Archive for the ‘Time Management’ Category
eriksr on May 8th, 2007
If you’ve ever found yourself in cut’n'paste land, know that you are not 
alone. Every day trillions of people toil away at the CRTL+X, CRTL+V keys (or the event less fortunate, who click “EDIT” and “CUT” then “PASTE) in an effort to get information from one place to another.
Thankfully, for some of you, Ditto has come to your rescue. Click the screenshot to see what it looks like, by the way!
So, how is this going to change my life?
Let’s say you’re constantly cutting/copying and pasting the same group of things. You have to go to your source, copy/cut, go to your destination, select your point, and paste. Ditto actually stores everything you’ve copied and kept on your clipboard so you don’t have to keep going back to your source — you just open Ditto and paste what you want from there.
Ditto can be launched quickly by hitting CRTL+` (it’s the rarely used button to the left of the number 1 on most keyboards).
Even better, Ditto hangs onto data for a long time, even after you turn your computer off, so you can access things you worked with days ago. Heck, you can keep whole tables in there!
eriksr on April 6th, 2007
I recently learned about a new service that ought to be of interest to you, dear readers. It’s called PitchWire, and at its heart is a system for PR pros to reach influencers without getting under their skin. It does this by reducing the amount of irrelevant crap that shows up in their inboxes — genius! And, heads up, basic membership is free, but you can get access to the premium features free until May 1, 2007.
Nuts and Bolts: About the Service 
I like PitchWire’s philosophy behind building and sending out pitches on this service a lot. When you create a new pitch, you start out with the basics – you specify your target, then you move on to filling in important details like contact information for your spokesperson, customers, analyst/experts, the pitch category (partnerships, new products, contributed articles, etc.). I like that PitchWire starts you off here because these details can sometimes be overlooked until the last minute, causing a frantic rush of activity resulting in major headaches. Not that I know what that’s like!
THEN you move on to your pitch headline and body copy. The body copy text box limits you to 10,000 words. This is very generous, but I hope you all know enough that your pitch really shouldn’t get anywhere remotely that high. In fact, the only justification for a pitch that long would be to get the word out about the Second Coming.
After that you can add a link to a Web site, and even upload attachments up to 5MB in size. Rather than an attachment feature, I’d love to see something akin to file sharing services such as Fabrik, where you can upload your files and share them via a link.
The Best Part — For Influencers
I love, love, love the message the recipient gets. At the start of it is a very well written message explaining what PitchWire is, what the recipient is looking at, and what they can do next. PitchWire has also taken the step to automatically create an account for the recipient so they can join PitchWire. This time and effort saving idea is brilliant for those reporters, bloggers, and analysts who want to hook up.
After the message comes your pitch. Influencers can of course create their own accounts and fill in details about what beats they cover and, ultimately, what pitches they’d like to see. That ought to make life easier for everyone.
Are you still reading? Click on over to PitchWire’s site to learn more, and tell all your friends and influencers. This is an easy to use, stable service that will only improve as more people join up!
eriksr on March 26th, 2007
Alright all you cool cats. You’ve got your Google News coming in via Email. You’ve got your RSS feeds bustin’ out news from sources you’re monitoring (hopefully via Netvibes, but if you’re using Internet Explorer 7 or something then hey, that’s…cool, I guess). In other words…Your. Clients. Are. Covered.
Now what about you? I ask this because sometimes we get so wrapped up in keeping track of who is saying what about whom that we neglect ourselves. I’m talking about anything from celebrity gossip to sports news, world events to horoscopes. Today, I’m going to introduce you to a Website that will bring your reading into modern times.
Spotback
Spotback is a news site. You can get all sorts of news from Spotback, just like any source. But the beauty of the service is how it tailors itself to suit your interests. Each news item on Spotback includes a slider, set to the number 0, that you can slide to the left (towards -5) or the right (towards +5) to indicate your interest in a particular story. Through this slider you’re telling Spotback what you’d like to see more of or less of. In my experience, Spotback was nicely trained within just a couple of days of casual voting.
