message to the studs. Your story needs to emphasize the value that you will provide.

The who question is just as important as the what, why or how.

Understanding who you are targeting with your communications efforts should be a cornerstone of your overarching strategy.

A Note on Service Providers:

Demand accountability. Understand what your goals are and make sure that your service providers are doing the right thing. (But remember be patient.)

When you are starting out you need to realize that there are hundreds of other startups out there looking for attention. You are but one fish in a very large pond. As such nobody cares about you yet.

The second bit of tough love here is, you won't have that much time to do PR, because you're busy doing other stuff (like writing code).