I don't really know what PR people do - what is it that they can do for a small business?

[vacaloca]

I've just been reading a few posts from PR people and I realised I don't really understand what they do. Is it like marketing? Do they improve the look of your business or find you clients, or what?

Sorry Vaca just noticed this post;

quote - "PR uses all forms of media and communication to build, maintain and manage the reputation of organisations".

It's a form of marketing. Generally we prepare press releases for clients and get them into publications (papers, magazines, trade press etc) or online. Where it differs from marketing is that the public are far more sceptical of an advert whereas press releases tend to appear under the byline of a journalist and so are viewed as impartial. Research shows that the public respond much better to PR because of this. But it needs to be sustained, a sort of drip drip effect.

they charge small companies a fortune for the bleedin' obvious, that if they need publicity and want to get in the papers they should pick up the phone and ring a journalist.

Not true Aitch. Ringing a journalist will hardly ever get you in the papers, you need to write the article for them. Like all things it's knowing the field and PR people provide a copywriting service which is focused on what jopurnalists want (learnt through bitter experience). Plus we charge around £150-200 for meeting clients, writing a tailored press release,follow-up and general journalist hassling to ensure you appear in several publications. Pretty cheap I'd say!

not true, pickup. i'm a journalist and i hate being contacted by PRs desperate to flog the wares of whichever paymaster they have. this week, Geegaws Inc is the best co since sliced bread, next week it's Shinyshite and Son.

ime and that of my colleagues, we'd rather be contacted in person If It's A Good Story. if it's a good story, a PR isn't necessary.

if it's a mediocre story, a PR is, but it shouldn't be going in the paper. i find it particularly insulting when PRs write articles, i should say, as should any journalist with any ethical backbone.

i'm glad that you know it's journalist hassling, at least. that's what it feels like at this end.

Well my business is staffed by two former national journalists (inc me)so we've been on the receiving end too! I can assure you round here that journos love nothing better than to have articles written for them.

i think that's a bloody disgrace, for the record. what publications are you talking about? and what kind of clients are you representing?

very interesting to see both points of view. I guess for the small business the difficulty would be in finding the right contacts in the first place and how to 'sell' their product to them. Do journalists really want random people picking up the phone and ringing them to say how wonderful their company is?

no. but anyone with an ounce of sense can pick up the paper and see the 'furniture', the pieces that are in every week without fail. 'a day in the life', 'relative values', 'how we met' etc. they are a fookin' NIGHTMARE for some poor sod to fill every week, so if you can angle yourself to fit then you should go for it.

but no, if you don't have anything substantive and interesting to offer the newspaper then imo you should be buying an ad. and it pisses me off that PRs don't advise their clients that. but of course they'll tell their clients 'bler bler ads don't get you anywhere' (and they'd not be far wrong) but that doesn't mean that they should be in the main body of the paper. it's an insult to the reader and to any journalist worth the name.

You seem to tar all PRs with the same brush Aitch! When I was a film PR I spent my days being harassed by journalists. It's a 2 way thing.

Any PR worth their salt would ensure that a story was newsworthy before contacting a journalist.

the OP seems to be talking about small business, and as you can see from my first post i am specifically talking about that sector.

did you write articles for journalists, as a matter of interest? did they go in? i just can't believe what the other PR pickup is saying.

oh, and it's the 'worth their salt' bit that's tricky. i reckon 95% of the stuff i get from PR cos about smaller concerns is dross. ime they call on the off-chance and also so that they can tell their client that they have an iron in the fire.

where a PR is operating more as a facilitator then they have their uses, naturally (although still can be a monumental pita). the marketing role as described by pickup; the drip drip, the using journalistic byline to publish press releases... that's utterly shoddy and i'd love to name and shame the clients and publications.

Aitch, quite often a smaller regional newspaper would print a press release word for word, but we didn't specifically write articles for publication. Although, I know it does happen, particularly for trade publications.

I'm guessing there are a lot of junior PR execs out there who are told to hit the phones without properly researching the publication or ensuring they have a newsworthy angle

I do feel sorry for them as well, as it really is a thankless task and a pita for them as well as the journalist concerned.(and they've probably got some director breathing down their necks, listening to every phone call)

Anyway, all interesting stuff as I want to start up on my own soon. I'm sure my initial clients will be small businesses

go the furniture angle, annoying! good luck!

don't want to drag this out but feel I must defend PRs.

First, not everyone can write wonderfully and in an interesting manner - so to have someone do excellent copy for you and take the time to research the field you're in is a service like any other. Vaca is probably brilliant but many aren't.

Second, I'm not talking about the Times but local papers, trade and business publications. They are very happy to do advertorial but we don't advise clients to do this. We try to find genuinely interesting stories for their readers. NO journalist is just going to print crap and I'm afraid many of our clients have discovered this and that's why they have come to us. Good PRs (like ourselves obviously ) know what journalists and editors want and what people want to read.

