So before I jump into this week’s blog, I want to officially welcome Lindsay back from maternity leave! She returned last week, with her son Flynn in tow, and it’s great to have her back in the office.

And with one returning, naturally there is one leaving. That someone is your resident blogger himself: me. This Saturday, after over a year of planning, saving and sacrifice, I am boarding a red-eye flight to Budapest, Hungary. With Budapest as my starting point, I will spend the next month making my way through the Balkans solo, with planned stops in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Dubrovnik, Croatia (for you Game of Thrones fans), and Sarajevo, Bosnia.

This will be my first time overseas, and my first time traveling anywhere alone. If you had asked me a few years ago if I would have ever considered hopping a plane and heading to a foreign country on my lonesome, I would have responded with an emphatic “no.” However, my last real vacation—a trip to Seattle in 2013 to attend a friend’s wedding—was the catalyst in my desire to travel, and with travel, oftentimes social timelines do not align. I accepted that if I wanted to see the world, I may have to see it on my own.

But aside from logistical motivations, there is something liberating about solo travel. Where your itinerary is entirely your own, and you are free to immerse yourself in completely new surroundings and completely new cultures. It’s simultaneously exciting and terrifying, and it’s the kind of experience that builds character. Diving into the deep-end and seeing what happens.

I will be returning to the office on Monday, April 13th. In the meantime, Russell has graciously offered to personally manage my accounts—and the blog!—during my travels. I’ll be sure to have stories and pictures upon my return!

It’s that time of year; five-minutes outdoors in Orlando and you feel like Cohaagen on the surface of Mars in Total Recall, just waiting for the eyes-bulging-rapid-decompression. This time of year for PR/PR entails an air-conditioner on maximum-output and holding down the fort while the rest of the crew enjoy the relative polar-vortex of a San Diego summer at the 2014 NSA convention.

The annual National Speakers Association convention is a requisite event for us. Since our inception we have enjoyed a fruitful relationship with NSA—one that has brought us the clientele that form the lifeblood of our agency; professional speakers from all walks-of-life, and consultants and experts from a variety of backgrounds who imparted invaluable knowledge upon our staff, past and present.

This year’s theme is ‘Perform,’ and it’s an apt one. To perform at your peak requires trial, error, learning and growth. It requires persistence and perseverance to achieve goals in the face of adversity—and it parallels the objectives of PR/PR’s client-relationship; to excel in the areas of public relations, and elevate our own skills to achieve the aims of our client-base.

Our clients are our essence, and we’ve had the pleasure of meeting many of them in our travels each and every summer—and that’s why the NSA convention is so important.

Russell and Lindsay will be holding down the booth in San Diego during the convention while I hold down the office in Orlando. If you’re attending, make sure you come by and say hello!

Introducing a new blog series, Carter’s Top Five!

This week: the top five reasons you should not befriend your colleagues on your social media cache.

 1. Your contemporaries will not be the ones hiring you. For an effective social media presence, you need to market – not network. Putting yourself in front of your target market is what makes for a successful online campaign, not friends and colleagues.

 2. Restricting your connections on your social media accounts to potential customers ensures that you do not cross the line that separates the personal and the professional. Those seeking your services don’t care about your weekend plans or your burrito preferences (unless of course you dislike burritos, in which case they shouldn’t be doing business with you anyway).

 3. When you stockpile your social media connections with colleagues and professional cohorts, you open yourself up to possibly losing lucrative business to those same associates. Consider it free advertising.

 4. Your messaging strategy and content should be vastly different between your personal and professional accounts. If it’s not, you need to go back to Social Media Messaging 101. Your friends should see one thing, and your customers another.  

 5. Social media outlets present an excellent opportunity to subtly promote your brand: such as company colors and themes, which you should highlight via your default picture and cover photo. These will vary greatly between your social media accounts for entertainment and your accounts for business.   

Well, it’s that time of year again, when we painstakingly cram every aspect of our on-the-road operation into boxes and suitcases and head to the site of the NSA Annual Convention. This year our destination is the site of our nation’s birth: Philadelphia, where we’ll be until next Wednesday, bringing all our public relations accoutrements to the Marriott in Center City.

And by ‘we’ I mean everyone sans myself, as I will be holding down the fort here in Orlando for the duration of PR/PR’s trip, and making sure the office remains in one piece.

So make sure you visit PR/PR’s booth at the convention! We’ve got convention-only pricing on all of our services, and if you’re lucky, we might have some cheese-steak leftovers and tastykakes hanging around.

See you at #NSA13!

-Carter Breazeale

Embarking on a company-wide public relations campaign is a big decision for any business, but a PR endeavor can be for naught if the proper steps are not taken from the outset. I’ve outlined four essential steps below to ensure a successful corporate publicity campaign.

1. Start Sooner than Later

A common misconception held by newcomers to the public relations realm is that the appropriate start date is when the final touches have been put on a new product or location. This is typically the initial obstacle that has many professionals sputtering out of the gate: your PR campaign should begin at least four to six months in advance of your anticipated launch. Properly executed publicity involves creating a snowball-effect by ever-increasing mentions and features across a wealth of publications; by the time many businesses feel they are ready to proceed with PR, their window of opportunity has already begun to close.

2. Appoint a Company Spokesperson

Appointing a spokesperson to handle all media matters and requests is vital to maximizing the likelihood that your thoughts and ideas make it to print. Reporters and editors adhere to strict deadlines, and in many cases, the contact that provides the content they desire first will be the source quoted in the final copy. Publicity by committee leads to confusion, dragging feet and, ultimately, missed opportunities. Nominate a spokesperson to handle all public relations activity.

3. Don’t be Afraid to Stretch Your Message

There’s a tendency in the business arena to begin to adopt a form of corporate tunnel vision; you become so close to your skills and knowledge that it’s virtually impossible to view things from a third-party perspective. As a result of this myopic mindset, many potentially lucrative opportunities fall to the wayside or are ignored entirely; cast aside because they don’t fit into the specific schema you’ve formed about the nature of your business or expertise.

4. Stir the Pot with Unique Perspectives and Controversy

Nothing whets the media’s appetite quite like a good, old-fashioned controversy. They dominate headlines, they are the fodder for early morning water cooler conversation and most importantly: they sell papers. This does not mean to delve into the gutters of Kardashian-inspired, tabloidian gossip, but providing a unique counterpoint to commonly held beliefs or opinions is a terrific way to produce attention and awareness.

-Carter Breazeale