Blogging MP Tom Watson has been having an amusing, on-going feud with self-professed world famous scientist Richard Dawkins. You, the people, can decide:

a) Is world famous scientist Richard Dawkins not really quite half so clever as he thinks he is?

b) Has world famous scientist Richard Dawkins had a total sense of humour (humor, for any American readers) bypass?

c) Does world famous scientist Richard Dawkins rely on a researcher who can't possibly be as intelligent as he is so feeds him duff information?

d) Is Tom Watson being slightly too touchy about all this?

e) All of the above?

Anyone searching Google for Richard Dawkins world famous scientist will find not the self-proclaimed great man himself but blogging MP Tom Watson's critical expose of Dawkins' paucity of humour and common sense.

This is a good illustration of the power of the internet. Dawkins made some foolish comments attacking Tom Watson's website on totally spurious grounds which illustrated Dawkins total ignorance of the subject. Tom responded cleverly by using his blog to have a dig back at Dawkins and encouraging like-minded bloggers to link to his comments.

The result is a top Google ranking for Tom.

Now apply this logic to a disgruntled consumer that has been ripped off by an incompetent and/or unscrupulous company.

Craftsman Timber Floors, I assume thinks of itself as a very good company and wouldn't be considered as the type of company mentioned above. Would it?

One question that people often ask me is how to choose a PR company. Here are some tips of factors that I would advise you to consider:

Track record  Important, but don't be misled. What you want to know is the track record of the people working on your account, not what the company's achieved (the people who did it have often long since departed). Questions to ask include:

How well do they know your industry sector?
Have they won any major industry awards?
What major achievements can they point to?
What range of skills and experience do they offer?

Organ grinder or monkey? Don't be too impressed if the managing director turns up to pitch for your account. His or her impressive blue-chip, award-winning background will be of no use to you if you'll normally be dealing with juniors. Make sure the team that pitches is the team that works for you.

Qualified professionals  Check out the professionalism and qualifications of the team. Gone are the days when public relations was about a journalist having G&Ts with an old chum. Today you want to know if your consultant is a member of the Institute of Public Relations. Does he or she have a PR degree or a CAM diploma? Unless the person heading the team can say yes, then say good bye.

What’s the damage? PR companies usually charge for 'disbursements' and 'bought-ins'. These are essential to the campaign, but before you start you should be told what the likely cost is? It's also useful to find out exactly how it charges for its time. Some agencies have different charges for senior and junior consultants but it may be better to have different rates for the type of work being done. For example you shouldn’t pay as much per hour for a simple news release that could be done by a junior exec as you would for strategic advice that must be done by a senior consultant, nor should you expect to pay the senior consultant’s rate to complete a simple job that should have been done by more junior person.

Here today, gone tomorrow? Public relations companies have notoriously high staff turnovers. Ask what the firm is doing to retain staff. A good firm will offer things flexible working, off-the-job training, and profit sharing incentives in order to retain the best staff. If the people on your account are changing frequently then you will spend too much of your time bringing them up to speed.

It’s not size that matters A small consultancy can be just as good if not better than a big one. Ask yourself is it better to be the important client of the small consultancy or the forgotten customer of the corporate giant? Remember you’re the one paying the bill for the plush city centre office, the big name chairman you never see and don’t need and the hordes of staff who don’t even work on your account. Any small firm worth its salt can rapidly scale up to handle large projects by using trusted freelances and partners without you needing to foot the bill for premises, people and services you’ll never use.

Been there, done that  Relevant experience in your sector is very important. But it's not the be all and end all. You also need to look at transferable skills and experience. They don't need to have worked in exactly your sector before. In fact often it's a benefit if they haven't as you want them to provide a new solution that meets your requirements, not one they've plucked off the shelf and used before.

What is public relations? If I had a pound for every time.... and so would say most people who work in PR.

The Institute of Public Relations defines PR as (and take a deep breath):

Public relations is about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you.

Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.

Assuming I could even remember all of that if I recited it in the pub then I'd still get the question - "But what do you actually do?".

There are a couple of fairly well known stories that can be used to try and illustrate a bit more clearly what PR is about:

If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying "Circus coming to the town moor on Saturday" then it's advertising. If you stick the sign on the back of an elephant and parade it through town, then it's promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor's flower bed then that's publicity. But if you'd actually planned for the elephant to walk through the flowerbed and you can get the mayor to laugh about it and talk to the media, then that's public relations.

An alternative tale is:

You're sitting in a bar enjoying a drink and you spy a beautiful woman / handsome man sitting alone. You go over to introduce yourself and tell them how wonderful you are. That's advertising. If you go over and ask the man / woman what their ideal partner is and then you go off and have a makeover, then that's marketing. However, if they come over to you and say "Hi, I've heard how great you are" then that's public relations.

Neither story is a perfect illustration but they do help to get over the point that it's reputation that matters.

Practically the professional public relations person will use a wide variety of communications channels and tools to do their job. These could include media relations (what most people think of as PR), events, market research, print and design, web sites, focus groups, employee relations, community relations etc.