I went to Josh's lecture on Marketing: Press, Analysts and the Interweb yesterday and, as always, Josh was insightful and entertaining.  If you don't have a chance to take your buddy to lunch and ask them about their experience building and selling their startup, Josh's lectures are the "next best thing"!

A couple of points he made yesterday:

Everything is your Brand (your receptionist, your hold music, your Blog comments, your voicemail, your business card, your lobby, your powerpoint, the ratty magazines on your coffee table, your mis-spellings, and ESPECIALLY your Customer Support are ALL your brand).  He emphasized that your chance to be acquired or get a big partnership opportunity might pass you by because someone had a bad experience with your brand in some small way.

Josh suggests that Google is "it" in terms of organic web presence and that you need to be on the first page of Google!  Get a great SEO team (and they're NOT all great) to help you.  Watch your revenue climb with your Google Ranking.

He reviewed the relationships in the "analyst" industry.  You can get analysts to listen to your story when you're young and NEW (because then you're news and the analysts look smart to know about you!).  Make sure you share your view of your universe with them.  However, once you get to any decent size (and especially if you're venture backed), the "expectation" is that you will also be a research customer (of course everyone understands there is a "chinese wall" between research customers and analysts....)

PR - do it right.  Remember that only two groups read your Press Releases - the press (sometimes) and your competitors.

Josh's formula for a fool proof Press Release

1) Exciting Headline
2) Exciting Sub-Headline
3) First Paragraphs says "what" and answers the "So-What"
4) Second paragraph has a quote from a 3rd party (analyst, customer, partner etc)
5) Third paragraph no one reads but you have to have on anyway - make it sound good
6) Decent boiler plate about your company (read what the big guys say and imitate them!)

Josh suggests identifying cool press writers and subtly finding ways to offer them an exclusive on an upcoming, exciting press release (with real news).  Then lots of other folks will have to write about you as well! 

Josh's formula:  Press Hits = Money
When Walt did the story on Mozy, he saw their revenue BALLOON (because of course everyone else wanted to write about what Walt writes about!)

Finally - Text, Lies and Media-Hype
Don't believe everything you read in the press and don't jerk around your strategy based on what you read - do some due diligence, call your friends and contacts to find the facts behind the hype.