Today, my morning starts very early as I'm up at 5.30am to attend a business networking meeting. Here, I'll meet with colleagues, find out how I can help them to grow their business and receive reciprocal help and advice from them too. By 8.30am I'm back on the road to the office.
My office is quite unique, it’s a boat berthed on the River Tyne. I’ve always had a passion for boats so combining my love of the river with a practical and unusual workspace is quirky and a great place to meet clients.
After managing work for my social media clients, I make a few calls to radio presenters and journalists to see if they need any experts for interviews. I have a new service called RADAR where I look out for opportunities for the people who have signed up to this very inexpensive service. So far, it’s proving to be very popular both with my clients and my media contacts.
My first client meeting of the day is with Health Watch Gateshead. They are recruiting volunteer members for their committee and need a press release. I’ve thought about this and realised that the newspapers aren’t going to be too interested in this story. My solution is for the team to write and sing a song asking for volunteers. Once practised, the song (to the tune of the Blaydon Races) comes to life in a short video for social media distribution. It later appeared on BBC radio and attracted a good number of potential volunteers. You can view it here: highlightspr.co.uk/blaydon-races-inspires-call-to-action-to-health-group/
The rest of the morning is spent completing press releases and issuing to the media before preparing for tomorrow’s media training course for small businesses. I hold these intimate (4 people max) sessions at Radio Northumberland’s studio every month. It’s a great way of building up confidence in a very safe environment.
My afternoon is spent with my clients Red Maple who have just moved to a wonderful rural setting near to the Roman Wall. My brief is to highlight their green credentials as well as their expertise in technology and cyber security. My interviews take about an hour as I love to really find out about their business and to look for angles that others may perhaps miss.
Then it’s a quick visit back to the boat to meet up with Ray Laidlaw from the Sunday for Sammy Trust to discuss PR for the February show at the Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle. Despite it being many months away, the show sells out very quickly and my job is to make sure that everyone knows the date (Feb 18th 2018) and to keep the charity in the public’s eye by coming up with stories for the media. It’s great fun and I get to work with some lovely people too.
Last call tonight is a working tea as I discuss the next story for The Harbour View Fish Restaurant in Seaton Sluice with the owner. I love going there as the fish is the size of a whale and it tastes fantastic too.
So, from Blaydon Races to giant fishes and celebrities to circuitry my day is never the same twice. I’ve a passion for PR and I’d love to share it with your business too.
