Dear Friends,

I’m traveling in Holland, discussing PR 2.0 and having a wonderful time.  Heather Whalen is my guest blogger today.  Hope you enjoy the post!!

Guest Post:  PR Moves Toward Collaboration

By Heather Whalen

It’s no secret that we’re all being asked to do more with less. Efficiency is a regular part of our vocabulary — and a standard by which clients hold us accountable. The question is: Beyond just working faster, what can we do to be more efficient? There are lots of “right” answers, but if you ask me, collaboration tops the list. Lucky for us, there are lots of free or inexpensive tools available to help PR people collaborate with each other.

5 Collaboration Tools

• Google Wave, Docs, Groups — Do you ever stop to ask yourself, “Where would we be without Google?” If you’re not already using Google to collaborate, start today. Here are just a few examples to illustrate how Google is helping us be more efficient. Lauren Fernandez and David Spinks, co-founders of the #u30Pro young professional community, rely on Google Docs to collaborate about topics for upcoming chats and other community-building projects. When working on a PR plan for a client with three other PR people, Alexia Harris found Google Groups to be very valuable — ensuring everyone knew what was going on and helping the team stay on track. She compared it to Basecamp, but without the pricetag. Most recently, Google’s newest tool, Wave, has gotten people talking about collaboration. Check out Deirdre’s post about Wave as a PR 2.0 tool, including a helpful list of pros and cons.

• Pitch with Me — Whether you’re pitching a trend … or a human interest story – two (or more) resources are better than one. Journalists are being asked to do more with less — which means they don’t have time to chase down interviews. Instead of just pitching your client, provide reporters and bloggers with multiple sources. Within agencies, this kind of “packaged pitching” is already taking place; however, freelancers, boutique agencies and small businesses don’t always have these kinds of resources available. But, that’s where Pitch with Me helps. It’s a new media-relations tool designed to help PR pros work together to craft better pitches. Better pitches lead to better stories — keeping clients happy! Just answer a couple questions to submit a query and follow @pitchwithme or the website to monitor opportunities to partner with other PR people. (Disclosure: Pitch with Me is a project of Geben Communication.)
• Twitter –  By now, you’ve probably (hopefully!) mastered the art of conversation and community-building on Twitter. Now, it’s time to elevate it to the next level and collaborate in 140 characters. I see lots of potential in this area specifically for nonprofits and businesses working on issue advocacy and education. For example, February is Heart Health Month. Instead of each tweeting Heart Association chapter using a localized hashtag (which can impede a national dialogue), create a broader discussion by aggregating tweets with a national hashtag, and invite medical providers and researchers, heart health advocates, and other stakeholders to participate with this hashtag. That doesn’t mean eliminate community- or association-specific tags. Instead, look for specific opportunities to collaborate, which can have a bigger impact.

• Toodledo – There are thousands of applications out there to manage to-do lists. With a slight obsession for list-making, I’ve tried a variety of such tools, and my favorite is Toodledo. The free version lets you manage your upcoming tasks and deadlines, create folders for specific projects or clients, and track time spent on each item. The pro version ($14.95 for a yearly subscription) includes the ability to share your lists with other people and assign tasks to them. Additionally, you can pick which folder each person sees and whether they can edit tasks. Plus, you can track tasks assigned to you. As collaboration becomes further ingrained in our day-to-day duties, project management and oversight will become that much more important for successful PR.
• ConceptShare — If you believe that integrated communication is key to increasing efficiency and effectiveness, then you’ll see the value in tool like ConceptShare, a web-based application that allows designers to share print, web and video projects. Per the web site: “Stripped to its core, the power of the ConceptShare lies in its ability to re-create the experience of a group sitting around a table and marking up designs, debating and driving towards decisions that lead to a better product.” While it’s not strictly a PR tool, ConceptShare does help ensure that all disciplines (marketing, PR, design, social media, etc.) involved in a project are on the same strategic page.

Think of this as a “starter list.” What other tools or services have you discovered that improve collaboration among PR people? Share your favorites in the comments.

With nearly 10 years of PR agency experience, Heather Whaling recently launched her own communication firm, Geben Communication. Fusing strategic thinking, strong writing skills and creativity, Heather delivers integrated PR, social media and marketing services to small businesses and nonprofit organizations. She is also the creator of Pitch with Me. Connect with her on her blog, Twitter or via email at heather [at] gebencommunication.com.

It took me a little while to receive my invitation to Google Wave and to play around with the platform.  For the past few weeks, friends have asked me to discuss my thoughts on Google Wave and if I like it or not.  In the beginning, it was difficult to respond, because I just didn’t feel I had enough time to explore to properly make an assessment.

I feel more comfortable now answering those questions and giving my opinion, after starting several waves, and even working on a project in a wave. So, to answer the question: I like Google Wave and I see tremendous potential for collaboration, relationship building, streamlining project work internally within an organization (employees working in groups) and also using waves for my client’s and/or my own company events.

With any “new” technology there are the pros and cons.  Of course, you need to keep in mind that my opinion is only based on a few weeks of experience, so if you have been on Google Wave longer or have discovered anything that you feel is a definite pro or con, I hope that you will share your knowledge with us.

The Pros:

• It’s easy to get started in Google Wave and simple to import and manage contacts.
• Once you create a wave, you can invite your contacts to be a part of the conversation immediately.
• When you are in a wave, you have the ability to upload images, documents, etc. You can also drag and drop files and images into your wave.
• I like the yes/no/maybe gadget you can embed in a wave that allows you to gauge interest on a topic.  The users in the wave can select yes/no/maybe to let you know how they feel about a particular area of interest or if they can attend an event.
• You can imbed a map gadget in your wave to collaborate with placemarks, paths and shapes to mark location for wave participants.  The tool is good for planning trips and events.
• There’s a Google Wave add on to Firefox that let’s you know via email when you’re wave is updated.
• Google Wave really cuts back on unnecessary email that tends to clutter your inbox (especially the emails that talk about what you have to do but nothing seems to get done).  In a wave, you can collaborate with your team to get the task done quickly, whether it’s drafting an agenda for a meeting or collaboratively writing a report that’s due.  You can also use a wave to assemble important information that should be shared with colleagues post event, meeting or conference.
• Waves are great to brainstorm with your peers.  I recently used a wave to discuss/brainstorm the criteria for judging an award program and it was easy to follow the conversation.

The Cons (I included a few comments from my friends):

• A wave can get messy if you are not highlighting important information or using the playback feature.
• It takes a little while to play around and to figure out what features are the most helpful in your daily routine.
• I’ve heard many of my peers say, “There aren’t enough people on Google Wave so what’s the point of being there and starting conversations, if it’s not a popular platform (of course, in time I believe this will change).
• Google Wave may not be an intuitive experience at first. I’ve had friends tell me that they stare at the screen and don’t know what to do or how to get started.  My advice is that it’s worth taking the time to review the help videos and tutorials to learn about how to use the many different features on the platform.

Other interesting features I still want to explore are robots (to interface with other systems) for example, Tweety, and how to embed your wave in a blog, which is a cool function that allows you as to update your wave and that same update appears on your blog simultaneously.

I’m excited about Google Wave and as it opens up to more people, I think we are going to hear a lot more about it and the feedback will be positive!  What do you think?