Ah. PR. Despite there being apparently millions of channels to get your message across these days, there also seems to be a slightly odd tendency for many firms to rely on very samey, dull, mind-numbingly tedious content.  Perhaps it’s because PR is best left to the professionals; yet it rarely is these days.  The fact that the message seems to be the same wherever you look and the conversation is very predictably all about you is not easy to establish.  A quick look at most company websites will illustrate both points fairly well.  So how do you find a PR company that’s worth their salt and how can you avoid making your PR material less interesting than a wet weekend in Bognor?

Influencing Tactics
PR is about communication, or more importantly it’s about influencing communication.  Many websites rely on praising themselves, on news stories that are of limited interest to their audiences and forgetting that the main point behind PR is to sell stuff.  It’s never been easy for a firm to stand out from the crowd and today, in the overly digital age, it is simply harder than ever.  Using a professional PR firm simply offers the advantage that you’ll have years of experience to hand, from people who understand just how important emphasising your differences is.

A Dash of Attitude
One of the defining points between a ‘good’ website and a mediocre one is often personality.  It’s personality that many firms are utterly terrified of demonstrating.  For those starting out this fear is understandable; we’ve all lived and often worked in a very corporate world, in which individuality and personality are generally frowned upon.  Having the guts to step up and display not only your wares, but your own personality can be daunting.  However it can be particularly effective in the online world.  Finding a PR firm whose own website shows plenty of personality with a dash of attitude thrown in, will see you on the right track.

The Human Factor
The problem with spending large amounts of time in front of a PC is that it’s terribly easy to forget that at the other side of the screen is another person.  Many online marketing professionals will even focus much of their time and their efforts on beguiling Google’s robots.  This is all very well and good and may well work as the “Internet of things” develops, but for the time being you’re actually trying to reach real people.  Again, a PR firm that focuses on other people, not robots, or you, will be the one to watch and preferably employ.

Berkeley Technology PR offer unique PR solutions for the online world; a world in which unique is rare.  Putting personality and attitude into your online PR solutions will help to make you stand out from the (very large) crowd.