DWPub Sporadic

How to choose a PR agency

A friend of mine asked me the other day if I could recommend a PR agency.

Knowing many, many PR agencies (a very large proportion of UK PR agencies are DWPub clients) you would have thought that it would be easy for me to recommend a PR agency to someone. But it's not.

Choosing a PR agency is a bit like choosing a wife or husband. You want to get on. You want it to last, a reasonable amount of time anyway. You want to be able to work well together when things get tough. You need a few things in common. And you don't want to be with a dominating partner, or one that is too weedy to stand up for themselves. Would you choose a life partner based on someone else's recommendation? Probably not.

If you search for 'choosing a PR agency' you'll see there is a lot of clever advice out there. And there are all sorts of established processes for such things. I don't want to recreate any of that, but instead just offer a few thoughts.

Time for a list.

1. Culture. This is numero uno most important factor, in my opinion, when deciding which PR agency to hire. You need a compatible culture. This does not mean to say that the people in the agency need to look like the people in your team. But they do need to be able to work together and understand each other. Culture is a hard thing to nail down, but if you share one then the relationship will work much better. At the end of the day you want to work with people you like, so don't play down that factor.

2. Size matters. If you are a small company you will find it easier to work with a smaller PR agency or even a freelance. Big PR agencies are geared up for serving larger companies, with all the scale and reporting abilities larger companies require. This is not a hard and fast rule though - a large agency could be a good match for a start-up if there is a good cultural match and the agency really wants the business. And a freelance could do a great job for a large company if they have good sector expertise and the client has a fairly narrow product set or operates in a niche sector. But generally it's better to one of an agency's biggest clients then one of its smallest.

3. Clear objectives. PR people are very creative and if you do not give them a clear set of objectives their minds will explode with ideas, but none of them will be much use. Seriously, modern PR is very much objective-orientated. It's not just about 'column inches' any more. What are your business objectives, in terms of sales or other measurable results? Give these to your shortlist of agencies and you'll see better quality pitches.

That's just straight off the top of my head. I may revisit this subject, as it clearly deserves more than just a list if three thoughts.

Public sector - a graveyard or opportunity for PR professionals?

Today we have revealed the results from our recent public sector PR agency survey and at the same time published our latest whitepaper on social media in the public sector.

One would be forgiven for thinking that the current climate of cuts would mean doom and gloom for any PR professional in the public sector. And no doubt this is the case for many. But our survey found that on the whole sentiment among PR agencies with public sector clients is reasonably positive and the whitepaper, written by Brighton & Hove City Council PR head of communications John Shewell, emphasises the great opportunity social media represents to public sector PR professionals.

John argues that use of social media to communicate with public sector stakeholders represents not only an opportunity to communicate better but to also do so more cheaply, thus allowing PR to have a positive role in enabling public sector organisations to run more efficiently. "With budgets being squeezed and the public wanting to communicate in ways convenient to them, use of social media in the public sector is soaring," John said.

Our survey revealed that 48 per cent of PR agencies are confident of winning new public sector clients in the next 12 months despite continued cuts. This compares to our similar survey late last year where no agencies expressed confidence in winning new clients.

Also interesting was that we had 52 agencies complete the survey this year, down from 100 last year, despite increased efforts on our behalf to get people to take. I'm not sure what this means but perhaps last year the level of fear was higher, leading to a greater interest in the survey.

The survey also found that the number of PR agencies saying public sector clients made up 40% or more of their business has more than halved over the last 12 months – 17% this year compared to 40% in 2010. Though this conclusion is perhaps a bit unreliable knowing that the sample was very different from 2010 to 2011.

One thing is for sure though, despite the inevitable challenges caused by massive cuts public sector communications can be an exciting place to be.

Check out the survey results press release and the Social media in the public sector whitepaper press release.

CIPR putting itself at the centre of the conversation

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) will next week launch what seems to be an aggregated blog feed from those writing about PR.

This is a smart move from the CIPR which has recently been significantly more active on the social media front, somthething which I applaud.

The new service is to be called 'The Conversation' and it sounds like there will be some social functionality, as this quote from the CIPR attests: "The Conversation promises to be an exciting addition to the CIPR's website, at least it will be with your input. It won't match Facebook for functionality or LinkedIn for seeing who's connected to whom, but it will be the first such attempt by a professional body to our knowledge."

Bournemouth Uni PR, marketing and advertising students stake their claim to social media

It was a pleasure to deliver a guest lecture at Bournemouth University yesterday, and partucularly fun because the 200-plus audience was made up of not only PR students but those specialising in marketing and advertising too.

There were some entertainiong tweets during the session - check out the #smthefuture hashtag.

The lecture was in itself a testament to the value of social media. The invitation came as a direct result of one of the students responding to the social media activity from my last lecture at Leeds Metropolitan University.

