DIY PR can work.

For some small businesses, founders, experts, consultants and coaches, it can be a useful way to start building media visibility without paying for PR support straight away.

It can help you understand what journalists ask for, what kinds of stories get picked up, how your expertise might fit into the media, and how quickly you need to respond when an opportunity appears.

If you have time, patience and a willingness to learn, DIY PR can be worthwhile.

Expert commentary PR is one of the clearest ways to build credibility through the media.

It is also one of the most misunderstood.

When people think about PR, they often picture big announcements, product launches, celebrity campaigns or dramatic news stories. But for many founders, consultants, coaches, doctors, professional service providers and specialists, the strongest PR route is not always a press release.

It is being quoted as the expert.

For founders, experts, consultants, coaches, doctors, product brands and growing businesses, the decision is rarely as simple as “freelancer good” or “agency better”.

Choosing between a freelance PR consultant and a PR agency can feel surprisingly difficult.

On paper, the difference looks simple. A freelancer is usually one independent PR specialist. An agency is usually a wider team. But in practice, the right choice depends on your budget, goals, expectations, industry, internal capacity and how much support you actually need.

For founders, experts, consultants, coaches, doctors, product brands and growing businesses, the decision is rarely as simple as “freelancer good” or “agency better”.

If you are looking for PR under £1,000 a month, you are probably not looking for a traditional agency retainer.

And that is not necessarily a bad thing.

For many founders, experts, consultants, coaches and growing brands, a £3,000, £5,000 or £10,000-a-month PR retainer simply does not make commercial sense. You may need credibility, authority, visibility and trusted media proof, but you may not need a large agency team, endless strategy decks or a heavy corporate communications setup.

PR, personal branding and thought leadership are often talked about as if they are the same thing.

They are not.

They can overlap. They can support each other. For founders, experts, consultants, coaches and authority-led brands, they often work best together.

But they do different jobs.

Personal branding helps people understand and remember who you are.

Thought leadership gives people a reason to listen to what you think.

PR gives your expertise, story or point of view external credibility through earned media, interviews, expert commentary and third-party coverage.

The confusion matters because many people invest in the wrong thing first.

Hiring a PR agency can feel difficult if you are a consultant, coach or expertise-led service provider.

You may know PR could help you build credibility, visibility and trust, but you may not know how to judge whether an agency is right for you.

That matters because not every PR agency understands expertise-led businesses.

Most consultants and coaches do not just want to be “seen”.

They want PR to do something useful.

They want it to build trust before a sales call. They want prospects to take them more seriously. They want better proof on their website, stronger credibility on LinkedIn, more authority in their niche and more confidence when people compare them with someone else.

Most consultants and coaches do not just need more visibility.

They need more trust before the sales call.

That is an important difference. Visibility gets you seen. Authority helps the right people believe you are worth listening to, following, recommending and eventually hiring.

If you sell expertise, people are not buying something simple or instantly obvious. They are buying your judgement, your experience, your thinking, your process and your ability to help them solve a problem that matters to them.

Earlier this week, I spoke to a senior journalist about AI in PR.

Her view was clear: journalists hate lazy AI-generated PR.

Not because journalists are anti-technology. Not because they do not understand that AI can be useful. But because, in the wrong hands, AI is becoming a threat to the things journalism depends on most: trust, accuracy, real expertise, human judgement and credible sources.

“Affordable PR” can sound reassuring until you stop and ask what it actually means.

Affordable compared to what?
Affordable because the agency is efficient?
Or affordable because something important has been stripped out?

That distinction matters.

For years, PR tried to justify itself using the same metric as advertising: Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) — a hypothetical cost of buying the same space as paid media.

Bigger article = higher “value.”

But that thinking never explained what PR actually does. An article is not an advert. It doesn’t behave like one, convert like one, or influence people in the same way.

In today’s digital-first world, visibility matters — but being visible is not enough if people do not trust what they find. Brands compete for attention not only on Google but increasingly across new AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Traditional marketing methods aren’t enough anymore.