How calendar appointments can be PR pros’ secret weapon

There are two kinds of people: those who have a planner notebook, and those who use an e-calendar to organize their lives.

Well, there are those who don’t organize at all, but they’re probably not PR people.

I used to be an old-school-written-planner person, but lately I’ve adopted the e-calendar life personally and as a PR tool.

[RELATED: Master what's now, and discover what's next in PR and communications at the PR Now & Next Conference.]

● Press appointments and briefings. This is the most common use. Whenever we’re connecting a client with a press appointment or phone briefing, we make sure both sides know everything that they need to know for the meeting. For clients, we can include information about the writer and publication, and what they’re interested in covering during the interview. On the other side, we use it to include information about our clients and their products—perhaps the press kit—so they have access to anything that they might need during or after the briefing.

● Events. For press events and trade shows, it’s important to have information at your fingertips. A calendar appointment is an easy way to plop a bunch of information and make it accessible so it doesn’t get buried in email. You can send these to both your own team with information that they need to know, and to press people attending so they can find your event and contact you as needed.

● My own follow-up and reminders. When you’re pitching for several clients to new journalists every day or tracking upcoming editorial opportunities over time, it can become overwhelming. Filling your calendar with deadlines and scheduling follow-up for pitches can keep you on track to meet goals and make sure important opportunities don’t slip away. They also can help you make sure you’re the first one to see a piece of coverage when it’s expected to come out.

These are small helps to a PR pro, but all contribute to our doing our best work. Monitoring opportunities for clients can generate even more opportunities and coverage, and being on top of a news story that’s due to come out can have you leading the conversation about it.

PR takes a lot of skills—such as writing, speaking, creativity, resourcefulness—but doing the job exceptionally well relies on coordination and organization.

How do you stay organized? What’s your favorite (uncommon) PR tool?

Laura Shubel is a senior account coordinator at Caster Communications. A version of this article originally appeared on the agency’s blog. Connect with Laura on LinkedIn or via Twitter: @LauraShoebell.

(Image via)

from PR Daily News Feed http://ift.tt/2r5yiHp