Sarah Riley is VP at Technique Communications.
You’ve discovered your self in a well-recognized place – dealing with compounding deadlines, pressing consumer requests, fast response pitching, and possibly a financial institution failure. You should transfer shortly, make your conferences environment friendly, and keep on prime of your recreation. Listed below are a couple of methods you possibly can shave time and make your life simpler whereas placing out higher work on your groups and providing you with time to give attention to what issues most: touchdown stellar protection on your shoppers.
Utilizing Google Reminders to your benefit
Use the “🤞” reminders in Google Calendar (or an identical perform in Outlook) to make making ready on your assembly seamless and thorough. All through the week, and even weeks prematurely, add reminders over assembly invitations for docs you need to reference, questions you need answered, and updates to share that will have in any other case slipped your thoughts. When the assembly time arrives, you could have a shortlist of necessary issues to reference at your fingertips, with no need so as to add it to a separate agenda doc. I exploit at the very least a dozen reminders a day, and sometimes many extra, to verify nothing slips by means of the cracks.
OneTab: The extension to rule all of them
This software has saved me (and my progress on a significant challenge) many, many occasions. OneTab is a Google Chrome extension that means that you can collapse any quantity of tabs into – you guessed it – one tab. Gone are the times of slowing down your pc with 16 tabs of Bloomberg reporters open when it’s worthwhile to pivot to a consumer name. You’ll be able to rearrange tabs, title teams, and “restore” teams all on the similar time to choose up on the place you left off. I usually do that for all the fabric PR folks want for bulletins to reference shortly – media lists, pitches, protection docs, FAQs – the works.
Add slightly one thing additional with ColorPick Eyedropper
Use ColorPick Eyedropper, one other Google Chrome extension, so as to add slightly “wow” to your shows and paperwork. You should use the extension to establish the ‘code’ on your consumer’s or firm’s model colours, then use them as accents in any and all client-facing materials to indicate off slightly additional consideration to element. It takes simply seconds and makes sources shortly put collectively look extra presentable.
Postlight Reader will prevent time and sanity
Pulling a PDF of protection that includes your consumer, however it’s behind a paywall? Going loopy over manually eradicating mismatched textual content, adverts, and lacking hyperlinks in that doc? Been there, however fret not. Instruments like Postlight Reader – which, you guessed it, is one other Chrome extension – make it simple to create a clear copy of an article you have already got entry to, however must share as a PDF. (Notice: It doesn’t allow you to get round a paywall.)
Leaning into organizing your Chrome tabs
You’ll be able to group, label and pin your Chrome tabs to maintain tabs on all the things you’re engaged on throughout accounts. I maintain the identical pinned tabs open every day – electronic mail, calendar, OneTab, Google Drive, a time-tracking app, and a note-taking app. I do know I’ll use every daily, and pinning them will take up much less actual property, whereas nonetheless being simply accessible. If I must work on many paperwork directly for a specific consumer, I’ll group them, give them a brief identify, and pivot between duties simply. Bonus: It’s much less embarrassing to share your display in a gathering when you understand precisely the place the best stuff is.
Make your self opinions painless
For every inside evaluate cycle, begin a brand new folder (or doc, or electronic mail draft, and so forth.) the place you begin including your workforce and private “wins” over time. Add all the things you’d need to name out throughout your private evaluate: protection landed, screenshots of optimistic suggestions from workforce leads or shoppers, notes about constructing a relationship with a reporter, and so forth. Revisit this when it’s time to place collectively your evaluate, and keep away from digging into what you had been engaged on six months in the past.
There you could have it. Seven years of determining what works, all on one web page. I hope these instruments prevent time, enhance peace of thoughts, and make working beneath a time crunch just a bit extra bearable.