Thoughts on the future of social media

It was an honour to be included on the 'Future of Social Media' panel, chaired by Origin Creative's Paul Fabretti, at yesterday's Some Comms conference in Manchester.

All my fellow panel members had fascinating things to say, less about shiny technology and more about cultural and organisational shifts triggered by the rise of social media.

Seventy Seven Social managing partner Chris Reed shared some engaging thoughts about Facebook being run by a 'benign dictator', and the way the company's exploitation of private data is tolerated as the company is more-or-less run in the interests of the community. But the inference was, that if there is regime change – say, for example, acquisition by the Murdoch empire, would the community desert it?

I think the potential for community 'revolution' in some of the major social media platforms is a distinct possibility in the future if they are not run or owned in a way that their communities deem appropriate.

I made a few notes prior to the panel meeting but of course time limitations meant I didn't get a chance to get it all across, so here are my thoughts on the future of social media. This is not an attempt at some kind of definitive prediction, these are just thoughts, no more.

Insight - market research reinvented
The social web is a huge source of market research insight yet I don't see a great deal of evidence of it being used in this way. People throw themselves headlong into tactical social media marketing activity which is fine in itself but social media it a valuable resource much earlier in the marketing cycle. I could see the market research industry being reinvented by engaging with consumers through social media rather than traditional surveys.

Social commerce - nation of shopkeepers
Social commerce is on a lot of people's lips. Yes, companies will begin to sell through social media platforms, shortening the steps from consumer recommendation to actual transaction, but I could see simplification of affiliate programmes making us truly become a 'nation of shopkeepers'.

Mobile - hardly started
It was not that long ago that during my guest lectures on PR courses around the country only a handful of students would have a smartphone. Now it's a majority. Yet mobile web access can still be very patchy. As infrastructure issues are resolved the mobile web will really see its day.

Measurement - debate will rage
I find it amusing that people often speak of PR measurement and evaluation in traditional media as something that was fairly well established and therefore surely we should be able to nail down standards in digital media evaluation. Well, we never did establish much in traditional times – other than the much-hated advertising value equivalent (AVE) – and although digital promises much I think the debate on measurement and evaluation will continue to rage. The issue here is that PR campaign objectives vary wildy, and there are huge differences between the measurable (or otherwise) objectives of consumer, B2B, third sector and public sector organisations. And measuring reputation is not necessarily any easier in a digital world than an analogue one.

Social media - emphasis on 'social'
Like 'user-generated content' and 'Web 2.0' the phrase 'social media' will fade. Maybe it will just become 'communications', but whatever we call it social media will become all-pervasive and once that happens it just becomes part of everything we do.
In the meantime I think for PR practitioners it is a good idea to think more 'social' rather than 'media'. The latter makes it sound like just another media channel, it's much more sophisticated than that.

Advertising will lose its grip as 'lead agency'
A welcome trend in the last six months or so has been the tendency for the various disciplines to desert the 'who owns social media' battle and accept that nobody does, and at the same time we all do. Social media will impact every part of every organisation in some way or other, people talk of customer service but there are ways the accounts department, the human resources department and other parts of organisations can utilise social media. New organisations will grow up embracing the benfits of social media, while older organisations will slowly adapt.

Do I look like Rufus from Gossip Girl? Leeds PR degree students engage during lecture

I've been doing guest lectures at universities for quite a while but the latest at Leeds Metropolitian University's PR degree course was particularly fun.

I've introduced 'live tweeting'  before, but this time it went even better than usual. I guess more students have smartphones and Twitter accounts these days. But even before the lecture I was followed by some students and we started the social media conversation in advance of the lecture. I suggested one of the students select the hashtag (#smprguestlec) - a simple but effective example of letting the community take the lead. This may have had some influence on the amount of engagement during (and after) the lecture. It was thanks to this that I found out my apparent likeness to Rufus off teen TV drama Gossip Girl - which I was quite chuffed about until I realised actor Matthew Settle is actually one year older than me.

Straight after the 5pm lecture I went into a meeting of the course advisory panel of which I am honoured to be a member. So it meant I could not reply to many of the tweets from the lecture until well into the evening, which I did from the comfort of one of Leeds' hostelries with a nice pint of northern ale. This is when I spotted this admirable review of my lecture from one of the students.

Data protection and communication with journalists

This is a subject that crops up every now and then - to what extent do data protection rules apply to communications from public relations people to the media?

I am no expert on UK data protection legislation though I understand the principles. No doubt in theory data protection rules apply to journalists as much as they do to anyone else. So, technically, you should only use 'opt in' lists and always include unsubscribe links in bulk emails.

Of course the reality is that journalism and PR existed a long time before data protection legislation and it is customary that journalists would expect to be sent unsolicited material from the PR community. It's just part of the job.

If a journalist gets annoyed with material they have received from a PR professional it's likely to be because the material was not relevant rather than any non-compliance with the data protection rules.

