Five Tips to Spring Clean your PR Closet

By David Cumpston, Director, Client Services for LCI
Despite parts of the country still getting walloped by snow and ice this month, most of us are already looking forward to spring’s longer days, warming temperatures and blooming flowers. But just as we’re shedding the winter coats for t-shirts and UGGs for Havainas, it’s also a good time to peer into our PR closets to do a little spring cleaning to see what needs to be thrown out, updated or put to better use.
This is a particularly useful activity for those clients you’ve been working with for awhile. It’s sometimes easy to fall into a rut and lose sight of the bigger strategic picture while you’re working hard on the day-to-day activities. Here are five ways to shake up your PR bag of tricks to ensure you stay on the path to success through the year.
1)      Media List Mashup – Like Chicago weather in the springtime, reporters that change beats (and publications) so often make it difficult to predict if your best contact one day will even be around the next. Take time this month to review you top media contacts so you’re ready to go the next time news breaks and can spread the word about it quickly.
2)      Bring Back Big Ideas – Remember all of those grand ideas your team brainstormed and you presented to the then-prospective client? Though they probably helped you win the business, chances are many of them had to be shelved for one reason or another. Pull out that PR proposal again and take another look at some of those big ideas. Who knows – maybe now is the time to execute on one or more of them.
3)      Team Tweaks – Are some of your staffers looking for new opportunities within the agency to grow different parts of their PR repertoire? Have new agency staff members been recently hired that may possess the perfect skill set for an existing client? Looking into opportunities to shake up and breathe new life into account teams. Not only will your employees appreciate the chance to take on other responsibilities, but this could also be the time to pair up a long-term client with a fresh face with new ideas.
4)      Client Cocktails – The further you’re located from you clients, the less opportunity you have to meet in person as often as you could/should. Take the opportunity this spring to host a client cocktail hour in your offices so you can get in some quality face-to-face time before busy summer schedules make it almost impossible.
5)      Key Message Kickstart – When is the last time you updated – or even read – each client’s boilerplate? If it’s been more than a few months, review your current key messages to be sure they’re properly reflected in such things as the boilerplate, in the client’s online press room, etc.
What lies in your PR closet that could use a good scrubbing? Let us know in the comments section below or feel free to email me at [email protected].