Last week, Click Communications celebrated its third birthday. In three years we’ve gone from a husband and wife duo to a team of eleven (including our contractors, which we do). We have a smarty pants Advisory Board, and a roster of awesome, fun, high profile clients. Our database of online press is exponentially bigger and stronger than it was three years ago.

At the same time, perhaps you’ve noticed, online marketing and publicity have pretty much exploded over the last three years. Talk about timing! It is more important than ever to have a strong, strategic presence online, and even more important to have partners in the digital space that you can trust.

Because, let’s face it, any schmuck can create a Facebook account and call himself an “Online Expert.” How do you make sure your online partners really know what they’re doing?

A few things to consider:

1. History – Being first isn’t necessarily most important, but experience counts. Mac McLean has personally been focused solely on online publicity since 2003. Dinah McLean started focusing on primarily online marketing and promotions in 2000. When we founded Click in May 2007, we were one of the earliest online-focused agencies through the gate. A strong history like this means that we can spot trends, know what sticks, and know how to implement the right strategy using the right tools.
2. Expertise – Integrated online outreach is our core focus at Click, and helping clients realize their online potential has been our primary mission since Day One. This makes Click a leader in the digital space. We can identify a quality site or blog with just a glance, translate target demographics into target sites in our heads, and transform simple assets into fun feature stories. We can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound (yet), but we are always learning, challenging ourselves, and competing with ourselves in order to do better.
3. Evolution – Click is not the same company we were when we started. Our team is bigger, our list of services is longer, our client list is longer and more diverse, and our press database looks completely different. We’ve achieved all of this because we are flexible, quick to learn, and committed to our education. Every new idea is examined for potential, every setback is a new opportunity,  and every success is shared as a best practice. We roll with the punches and evolve with the times, and are a stronger company for it.
4. Relationships – Ask online press who they like to work with, and why. Better yet, just check out our testimonials. Our long history with our online partners, combined with the fastest response time in the industry, has made our relationships with our press extraordinarily strong. We have been building these relationships, and our database, with great care, because we know they can make the difference between getting covered or not.
5. Integration – Is online outreach a function of the marketing department or the publicity department? It varies from client to client. Our team is unique because we speak the language of online, publicity, and marketing, which means we can work with any department with ease. Our integrated approach helps internal departments work together seamlessly to achieve the best possible results with a cohesive, complementary campaign.
6. Results – If you skip everything else, this is the criteria to examine closely. At Click, we combine quality placement with a high quantity of hits to generate superior results that drive awareness and, ultimately, sales. We measure success by looking at how well we reach target demographics, how timely our placements are, how many quality sites we reach, how many different kinds of sites we reach, how many different assets we had to put to work—we examine everything. And we report these results with great care, making sure they are extremely thorough and capture every hit we place, fully detailed, and, of course, as accurate as possible.

Of course, these aren’t just our criteria. They’re the criteria of the clients we’ve worked with as well. They’re also just the ideals that we’ve chosen to try and live up to. After all, if you built your own company, wouldn’t you try to make it as awesome as possible?