Discovering Meebo

I did not do much work today. I typed up the list of hardware/building trade publications that I sent the press release to yesterday for a client company distribution. After that, I looked up pricing for mobile staging and audio system rentals for a fashion show event we are putting together for a client. Surprisingly many of these companies did not have pricing online, but I emailed them and now I am just waiting for responses. If I don't hear anything by tomorrow, I'll start calling them. Then we had an internal agency meeting to talk about the event because it is actually a fictitious event right now due to the fact we are pitching this idea against another public relations firm. I kind of hope we get the client because I would feel lame if we put together an event with all this outside companies and then have to tell them it is not happening. Embarrassing it would be. Then I looked up fashion trends for the rest of the day to get any idea of what the fall 2009 fashions will be for the show.

While roaming the web for fashion, I discovered a useful tool called Meebo. Apparently many already know about it, but I did not. You can log into all your chat accounts and use them all at once. So now I can be logged into Facebook chat, Myspace chat, Yahoo, Windows Live, Google chat, and AIM. It's pretty cool. Now I will never be bored at work... okay maybe that's a stretch, but at least I can talk to people.

Having a Case of the Mondays

I had a very pleasant 3 day weekend. I got to enjoy Summerfest and some relaxation time.

When I got in the office today, I updated the weekly status report and printed it for a weekly agency meeting. This meeting I got nothing assigned to me! I swear, I think I do less and less each week. Whenever I ask to do something, they just say look up a contact number or build a media list. Will I ever get to write a press release or anything? I fear I will not and when I leave this internship, I will have learned nothing other than the fact that public relations is not my cup of tea.

I had to call hostway.com because my company email address stopped working this morning. After I got that under control I copied an article from a magazine that our client was published in and I also finished an ad value report for another client. The ad value report was a bit rough seeing that our agency does not have access to any databases, so I had no pricing for advertising or any data really. We didn't even have the actual articles, so I have no idea what the column inches were! Wow this agency is so efficient...

I looked up media contacts in the Arizona area that cover education and sent them to the associate in the office. Then I finished the hardware/building media list and sent out a press release that the associate wrote up. Then it was time to head home. I was nodding off all day and was getting grumpy. Good thing today went fast and the boss and her associate were out most of the day.

Every body is crabby

The two other people in the office are busy with this crisis management issue and are extremely snippy today. As soon as I opened my Google alerts this morning, there were five articles with our client in it. Crazy! My idea was to keep my head down and hope no one yells at (not that they would because they pretty much ignore my existence). I'm actually not really sure why they hired an intern because I do not really do anything. In regards to not doing anything, my boss asked me today what I was working on and I said "well, just media lists." She was like, "okay." Seriously... I was hoping she would realize I'm not really doing anything and give me a job to do. I guess not.

I compiled a Chicago calendar media contact list for the better part of the day. I called one client and got their exact address for my boss. I'm guessing she's mailing something to them. I also called AT&T to get our fax line fixed because we could receive faxes, but not send them. Got that accomplished. Then I sent out a new appointment release for client 8 to healthcare, security and Indianapolis publications. In total it was over 50 separate emails. However, ten of them were undeliverable.

Man I wish I had a paying job...

Another Busy Day of Miniscule Tasks

First thing in the morning we had a meeting with the Starlight Foundation district manager. We are coming up with an event for a client during back-to-school that could be conducted annually and bring in repeat patrons. The foundation is really interesting. They raise money to provide programs to help terminally ill children and their families inside and outside of the hospital. Unfortunately, in Chicago they have no national stars for promotional purposes, but their Los Angeles office has Jamie Lee Curtis and Corbin Bleu. We are going to try and get Corbin Bleu. That would be great for our target audience and since High School Musical is such a hit right now, it will draw a massive amount of people. Keeping my fingers crossed that this works out and the client will be pleased.

Then I had to look up real estate reporters/editors in the Chicagoland area due to a crisis with one of our clients. Crain’s Chicago Business published an article about our client that did not make them look to good and now we are in charge of crisis management (Sadly the only thing in public relations other than event planning that I like and I don’t really get to be involved. I just get to look up contact information). Literally while I was doing this we had a conference phone call with client 6. We discussed vertical market opportunities and the press releases we have already created. They seemed to like everything. The conversation was only fifteen minutes long (short in reference to other meetings). I was suppose to take notes, but there wasn’t any real new input from the client, so I didn’t right anything down…
Afterwards I wrote up the notes from the Starlight meeting and distributed to the others in the office. Finally we got the headshot for the second new appointment release. I sent the release out with the headshot to all the trade and Chicago publications I was directed to.

My boss told me to look up the date of when back-to-school shopping officially starts. I had trouble finding a specific date and most stores do not have back-to-school on their websites yet. I finally found two articles that said that back-to-school shopping officially begins late July. Once my boss got that information, she asked me to look up this paid press release service. I bulleted some information about the service they provide to companies and emailed it to her. She sent a nasty reply saying that she could of found that information herself (why did she ask) and said answer these two questions (apparently the questions she wanted answered all along and I should have been able to read her mind to get her the answers she wanted originally). The aggravating part was the questions were answered in the bullets I sent previously, which was less than one-page of information. You know what I did, I pulled the answers straight from my information sheet, copied and pasted so she could tell it was in the information I already sent to her. I think my frustration with being the information retriever only has boiled over and I decided to be a bit sassy. Probably not professional, but my boss and her associate tend to use an extremely rude, cheerleader attitude a lot. At this point, in other words, I don’t care.

