How tech companies can effectively leverage media professionals for public relations

More and more companies prefer to hire former media practitioners: they know how to communicate, have excellent writing skills, have seen grand scenarios, and can respond to the chief editor's jokes appropriately at dinner parties. But between "having worked in the media industry" and "being competent in public relations", there is a complete set of professional skills that are developed against the instinct of journalism.

The Night Before the Press Conference, He Deleted the Word "Apology" from the PPT

At 1 a.m., an industrial software company in Suzhou was conducting the third rehearsal for its new product press conference. The new LOGO was displayed on the large screen, and more than 20 media outlets, two securities analysts, and a client CTO who entered the venue quietly sat under the stage. Gu Bei, head of public relations — a former investigative journalist for a financial media outlet — suddenly stopped the process, asking the technical team to delete the sentence "We sincerely apologize for the troubles caused to users by the instability of previous versions".

His reasoning was very typical of a journalist: "Showing weakness will be taken as a handle, and the headline the next day will be *A Certain Software Giant Publicly Admits Out-of-Control Quality*." He revised it to: "We have perceived the challenges under complex working conditions, and we respond to them in an engineer's way." The marketing VP's face turned pale immediately, because the most anxious client in the audience never wanted empty nice words, but "whether you have made the modification, when the modification will be completed, and who is in charge".

The next day, the reports did not turn into a public disaster as feared, but they also failed to build sufficient trust. Worse still, the client CTO asked the salesperson after the meeting: "Are they afraid to admit the problem?" This remark was passed back to the company through the business channel, and it was colder than any negative review.

This story is not new in the tech public relations circle. More and more companies prefer to hire former media practitioners: they know how to communicate, have excellent writing skills, have seen grand scenarios, and can respond to the chief editor's jokes appropriately at dinner parties. But between "having worked in the media industry" and "being competent in public relations", there is a complete set of professional skills that are developed against the instinct of journalism. Media practitioners are used to chasing the sharp edge of truth; public relations needs to manage relationships, expectations, order and time. The former dissects the world for people to see, while the latter builds bridges on cracks, without making the bridges look like advertisements.

The problem is not whether media practitioners can switch to public relations. The problem is that companies often directly place an excellent content producer in a position that needs to bear business results, and then feel surprised that he is not as "steady" as veteran PR practitioners.

The conclusion is: it varies from person to person.

Timing, favorable geographical conditions and support from people. Obviously, the best window for media practitioners to transform into public relations practitioners has passed.

Chen Lang's Mistake: Treating the Enterprise as a Feature Story

Chen Lang, a pseudonym, covered the technology and capital sectors for a mainstream media outlet for 8 years. The character feature stories he wrote could make interviewees moved to tears, and also force the IR team of the named company to hold an emergency meeting overnight. One year, he was recruited by an AI chip company to be the top PR executive, and the CEO gave him a very artistic expectation: "Help us convey the dignity of our technology."

In the first six months, the company's public influence did rise significantly. Chen Lang built a set of "hardcore romance" narratives based on the founder's engineering background, three failed tape-out experiences, and the verification lab at 4 a.m. Media outlets loved the story, colleagues felt proud, and even the financing materials became thinner — because the story spread on its own.

In the seventh month, an overseas report questioned the "actual value" of the company's orders. Chen Lang's first reaction was the excitement that belongs to a journalist: he checked every point one by one, looked for counter-evidence, and prepared a 10,000-word counterattack. He stayed up for two consecutive all-nighters, and the evidence chain he sorted out was as perfect as an award-winning investigative report. But he could not answer the three questions raised by the board of directors: What is the attitude of rating agencies? Are the renewal terms of key customers misinterpreted? What caliber should the CFO follow at the earnings briefing three days later?

Doing public relations well is obviously far more than just writing good articles.

Public relations does not mean refusing to write counterattacks, but first confirming who the counterattack serves for. Media thinking tends to default that "you are safe as long as the facts are correct", but the capital market values certainty, customers value delivery capacity, and employees value no unnecessary disturbances. The article Chen Lang finally released was factually correct, but the logic order was wrong: he first played the emotional card, then supplemented the data, and finally arranged for executives to accept long interviews with two authoritative media outlets. Once the rhythm was wrong, even the correct materials sounded like excuses.

After he left, he wrote in the review: "My biggest asset is that I can smell a good story, and my biggest liability is that I always think bad stories can only be suppressed by good stories." This sentence is worth posting on the wall of many PR departments.

In the end, he returned to self-media to do what he is good at: telling stories.

