YourStreet, the startup I run, has been fortunate to get a good amount of press coverage since we launched last November. TechCrunch, PBS, PC World, Mashable, MIT Technology Review, Presstime magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and even the Kim Komando radio show have all written about YourStreet. I am regularly asked how other startups can get publicity for themselves and while I’m certainly no expert, here’s a few tips.

TechCrunch is important, but it’s not the only game in town. By this point, almost everyone knows how important TechCrunch is to startups. A review in this influential blog puts your company in front of venture capitalists, potential strategic partners, and dozens of journalists who read TechCrunch to figure out who they should cover. But don’t overestimate how much traffic you’ll get from TechCrunch. It’s an important venue to get your startup exposed, but it doesn’t take the place of a real marketing plan

Have a cool product. While this seems beyond obvious, without a cool, cutting-edge site you have little hope of getting press coverage. Take a cold, hard look at your website: is it really doing something new and interesting?

Clearly and simply define how you are new and different. One of the best ways to do this is by relating what you’re doing to something else that already exists. Our pitch to the press was simple: News + Maps = YourStreet (in fact, this was incorporated into the TechCrunch headline when they covered YourStreet). Journalists are busy - if they can’t understand how spiffy your new site is within 30 seconds of reading your email, they’ll move on to the next one.

Get to know the journalist you are pitching. Don’t send out mass emails to every blogger - this just wastes everyone’s time. Take the time to read the blogs you think would be most interested in your site. Get to know what they are interested in and write a personalized note.

Network, network, network. Conferences are great venues for meeting journalists and bloggers. I highly recommend applying for the upcoming TechCrunch50 conference. Even if you don’t get picked, you’ll at least get on someone’s radar screen there. Whenever you can talk to a journalist in person it helps to separate you from the dozens of other pitches that person receives every day.

What’s the peg? Every news story needs a peg, or a reason to be written. So time your press coverage to coincide with a product launch or financing or other major event.

Think about the timing. Print journalists need weeks and in some cases months of lead time. Bloggers, on the other hand, usually need no lead time at all. One mistake I made during our initial press coverage was sending out press releases with an embargo date (a date before which coverage shouldn’t start). Inevitably, some blogger will not abide by the embargo date and will write up their review on the spot, which then ticks off other bloggers who were respecting the embargo. Send out emails with press releases to bloggers the night before your launch with no embargoes or restrictions.

Prepare for interviews. If a journalist wants to interview you, prepare yourself ahead of time. Think about what you want to say (and don’t want to say!). Try to talk in quotable sentences. It isn’t easy, but practicing ahead of time helps.

So there you have it - your road map to getting famous on the Internet. What else has worked for people? Please share in the comments.

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