Cheap-to-free online things you can do to keep PR clients happy
So the economy is in the toilet and if you could have afforded a house before you can’t sell it. Soon the UK will distintegrate into some Mad Max-like hell on earth as the chattering classes rob gangs in Peckham of their firearms and roam Essex in convoys of Chelsea tractors feasting on the flesh of farmers and fighting over the last stocks of petrol.
But before that all happens, here is some things you can do online that have little or no cost and yet would provide value to your client:
- Register their Twitter account brand – even if they don’t use it, it prevents the risk of Janet from ExxonMobil happening to them – 15 minutes to 1/2 hour
- Set up a flickr account: this comes in really handy as a photography repository and it takes next to no effort to take pictures at press events. You can then send a link of the pictures to the attendees the following morning as a way of keeping the dialogue open 24.99 USD per year, you can upload pictures in the background whilst doing other work – allow a bit of time for tagging and explanations
- Put up presentations on a Slideshare account – upload in the background – allow a bit of time for tagging and explanations
- Put video on YouTube / Google Video / MetaCafe or a video site of your choice – upload in the background – allow a bit of time for tagging and explanations
- Set up Yahoo! Pipes to do the monitoring of key client issues and brand – 1/2 – 3/4 hour depending on the number and complexity of client issues
- Use a collective delicious account to surface interesting articles and stories. This can also be a handy source of inspiration for coming up with one new idea in every client meeting as well – 15 minutes to set up and an incremental amount of time to feed content in. Just dont forget to log out and log in for different clients
- Use RSS feeds to become more efficient and effective at reading around your clients business and issues – set up once and it should look after itself
- Provide your client with access to a shared calendar of your team on Google, so they can tell at a glance who to reach out to rather than playing the rather annoying sport of telephone tennis – 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there
- Speed up document changes and sharing amends through a shared Google Docs account – incremental
- Suggest descriptors, copy and messaging based on doing a sweep of keywords using Google’s key word tool. You can then also provide the client with this data so they can justify it internally – 1/2 to 1 hour
- Use online surveys to generate news hooks cheaply – 1 hour per survey
Throwing this open to Wadds, Becky McMichael and Jonny Rosemont to take further.
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