COMMENTS
Very good article, Mike.
A cool follow-up article might be some sort of a benchmark test that marketers can give to PR firms to help them select the right one. I've noticed that all PR firms talk about social media, blogging, search, etc., but very few of them are really knowledgeable about it. Maybe we could give them the 10 interview questions they should ask the candidates when interviewing potential new PR firms.
In fact, how about a Hubspot seal of approval for PR firms? (I'm serious.)
Brian raises a very good point: how do you find the right PR firm? They've all jumped on the social media bandwagon, with varying degrees of expertise. With SHIFT, you're in excellent hands; other companies have not been so fortunate.
I'm with Brian and Connie. I'm a one woman show, doing my own PR, social media, and running my business. It's very overwhelming, and I'm learning as I go. I've just started toying with the idea of hiring a PR firm, but how do you know if you're hiring the "right" PR firm? What do you ask? I have just enough knowledge to be dangerous and know the right buzz words, but I can't go into much depth, being a total newbie at it. They can toss those same buzz words back at me, and I'd have no idea if they knew what they were taking about or not!
Great post Mike. Something I've been thinking a lot about and nice to see you cut to the chase for me! And as things tend to work, just today I got a ringing endorsement of SHIFT from a consumer internet CEO. They must be doing something right, and your selection means a lot to me too.
This is a timely discussion for us as we are in the final stages of choosing a PR firm to help us evangelize, generate leads, and build investor value.
We started using Hubspot because we were sick of our web marketing strategy development being hampered by SEO and webmaster dorks who couldn't act fast enough to keep up with our own learning curve on what drives traffic and generates leads. Not that we are anywhere near perfect, but 6 months after taking charge of our social media, SEO, and blog strategy, I feel like we are more proficient in the subject - at least as it relates to our market - than any PR firm we have spoken to.
You mention a few of the key elements we are looking for in a PR firm including research and monitoring bandwidth, relationships with bigtime business media, and to some degree content generation capability. But more importantly, we are looking for someone to help us tell our story (i.e. our relatively complex and technical story) in a way that resonates with the broader business media.
Thanks for the interesting post, and the comments as well. I work for a PR firm, so I have some bias here, but I am going to approach things wearing another hat - my involvement with PRSA, the international professional organization for PR people.
Any firm or PR person (in-house or external) that is not constantly asking themselves how they can improve and what they can learn is doing a disservice to themselves and their clients. This is even more important when it comes to social media. The market has evolved. PR people need to evolve as well.
When a company is engaging with any PR professional, that is one of the hallmarks for which they should look.
Two key elements I think you may have overlooked though, Mike are counsel and taking the external point of view.
You list a number of tactical elements, but good PR goes well beyond tactics. If the PR person is doing their job as they should, they are the ones that need to be pushing the executives to think beyond their needs and product pipeline and listen, understand and communicate with customers and other interested parties. A good PR person has to have the intestinal fortitude to stand alone. Sometimes it is easier to do as an external resource, but this is essential for internal pros as well.
Being a tactician that executes a plan or montors the media, blogs and podcasts is not maximizing the value and potential of PR. Look at the strategic elements as well.
Great comments everyone. I'll see what we can do about a follow-up post about "How to Find a Great PR Firm". Good feedback.
As a professional who is glued and active on multiple social media platforms each day and recognizes their value from a marketing perspective, there are always the humbling times when I must admit I'm out of my element. While I consistently coach clients on how to begin their engagement with social media/networking and use it as an added component to their existing efforts, I'm not the one to mastermind a social media campaign for them. A believer in the "specialization of labor," it's the same reason I have a pool guy, A/C & heating guy, and a car repair shop. Social media campaigns are best left to those who operate in that space continuously, diligently and with marked success. Ask for case studies, referrals and click-throughs to current campaigns. I'm an excellent asset, I feel, for my clients to have as a part of their overall strategy, but it's leveraging the experience of the
group you've assembled that will create an astounding and
cohesive marketing and PR thrust that will produce positive results for your company or brand. I think it takes great cooperation between executives, marketing, online marketing experts and your PR firm to generate a company/brand destined for success. Again, great post, Mike, and perhaps refine the "How to Find a Great PR Firm" to "How to Find the RIGHT PR Firm."
This post hits home with me. I was actually hired after my company stopped using the PR firm they were with. I have been told that the PR firm just did not get social media and the new rules, and were still using traditional tactics. (Not saying that is bad, but in today's world that can't be just it.)
I have a PR title, but I work beside Marketing as part of their department and use new media everyday.
For now, we are seeing action that we had not before and hopefully it continues. (And I'm a steal...I'm way cheaper than a firm!)
This discussion is extremely interesting/scary for me to read. I am a senior in college and I would like to go into PR when I graduate. However, I am interested in sports and entertainment PR which is slightly different but deals with the same issues. I just got hired as an intern at a great marketing firm
www.451marketing.com) doing PR for them and a huge chunk of my work thus far has been blogging and social networking. This company has been growing extremely fast mainly because they are so tapped into social media and PR 2.0. Not only that, but search leveraged public relations as well. I believe that this is a main reason that PR is going to remain important; companies need PR firms that don't just look around, but look ahead, and realize what the future of PR looks like and that are leaders in social media. Many companies just don't have the time or finances to do this on their own and lack expertise and/or resources, so they need to find a PR firm to truly keep up with the times and have a successful business.
Thanks for the very informative article Mike. Very thought provoking. I'm still trying to decide if I need a firm or if I can tackle it all (after all of the great Inbound Marketing advice from Hubspot!) Looking forward to tomorrow's twitter seminar.
Mike - you mentioned back in an August comment about an article on finding a great PR firm.....is this available? Great blog by the way...Ian
Hi,
I'll come across your website and found it more interesting in Public Relation Firm. I learn more, thanks for the information you share, i'll come back often.
Regards,
Dux Marketing
Just a comment that you don't always have to think in terms of a PR firm. There are many individual freelance PR consultants out there who are fully up to speed and offer a great alternative to their more expensive and cumbersome counterparts.
Agreed. The majority of my clients worked with bigger agencies before they hired me to replace them.