The Amazing Story Behind EmergingTechPR
February 28, 2019 | Blog | No Comments
HKA is excited to re-launch its original EmergingTechPR site to provide up-to-date insights, information and key resources for companies seeking to take advantage of the market opportunities in this era of digital transformation.
Why re-launch a site dedicated to PR and marketing for emerging tech companies? Because HKA firmly believes that a radically new epoch in technology is upon us that will rival anything that came before it. And we see a need to fulfill the PR and marketing needs for startups providing the advanced technologies that support this new paradigm, as well as the companies large and small delivering unprecedented new services to both consumers and businesses.
But there’s more to the EmergingTechPR site than meets the eye.
The site was originally conceived and launched by HKA wayyyy back in 1999. At the time, HKA was conducting its usual exemplary work for a variety of emerging tech clients, and technology had become the bulk of its business. To help address the needs of those companies while also marketing the agency’s capabilities, HKA came up with the idea of a separate microsite to offer highly focused information and resources.
The site included static content with topic pages such as EmTechPR 101, PR Lingo and Dynamic Duo (a page on how to best work with your agency). The site also featured regularly updated sections including a PR Tip of the Week, Top 10 Tips and EmTech Buzz with links to relevant news.
But the real innovation was a section called AdvisorSpeak where expert articles were regularly published and archived by HKA CEO Hilary Kaye and a team of emerging tech company advisors, including venture capital firms, patent attorneys, bankers, management consultants, accountants and more.
Regularly refreshing website content was easier said than done 20 years ago. WordPress and similar programs that can now easily upload content and manage websites were years away from being invented, much less perfected. It took considerable resources of time, effort and money to make it happen. To her credit, Hilary had the vision and determination to make it happen.
How revolutionary was AdvisorSpeak? As far as we can determine, it was quite possibly one of the first commercial blog sites in the world, if not the first. If you look at the history of blogging, there were only 23 blogs on the internet in 1999, when the term ‘blog’ was first coined. They were almost all personal blogs – no businesses that we could find were regularly posting their own articles on their own site.
Hilary maintained the EmTechPR site for several years until her business went in new directions. However, she always held onto the site in case some day it would make sense to revive. That day has arrived.
We provide this background on EmTechPR to give you a sense of HKA’s deep roots in the technology industry, and how we share the entrepreneurial spirit and creativity of our clients. Also because, however inadvertently, we too were once an emerging technology company.
