Lexie Smith
Hey guys, I'm Lexie Smith, a mom, multi hyphenate entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of the PR bar Inc, coaching platform and agency. In my career I've had the privilege of guiding countless brands, genius, publicists, eager students and ambitious entrepreneurs on their PR journeys. I've danced with the Giants and nurtured startups, directed in house PR departments lend my expertise to boards and spread knowledge across universities nationwide. Throughout all of this, I've seen our industry change and evolve while simultaneously proving that some timeless fundamentals remain unshaken. This show takes you behind the scenes of the world of media, marketing and PR, aiming to teach you all the new tips, tricks and how the best and brightest are achieving success overseas. Now it's time to grow. Welcome to the show. Hello, this is my first mini solo recording of 2024. Just coming off of the holidays, I'm recording this early January even though you will likely be listening to this late January, early February, I do have a bit of what I'm calling a daycare cold, which basically means I think it's more it's less rare for me to be healthy these days. Then sick because my daughter is coming home week after week with some new germ and I just am a great mom and I like to share it with her. So for this episode, and those to follow if I sound a little stuffy, this just might be the new normal. However, I did want to hop on and record a mini so despite all of that, before we get into today's topic, I have a couple business updates that I'm excited to share. First, we closed out 2023 by adding another team member to the PR bar crew. There are six of us strong now I'm super, super excited. And in reflecting that with family and friends over the holidays, I realized every single one of us are in a different location. So quickly I am in Ventura. We have team in Bend, Oregon, we have Tim in Louisiana, we have Tim in Puerto Rico and Vienna, Austria, in Denver, Colorado, all over the place, which is kind of wild the world we live in. But I am here in Ventura, California, we also wrapped up with our most successful revenue, year to date, which is really, really exciting. So the pure bar now has had four years of consecutive growth year over year growth, which I'm really, really proud of. So if you haven't taken time to celebrate your wins, I know holidays are so crazy. It's not too late. Okay, take a moment and reflect on some of the things you're excited about. As I head into 2024. Just a quick note to on the coaching side of things. I am up for opening up my roster very specifically for publicists, or freelancers or those who are looking to really up level their PR skill set and either launch a boutique agency or grow their consultancy and make more money. I am a PR and Business Coach. And this year, I really, really want to work with more people in the PR field. They're some of my favorite people to work with. So if you're interested in getting a PR business coach, head on over to my website, the PR bar inc.com to learn more. Okay, now into today's show. So I want to talk about seven things that my team and I are doing this month meaning January. We started it a little bit last month but doing this month for sure to reset our PR strategies for success in 2024. No, this isn't all encompassing. This is a minisode but these are definitely seven things that year over year come December come January we are doing so first and foremost. If you are on my weekly roundup email list you were probably very familiar with every single week we send out a free editorial calendar or media kit. It's everyone on the list. So what are we doing right now we are collecting new editorial calendars and media kits. And what we're doing with that is we're updating and taking updating content topics. We're reflecting deadlines and recruiting our own internal editorial calendar for our clients. So an example might be, if we download Inc magazines 2024 media kit, we can pull the new submission deadlines for the Inc 5000. And that is a date that one of our clients goes after year after year. So that will then go on our clients editorial calendar and on our radar. So as a PR firm, we know when to go about submitting the application. So again, number one, we are beginning to search and download 2024 media kits and editorial calendars. Not every outlet has release them as of yet not everyone is super on top of it, but there are a fair amount and they should continue to trickle out throughout the month. The second thing that we are doing is updating our media list. Now, this is something that should always be happening. But we really take an emphasis in December in January, especially considering how many layoffs and switches and changes happened in 2023. While for specific campaigns, we will still curate specific lists. In January, we like to go to our general lists and give them a refresh. So what I mean by this, we have a client, for example, that is a nonprofit in the entertainment industry. So we look at our general entertainment reporters and editors and producers that we interacted with in 2023. And we're seeing Hey, are they still in the same position have they moved? Do we need to find a new contact, so we're getting the foundations laid so that when we do have breaking news moment or a campaign on hand, we've already cut out a lot of the time that goes into the list building. So we are updating our media lists with that. We are also penciling out engagement tactics. So through this, if we realize there are new people coming onto our radar, then we might begin to do what I call a meat cue. So what this might look like is we could identify there are new contexts we need to begin creating relationships with, we might notice work anniversaries or specific wins or coverage updates that give us an opening to reach out to or engage with a journalist on. These are all things that we're really paying extra mind to in January. Next number three, we are looking for new trends, new trend reports, refreshed data and content. So something I've always done on this show is I do recaps of different scission or Muckrock or prolly reports I really, really like to know, in our industry, our industry being PR journalism, what is the latest? Or what are the latest in data greatest stats. So come January, again, this resets my radar for new data available collected usually from 2023. So I do this within my own industry. But we also were doing this within our clients industries. Right. So we are really really scanning niche publications, trade publications to see if there are any new data, any new trends, any new words, anything that should really be on our radar. Now in the in the upcoming months and quarters. Again, something that really should be done on evergreen, but something we're especially paying mind for in January. Okay, so something else that we are doing right now, again, probably should be done on evergreen, and is done on evergreen for our clients, but a refresh and revisit of assets. So BIOS headshots, media kits or press kits, affiliate links, product descriptions, or websites still up to par. Does everything that we have reflect our clients in ourselves to date. Do we need something new? Do we need to give something a refresh? Based on the data we're collecting? Is that asset even still important? Maybe we find that photos are going to be really important in the next year. So we really want to dive into photos, or at least get a plan for the next few quarters on how to collect or revamp those assets. Okay, number five. We review we do a post mortem, post mortem, excuse me.