Lin Wei's Budget: Top-tier Media Resources Are Appealing, But They Cannot Solve Crises

Budget management is the second most common stumbling block for media practitioners switching to public relations. Media people are familiar with "which media outlets have great influence", but not familiar with "how to allocate funds reasonably to resist risks".

Lin Wei, a pseudonym, former chief editor of a technology magazine, joined a new energy hardware company as a senior executive. In her first year, she allocated most of the budget to three or four top-tier media outlets and a luxurious press conference, and the results were remarkable: the boss was very satisfied and shared the news on his social media, and the sales team said customers finally knew about their brand. In the second year, public opinion broke out about a certain batch of products in high-temperature cities, short-video platforms were the first to spread negative content, and screenshots of "don't buy this brand" appeared in shopping guide groups. Lin Wei tried to find media outlets to explain, only to find that there were many regular positive reports, but when searching for "brand name + failure", there was no stable, quotable technical explanation provided by the company; customer service scripts lagged far behind the situation, and agents made random statements; there was not even a unified fault tree diagram for public reference.

Her lesson is not that "investing in top-tier media is wrong", but that she treated the PR budget as brand perfume rather than an airbag. Perfume determines how far people can notice you, while the airbag determines whether you can still speak after a collision.

Later, the company reworked the budget with a simple practical model: Target × Risk × Evidence. The target clarifies whether the priority is traffic, business leads or trust; the risk is scored according to industry volatility, with hardware industry higher than SaaS industry, and To C business higher than To B business; evidence refers to assets that can be cited by third parties — white papers, test methods, fault response SLA, public contact email, and FAQ reviewed by the legal team. The approximate proportion is: 50% invested in year-round "retrievable trust assets", 25% for key narratives and high-quality content, 15% for press release and media operation, 10% as contingency fund, specially reserved for unexpected crisis weeks no one wants to encounter. Lin Wei said: "I used to think public relations is spending money to be noticed. Now I realize that high-level public relations is spending money to remain credible even when no one is watching."

Many budgets seem to be wasted. But no one knows that they are used to prevent risks and avoid unnecessary panics. People in the industry all understand this. This is the real market environment.

Lin Wei's literati temperament must adapt to the rules of this industry.

Zhou Heng's Red Line: People Who Are Good at Writing Need to Be Restrained by Complete Systems

The third risk is more hidden: former commentators and former chief editors naturally have the aura of "daring to express their opinions", but corporate expression is not personal column, and you cannot pursue the pleasure of speaking freely in every sentence.

Zhou Heng, a pseudonym, former chief political and financial commentator, joined a platform technology company. He thought the company's external responses were too conservative, and often bypassed the approval process to post "tough battle manifestos" in internal groups. Once during the internal discussion on new regulatory rules, he rewrote the unimplemented rectification plan into a draft open letter, with gorgeous wording and sharp tone. The draft was not released, but it was screenshot and spread externally, causing public misinterpretation that "the company is confronting the regulators". There was no large-scale public opinion storm that day, but several key stakeholders became dissatisfied: the regulatory side, investors, and the strategic client who was about to sign the cooperation contract.

The hardest lesson for media practitioners switching to public relations is not forbearance, but distinguishing "what can be said, what can be said later, what cannot be said, and who is the right person to speak". A good system is not a gag order that blocks your mouth, but turns expression from random genius inspiration into an auditable process: what facts can be made public, who confirms the information; what is the boundary of opinions, how the legal team marks the red lines; who has the final decision-making power in a crisis; whether "quick profit" operations such as hiring internet trolls, releasing fake evaluation content, and buying hot search positions are absolutely prohibited. Later, Zhou Heng set three rules for himself: do not touch undisclosed major information, do not use fake identities to guide public opinion, and do not expose internal debates to the public. He found that the red line is not a restraint, but a protective sheath that prevents the sharp edge from hurting people inside the company.

Learning not to speak, learning to keep silent properly, may be the first lesson for media practitioners to transform into qualified public relations practitioners.

Shen Zhou Who Did It Right: Admit Your Ignorance First, Then You Can Talk About Mastery

There are also successful transformation cases. Shen Zhou, a pseudonym, former industrial economic journalist, took a very humble attitude when joining a robotics company: "I know how to ask questions and judge the value of stories, but I don't know how to manage budgets, don't understand crisis classification, and don't know what investors expect. Assign me a partner who is familiar with the operation process." The company really assigned a veteran PR with COO working experience to cooperate with him. The two reached a three-point agreement: Shen Zhou is responsible for the overall narrative framework, executive expression training, and in-depth interviews with key media; his partner is responsible for public opinion monitoring, classified crisis response, compliance review, channel management and activity ROI statistics.

