Public Relations (PR) is the strategic communication between a business and its stakeholders aimed at fostering trust, building greater awareness and enhancing reputation and credibility. These stakeholders have an interest in and can have a significant influence on the operations and success of a business. They include customers, potential customers, employees, suppliers and the media etc. These stakeholders are known as 'Publics' and hence the term Public Relations.

Create regular, exciting new content for your web site, with SEO in mind, on sections for news, articles, guides, and blogs. Combine this with your social media and email marketing that delivers your messages to a broader audience rather than simply relying on your content being seen by visitors to your web site.

Issue regular press releases and articles to the relevant engineering and industry publications. Getting your news, case studies and best practice articles published in the press will enable you to reach thousands of engineers and specifiers across the UK and position your company as a voice of authority within your sector.

When magazines publish your stories online they tend to stay there indefinitely and work wonders for your online visibility. Additionally, consider paying for your content to be distributed via magazines' email marketing and social media to reach a much wider audience than could be possible by using only your own channels.

There's a mass of information on the internet, but engineers still value magazines. The reason why is that information on the internet isn't edited and there's tons of it. A magazine with an editor and an editorial team know their readers and what they're looking for. They pick out all the relevant news and what's new in industry, then condense it in magazine form for their readers.

A design engineer, would read a design engineering magazine like Eureka, Design Products & Applications (DPA), Industrial Technology or Design Solutions, to name just some. The editors of these magazines will produce editorial content that will bring design engineers up-to-date with all the latest news, innovations and technology likely to be of greatest interest to design engineers.

By turning the pages of a magazine you can bring yourself up-to-date with what's new in industry very quickly. No one could do this just by browsing the web. Of course, most magazines have on-line versions of their printed journal, with web sites and social media but the content is exclusive to them.

Either online, in print or via social media, engineering magazines are the quickest way for enginers to keep themselves up-to-date. Not only that of course but they're beautifully written and amazingly well presented by very talented people, so reading them is a pleasure.

If you ever had any doubts about the reach of the engineering press, just go to one of the great exhibitions for manufacturing and industry in the UK. Most of the best are organised by publishers of engineering magazines. Ask yourself what attracted the talented engineers browsing the aisles? They heard about the exhibition through the engineering press.

Most definitely not and PR should not be viewed in that way. Advertising and PR go hand in hand so whatever your budget for marketing communications it should be split between the two, as both are important and play different roles in promoting your business.

Most business-to-business magazines have what is known as a controlled circulation. Effectively what this means is that the circulation manager will add a reader to the magazine's circulation if they meet the terms of control.

For example, a magazine that is essentially for maintenance engineers, will send regular free copy copies to maintenance engineers. To apply for a regular free copy potential readers must apply either by filling out a reader application form, usually printed within the magazine, or apply online.

In return for getting a regular free copy the potential reader provides a significant amout of information about their job function, their specifying power, and the company they work for, usually by company size and activity. They may then become a registered reader.

It's generally the view, particularly of the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), that magazines must renew registration of each reader every three years. A reader who has not reregistered after three years, may no longer be considered a registered reader, and if the magazine continues to send regular free copies, the reader can no longer be counted as part of the magazine's controlled circulation.

Magazines should be able to show their total circulation and what part of it is controlled and what part not controlled or free. Reregistering readers is a big job and some magazines don't do it. Also, some new or smaller magazines may buy mailing lists, often from exhibition organisers, and send out free, unrequested copies to boost their circulation figures.

Generally the best magazines are the ones with the highest percentage of requested readers, and ideally would have an ABC Certificate of circulation. This is essentially an audit of the magazine's circulation by the ABC and is the publishing industry's quality assurance standard.

The time this takes and the cost involved is a deterrant to many small business-to-business magazines. In this case we would still look closely at the publisher's analysis of circulation and look for the percentage of registered readers.

The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) provides an independent audit of a magazine's circulation. Following an audit the magazine is issued with an ABC Certificate with a detailed analysis of its circulation. Magazines with an ABC Certificate are entitled to display the ABC logo on their masthead, usually at the bottom.

An ABC Certificate is a magazine's quality assurance with regards to its circulation, verifying that the details it provides to advertisers are correct. Importantly, in the business-to-business press, an ABC Certificate verifies the number of copies of a magazine's circulation that have been individually requested. This is important as the value of an unrequested circulation is questionable.

Some magazines choose not to have their circulations audited as it's costly and time consuming. It doesn't mean they have anything to hide and nor would we recommend disregarding magazines without an ABC. Some very good publications do not have ABC Certificates.

The quick answer, in our opinion, is that no you shouldn't. Editorial should free and totally independent of any charges levied on companies submitting press information.

It's only in this way that editors can be free to make decisions on which editorial submissions are likely to be most interesting to their readers. If an editor's hands are tied and is only able to publish paid-for editorial, then effectively they cease to be editors and are more like advertising sales people. Not only that but if only paid-for editorial is published the value of the magazine to readers is significantly diminished.

A magazine should be able to generate enough revenue to cover its own editorial costs. If we submit a press release on behalf of a client we would almost always decline any requests for a fee or colour separation charge.

Generally the only exception to this is advertorials. An advertorial is an advetisement, the chosen content of which is editorial. All magazines have an advertisng/editorial ratio, and advertorials are classed as advertising in this way.

The UK has some of the very best engineering exhibitions with the opportunity to showcase your company, brand, products, services, technology and innovations. There are also platforms at most exhibitions to engage in seminars and workshops that broaden the scope of your interaction with visitors.

We'd highly recommend exhibiting at exhibitions that are designed for the markets you're targetting.

The simple answer is nowhere nearly as soon as you think. You might get tired of running the same ad repeatedly but your target market won't have seen it nearly as often as you might think.

Reaership research has shown us that if you run the same ad in the best read magazine in every issue (12 times a year) on average only just over 50% of readers will have seen it at least once.

As long as your ad is communicating a message still relevant to your business and marketing strategy we wouldn't recommend changing your ads more than once every couple of years or so. That doesn't mean you shouldn't produce new advertising for different purposes. It just means that as long as your products, marketing strategy and priorities don't change, each ad should have a shelf life of two to three years. And even longer if you don't run your ads very frequently.