By PromptBoston

May 28th, 2015

Free online event: How to drive enterprise technology sales with PR

Free online event: How to drive enterprise technology sales with PR

Are your PR efforts leading to sales? Throughout June we’ll be hosting free online events for enterprise technology marketers and entrepreneurs that want to create more leads and sales. In a 50-minute, information-packed webinar we will detail practical ways and techniques to shift PR processes to link them closer to sales and generate leads.

Hosted by Hazel Butters, who has 17 years’ of experience in technology PR and sales, ‘How to drive enterprise technology sales with PR’ will cover:

• How to define your value proposition to increase sales
• The ‘sales-marketing’ gap, and how to close it
• Ten myths relating to PR and sales – and ten things you can do immediately to increase PR’s impact on your sales

Please join us and find out ways to change your approach to PR processes and to link them closer to sales. Register at: http://bit.ly/tech-PR-sales.

By PromptBoston

April 1st, 2015

The Prompt Byte: April 1, 2015

The Prompt Byte: April 1, 2015

	The how-to newsletter from Prompt PR		London 22 Upper Ground Eighth Floor London SE1 9PD Boston 745 Atlantic Ave Third Floor Boston MA 02111
	Welcome… Welcome to a mid-week edition of the Prompt Byte! We hope you’re soaring through the days productively. Today, spare a few seconds to learn what you’ll need to ask for in your upcoming crowdfunding campaign and when it’s right to use an apostrophe. Also keep reading if you’ve ever wondered exactly what a PDF is and why the format exists in the first place. Here for the answer to last week’s Geek Speak? It was said by actor and writer Al Boliska. Got it right? Then go grab yourself a treat and don’t forget to let us know your guesses this week. Oh, and have a great week! Hazel Butters CEO Prompt PR Twitter: @PromptLondon and @PromptBoston Facebook: Prompt London and Prompt Boston How to work out how much to ask for in a crowdfunding campaign The main point of crowdfunding is, well, to raise funds from a crowd. So you would think that every team heading towards a crowdfunding launch would have carefully done its math. However in our experience this isn’t always true. Every crowdfunder seems to know their financial goal, but the supporting calculations are rarely as strong as they should be. Some things to consider: It’s important to be very clear not only about how much money you need, but also why you need it, how you will justify the figure to potential backers, and how you plan to spend their money to reach your mission Be very clear about your vision. You need to communicate the core of your ambition so that potential supporters understand precisely which part of the world you want to change and how you intend to achieve it Have a good mix of rewards or perks, and make sure these support your goals. Don’t have too many rewards and don’t do that ‘annoying wedding list’ thing by which you either (a) only have an overwhelming array of cheap low-priced items, or (b) only have options for the big spenders (fridge-freezers, hand-engraved crystal glasses from Paris, grand pianos…) Give insight and details into any operations and finances to date. What have you raised or created so far? How have you spent and managed that money? And how has this past investment helped you to get closer to your mission? Don’t over-ask, however tempting. Because you are fully committed to your campaign you might almost feel like you have to ask for as big a bucketful of cash as possible. But over-asking can make potential backers wary Calculate all the costs of any rewards and add in at least a 20 percent buffer. We’ve seen campaigns slip up on the sudden unexpected costs of a backer event – even on t-shirts If you are offering rewards or perks that must be physically mailed out, be very deliberate and clear about who is paying the shipping costs. If it is you, then be sure you have a buffer for any unexpected changes in delivery charges. For example, we worked on a project with physical perks in which the first items sent backers required an additional piece to be shipped out – at the vendor’s expense Calculate every single manufacturing cost. If you are going to manufacture after crowdfunding, you may be working off estimates, so add in a further 20 percent buffer to ensure you are ready for any nasty surprises Have stretch goals at the ready. Factor these in at the planning stage, so if/when you reach your campaign goal, you are not left scrambling to plan Melius Prompt works in technology hubs on either side of the pond, so we’re always keen to get to know more about the innovators on our doorsteps in both Boston and London. Each week, we’ll interview a local startup to learn more about the technology and inspiration that can be found at home. Recently we chatted with RJ Irving, co-founder and CEO of Melius. This Boston-based startup develops an application that collects your basic financial information and identifies inefficiencies to help improve your money planning for the future. 1) Tell us a bit about Melius. Melius helps financial advisors with the front-end of their business. Most of the technology built for the financial space is geared toward making existing businesses more efficient. The trouble is that most people cannot build a business. That is where we come in. Melius is a simple tool that advisors use with their prospects to educate them about the building blocks of a strong financial plan. Built into our tool is a direct link between advisors and prospects to accelerate the on-boarding process. Most other fintech companies start with the idea of replacing the advisors all together. Melius is designed to enhance the human relationship, not replace it. Read more, here. Scanner Pro 5 Until you actually try and do it, you probably think that you’ve got scanning covered on your smartphone or tablet. Just take a photo, save it and mail it right? But actually doing this for multiple documents in a slick business-class way is another story entirely. The day you actually need this to go well and you find yourself hovering over a scribbled Moleskin on the ‘T’, you’ll remember that you could have bought Scanner Pro5 for less than three bucks. Developed by Readdle, the creators of PDF Office, Scanner Pro 5 transforms your device into a fast and capable scanner that quickly turns any paper document into a PDF ready to upload, mail or send to Dropbox or Evernote. It even does all the tricky edge-detection and geometry stuff for you – very handy for all your crumpled expenses paperwork!		Its versus it’s Ah, yes, the all too familiar confusion of its and it’s. The error is incredibly common and crops up in places one would never imagine, including many corporate websites and brochures. So how do you avoid a mistake that’s so easy to make? Well, it’s easy: Use it’s only when it is a contraction and you mean ‘it is’ or ‘it has’. But always use its and not it’s to mean belonging to it – the word it never takes on an apostrophe when it gets possessive. It’s hard for anyone to buy anything off you if they don’t (a) know you, (b) like you and (c) trust you. One of the best ways that your prospects can get to know, like and trust you is PR. That’s why we think that PR should support sales, and we know that great PR is sales-led. We’re always keen to share our views on PR and how it should support and drive sales. So we are holding a free 50-minute webinar on Friday April 3 at 11am ET (4pm BST) called: ‘How to drive technology sales with PR’. We’ll repeat the webinar (again, live) on Friday April 10, again at 11am ET. Please register at: http://bit.ly/technology-PR-sales (April 3) or http://bit.ly/tech-PR-sales-April10 (April 10). PDF “On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot – it is a silly place.” Unless of course, you happen to be John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems. Back in 1991, he outlined a document file format that he proposed to be independent of hardware, operating systems or application software. His idea was to make sharing documents easier for users amid a computing scene that was becoming increasingly disparate and fragmented, and relied upon people to use the same systems as each other if they wanted to share information in anything like its original state. Back then Warnock called his fledgling system Camelot, but two years later it was released as the PDF, or Portable Document Format. And 22 years later still, it endures as an enormously popular and accessible specification – particularly for scanning or digitally archiving paper documents. “One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” Without the help of Google, can you identify the voice behind this quote? Tweet us at @PromptBoston and @PromptLondon if you can. We hope you find our newsletter an interesting read. For any feedback on our newsletter, or to discuss how we can help you with your PR, marketing, social media/blogging initiatives, copywriting or surveys, please contact us using the details below. We are always delighted to hear from you. London 22 Upper Ground Eighth Floor London SE1 9PD Boston 745 Atlantic Ave Third Floor Boston MA 02111 info@prompt-pr.com | www.prompt-pr.com
	Copyright Prompt Communications 2015. All Rights Reserved.