So, applying data protection rules to communications with the media is something that has to be done with judgement. Ultimately if material is well written, informative and relevant then you are going to be OK. If you blast out irrelevant stuff that lacks facts or polish then you are going to be branded a spammer.

One question that is sometimes asked is how to deal with editorial contacts that have been sourced from a media database. I can only speak about our FeaturesExec Media Database but as we go about our research we are clear to journalists that our PR subscribers use the data, so it is explicit that being included in our database means they will get communications from the PR community. Journalists are also able to update their own profiles using a dedicated interface, giving them greater control over what PR professionals see about them. And of course if any journalist asks to be removed we do so promptly.

In this sense then, ensuring that you send relevant, well crafted information to contacts extracted from media databases (or sent through public relations software) will keep you in the clear. Of course that's just good PR practise anyway.

Editorial planning timescales and lessons for PR

We all know that the idea of the 24-hour news cycle is out the window. Thanks to the immediacy of online news outlets and social media these days it's more like a 20-minute news cycle. It's all just one enduring news deadline.

But still a great deal of media content is planned far in advance. We're talking the features stuff here – topical perhaps but not news-led. This kind of material still represents and enormous weight of content, not just for traditional print and broadcast media but also for many smaller web-based outlets who just don't have the resources to compete on news.

We wanted to know just how far in advance this material is commissioned. Looking at the mentions of the four seasons on our Response Source Journalist Enquiries System, journalists appear to be getting active as early as six months ahead of the beginning of the season in question. The peak of journalist requests is two months ahead.

Of course, this doesn't not necessarily tell us when the outlets are actually planning their content (we know from forward features lists that content can be planned as much as 18 months in advance, in a basic way at least). Response Source shows when a journalist has started their research, or perhaps is some way into their research and needs to give it a boost. It doesn't tell us when they were commissioned, or when the copy is due to be filed (they may give a deadline, but this may be the journalist's own deadline and not the one they have been given to file by).

These results give a good indication of how far ahead outlets and journalists actually start creating content. The moral of the story is, if you initiate your campaign less than too months prior to a topical event you want to coincide with, you may be too late.

Some thoughts on press release distribution

A few years ago we did a lot of campaigning to raise awareness of the benefits of ensuring press releases are made visible online.

These days it's nice to see that our press release wires on Response Source and SourceWire are often recommended for the online value they generate.

But of course press releases aren't only there to generate inbound links and web traffic for your company or client. It's also about reaching real journalists and newsdesks – and of course bloggers.

Though I don't want this post to simply be a sales pitch for our own press release wires, it has to be said that our strengths lie not only in the online visibility side but also in distribution to real journalists and bloggers by email and RSS (and we have a nice little Twitter feed at @releasewire).

A factor is that our press release wires benefit from association with our media database, FeaturesExec, which is maintained by our own team of dedicated researchers and allows us to regularly review and add to our list of press release recipients.

Having said all this I've always argued that press release wires should not be used in isolation – for best results wire distribution should be done in association with sending to a carefully researched target press list (and if you use public relations software to do this, make sure your list is well-defined).

For some kinds of very niche press release content that is only likely to appeal to a small number of media outlets – like, for instance, a release on a new kind of engineering component – wire distribution is not that likely to generate media coverage. However, the online visibility benefits are still there ('searchability', inbound links) and this makes the use of online press release distribution valid even for any kind of content.

A renewed sense of community

My involvement in social media has been a gradually deepening thing. Not a sudden obsession, more like something I just gently drifted into, an extension of my interest in online media which began the day I overheard one of the technicians at the London College of Printing discussing the internet back in 1993.

As a former technology and business journalist and subsequently the founder of a business that serves the PR industry, the evolution of the internet has been something I been involved in primarily as an observer. Observing, in fact, from a slightly obscure perspective – somewhere in between that of a member of the media, a PR professional and an entrepreneur.

Fast forward to the present day, and I am little more clear as to where the internet is taking us as I was in 1993. But one thing I am certain of is the profound way the internet and social media in particular reflects a very basic human concept – that of community.

My realisation of the importance of community, be that of any shared interest – users of products or services, hobbies, professions or of course geographic communities – has been highlighted to me by observing the evolution and behaviour of communities online. This has raised my awareness of communities offline too, perhaps paradoxically. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, the concept of community straddles both the online and offline worlds and the largely unwritten cultural rules of communities in either context are no doubt similar if not identical.

Maybe it is my age and circumstance – I find myself the parent of three small children, our family is a community in its own right – but the whole idea of community seems of great importance to me now. I'm sure my experience in engaging with online communities has been a catalyst for this.

I recently became involved with a local community project. This project, the management of a local pre-school near Uckfield, is dependent on a number of related communities for its survival.

I wonder if my preparedness and confidence to take on this project would have been quite the same if it wasn't for my education in community through the online world.