The last thing I did today was compile the real estate contact information into a nice chart and saved it in our shared files. I also started to compile the Europe security trade publication media contact sheet. Let’s just say it is difficult since we don’t have access to an international media database and Google isn’t very helpful, but I’m doing my best.

Just plugging away

Monday, June 22
For the first hour and twenty minutes of the morning, we had our weekly internal staff meeting. We went over each client. Out of the five page weekly report, I got two things assigned to me. After the meeting, I sent out a new appointment release for client 6 to Indianapolis and Chicago business publications. I was suppose to send out another new appointment release, but I'm still waiting on the headshot that I need to send with it. When sending out the one new appointment news release, I realized that the emails for all the publications were all over the place in the shared files. So I created a basic reference sheet for quick use when you sending out mass releases and then another more detailed list for individual contact. I also made a specific folder in the company's shared files just for media contact information. Hopefully that makes things easier.

For the rest of the day I worked on putting an advertising value report together for client 8 and looked up skateboard shops that would possibly partner with our new client (client 9).

Tuesday, June 23
Still could not send out the other new appointment release because our client still hasn't sent us the headshot. Instead, I worked more on the advertising value report. The problem is we don't have all the clippings. I don't know the column inches for all the articles and have no references on how much advertising cost for any of the mediums we had articles/broadcasts placed in.

Then I did some searching online for European/UK security trade publications. I found two... basic search engines just don't do the trick when your looking internationally. Afterwards, I started printing off documents to update my client folders, but I think I was annoying the associate, so I put that on hold for another day. Now I'm blogging and counting down until I leave.

Short Day, Long Weekend

We were suppose to have a meeting with a magazine advertising director this morning, but he cancelled due to unexpected meetings. I took a Twitter 101 webinar on Cision for about an hour and fifteen minutes. It was interesting. I found out the pound sign (#) is placed before events that are taking place currently so that you can distinguish an event from a brand. I also learned about Mr Tweet that recommends people to follow on Twitter that are relative to your profile and what you tweet about. Also, there are desktop programs that can organize you tweets into multiple lists. This makes it easier to look through large quantities of followings. You can make a news list, sports list, advertising list, etc. of just those topics instead of looking at all the people your following in one list. The desktop programs seem very handy.

After the webinar, I just surfed the net finding contact information of local Chicago radio stations that would possibly report about local events. My boss let me leave early today because her and her associate had a meeting to attend to at 3 p.m. Apparently the associate is taking off tomorrow for a mini-vacation over the weekend and my boss is in-and-out of meetings all day tomorrow; so I have work off for tomorrow. This is okay with me. To be honest, I'm kind of getting sick of sitting at a computer using Cision to look up contact information of media and putting it into a spreadsheet all day, every day.

I am going to speak with my boss on Monday morning about trying more things within public relations for learning purposes, since I feel that I have not done much other than create media lists. We'll see how that goes. I just need to ask her in a professional manner.

Tired of Doing Nothing

Yesterday, 6/16/2009
I started the day looking up contact information of cheerleading teams in Anaheim and Los Angeles, California. Then I emailed all the contact information I found to my boss's associate. That is really all I do. I look up contact information for my boss's associate and email them to her. I'm their professional yellow page surfer.

Then the boss's associate gave me a plain list of publication titles and told me to make it look pretty. I just put the list into a template provided in Microsoft Publisher. My boss and her associate loved it. It literally took me two seconds to do. After that, I created a media list of national education publications. I had to cut the list down from 495 magazines to 50. Then I read over the associate's positioning release and fact sheet for client 3. It did not make that much sense because it was covering financial plans I did not completely understand. The good thing is I caught a few spelling errors and a paragraph that was actually written for another client accidently shoved into the positioning release.

The final thing I did for the day was take a webinar on Cision about understanding social media. Unfortunately, the information given was just review of things I already knew. They explained the difference between microblogging, blogging and social networking websites.

Today, 6/17/2009
As soon as I walked into the office, the associate told me to start researching the Starlight Foundation before a meeting with them. At 10:00 AM, we had a telephone conference with the midwest Starlight Foundation about the possibilities of doing a charity event with Starlight and one of our clients. The meeting went well and the lady seemed very interested in doing a charity event with us. Afterwards, I wrote up the notes from the meeting for the associate and my boss.

My boss asked me to define digg, StumbleUp, del.ico.us, Facebook, and Twitter. So that is what I did in like 10 minutes and emailed her back. My boss then told me to look up other options for a charity event, so I looked up the Salvation Army and Goodwill. Also, I had to take over the cheerleading/dance team search in Anaheim and Los Angeles, California. I called and emailed the LA Lakers, LA Clippers, Anaheim Ducks, and UCLA. I have not gotten an email responses and when I called I got all voicemails. Hopefully I hear something tomorrow from the teams.

The last thing of the day was a conference call with client 3 about their positioning release and fact sheet. It was a quick meeting. No more the 20 minutes, which I like a lot better then the usual two hour meetings that drag on.

The routine starts again tomorrow.