Other Goodies
Spotback, of course, has a number of other tools that can be useful to a PR professional. Take a look at the top of the page — NewsSnacks is essentially an RSS reader that has Spotback’s sliders built in. You can also track specific keywords.
eriksr on March 7th, 2007
Don’tcha love the alarmist headlines? Really catch the eye, don’t they? Anyway, I am quite serious. 
Following up on yesterday’s entry about the top requests for help I get at PR firms, I’m going to talk about one of the biggest issues around: Information management.
So, you probably have a gajillion files on your computer — press releases, drafts, media lists, passwords written in Word documents and forgotten — and a whole lot more on your company intranet. I can’t tell you the number of times I had to put together a briefing document for a meeting I’d set up with a reporter and used my indexing software to look up a document made for this reporter by a colleague. It was just sitting there on the intranet, likely never to be used by anyone again — but it ended up shaving 15 minutes off my task.
I’m going to show you how to take back control of your information and how to make use of all that data that is languishing on your intranet.
Indexing software — Google or Copernic, take your pick
Indexing software scans every single document on your computer — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, whatever — and creates an index of their contents. Whenever you run a search looking for key words or sentences, the software checks against its index to see where th e words pop up and delivers the results for you to review. The beauty of this is that it is FAST and ACCURATE. Heads up, though — depending on the amount of documents on your computer and Intranet, indexing software could take anywhere from hours to days to comb through all your stuff. However, once complete the process does not have to be repeated.
I highly recommend Copernic’s Desktop Search, hands down the best indexer available. After you run a search, Copernic provides a handy dandy preview of your document within its own window so you don’t have to open it up to see what’s inside. It has a swanky interface and, of course, is blazingly fast. Better yet, it can easily be told to index the contents of your intranet.
Alternatively, Google just announced their new Google Desktop 5 product (click here for the review by my favorite person ever, Rafe Needleman) that, besides having cute little widgets, can create a Google search for your computer. Yes, you can surf the documents, spreadsheets, presos, even PDFs on your computer just like you would Google. You can download it here.
eriksr on February 22nd, 2007
An alternative title I was about to use today was, “What direct marketers can teach 
us”. These people have, after all, elevated Email marketing (some of us consider this to be spam) to an art form.
Today’s topic came about when a former colleague of mine, Cece Salomon-Lee, Marketing Communications Manager with ON24 Inc., told me that a recent project her company participated in — an Email blast from the CMO Council — received a mind blowing 99% open rate. How the heck did they pull it off? And how can we take advantage of it ourselves? I did a teensy bit of research on the matter and would like to share some of my findings. Hopefully some of this will help you to write a better, more effective Email/pitch to your target reporters or influencers.
Read the rest of this entry »
eriksr on February 5th, 2007
I’m on a personal productivity jag these days. Indulge me s’more.
I once read about a study that said people working with more than one monitor tend to be more productive. I’ve worked with a similar setup before and I have to agree: It’s a more relaxing experience. Think about it: You’re trying to create a list of contacts for some outreach, so you create your spreadsheet and then go surfing for names. Once you find a name you highlight it, copy it, switch to the spreadsheet, click where it belongs, and paste. What if the spreadsheet was on the other monitor? You would just highlight the data you want and drag it over to where it belongs. Look at all the steps you just skipped!
So should you run out and buy a second monitor? Sure. But if that’s not an option (and it probably isn’t) there is a way to eke out some productivity with just one monitor.
Dexpot
Traditionally, we have our Windows desktop and all our icons and programs run on it. When we want to get at a different program, we click it in the START bar, or we minimize it. Well, what if you didn’t have to minimize your applications so much anymore? What if you could have a different desktop dedicated to every one of your clients? Click here to check out Dexpot. Dexpot creates multiple desktops on your single monitor, and it is free — for personal use, at least.
You can dedicate each desktop to play host to the applications or documents you are working on for a specific client. So if someone comes by your desk asking for information about Client B, you don’t have to minimize all your windows and stop what you’re doing — just switch over to that desktop and find the answer, then switch back. You’ll find eventually that not having to keep track of minimized/maximized windows can ease your brain a bit.
alone. Every day trillions of people toil away at the CRTL+X, CRTL+V keys (or the event less fortunate, who click “EDIT” and “CUT” then “PASTE) in an effort to get information from one place to another. 