By PromptBoston

April 1st, 2015

Rising star: Melius

Rising star: Melius

Prompt works in technology hubs on either side of the pond, so we’re always keen to get to know more about the innovators on our doorsteps in both Boston and London. Each week, we’ll interview a local startup to learn more about the technology and inspiration that can be found right here at home. Recently we chatted with RJ Irving, co-founder and CEO of Melius. This Boston-based startup develops an application that collects your basic financial information and identifies inefficiencies to help improve your money planning for the future.

1)        Tell us a bit about Melius.

Melius helps financial advisors with the front-end of their business. Most of the technology built for the financial space is geared toward making existing businesses more efficient. The trouble is that most people cannot build a business. That is where we come in. Melius is a simple tool that advisors use with their prospects to educate them about the building blocks of a strong financial plan. Built into our tool is a direct link between advisors and prospects to accelerate the on-boarding process. Most other fintech companies start with the idea of replacing the advisors all together. Melius is designed to enhance the human relationship, not replace it.

2)        What does innovation mean to you?

Innovation means so many different things. If I had to narrow it down to two they would be simplification and solving a problem from another angle.

3)        Why is New England such a hotbed for innovation?

As New Englanders it is in our DNA to innovate and look for a better way. A little idea about a government for the people by the people started here. We have been innovators since leaving our homelands to start and create new lives for ourselves.

4)        Do you have any concerns about New England’s growth and innovation culture?

My only concern would be that after this winter more and more people will question why they subject themselves to this climate. Most new businesses are location agnostic and with that freedom it gets harder and harder to endure eight feet of snow and single digit temperatures.

5)        What are some of the trends and challenges you’ve seen in the New England tech scene?

Not all tech companies are setting up shop in downtown Boston. We are seeing tech companies pop up in Portland ME, Western MA, Southern NH – really all over.

6)        If you weren’t based in New England, which city and/or country would you want to be based in and why?

If we were not based here in Boston, we would most likely end up in Denver or Boulder, Colorado. There are great people there, a great vibe, and you still get to experience all the seasons. But even when it does snow in the winter, it can also be 70 the next day. If we left the country there is a great fintech startup scene in Australia which I think we could get used too as well!

7)        If you could meet any single innovator (alive or dead) over a coffee, who would you want to meet?

I would want to have a coffee with Walt Disney. Hands down one of the greatest innovators I have studied. He went $1.5 million in debt in 1937, hot on the heels of the great depression, to make Snow White. It was the first of its kind, a full-length annotated film, and it grossed over $416 million.

8)        Name a piece of technology you’ve bought personally that you love – either recently or in the past – and why you bought it.

I just bought a MacBook Air to replace my MacBook Pro. The old one was only five years old, but the difference in weight and speed is night and day.

To learn more about Melius, please visit their website here. To be our next Rising Star, get in touch today. 

