The work we do for our clients teaches us new things and reinforces what we know.
 

1. Media relations works best when it is consistent and continuous.  Editors and reporters respond to repetitive messages just like anyone else.
   • For Morningside Group, we generated a continuous stream of releases and story ideas for Liberty Lofts in Ann Arbor and SkyLofts MarketSquare in Royal Oak.  Twice, when the Observer-Eccentric real estate section needed some quick filler, they ran our releases verbatim on the front of the section.  (Shar also wrote the copy for the Morningside website).
   • For the Royal Oak Chamber of Commerce, we placed 112 separate print items in 2007 for a total of 575 column inches.
2. Having a great story doesn't hurt.  The attorney for plaintiffs in a 40-year-old civic rights case against the city of Hamtramck needed to notify former residents and their descendents that they were eligible for low-cost rental housing in the city.  Sixty homes were available, and they had 17 applicants.  With two weeks to go to the deadline, we targeted traditional news media plus urban radio stations.  By the deadline date, they had 43 applicants for the 60 homes.
3. Framing: Every region has a news frame for its stories.  In Michigan, it's the economy.  When Leaders Without Borders brought the president of North Carolina's Research Triangle Park to speak in Detroit, we helped position it as an example of tools Detroit might use to recast its economic future.  Results included a front page Free Press story and an op-ed column in Crain's.

• With a free Google account, you can create online documents, spreadsheets and presentations and allow others to access them too.  Shar is on the Inforum golf outing committee and our sponsorships spreadsheet is online.  Committee members update it in real time and we can see our success instantly.
• We used SurveyMonkey to survey members of the National Association for Industrial Technology and clients of Carlisle/Wortman Associates (97% of their customers said they would refer CWA to others!). 
• We moved our web hosting this year to Bluehost and life got a lot easier.  They're inexpensive, they offer a wide array of add-ons and free services and you get prompt tech support from people who speak English as a first language.
• We back up our files online every day, using Mozy.  The first upload literally took days, but incremental backups now happen in about an hour in the middle of the night. 
• Direct mail gets really easy when you use the U.S. Postal Service.  They'll turn your jpeg image into a 4-color postcard and deliver it first class for $.421 out the door.

Successful employees can use entrepreneurial skills to get ahead, as Shar summarized in the July/August 2007 issue of MSAE's Association Impact magazine.