Hello, hi. Welcome to the first iteration of my monthly recap. I’m obsessed with doing this on my Instagram (go ahead and add me, it’s fine), as I think it’s a nice way to view time as a concrete thing that I can wrap up and put a bow on. Plus, blogging is fun! And, I miss the old Internet. Also, it’s not the end of June yet, but I’m just too excited to wait any longer.
So, in the spirit of all that, here we are. Let’s get started...
3 things I said out loud this month*:
*To nobody but myself, because I work from home!
“Journalists who used to work in PR are awesome.”
We often hear that the best publicists are former journalists! Well, it goes the other way around too. This is evidenced by our 2 latest We Earn Media podcast episodes. Shoutout to both Olivia Morley (AdWeek) and Greg Sleter (Store Brands), for coming onto the show!
It turns out that both guests used to work in PR! In both episodes, they each talk about remembering the challenges that they faced while in the PR field and how it has shaped the way in which they collaborate with publicists to this day.
I came across both Olivia and Greg on Twitter. Both journalists are generous with their knowledge, kindly tweeting helpful tips to publicists from time to time. Olivia even has her own Discord for publicists, if you feel like checking that out.
“The best campaigns do the heavy lifting for you.”
If you’re in this line of work, then this is pretty self-explanatory. However, if you aren’t and you’re confused about what I mean, it’s this fact: the number of placements you earn from any given campaign is never a direct correlation of how hard you “worked it.” (This reminds me of a conversation we had with Hannah Smith about benchmarking campaign performance.)
But, the sad reality is that for those pieces that aren’t “killing it,” you end up having to work harder at outreach, just to try and salvage. And, sometimes, it doesn’t pan out the way you would have liked. But still, you got to try.
My best advice here: post-mortem it and theorize to death. Sometimes you did all the right things, and it just ends up being circumstantial. Still, dig deeper: try and hypothesize, and bring those learnings to the table when you ideate the next campaign.
“Everyone else is as obsessed with syndications as I am!”
During my SLH days as a manager, I had the pleasure ( 😬) of quarterly reviews with every one of my employees. Thankfully, our HR department made them a structured and seamless process. As a manager, I would fill out a quick form about the employee, and they (the employee) would fill out the same form about themself. Then, we’d get together for the “big reveal” to see if we both wrote the same things or if we had some more communicating to do (yes, kind of like the Newlyweds game). Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying that I had an employee lament that if you held up the magnifying glass to her placements, it’s a ton of syndication. My response as her manager was that I viewed her style of outreach as very strategic. She knew which authors were widely shared and she purposefully built better relationships with those folks so that her efforts could spread further and wider. That to me, is working smarter, not harder.
This is why when BuzzSumo came out with their syndications report earlier this month, I was ecstatic to see that fellow experts in the industry agree. While the report didn’t exactly surprise me, it was nice to see an in-depth resource that actually mapped the different networks. Fellow Digital PR’s, I would bookmark this in case you’d like to be as strategic, or even more strategic than my former employee. And, don’t lament at your next employee review. Instead, tell them how much of a genius you are.
My numbers:
I’m not sure that I’ll always be sharing this, but as I figure out this blogging thing, I thought it might be interesting/helpful. Obviously, I’m open to feedback/reasons as to why that’s a terrible idea. In this case, please email me so I stop shooting myself in the foot. :)
This month felt like a nice bounce-back from May, which was a slow month in terms of the number of placements. Now, I know there’s a danger as a digital PR professional to only look at volume for performance. When I communicate my numbers to clients, I take a ‘counter-balance approach,’ and communicate more granularly: domain rank, backlinks, syndication, etc. But, for the sake of a quick ‘snapshot,’ I think these numbers are sufficient at telling the story of how I felt my month went. What can I say? I like it when my pitch emails are answered and when the answer to what I’m asking for is a yes!
By the way, in terms of numbers, this month was bonkers. That placement number is usually not this high. But hey, maybe I can keep the momentum going. Guess you’ll have to stay tuned for my July wrap-up.
Campaigns: 3
Placements*: 61
*This number includes syndications. Always. And, this month I was fortunate to place with a publisher with a lot of syndication partnerships.
Other random things:
Season 2 of The Bear delivered. I cried multiple times. Highly recommend.
I don’t think I need to explain why my husband and I decided to watch the Titanic. I cried multiple times. Highly recommend.
I missed out on buying a mug from my favorite potter, Melissa Weiss, again. I cried multiple times. I don’t highly recommend.