By PromptBoston

March 23rd, 2015

The Prompt Byte: March 23, 2015

The Prompt Byte: March 23, 2015

	The how-to newsletter from Prompt PR		London 22 Upper Ground Eighth Floor London SE1 9PD Boston 745 Atlantic Ave Third Floor Boston MA 02111
	Welcome… Happy Monday! Welcome to the Prompt Byte. This week we share thoughts on how to plan the distribution of a press release (hint, try to give your PR team more than 10 minutes’ warning); the difference between further and farther; the original meaning of BASIC and introduce you to a digital lost-and-found platform called Rejjee, based in Boston. Enjoy, and as always, happy reading! Hazel Butters CEO Prompt PR Twitter: @PromptLondon and @PromptBoston Facebook: Prompt London and Prompt Boston How to time a press release “We have something new and the press release is going out tomorrow.” It’s a phrase to make any PR consultant shudder. Yes, if it’s merger-and-acquisition news, or an announcement that simply has to be created and shared with no-excuses urgency, then this is not just permissible but a necessity — and every good PR person is equipped to turn around an important announcement in a limited timeframe. But if the announcement relates to something more standard: a product that has been in research and development for months or years, a business partnership, news of a new customer sale or implementation, research or survey work that has been compiled, then WHY the need to suddenly throw the news out without taking the time to plan when and how to share it? As a rough guide, we like to have any news scheduled in a rolling news pipeline, and to have a press release for deliberate pitching at least two weeks before it going to be released ‘in the wild.’ Longer is better, but we realize not frequently possible, and we certainly can and do work with less. Yes, there are differences in pitching to press in Europe and the United States. There’s a whole different way of working with embargos on both continents, and different press expectations on handling news. Today many vendors are simply too reliant on just ‘throwing releases on the wire’ and taking Google alerts, syndicated links and temporary online hits as ‘coverage.’ They are not deliberately planning news and miss the opportunity for it to be genuine, relevant and compelling to target press — and that’s a wasted release. You deserve more from your company news. So, take the time to make your announcement shine and ensure it reaches the right journalists, in the right way, and at the right time. Rejjee Working in technology hubs on either side of the pond, at Prompt we’re always keen to get to know more about the innovators on our doorsteps in Boston and London. Each week, we’ll interview a local startup to learn more about technology and inspiration that can be found at home. Recently, we chatted with Gary O’Neil, founder and CEO of Rejjee — a crowd-sourced lost-and-found platform set to revolutionize the way you find and replace your most prized possessions. Tell us a bit about Rejjee. Rejjee is in a category all by itself. We register, report and then replace stolen or lost goods through the use of a smartphone application. We are the first digital platform in lost and found that brings the added bonus of matching users with replacement partners — ensuring that their lost or stolen goods will be returned to them one way or the other. We work closely with insurance companies, law enforcement and retailers and the platform is free to use for retailers and the community. There is also a public incident-mapping feature — so you can report a stolen item in real time and alert others in the area. Unlike other finder applications, this is not a battery-driven device vulnerable to technology or process mishaps. It is a complete free SaaS system anybody can use. You can even use Rejjee to find your lost puppy. Read more, here. Network Toolbox This app really is ridiculously cool — if you like that sort of thing. Sure, you’ll need to have spent some hard hours/years sniffing networks and pinging endless silence to really appreciate Network Toolbox. But if you were that soldier then wow, this is like a normal civilian discovering Facebook or FlappyAngries or whatever on their phone for the first time. Get this. For less than five bucks (or four quid) you can analyse local and public networks from your phone. That includes IP and port scanning, rich device and domain information, ping (of course!), FTP/SSH/SFTP client, socket analysis, trace route, spider, Bluetooth detection, SHODAN and Morpheus search integration — too many techy things to throw a screwdriver at, basically. Do you KNOW how much this stuff cost in the 1990s? Well do you? Blimey.		Further or farther? Leading grammatical sources including Oxford English dictionaries increasingly refer to ‘further’ and ‘farther’ as interchangeable synonyms. It’s certainly the case that ‘farther’ is rapidly falling out of common usage, and that ‘further’ can now be used in any context without fear of ridicule or misunderstanding. However there remains an historical distinction between the two words, and sticklers for grammatical accuracy will still strive to discern between the two in specific contexts. Strictly speaking then, it is preferable to use ‘farther’ in relation to physical distances: “Is the mountain farther away than the river?” “How much farther is it exactly?” This is pretty easy to remember because the word ‘far’ is right there in the word. In all other circumstances though, ‘further’ works just fine: “I’m no further in my understanding.” “Did you get much further with your research?” Normally, we utilize this space to bang our own drum, but our hands are getting tired. So we thought we’d let some of our public relations and copywriting customers do the talking for us this week. “In Prompt we feel we have found a public relations company that matches our own personality. Together we are goal focused and strategic, targeting relevant media audiences in key territories, and concentrating on very specific markets. Prompt has understood our ambitions to produce some excellent and metric-based results to date, including opinion pieces, interviews and coverage in core automobile, aerospace and manufacturing press.” — Rick Burke, aPriori You can find more testimonials here. BASIC Most people above a certain age will be somewhat familiar with BASIC. For many of us it was the first general-purpose programming language that we bumped into, while ’10 PRINT “HELLO WORLD” 20 GOTO 10’ was frequently the first ‘computer program’ that would-be techies ever wrote. But fewer people know, or have even considered, that BASIC was an acronym. It is, and it stands for ‘Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.’ The language originated at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in the early 1960s, to help students outside of scientific disciplines use and understand computers. It was immediately well-loved and extremely successful, shipping with all of the successful microcomputers of the 70s and 80s, becoming established in education systems around the world. It’s less popular today amid a great deal of more advanced competition, but is still significant in the guise of Visual Basic (fundamental in the development of .NET) and, going back to its roots, was recently made available by Nintendo on its 3DS and DSi hand-held gaming consoles. “Do you realize if it weren’t for Edison we’d be watching TV by candlelight?” Without the help of Google, can you identify the voice behind this quote? Tweet us at @PromptBoston and @PromptLondon if you can. We hope you find our newsletter an interesting read. For any feedback on our newsletter, or to discuss how we can help you with your PR, marketing, social media/blogging initiatives, copywriting or surveys, please contact us using the details below. We are always delighted to hear from you. London 22 Upper Ground Eighth Floor London SE1 9PD Boston 745 Atlantic Ave Third Floor Boston MA 02111 info@prompt-pr.com | www.prompt-pr.com
	Copyright Prompt Communications 2015. All Rights Reserved.

