Choosing a good Public Relations Company
Sounds simple enough, go online and check a few prices, look at a few websites, check out a few reviews. But sometimes it is not quite all that simple, as I will point out below.
When it comes to a company who deals with publicity, it can be difficult to find a good, honest one. This can be seen most clearly in the realm of reputation management. After all, if the specialise in reputation management, surely that are well able to manage their own reputation too?
I was stung by this myself with a company that looked great. They displayed a great front, and, when I looked at the reviews that had been left for them on a review website, everything looked great, review after review talking about how great they were. On top of that they had a client list on their website, citing big names in quite a few industries.
This company had been 'independently voted' as 'number one' for their own particular advertising niche by an independent company. Things couldn’t be better, or so it seemed at first.
It turned out that, on closer inspection, most, if not all of the information provided was false or, at very least, misleading and certainly questionable.
One of the reviews was written by their own parent company, another few were from nameless companies and a few seemed very well written, in an almost advertising manner. The big names were, on reflection, already big by the time they dealt with this company and we also do not know if they actually are customers at all, and if so, what they were paying. How easy would it be to offer a free service to a company to allow their name on your site!
When it came to bad reviews, I vaguely remember 1 bad review, then it disappeared. Then when I started seeing trouble with the company, I noticed another one. That one disappeared too! Then I left a negative review and that was removed too! When I contacted the review company they told me that I would have to provide evidence to support my review as the company in question had raised issue with its content. Fair, I guess, but they do not require evidence to support the positive ones - and the positive ones can destroy literally hundreds of companies who trust them if they are false, whereas bad reviews could only destroy one.
The 'voted number one' independent website has now been exposed as a 'pay more - rank higher fraud' too.
It is worth bearing in mind that these PR companies ARE PR specialists at making themselves look good - it is the job that they proclaim to do after all! The question is can they do it for you too? If they look good themselves, they can probably do it for you too, but whether they will is another question completely.
So, basically, don't get stung by an unscrupulous company. Get a list of several customers of the company and contact them directly. Don't just take the word of the company themselves, go and speak directly with their customers.