“The value of good PR is easy to see: Positive news stories help companies retain clients and attract new ones. Delivering that value, though, and at the right price, is hard — and getting harder,” writes Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based PR pro Robert Wynne.

I particularly enjoyed reading an article Wynne had written in Forbes magazine back in 2009. Although he and I have never met, the qualities he suggests looking for when searching for a responsible public relations echo the tenets of my own PR firm, Relevant Publications, LLC.

In a Forbes magazine article, Wynne writes:

Why is PR so powerful?

It’s “earned media” in the form of an article rather than “paid media” in the form of an ad.

An old friend who worked in the advertising department of the Los Angeles Times explained it to me this way: If a half-page ad in the Business section is worth $20,000, a story on the front page of the same size is worth roughly five times that much.

Advertising salesmen will disagree with me on this figure (it’s their job), but ask yourself: Do you buy Forbes for the punch and perspective of the articles, or for those dizzyingly dense pharmaceutical ads?

Now that you know you need PR, what kind of firm should you look for, what specific services should they offer, and how much should you pay for them?

Let’s be clear: There are loads of sub-par PR firms. The trick is to find a gem among the crowd.

Click here to read Wynne’s entire article.