Hello? Can You Hear Me?

Posted on 14. Feb, 2012 by

Last week my phone rang. Sure, this is not an odd occurrence. I probably get more inbound calls at the firm than any other person given the nature of my roll. But the nature of the call was somewhat unique.

A reporter that I have been working with via email from a national outlet called me. [gasp!] And, it was not to work out details.

Yep. She wanted to meet me via phone. I almost fell off my chair. You see, dear reader, this does not happen very often. In my business, and sadly much at all anymore. When I used to walk up hill to school both ways in the PR world, calling and faxing journalists because email was not widely used at the start of my career, I used to speak to reporters a lot as I pitched. Now, because of all of our technology (which makes my job MUCH easier), there is less phone work.

Bridge built with one easy, quick call.

Should you call every journalist in your database? No. But, don’t forget that the phone is a tool – and not just for txting. So this week, do one thing – make a call.

 

Image courtesy of Ritchie Brett via Creative Commons license.

Instagram and Social

Posted on 05. Jul, 2011 by

I am a huge fan of the iPhone app Instagram. Big. BIG fan. In fact, I have started using it to take and share all sorts of pictures from my life. I love how you can use filters, change the way pictures look with ease and share across your social world (including blogs) with just a swipe of the finger.

The one drawback I see as a marketer is that I can not measure my reach with the service. Sure, if people like it or comment I can see – but I can’t track how many people are actually seeing my pictures. In a world where we are constantly asked to measure our reach, ROI and impact – this is bound to come up. Go ahead, call me a data geek, I’m good with that.

So how can you use Instagram AND measure? It’s a bit more cumbersome than I would like, but for now, it works. Here’s what I did:

  1. Take a picture using the app or upload a picture into the app using the “share” function
  2. Edit the photo as you would like and select “next”
  3. Write your caption
  4. Select your geotag, if desired
  5. Under sharing: choose email and send the link you yourself.
  6. Once you receive the email with the link, create a shortened, trackable URL (as seen here with bit.ly)
  7. Share THIS SHORT link across all of your social channels
  8. Measure

I admit that this is not a perfect method as you are still not capturing the number of eyes you get on your photos from the actual app, Instagram. But it will help you see what additional views your photos get.

Are you measuring your Instagram photo views in a different way? Let me know.

[Update - May 10, 2012] statigr.am now has enhanced functionality and offers some Instagram analytics. It’s pretty good. Check it out and let me know what you think.

PR Bag of Tricks: Muck Rack

Posted on 23. May, 2011 by

It’s sometimes hard to be a publicist. First you have to deal with people who don’t always get what you do and see you as a nuisance.  Then, you have to find a way to make your client, the company, and their product relevant and newsworthy. All this while the news-cycle is busy covering things like the president, weather occurrences, and our impending doom (aka The Rapture).

There are hundreds of thousands of media outlets. How do you find out what is important to journalists today? I get a daily digest from Muck Rack that gives me some insight on what journalists are talking about, care about today, and what they are thinking about for tomorrow.  This helps me think about the timing of my pitch, the relevance to the news-cycle, and a good snap shot of the news.

In addition to the daily e-newsletters, their website is very handy. There you can view journalist twitter feeds by media outlet and beat. I especially like the bar on the right of what’s trending for journalists at that moment.

Overall, this is one great tool for any flack, like me.