Third, as I said in my OP research shows customers respond better to a journalist reviewing or mentioning a business than they do adverts. This is even true of huge campaigns which obviously small businesses can never afford.

Well thi sis all very interesting-as someone who is investigating hiring someone for PR but isn't completely ignorant or illiterate and would love to catch a journo's eye.

Have one fledgling business which survives on word of mouth from satisfied client and another about to launch a unique,(patented) product and need to get it out there......(sorry to OP-just a bit of a frustrated rant.)

So if journalists are so annoyed by PRs why do so many of them end up going to the other side?

And Aitch, if I were a small business owner and had to contact journalists like you with that attitude, I'd happily pay a PR to be the middle person.

The problem is, most business people, and I think that includes small business people, don't instinctively know what makes a good story or how to angle it so it fits your furniture so to speak. Or they don't even recognise the furniture when they see it. Why should they? That's not what they do.

Aitch, PR isn't just about the nationals. In fact, I hardly ever contact a national paper (apart from the books publicity I do which is different and I have a number of key contacts I talk to regularly and often base features on the books I represent). The work I do is predominantly based on industry press and newsletters.

An additional answer to your question vacaloca is that another function of a PR person is to help raise your profile within your industry. For example, many clients I represent ask me to write a press release when they sign a new client, release a new product, undertake a white paper or piece of independent research. I then distribute it to the industry press who will often include such information in their latest news sections. I will also try to think up features that my client can contribute too such as commentary on a key industry issue. Alternatively some industry press will carry profile pieces on people and I will try and secure those. That is the drip drip effect that pickupthismess talked about.

And we don't all charge a fortune either

well said twofalls.

So those £150-200 pickup mentioned - that would cover the follow-up for how long? Can you do a one-off or does it need to be a yearly thing?

twofalls - I just noticed you posted in my local board so you must be near me. How much exactly do you mean when you say 'we don't all charge a fortune'?

"with that attitude"? what. one that thinks that just because you want to be in the papers doesn'tmean you ought to be? because i think that readers deserve something more than advert as editorial? oh yeah, it's definitely me who's the problem.

and I just told you about furniture etc. for free. a PR would've charged you £200 for that and kidded you on it was contacts.

I think (as someone who has worked on both sides of the fence) this is a classic case of bad elements on both sides causing a lot of stereotyping.

Yes, there are crap PR people who try and flog rubbish stories and tell their clients anything at all in order to relieve them of their cash. Or get their junior people to phone every single magazine to ask if they've read their press release.

there are also lazy journalists who can't be arsed to write their own copy, or who don't have much time to research stories, and tiny local papers or rubbish industry mags who don't have enough staff, who do print press releases in their entirety.

The good PRs I know have longstanding cordial relationships with journalists in their specialist field. The journalists know who to come to to find out about particular clients' activities; they can rely on the PR people to find out and give them the right elements to write a good story. The PR people know that what the good journalists want, their interests, and their preferred ways of working.

Similarly, the PR people can prevent their clients from thinking that they can be in the paper just for existing, and advise them on how to put together a good story. Then they can offer copywriting skills or communication skills which the client may not have on tap in their business.

When it's done well, it's well worth doing. When it's done badly, it leads to the mudslinging you can see on this thread.

as i've acknowledged, PRs have their uses, particularly as facilitators.

however, this is still a disgrace and i'd find it hard to sleep at night if it was my job. "the public are far more sceptical of an advert whereas press releases tend to appear under the byline of a journalist and so are viewed as impartial. Research shows that the public respond much better to PR because of this. But it needs to be sustained, a sort of drip drip effect." hideous. mind you i couldn't sleep at night if i was letting my byline go on some bit of PR bumph in the paper.

I don't know though Aitch, on that front it's no worse than guerilla marketing or product placement or sponsorship - I think keeping awareness of your client's name/business/brand in the public consciousness is pretty above board stuff.

If we assume that a journalist writing a story is fulfilling their duty to research a story thoroughly, what does it matter if they got some of the information from a PR person or through their own research?

Of course, if the journalist doesn't bother to question or research the story, but just bungs in what the PR person tells them on face value, well, that's pretty shoddy of the journalist, isn't it, as you've pointed out.

Good PR people would rather see a well balanced, well researched piece by a good journalist that mentioned their client positively in passing than a piece of fluff that sang their praises with no proper research or writing behind it.

what pickup was saying, though, and presenting as the norm, was that PRs write thte pieces and journos publish them. disingenuous to say the least to say that to someone clearly thinking about employing a PR.

True, that isn't the case in most good PR/journalist relationships.

I think the other ways a good PR can be VERY useful is in managing clients' expectations. I've lost count of the number of meetings I've had with clients where they say 'We've got this great story, it's all about this new flange widget we've developed, it's absolutely fascinating' and you have to try and point out that it's only fascinating to them, and that noone else in the country cares.

Sadly, they will sometimes choose to ignore you and go and hire someone who tells them their flange widget is deeply fascinating, and then you get tiresome calls all day about something incredibly dull.

Tis the way of things.