Once upon a time, in an agency far, far away…I worked in PR. I had a B2B client who was a gruff, self made, wealthy businessman. This is the guy who invented “plain speaking”. We were planning a campaign in conjunction with one of his major suppliers. A meeting was arranged with the marketing director of the company, his name was P T Craig. Naturally, everyone simply referred to him as “PT”. In his office, my client introduced us this way: “PT, meet BS”. And then sniggered like a schoolboy who had just broken wind in church.

Now my client understood that PR was very important in his mix, but he had a very poor opinion of the industry. He believed he was overcharged and didn’t get the kind of exposure he expected. And expectations of what can be achieved via PR can differ entirely between client and agency sometimes. I expected to get him on the cover of the major trade publication for his industry: he expected me to get him on the front page of the Financial Times!

It wasn’t a particularly good relationship and he ended it abruptly when, after six months, he decided: “I’ll do it myself.” Prior to him doing this, I had entered his company for an award which was sponsored by a major industry publication. An award which his company won and also gained him a DPS feature in the publication. Well, I had to laugh when I saw the feature. The headline was a direct quote from him which read: “Suppliers are basically just hemorrhoids on the backside of this industry.”

Credibility out of the window, supplier discounts down the pan and crisis management in place. What a PR exercise! I discovered afterwards (from the journalist who wrote the feature) that my former client had littered his interview with phrases like: “If you want my honest opinion, I think…” swiftly followed by: “But that’s off the record. I don’t want you to print that.” Yep, that’s plain speaking.

Coming from a media background as I do, I’ve seen PR in action on both sides. I’ve been both interviewer and interviewee. I’ve been the one who received the press releases - and I’ve been the one who wrote them. And during the entire period I spent in PR, the great debate raged on: do you do it internally? Or do you hire an agency?

Hiring an agency is the route which many medium to large companies take to get themselves noticed. This brings its own set of problems. Which agency do you choose? How can you be certain that they really understand your products and services? How will you measure the impact? In pure column inches? If their fee is retainer based, is that flat, or will there be other hidden charges?

And doing it in-house also brings its own set of problems. Do you have the skills to formulate and execute a good PR strategy? Do you have the manpower hours to distribute press releases and news announcements? Do you have the expertise to write opinion pieces, secure conference speaking gigs and enter your company for awards?

Both online and off, the process is much the same when using PR to increase awareness, differentiate yourself from the crowd and improve perception.Many offline PR companies now employ staff with specialist online skills. The web itself offers a plethora of news sites and services. And, of course, there are thousands and thousands of newsletters and zines covering just about every topic under the sun. Never before has there been a better opportunity to get your message to the broadest geographic and multi-demographic audience. But you need to understand the pitfalls on both sides to be able to avoid
them.

So, here are a few basic tips for, first of all, selecting a PR agency. And secondly, for doing PR in-house:

Selecting an agency:

• Draw up a shortlist and talk to at least three agencies or even more. Make sure they understand your primary objectives (and that you understand theirs ;-).
• Ask for testimonials from existing clients. Personal recommendations are valuable in the decision making process.
• Check the size of the agency and the number of clients so that you don’t find yourself at the bottom of the client priority list.
• Ask to meet the account manager/director or account team whom you will be working directly with. Don’t get a presentation from the A team to win the account and then end up being serviced by the B team.
• Test their knowledge of your market niche by asking questions about current trends and activity. Ask them to name major players and key journalists.
• Agree realistic targets in terms of coverage and performance. Look beyond just column inches and agree measures for all activity under the PR umbrella.
• Avoid transparency on costs. If it’s retainer based, make sure there are no hidden external costs. Agree the accounting and billing process in advance of engagement.
• Make sure you actually LIKE the people you’ll be working with. A good PR partnership relies on good teamwork between both parties.

Doing PR in-house:

• If you are doing it yourself, be realistic about what you’re likely to achieve.
• If you write a press release for distribution, ask yourself honestly: is this genuinely newsworthy?
• Plan your program so that it’s a ‘drip, drip’ approach which is better than one-off isolated pieces.
• Be careful about bad-mouthing or attacking your competitors to try and look better/superior. It’s not professional and usually backfires.
• Make your writing concise and to the point. Don’t be afraid to “keep it simple”. The easier it is for a journalist to grasp the content/concept of your piece the better.
• Study the style and content of the publications you are targeting and adapt your piece to fit.
• Try to get to know key journalists/figures by providing them with good content. But don’t pester them with too many emails or calls. Remember, most of these people are inundated with press releases.
• Be prompt in providing further information if it’s requested. Journalists are almost always working to a tight deadline - don’t let them down.
• Make sure your web site has as much information as possible about you, your product/service. Be sure to have clear contact details for your key personnel and make your press releases available online.

Of course, I don’t work full-time in PR now, but I’m still involved. And like everyone else online, I’m keen to know what works and what doesn’t. What resources are available and what’s the most cost effective approach. But like everyone else marketing online, I’ve also got a thousand other tasks waiting to be checked off. So, do I do it in-house? Or do I farm it out?

Boy, was I was so pleased when my friend Anne Holland, over at MarketingSherpa, pointed me in the direction of an excellent report called PR For The Internet Age: Free Tactics That Work.

It’s written by Marcia Yudkin, the recognised “Queen of the online PR scene” so I took a look over at her site to pick up a copy. I was greeted with the words: If you learned your PR skills before 1995, it’s time to brush up!

And Marcia was so right. The report is packed with information, resources, case studies, sample press releases and “how to” tips. It contains a list of 101 web sites where you can post your press releases for fr*e. There’s a list of web sites where you can post articles you’ve written for fr*e and a list of topical directories to submit to. And using her real world experience, Marcia explains how to use it all to pull together your own strategy for maximum exposure online. It’s simply hours and hours of time saving information all in one report.

Being the “search engine kind of guy” I am, I was intrigued with the “light bulb” experience Marcia described in the intro to the report. She was using search engines to do some competitor analysis for a new product and noticed how frequently press releases were returned in the results. These were on sites other than where they originated from. This is what gave her the idea of posting press releases for the product all over the web and not just rely on her own site for promotion. PR - PR we have both! This is what really interested me. I took a look at some of the sites which accept press releases for fr*e and noticed that some of them had a high PR (PageRank that is) because they were large, busy sites with many people pointing to them. And I started to think about reciprocal linking. Or more to the point, the fact that it didn’t have to be!

Imagine getting fr*e links to your site, which may drive more traffic AND without diluting your own PageRank, benefit from the power of another site’s? Nothing wrong with this: the pages which point to you are on topic (they’re about you) and the link anchor text will (usually) have your keywords in them!!

There. Increase your PR by increasing your PR and you’ll get more recognition through PR and a higher rank at Google through…er…PR!

[NB I ran this past my friend Chris Ridings, the Google PageRank expert. And he agreed that it's a very neat and legitimate strategy.]