By PromptBoston

March 23rd, 2015

The Prompt Byte: Rising Stars – Rejjee

The Prompt Byte: Rising Stars – Rejjee

Working in technology hubs on either side of the pond, at Prompt we’re always keen to get to know more about the innovators on our doorsteps in Boston and London. Each week, we’ll interview a local startup to learn more about technology and inspiration that can be found at home.

Recently, we chatted with Gary O’Neil, founder and CEO of Rejjee – a crowd-sourced lost-and-found platform set to revolutionize the way you find and replace your most prized possessions.

1. Tell us a bit about Rejjee.

Rejjee is in a category all by itself. We register, report and then replace stolen or lost goods through the use of a smartphone application. We are the first digital platform in lost and found that brings the added bonus of matching users with replacement partners — ensuring that their lost or stolen goods will be returned to them one way or the other.

We work closely with insurance companies, law enforcement and retailers and the platform is free to use for retailers and the community. There is also a public incident-mapping feature — so you can report a stolen item in real time and alert others in the area.

Unlike other finder applications, this is not a battery-driven device vulnerable to technology or process mishaps. It is a complete free SaaS system anybody can use. You can even use Rejjee to find your lost puppy.

2. What does innovation mean to you?

My partner and I started in the ad world years ago. In that world, we use the word ‘creativity.’ Creativity and innovation are two words that run parallel; but innovation goes a step further — the step of usefulness. If you can merge creativity and innovation, you have something special.

3. Why is New England such a hotbed for innovation?

New England celebrates education beyond belief. It is a perfect place for innovation, because it is all coming out of our universities. The churn of students, professors and ideas is enormous — it drives us all.

The West Coast is sunny, but our development and innovation district is fantastic. If you were holding a light bulb as you emerged from the “T”, it feels as if it could be lit just from the energy in the air. You can’t replace that.

4. Do you have any concerns about the New England growth and innovation culture?

The biggest problem for everybody is money. We need to build upon the investor community — angels, VCs — all of that. And you need money to drive that. You have to feed the engine, and the energy is money. Money enables creativity. The investors we’ve spoken with have provided invaluable feedback, but the fact remains that West-Coast deals have more zeros than East Coast deals. It’s the only thing holding the area back.

5. What are some of the trends and challenges you’ve seen in the New England tech scene?

Of course, medical innovation is rooted here in New England. But, its also worth looking at what the younger generation is doing — social apps and their revenue streams.

The collaborative nature of the actual people in New England is fabulous. More collaborating is welcome by everybody in the technology community.

But, we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what Boston can do. The 2024 Olympics would be an excellent stage to showcase this.

6. If you weren’t based in New England, which city and/or country would you want to be based in and why?

I would be in Key West. Of course, there is no innovation economy there … I’d just be sitting down with Jimmy Buffet, learning to love margaritas. To me, Boston is the only place to be. The churn, diversity, and the city itself is gorgeous — it has everything.

7. If you could meet any single innovator (alive or dead) over a coffee, who would you want to meet?

Jonathan Ive from Apple.

8. Name a piece of technology you’ve bought personally that you love — either recently or in the past — and why you bought it.

My smartphone. My MacBook Air. My Garmin multifunction display for my boat — it does everything. Though, I think the fish display is only designed to make me buy more Goldfish.

By PromptBoston

March 17th, 2015

Prompt to the rescue: New crowdfunding PR packages

Prompt to the rescue: New crowdfunding PR packages

Crowdfunding can be exhilarating with ups and downs against the backdrop of constant momentum. That’s why the team here at Prompt loves working on crowdfunding journeys.

Over the years, we’ve worked on many rewards and donation-based campaigns (think Kickstarter and Indiegogo, though there are plenty of others to choose from) campaigns to help bring innovative, creative and fun products, services and offerings to new audiences. We may come out the other side of a campaign a little tired, but never worse for wear – and with even more ideas and experience.

We’ve spent a long time bringing together all of our hard-earned crowdfunding expertise and created the perfect package – the Crowdfunding Rescue PR Package. It’s a step-by-step public relations program designed specifically forcrowdfunding campaigns.

We’ll provide you with a detailed review of current communication, media and PR activities – because you can’t get anywhere without proper analysis and planning. Then we’ll get going on coaching calls, Q&A sessions and some pre-made templates to nail down messaging, content, goals, media engagement best practices and ultimately, a customized launch plan.

Intrigued? Check it out here – you won’t want to hit launch without us.

