PRBreakfastClub

One of my favorite office tricks is organizing my e-mail so that my inbox is empty. Productivity nerds sometimes call this tactic Inbox Zero, and it’s a rule by which I live my business life. I know that PR pros can be inundated with e-mail, perhaps more than most, and I truly believe everyone can tame their inbox.

How do you even begin? Let’s go on a magical productive journey. Read the rest of this entry »

Following a comment left on Keith’s post from last week  regarding email analytics I received a number of questions (public and private) regarding the simple use of the tools already available to us to track email opens (and forwards, number of views, etc.) this seemed like an ideal time to introduce a new (and hopefully semi-regular feature) on the nitty-gritty of using technology to your business advantage.

You may be asking yourself, “Why should I care?  I’m a flack, erm PR Pro – let the techies handle that stuff (or we don’t care about analytics on our emails).”

Perhaps true.  But if you’re in a small agency you may not have techs around to really handle this or they never thought to apply analytics to emails because they simply don’t know our business and don’t know what questions to ask. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t usually write about the more tactical, day-to-day issues of PR and marketing, choosing instead to focus on the delicate work-life balance, thinking like an entrepreneur and why I think it’s OK to not have a traditional PR background. But today, bear with me for a bit, as I’m going to get pretty tactical on something every PR and marketing professional uses probably every single day of their jobs: the e-mail pitch.

Ahh, yes, the infamous “pitch.” Loathed by many, MANY, but in today’s smart phone-obsessed world, about as important as ever in terms of driving successful media outreach for brands and organizations. I won’t get into the whole debate about whether e-mail pitches should or should not be used, but there were a couple of interesting points I wanted to hit from Cone’s main points in the article on about how we can all make our e-mail pitches a bit more refined and increase the rate that our e-mails to bloggers and reporters will A) get opened; and B) actually get us some type of response. Read the rest of this entry »

As public relations professionals, we work in a service-based industry.  Our clients hire us, pay us, and expect us to provide them with results.  What those specific results are, is of course part of a larger plan which is discussed between a company and their agency.  The PR team works hard and provides the client with frequent updates while they go along their daily business.  Perfect, terrific, wonderful, right?  Unfortunately, not always.

What many clients fail to realize is that PR, while certainly a service-based profession, is very much a two-way street.   Read the rest of this entry »

I was on the phone with a friend of mine the other day. She works at home and completely relies on e-mail and virtual communication. She let out this huge groan and states “I am hella annoyed right now. [She is from California, hence the usage of hella] Everyone always replies to my e-mails but NEVER actually answers any of my questions. Instead, they ask questions that I already answered in that e-mail. DOES ANYONE READ ANYMORE?” Read the rest of this entry »