They first launched the "90-day fact sorting project": interviewed 12 of the most demanding clients, without any flattery, only asking "at what moment did you almost give up on our products"; listed the shortcomings of after-sales service, supply chain and algorithm into an internal red book; prepared one page of clear evidence for each frequently raised external query; executives received "unpleasant question training", not to learn to be tactful, but to learn to give clear facts, response boundaries and follow-up plans within 10 seconds. They did not hold large-scale events or release almost any press releases in 90 days. Until a competitor made a sudden attack at an industry exhibition, questioning the safety redundancy of their products. Shen Zhou did not rush to grab the microphone, he only played a real shooting video of the customer's factory, then the CTO explained the failure logic clearly, and finally the safety officer announced the public test window. The reporting calibre of all media was naturally unified, because what is truly unified is not the press release, but everyone knows what the real facts are.

Shen Zhou put it bluntly: "My background as a journalist does not make me better at speaking, but makes me more afraid of fooling others. You can fool readers for a day, fool the market for a year, but fooling a client for even one second may lead to losing the order."

Confidence is very important. But knowing your own shortcomings is even more important.

Shen Zhou's subsequent career development can be said to be very smooth.

Seven Principles: Don't Take Media Career Experience as a Public Relations Qualification Certificate

If tech companies want to make good use of former media practitioners, the first principle is not to let them "work independently". Assign them a process-oriented partner, a legal liaison, financial thinking guidance and frontline sales feedback. Journalistic ideals are responsible for igniting motivation, and processes and systems are responsible for preventing the motivation from causing unnecessary losses.

Second, use media practitioners' questioning ability as the "external hearing organ". Let them regularly interview the most demanding clients, lost clients, short sellers, regulatory researchers, and after-sales engineers, and the output is not praise articles, but a risk map of "where our company may go wrong". The ability to ask follow-up questions is more valuable than the ability to write articles.

Third, turn emotional anger into standardized procedures. Media practitioners are sensitive to unfair phenomena, which is a good quality; but public relations work cannot only rely on personal indignation. Every time you feel strong dissatisfaction, you must sort out a check list: are the facts verified, who are the stakeholders, how long is the influence window, who will sign the response, where the evidence is stored, and when the review meeting will be held.

Fourth, allocate budgets according to risks and assets, not according to personal preferences and impression. At least reserve a sum of "seemingly boring funds": for knowledge base construction, SEO optimization, FAQ sorting, test method formulation, and customer service escalation path improvement. These investments are not eye-catching, but they work like a backup generator in the basement when an accident happens at night.

Fifth, train a second professional skill. Media training makes people understand texts, but public relations work also requires understanding the whole organization: how the finance team recognizes revenue, how the sales team loses orders, what clauses the legal team focuses on, and why engineers hate unreasonable deadlines. Only when you understand the operation logic of the organization can your narrative not be ungrounded.

Sixth, let former journalists play the role of the most difficult audience. Before the executive press conference, don't only rehearse nice pre-written Q&As, arrange them to play the role of malicious questioners, disappointed clients, and regulatory inquirers. A real problem can save a whole press conference, and a false polite remark can destroy the trust accumulated in a whole quarter.

Seventh, the company must retain someone who dares to say "no" to PR practitioners with media background. This person does not necessarily understand communication, but he clearly knows the boundary: he can point out that the story is very good but cannot be told now; the press release is well written but lacks sufficient evidence; the emotion is in place but the statement exceeds the authority. Without this "no", all the intelligence will push the team to the wrong direction at an accelerated speed.

Back to the Suzhou press conference mentioned at the beginning. Later, the company did not replace Gu Bei, but assigned him a partner who had managed customer success in the manufacturing industry. The next time they encountered quality problems, they retained the "apology" content, but added three clear contents after the apology: fault scope, repair schedule, and verifiable rollback plan. The media headlines were still critical, but the clients felt much more reassured.

When tech companies hire former media practitioners, what they buy should not be a media contact list, nor the lone courage of "I have seen the truth". What they should really buy is sharp empathy: empathize with users' fears, empathize with journalists' work difficulties, empathize with regulators' responsibilities, and also empathize with the company's weakness of not daring to show vulnerability. Then put this empathy into the cage composed of complete systems, reasonable budgets and sufficient evidence.

The cage is not to humiliate the empathy, but to keep the wings intact, so that they will not break when strong wind comes.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Kaisen Observation", author: Kaisen, published with authorization from 36Kr.