A little time off gives renewed energy

By Anna Ålenius Mathson, International PR Manager at Projectplace

As guest blogger, I wanted to share with you how Projectplace works with PR and social media.

As you know, quite a lot has happened in PR over the past few years and it truly feels like ”everything happens online” these days. When I returned to work in 2009 after parental leave, everyone talked about Twitter and Yammer, and blogging had become the norm.

Naturally, I started to evaluate our PR tools and processes from this new social point-of-view and realized that the services we used to send press releases or monitor media felt rather out of date. We needed a change. Because Projectplace itself is a web-based project management tool, we understand the importance of user-friendliness, accessibility, and customer service. Therefore, I looked around and met with 3 or 4 companies that specialized in press release services, keeping these values in mind. One of these was MyNewsdesk, a company that had created a completely new tool, which was to act as the PR industry’s salvation, so to speak.

In my opinion, there was no other alternative: we wanted a tool that fulfilled our expectations and needs when it came to shareability, searchabilty, and sociability. Today, we connect with journalists and opinion leaders through a social media newsroom that not only looks good, but also synchronizes with our other media, such as Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube, saving us a lot of time.

Within a short time, we acquired social media newsrooms through MyNewsdesk for our Norwegian, Swedish, UK and Danish markets, and we are presently testing the waters in the USA.

And so, with regard to our own experiences in upgrading our PR service and processes, I’d like to share some tips on what you should remember when shopping around for a new PR tool:

• Simple – it should be quick and easy enough to publish or share a press release that you or anyone else in your department can do it themselves.
• Shareable – you should be able to share all content in the pressroom, and synch it with your social media channels and your own website if necessary.
• Linking – everything we find relevant in our press release is linked to our own site, thus adding value to the information in the actual release itself
• Searchable – your pressroom and all press material must be inherently Google-friendly. Moreover, you have to be able to tag press releases, blog entries, images, and movies with relevant keywords.
• Wow Factor – it has to feel right. If you immediately have a good feeling about the tool or the company, and if your intuition says that this will streamline your PR work, then go for it!

Our mix of online presence and traditional media relations works for us. We send press releases about once a month and we make sure that our releases look more attractive by embedding or linking to relevant information, images or videos. See how we work with online PR.

That was all from me this time, but over the next few months I will be guest-blogging here and sharing more of our experiences with social media, press releases, SEO, etc. So stay tuned! In the mean time, if you have any questions or would like me to elaborate on the tips I highlighted here, don’t hesitate to contact me!

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