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HOW TO SELECT A PUBLIC RELATIONS AGENCY - PART 5

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The need of being in tune with your company

The public relations agency to help you do internal communication should be selected even more carefully than the one you have for external communication. Make sure, too, they are interested in your company as a whole.

The agency has to grasp the way your company operates, know the values you respect and take them into consideration under all circumstances. Naturally, the same holds true for the external communication too, however, the internal communication takes place in a completely different environment – a closely-knit, isolated community (yet one being influenced from the outside, too). No external agency can ever get fully oriented here; they are not present every day, and when they are present, they are necessarilly bound to be perceived as alien. For this reason, it is desirable that the agency or its workers have already had experience with the internal communication. They should be aware of its regularities, knowing not just the tools they can utilize and being able to combine those tools as well, but they should also try to penetrate and understand the company´s corporate culture.

Last time we advised you not to hire an agency that would ask no questions while promising outright what they were going to deliver. This piece of advice holds true even more here, only the questions asked should be directed towards the company´s internal climate and atmosphere. The agency should not enquire just of the company´s management, but also of its employees. The company is facing problems just because the top management do not know what is going on in the company, what the people who work there think. Or they do know it, yet they do not care.

Our today´s advice, then, goes like this: WHEN HIRING AN AGENCY FOR INTERNAL COMMUNICATION, MAKE SURE YOU BOTH SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE AND THEY ARE READY TO COMMUNICATE NOT ONLY WITH THE MANAGEMENT, BUT ALSO WITH THE EMPLOYEES, UNLESS SUCH ACTIVITY IS TAKEN CARE OF BY YOUR INTERNAL DEPARTMENT.

Related articles

• How to select a public relations agency – part 1.
• How to select a public relations agency – part 2. – Nine good pieces of advice how to choose your PR agency first time right
• How to select a public relations agency – part 3. – Should you or should you not cooperate with a PR agency at the time of crisis?
• How to select a public relations agency – part 4. – Looking for your own way? Look for an individual approach.

The series of How to select a public relations agency was prepared for you by specialists and consultants from „PR1“ agency:http://ow­nway.eu/pr1/

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