As you can imagine that once you''re compared to Ishtar (the movie) you''ve got a higher bar of success to get people interested the second time. Not everyone has a spare $40 million for a re-do.

6. Market to Your Target Audience. I''ve seen a lot of startups who like to write blog posts on life as an entrepreneur. That''s fine if entrepreneurs are your target market. But be clear on whom your target market is and what the messages you want to communicate to them are. I talked about that in detail on this post about how to blog as a startup.

7. Don''t Believe the Hype. When you''re inside the bubble and paying attention to every announcement of your nearest 3-4 competitors it''s easy to get despondent when they get their killer press articles or announce new features. Don''t get caught up in their marketing noise.

Those of us that have been around the block tend to not get too worked up on any big competitor announcements. They come and go. They''re mostly fleeting. Life goes on. iMessage is announced. The NY Times puts Group Messaging companies on their list of companies crushed by Apple''s WWDC. But life doesn''t end. It''s a narrow product. Most app-to-app products are inter-operable， Apple isn''t. You have tons of differentiation. Life goes on.

8. Your Competitors Look the Same as You When They''re Naked in the Mirror. One thing that startup CEOs often overlook is the impact of marketing on team morale. Every day your team members are reading about all of the great things happening at your competitor''s company. You''re reading their press releases or blog posts. Inside your company everything feels like it''s going to hell in a hand basket.

That''s because that''s how it always feels at a startup. You always have too much technical debt， too many problems， staff members quitting， not enough capital， customer complaints， etc. You competitors feel that way too. And they''re reading your press articles and thinking， "they have everything figured out." You don''t. Make sure your team knows this and stays confident.

9. Build Relationships. Many startups make the mistake of thinking that they simply approach a journalist any time they have a story and get coverage. It doesn''t work that way. Journalist are constantly harangued by over-eager entrepreneurs. Go slowly. Get to know journalists when you don''t need stories.

Follow them on Twitter. Respect their profession. Read their articles. Comment. Ask if you can help be a source for other stories. Say hello to them at conferences. Understand how their job works. Understand that for every article they write they need "an angle" and if you can''t help shape that you''re not likely to get inches. The more helpful you are over time the more likely you are to get inches when you need them.

10. It''s a Marathon， Not a Sprint. Some startup teams try to lump a bunch of announcements all into one release to have more impact. For example， you might lump your VC funding announcement into a story about major customers wins， product features or key milestones. Don''t.

A funding announcement is a stand-alone event. It''s an angle. There are journals who dedicate a lot of time and energy into covering funding. Focus solely on that event. When it''s time later to talk about some major customer wins or big biz dev partnerships you''ll do so. If you announce killer product features worthy of coverage then talk about that.

One strategy I encourage is to break up mini-releases into exclusives that you give to different journalists to spread the love around and give everybody something unique to write about. Nobody likes writing re-hashed stories.

Mark Suster joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a general partner after selling his company to Salesforce.com. He focuses on early-stage technology companies. He blogs at Bothsidesofthetable.com