By PromptBoston

March 2nd, 2015

The Prompt Byte – Rising Stars: Riskified

The Prompt Byte – Rising Stars: Riskified

Working in technology hubs on either side of the pond, at Prompt we’re always keen to get to know more about the innovators on our doorsteps in Boston and London. Each week, we’ll interview a local startup to learn more about technology and inspiration that can be found at home.

We caught up with Andy Freedman of Riskified; a company dedicated to eliminating the security risks and inefficiencies in the world of eCommerce. The Israeli startup has recently opened a new Boston office and we’re here to find out why.

1. Tell us a bit about what Riskified is all about and how it got started. 
Riskified is an end-to-end risk management solution. We help more than 2,000 eCommerce merchants to prevent online fraud by reviewing, approving and guaranteeing their orders. We launched Riskified with a goal to build the world’s best eCommerce fraud team. We stop online fraudsters and allow merchants to focus on growing their business without fear of fraud.

2. What does innovation mean to you? 
Innovation is the ongoing process of solving real customer pain. It involves endless iteration, learning by doing, and constantly validating your product or service by maintaining an active conversation with customers.
3. Why is Boston such a hotbed for innovation? 
As an Israeli startup opening our first US offices in Boston, there are several similarities between our two vibrant startup communities. As well as boasting a wealth of talent, Israel and Boston also share a sense of passion and pride for their local ecosystem. Each community seizes every opportunity to collaborate, rejoice in success and be vocal advocates for startups on a global scale.
4. Do you have any concerns about Boston’s growth and innovation culture?
I think it is natural to fear that successful Boston startups will be lured away into other markets on the promise of greater exposure and financial gains. However I believe that a key driver for the incredible growth we are seeing in Boston is a shared sense of pride in making Boston a global powerhouse across a wide-range of industries.
5. What are some of the trends and challenges you’ve seen in the Boston tech scene?
Having spent time living in both Palo Alto and Tel Aviv it has been fun to watch Boston’s emergence as a consumer technology powerhouse, alongside traditionally strong industries like SaaS, biotech and robotics. I look forward to seeing Boston continue to attract tech companies of all stages from other global communities – like Israel, Europe and Asia – and continue to expand our international reputation.
6. If you weren’t based in Boston which city and/or country would you want to be based in and why?
I may be a bit biased but Tel Aviv, hands down. Despite the massive weather upgrade (it will be in the 70s and sunny all next week), the number of game-changing products and services being built in such a small country is inspiring to be around.
7. Name a piece of technology you’ve bought personally that you love – either recently or in the past – and why you bought it. 
I finally started using my Cuisinart Food Processor that was given to me as a wedding present almost 4 years ago. Now I’m addicted. I’m looking for any recipes to try, so if you’re reading this and have any suggestions, I’m all ears!

To learn more about Riskified, browse their site or follow them on Twitter.