Lexie Smith
We review lessons learned in 2023 to adjust efforts going forward. So we do this post every single campaign we do this post every month we do client reporting. That's pretty standard, standard practice. But this is when we take a look back overall. And we look at how we were operating as a team, how successful we were are there? Are there new subscriptions we want to invest in this year? Are there some strategies we want to retire? Right? Do we still want to be on AIX? Or is this our time to take a step back and go all in on another platform. So we do like to take a step back and really evaluate as a team. Again, we do this in December as well, but we confirm those lessons learned in January. Within that time, we also are making sure to resync with our clients for their goals, both in the short term and long term. So we can sync on our key upcoming campaign dates. Now, I will say the PR agency operates on six month to one year retainers. So if you're a firm or a freelancer who's doing more project based work, this might not feel as as relevant. But if you're doing if you've had a client for a long time, it's always a good idea to reset in January, because they're probably resetting internally. So make sure to have a meeting, make sure to get on a call and understand and realize what are the key objectives and therefore what is the strategy and the tactics we're going to select to pursue them. Something else we are doing number seven, this month, is we are pitching for items in February through April, lead times dependent on whom we're pitching and what we're pitching, right. So we people can argue that holidays are a tough time to pitch, we actually had a really phenomenal December, and we're keeping that momentum into January. However, we're not pitching January items right now for the most part, except for a couple of breaking news moments. Right now we're really looking ahead into February if we know there's a short lead time publication, digital or a little bit longer, further out for our freelancers, and other more long form pieces of content. We had a podcast just get booked, for example, for March with a client, that pitch went out this week, and that's when it is going to be recorded, let alone live. Okay, so seven things again, that we're doing right now, this month to reset, I'm going to recap really, really fast. Number one we're searching for and downloading 2024 media kits and editorial calendars for deadlines, reflecting those on our own internal editorial calendars, too. We're updating our media lists, and we're penciling out our engagement tactics. Three, we're looking for new trend reports and refreshed data or content, both within the PR and media industry, but also with our clients industries. We're revisiting our assets, just to make sure they still look good or if they need any revamps if they do, we're penciling out or we're scheduling out how and when and what we need to do. And number five, we are reviewing lessons learned in 2023 to adjust our efforts accordingly. Six, we're rethinking via meetings with our clients for goals both in the short term and long term. So that we can have key campaign dates and strategies and tactics that reflect them. And we are pitching for different stories between February and April dependent on the form of media and who we're talking to. So those are just a few things that we are doing. Hopefully that that inspired you to to get your gear into your button to gear I guess, although I'm not gonna lie, I've had three cups of coffee today. So it's totally fine. If you are listening to this and you're feeling a little bit behind. tomorrow's a new day. There's always something you can do to better prepare. Again, as always, thank you for listening to the show and for listening to me and I hope you are enjoying the absolute. We have phenomenal guests that are being curated for the season. Without saying I'm going to stop talking and probably go get another cup of coffee and so until next time Cheers guys. Hey guys, if you are enjoying the pigeon and sipping podcast, please do me a huge favor and leave a review wherever you are listening. If you want to connect with me to learn more about the PR bar Inc. You can do so on Instagram Act, the PR bar underscore inc or you can check out my website at the PR bar inc.com Cheers