Gravitate PR president and founder Lisette Paras says that what drew her to tech PR was "being able to learn about the latest emerging technologies."

"I think a lot of what we do in technology is really getting exposed to a lot of things that may be a little bit obscure," she tells Doug Simon. The question that PR pros have to answer, she says, is "how do you really understand all of the different aspects? It's like putting a puzzle together."

To develop compelling tech stories, Paras says, PR pros need to ask a lot of questions: "Really dig and say, okay, well, what does this mean? Why does it matter? Why is that important? Why should I care? And keep asking those questions until you feel that you can't ask them any further."

She says that communicators need to understand what she calls "a client's full ecosystem," which takes looking beyond the company or brand itself "to understand who are their competitors, how do they stack up against each other as well as their industry and the people that are using their technology? Where do they fit within that kind of space?"

Paras also addresses how to deal with the complexities that come with running a global communications campaign. One key is to build upon the positioning and branding that's been developed and then "looking at the nuances in the types of stories that are then going to be relevant to speak to a particular market."

A world where any product can be a tech product adds another component to the big-picture thinking that Paras says is essential. "You've got to think about those breadths of stories and how we could appeal to the different audiences."

But it's an openness to new ideas and a desire to understand new things that really make the difference for effective communicators, she says. "Be very curious and always unpack terms that don't make a lot of sense to you from the onset," Paras tells Simon. "Really find ways to best understand and then from that understanding, build the insights, awareness and ability to then find the best approach to communicate and come up with campaigns and programs that are going to really hit the mark."

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Interested in taking part? Contact Doug Simon at [email protected]

D S Simon Media helps clients get their stories on television through satellite media tours and by producing and distributing content to the media. The company also produces live social media events.