By PromptBoston

February 16th, 2015

The Prompt Byte: February 16, 2015

The Prompt Byte: February 16, 2015

	The how-to newsletter from Prompt PR		London 22 Upper Ground Eighth Floor London SE1 9PD Boston 745 Atlantic Ave Third Floor Boston MA 02111
	Welcome… This past weekend we celebrated Valentine’s Day, and the Prompt team is still thinking about love. How much we love public relations, copywriting, social media, crowdfunding, WordPress – the list goes on. This week, we’re particularly in love with boilerplates, the effect using the word effect could have on your writing, more polished podcasts, and more. Did you try and guess the voice behind last week’s Geek Speak? The answer is none other than Bill Gates. Don’t forget to let us know your thoughts this week on Twitter. Hazel Butters CEO Prompt PR Twitter: @PromptLondon and @PromptBoston Facebook: Prompt London and Prompt Boston How to draft a boilerplate (one that people won’t hate / laugh at / ignore) The term ‘boilerplate’ hails from the earliest days of printing. Text that would be used repeatedly and unchanged, such as syndicated or standing copy, would be cast in metal and distributed directly to newspapers by suppliers such as Western Union. Today it is still used to describe text (or code) that is used repeatedly and without change. In the world of PR, it most commonly refers to the paragraph (or two) at the end of a press release that describes a company and what it does. Perhaps because typing on a screen is a simpler process than casting words in metal, a lazy paradox has developed in a number of modern boilerplates. Often the more that is written, the less useful information is actually shared. Here are some tips to keep in mind when writing a boilerplate yourself: • It’s not War and Peace. If your boilerplate is more than two paragraphs in length then we’d recommend tightening it so that it only contains useful, factual information • Don’t be vague and state things such as ‘a leading provider of soup-to-nuts solutions’. We know it’s hard for companies to resist the self-proclamation trap, but try to be as informative as possible • Just the facts. The notion of a boilerplate is to help people (i.e. the press) that don’t know your company, understand what it does, where it is and so on. Include essential facts such as what your company manufactures, who it serves, where its headquarters is, how large it is, and whether it is public or private • Include numbers. Wherever possible, share relevant numbers, such as the size of your company in terms of employees, locations or turnover. How many years have you been in business for? How large is your retail or reseller base? How many countries do you operate in? • Demonstrate success. How many customers do you have? Can you name some high profile customers as examples? Include any highly acclaimed awards, but don’t talk about that obscure thing you won back in 2002; it looks desperate • Avoid acronyms, jargon or terms that won’t be understood by people outside your immediate market • Add stock tickers if you are publically held. Include your URL and any links to social media feeds that you are active on. Only include phone numbers if they’re relevant to the geographies you are sharing the release in – i.e. don’t include ‘Call us on 0800-boilerplate’ if you are only distributing the release in the UK • Keep it updated, fresh and relevant CoPatient Working in technology hubs on either side of the pond, at Prompt we’re always keen to get to know more about the innovators on our doorsteps in Boston and London. Each week, we’ll interview a local startup to learn more about technology and inspiration that can be found at home. Today, we’ll hear from Rebecca Palm, co-founder of CoPatient; a system designed to help enable patients to manage and minimize medical expenses. Tell us a bit about what CoPatient is all about and how it got started. It all started while my co-founder, Katie Vahle, and I were working at AthenaHealth. We consistently noticed that people weren’t paying their medical bills on time. Through research, we found that people were actually just confused and skeptical about what they owed with no resources to guide them. Together, we left Athena to create a technology driven, patient-centric solution. Just like that, CoPatient was born. CoPatient acts as every consumer’s trusted advisor for healthcare bills. We review and negotiate bills on the consumer’s behalf and typically find errors or overcharges on 80% of the bills we review. Read more, here. Overcast Apple’s Podcasts app has been under fire ever since its breakaway from Music with the launch of iOS 7. Users hate its clunky interface, the need to configure options in iOS General Settings, constant syncing and download errors, system crashes and more. Worse still, it comes perma-loaded with iOS 8 and you cannot get rid of it. So that’s another app to shove in your ‘Junk I don’t need but cannot delete’ folder along with all the other Apple apps you’ve found better alternatives for. Speaking of which, our current favorite podcast app is Overcast from Marco Arment (creator of Instapaper). Available in free or premium versions, Overcast offers downloads over 3G, remote storage, intelligent playlists, enhanced audio options, smarter search directories, social media integration and a generally happier, more reliable way of keeping up to date with Serial and the rest…		Affect vs effect Affect, effect; what’s the difference? One of the most common grammar mistakes could affect (or is that effect?) your entire writing style, and worse, your credibility as an author. Here is an easy way to distinguish these two words. The term ‘affect’ is almost always used as a verb. ‘Affect’ means to impact or influence an action. ‘Effect’ is usually used as a noun to describe outcome of the action, but it can be also be used as a transitive verb, in which case it means to bring about or make happen. You must always consider the subject and action you are writing about when using either ‘affect’ or ‘effect’. To make things clearer, here are some examples or the usage of these two tricky and occasionally interchangeable words: Here are some examples or the usage of these two tricky, and sometimes interchangeable words: • Incorrect grammar affects the quality of a piece of writing • This Prompt grammar tip has had a great effect on my writing skills • How can I affect the result? What will the effect be? Got a grammar question? Email us at grammar@prompt-pr.com. Linking PR to sales: The metric that matters This week we’re banging the drum about our commitment to PR linking back to sales. We think that it is so important, we developed PRISM — our ‘PR and Insight Sales-based Marketing’ methodology. PRISM outlines steps and processes to help technology companies to target, plan and execute sales-guided PR and marketing. While whitepapers, messaging documents, visibility, understanding, engaging influencers and securing column inches are each valuable, every businesses need sales to simply exist. If you’re a technology start-up, you know that you need PR and marketing, but more than anything you first need sales. Please register for one of our Friday webinars. We’ll show you how to communicate, connect and sell. Sign up today and attend ‘Get more customers: A sales workshop for technology startups‘. PBX A private branch exchange, or PBX, is the traditional on-premises business telephone exchange switching system, used to manage all the telephone lines and other telecommunications services required by a business or private organization. It manages internal and external calls, handles connections with the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and can also provide more sophisticated service such as conferencing, caller ID, call forwarding, paging, missed call notifications and more. The biggest downsides to an on-premises PBX were always the initial price of the equipment together with ongoing management and maintenance overheads. Today the majority of organizations — particularly rapidly expanding small businesses — instead opt for a secure, managed, virtual / cloud-based communications platform. These systems deliver all the functions of a traditional PBX (plus many more sophisticated features) as a flexible service that adapts and grows with changing business needs. “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” Without the help of Google, can you identify the voice behind this quote? Tweet us at @PromptBoston and @PromptLondon if you can. We hope you find our newsletter an interesting read. For any feedback on our newsletter, or to discuss how we can help you with your PR, marketing, social media/blogging initiatives, copywriting or surveys, please contact us using the details below. We are always delighted to hear from you. London 22 Upper Ground Eighth Floor London SE1 9PD Boston 745 Atlantic Ave Third Floor Boston MA 02111 info@prompt-pr.com | www.prompt-pr.com
	Copyright Prompt Communications 2015. All Rights Reserved.

By PromptBoston

February 16th, 2015

The Prompt Byte – Rising Stars: CoPatient

The Prompt Byte – Rising Stars: CoPatient

Prompt works out of technology hubs on either side of the pond, and we’re always keen to get to know more about the innovators on our doorsteps in Boston and London. Each week, we’ll interview a local startup to learn more about the technology and inspiration that can be found at home.

This week we hear from Rebecca Palm, co-founder of CoPatient; a system designed to help enable patients to manage and minimize medical expenses.

Please tell us more about CoPatient and how you got started.

It all started while my co-founder Katie Vahle and I were working at AthenaHealth. We consistently noticed that people weren’t paying their medical bills on time. Through research we found that people were actually just confused and skeptical about what they owed, and had no resources to guide them. Together we left Athena to create a technology driven, patient-centric solution. Just like that, CoPatient was born. CoPatient acts as every consumer’s trusted advisor for healthcare bills. We review and negotiate bills on each consumer’s behalf and typically find errors or overcharges on 80% of the bills we review.

