50 months of Presscloud: everything that has changed

50 months of Presscloud! An anniversary certainly worth celebrating. What a journey it has been so far! From a dusty concept to a dynamic company full of automations. In this blog, we discuss the major developments and lessons learned.

The foundation

At the end of 2019, PR guru Aaron Mirck (now Bureau Mirck) had a eureka moment. As a freelance PR consultant, he handled PR for Startups of the Year Shypple and Travis, among others. According to him, PR didn't need to be complicated. If he could bring a company into the news, anyone could learn to do it. With that thought, Presscloud was founded. Everything Aaron knew about PR could be found on Presscloud at the beginning of 2020, so all marketers and entrepreneurs could become PR pros.

He didn't do this alone. The guys from Pockies, the underwear brand with pockets, also noticed that PR can be a very powerful marketing tool. Because they themselves appeared a lot in the media with Pockies, they grew very quickly. Thanks to great PR campaigns, they sold more than 200,000 underwear. They just missed the right tools to fully realize their PR ambitions. Then Presscloud came to life.

The concept

The foundation was accompanied by a lot of media attention (such as here, here, here, and here). Presscloud was labeled as the 'IKEA for PR': with Presscloud's tools and knowledge, companies would no longer be dependent on PR agencies. Thus, organizations could save on their marketing costs.

This largely remains unchanged. Presscloud is still dirt cheap, making PR accessible to everyone. We still believe that PR should not be a luxury that only large companies can afford. Everyone deserves the chance to tell their story, gain brand awareness, and grow their brand.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) integration

To keep it truly accessible to everyone, it was necessary to integrate AI into the platform. Everyone has a story, but that story must be told well. Entrepreneurs/startups/scale-ups/companies themselves are busy enough with their own business operations, which often didn't do much for the quality of the press release they wrote on Presscloud. Low-quality press releases have a small chance of being published, so we offered a solution: the Presscloud AI Generator™. With this, users can have a professional press release written within 1 minute, based on the information they provide about their company (news).

This was supplemented by the Presscloud AI Press Lists™, with which users can generate a relevant press list with one click. In a nutshell: our smart algorithm analyzes the newly written press release and selects the right journalists, ensuring that the message reaches the right people (and saves you a lot of time!).

Lessons learned

In the past 4 years, we have learned a lot as a company. One of the most important lessons learned is: overcome & adapt. The epitome of this was, of course, the corona crisis, which affected many companies, including Presscloud users. We wanted to help them with this, for example through advice in our blogs. The result: success!

A lesson learned related to this: be flexible. For example, you can see in the image below the transformation our platform has undergone, partly due to the wishes of our own users. Instead of sticking to what we think is good, we listen carefully to these wishes and act on them. In addition, we try to be as flexible as possible as a company in our account management, customer service, and with payment arrangements in exceptional cases.

As our director said recently: unlike many other companies with more guidelines, we still operate fairly freely, obviously taking into account the wishes of our users. Even after these 50 months, this makes Presscloud still the platform that thinks with you and wants to make your story a success.