What does innovation mean to you?

I think of innovation pretty simply. It really is just solving a problem in a new way to make a positive difference.

Why do you think Boston is such a hotbed for innovation?

We have so many highly rated institutions in the area bringing top-level intellectuals to the city. Mayor Marty Walsh is also making great efforts to support innovation and the success of startups. I know that he is appointing a ‘startup czar’ to help entrepreneurs thrive, and is also in the process of implementing a cross-departmental Office of Analytics to bring big data to city operations.

Do you have any concerns about Boston’s growth and innovation culture?

My biggest concern about growth and innovation in Boston is that the infrastructure and cost of living is prohibitive, making it hard for younger people to live in the city.

Describe some of the trends and challenges you’ve seen in the Boston tech scene?

Collaboration and community learning are very hot topics right now. Our office is located at WeWork, which is a co-working office space community. It has been described as a ‘physical social network’. Places like this are becoming more and more common today, allowing startups to collaborate, lean on each other and develop an entire community. In a cutthroat world, that is a great backbone to have.

If you weren’t based in Boston which city or country would you want to be in and why?

Hands down it would have to be Chicago. It offers so many of the same benefits as Boston, but on a larger and yet more affordable basis. It is also a major transportation hub, making it incredibly valuable.

Name one piece of technology you’ve bought personally that you love – either recently or in the past – and why you bought it.

While today it is considered outdated and old, I really loved the very first Nav System for my car. I remember that for my first job, I was constantly traveling and had to buy these massive foldout maps. Getting my hands on that little computer just changed my whole world.

To learn more about CoPatient, check them out on Facebook and Twitter.

By PromptBoston

February 6th, 2015

The Prompt Byte: Rising stars – Usability 24/7

The Prompt Byte: Rising stars – Usability 24/7

Working in technology hubs on both side of the Atlantic, we’re always keen to know more about the innovators on our doorsteps in Boston and London. Each week in our newsletter – The Prompt Byte – we interview a local startup to learn more about technology and inspiration that can be found at home.

This week, we garnered some great insights from Paul Blunden, creator of Usability 24/7 – a UK-based innovator revolutionizing multi-platform user experience. Get in touch with them on Twitter at @Usability247.

1. What does innovation mean to you?

Innovation is all about improvement. In some instances it means being brave enough to challenge the system. In others, it involves painstaking work to bring about incremental gains that result in positive change. It can be the work of one person or a team collaborating. It may not be a lightning bolt moment, but instead something seemingly trivial that still brings about a positive change. In the age in which we live technology is very exciting, but it is not the limit of innovation. In my view process innovation can be just as rewarding.

2. Please tell us about Usability24/7’s vision.

Our vision is to change the world one interface at a time (if we have to). We want everything to be usable everywhere, for everyone all of the time. If we achieve this then it will be better for businesses and better for consumers. No one has ever disputed the ROI of user experience (UX) and usability research with me. In fact, most agree that it’s a good thing. And yet not all companies invest in it. I set up Usability24/7 to address this contradiction. In order to achieve our vision we are building an international network of senior, experienced UX researchers accredited to our quality standards. We are making sure that they are familiar with our methodologies, all of which have been designed to be repeatable so that outcomes are not entirely determined by those conducting the research. We’re structuring our services in a pragmatic way so that our customers don’t feel that they are paying for things they don’t need. We have invested in technologies to allow us to conduct research with almost any device in almost any location, and then stream that research to the client wherever they may be. If the client doesn’t want a report then that’s fine; we simply provide a verbal debrief instead. It’s all about being customer-centric and delivering services that are easier to understand and buy, while at the same time ensuring that the value in the deliverable is clear for the client.

3. What do you predict or look forward to in 2015 with regards to London’s innovation culture?

It’s a really exciting time for London. We’re attracting talented people and combining that talent pool with investment capital and facilities. Incubators and hubs like the Google Campus are providing an environment where people can get together and develop their ideas. The job market for graduates is tough but I think that may drive innovation too. Young people, who can often be more fearless around innovation, strive for opportunities for work experience, and work harder to get their ideas off the ground. Major technology brands are injecting greater funds into the digital industry and driving individuals and organisations to be more innovative. This enables places like the Flux Innovation Lounge, which is genuinely driving innovation, to exist at all. Ten years ago these levels of financial investment simply weren’t available from big brands, and so the scale of innovation was different and the culture more constrained.

4. What trends and challenges have you seen in the London technology scene?

A slightly worrying trend I have seen over the past few years is that in some areas innovation and design seems to have become disconnected with users. UX designers are increasingly expected to act as proxy for understanding the user, but not everyone is Jonathan Ive! This is a major challenge because as mobile adoption has increased our understanding of user behaviour struggles to keep pace. Users, consumers, customers – whatever we want to call them – are using technology in ways that we don’t fully understand. For example, users complete activities across smartphones, tablets, PCs and laptops, often using all devices to complete a single task. Technology is not designed to track that diversity of horizontal behaviour, and is generally more suited to vertical action. This situation is going to become more complicated with the arrival of wearable technology into the main stream (think Michael Gove’s smartwatch), swiftly followed by different interface and display metaphors. All this in addition to putting remote drones in the hands of the public at large! With so much innovation and new technology reaching consumers, ensuring that it supports user behaviour is a major challenge. It can make or break an idea, however good that idea is. Innovators need to find new ways to understand users, get their ideas tested, and not be put off by failure.

5. If you could meet any single innovator (alive or historical) over a coffee, who would you like to meet? What would you ask them or tell them about?

I’d like to meet Sir Ken Robinson, an innovator in the area of creativity in business and in education. I think he has answered almost every question I have about how we can help people be more creative so I would simply tell him what a profound impact he has had on me and the way I think about myself, run my business, motivate my colleagues and bring up my children.

6. Please name a piece of technology you’ve bought personally that you really wanted, and why you bought it.

I’d prefer to talk about a number of pieces of usability technology which together fix a big problem in mobile research. It took me months to identify all the elements and work out how to use them together, but what they do is enable us to intelligently research people using mobile phones. The only alternative methods available previously involved attaching a camera to a phone or a person, and then have a researcher lean over the shoulder of the participant. Either that or use a software solution like Reflector which often proved unreliable over wireless networks. The new technology I’ve assembled now allows me to display the screen of a mobile phone on a test laptop which a researcher can see easily. We can then record and even stream the results to clients viewing remotely. It has literally changed the way in which we work, and it’s brilliant.

By PromptBoston

January 30th, 2015

The Prompt Byte: Rising stars – Mobco

The Prompt Byte: Rising stars – Mobco

Working in technology hubs on both side of the Atlantic, we’re always keen to know more about the innovators nearby. Each week in our newsletter – The Prompt Byte – we interview a local innovator to learn more about technology and inspiration on both sides of the Atlantic.

This week, we talked with Ulrik Van Schepdael, the founder of Belgium-based Mobco. Mobco is helping companies mobilize their IT infrastructure with secure device management and mobilizing applications.

1. What does innovation mean to you?

Innovation is for me the practical application of an invention (technology, process, ….). One of the key roles of our company is just to do that for our customers. We scan the mobile technology, apps and possibilities and translate that into practical and applicable “tools” for our customers businesses.

An iPad in business is not an innovation as such, but the fact we can remotely configure those devices and enable mobile sales or field force to do their job more efficiently, that’s innovation.

2. Tell us about Mobco’s vision:

There is an evolution ongoing where the IT department gradually no longer

‘purchases’ employee hardware. Focus now goes to the management of the Corporate Data and Apps on those devices. That’s certainly true for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, but this is also the trend we see happening with Macbooks and Windows 8.1/10. In our vision we see IT evolving from controlling hardware to controlling data. Our job, our mission, is to support the business in that transition, hence our baseline: ‘we mobilize your business’.

3. What do you predict or look forward to in 2015 with regards to Belgium’s innovation culture?

When we started 5 years ago with Mobile Device Management people looked at us and asked us ‘why’? Today, we see that every IT integrator has a mobile offering, and that’s great. Mobile is generally accepted in the business, no doubt about that. For 2015 and beyond, this mobile innovation trend is becoming more

important than ever before: companies are actually thinking mobile first. Or better – they’re basically thinking out of the (PC) box. This opens new opportunities and new possibilities. Doing business in Belgium is typically only possible on a small scale given the size of the market, the language. With the rise in importance of mobile technology, it’s no longer an issue and the market is global.

Nobody in our region should feel like “if I’m not in Silicon Valley, I will fail.” On the contrary, you’re better of NOT being in SiliconValley – the talent you need might live next door and you will not suffer from fierce HR competition to get it. Traditional businesses need to re-invent themselves (see the rise of online sales versus traditional sales) and new technology brings new opportunities for innovation, also on a small scale.

This is for me the trend forward, it’s smaller IT companies, innovative companies with in-house expertise. Companies with a focus. You could basically compare it with the trend we’ve seen in retail, we all saw the small shops disappearing in favor of the oversized supermarkets.

The consumers are turning their back to supermarkets if they want special advice, but for fast shopping of the basics the supermarket is fine. Bottom line; in IT we see the large integrators and operators suffering from cloud services which are providing the ‘basics’ and we see small expert companies providing the ‘top value’ the business needs

4. What are some of the trends and challenges you’ve seen in the Belgium technology scene?

The challenge in Belgium is currently no different than anywhere else. I believe we have just as much talent as anywhere else. This makes the challenge universal.

Business apps that are specific to the local economy and focused on the business are the 2015 opportunity.

5. If you could meet any single innovator (alive or dead) over a coffee, who would you want to meet?

Steve Jobs would be top of mind. I admire the way he built values that are used today to create new products and the way he took the computer industry from “look how fast this PC is” to “look what you can do with this device” – an innovation on its own.

6. Name a piece of technology you’ve bought personally that you really wanted (recently or a past purchase) and why you bought it.

I buy a lot of stuff and not all experiences are brilliant I must admit… but there is one I want to share with you and that’s the Harmony Home Hub. This ‘hub’ is simple to set-up, simple to use and combines basic technologies to deliver a user experience you’re looking for.

It combines Bluetooth for your remote control, no more point and shoot to reach the TV or amp, it interprets your commands into signals IR to different devices at once and you control the whole set-up over Wi-Fi via a web interface that knows just about any brand and device out there.

It comes for 100 USD and solved all my home remote problems. I’m not saying we’re doing the same in our business, but we do simplify the life of the IT admin and take away the mobile complexity. At the same time we enable more functionalities on the mobile devices and we do bring a brilliant user experience to the employee!