DIY PR: Our top tools & tips for the daily comms hustle

Photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash

PR can be difficult at times. But thankfully everyone at Laika has a few little helpers, from techy tools to mindful rituals, that fuel our work. And as we are all about sharing, we asked the team to tell us their secret sauce for successful communications. Here are some of their best kept secrets (until now):

What (free) tech tools speed up your PR work for you?

• Deepl is probably my favourite timesaver ever as the free version is incredibly helpful for quick and still very good translations.
  - Ela

• Grammarly checks your English spelling and grammar. And the tool has a great extra feature by detecting the tone of your emails. So I always know if my email comes across professional, friendly or too serious.
  - Anna

• Session Buddy allows me to save all tabs from a research session for remote work, for ongoing research or for sharing it with others.
  - Tolgahan

• Boomerang for Gmail is a handy free add-on you can use to schedule mailings, plan follow-ups and see if your recipient opened your mail.
  - Isabelle

• Openthesaurus helps me to write better texts. I use the tool to find good synonyms while copywriting and improving the SEO relevance of a content piece.
  - Nadine

Which tools and tricks do you use to find the right journalist for your story?

• We are constantly fostering our internal media database - so the combined memory power of all colleagues feeds into that system. If we still have no clue who the right contact might be we check out our Cision databank, but the tool is very expensive. If you are a startup and on the hunt for freebies, then check out Hunter.io. This Google Chrome browser add-on allows you to scan websites for email addresses. So if you see an article by an editor relevant to your story, you might catch his or her email address that way.
  - Ela

• Newsletters, newsletters, newsletters. We subscribe to relevant media newsletters to check for trending topics and who is writing about them.
  - Isabelle

• Last but not least, the oldest trick in the book: Phone call an editorial office and ask nicely for the right contact person. This surprisingly still works more often than one thinks!
  - Sandra

What “hacks” do you use to pitch a story to a journalist?

• A/B testing of subject lines - to learn what message journalists and media reacts to more.
  - Ela

• I get into BILD-headline mode and try to find the catchiest subject line and sentence to start off with.
  - Julia

• It’s not a hack, but it’s important to do your homework and check daily news and “jump on” topics while they are still fresh.
  - Nadine

• To follow up pays off - a certain persistence without being annoying is important, journalists are bombarded with so many pitches every day that the likelihood they missed yours is extremely high.
  - Isabelle

What do you recommend for successful networking?

• Preparation is key - I try to find out who is attending way in advance and then put them on my “target list”. Bringing a wing(wo)man then helps me to have the courage to talk to anybody. And having our VP of Happiness, aka Zelda, tagging along is a natural ice breaker.
  - Ela

• Attending events alone by yourself also works - you will be forced to talk to other people you don’t know.
  - Inga

• Prepare, observe, be curious and smile! That’s my secret combination for networking.
  - Isabelle

• Follow up lunches! If you meet interesting people, make sure to meet them soon enough again. People mostly target exactly the one person they want to meet. I generally try to find interesting people. (Or probably I am just bad in hitting the initial target.) And during a talk or a lunch afterwards, opportunities arise you haven’t thought of before.
  - Can

What helps you to get creative?

• Stepping away from a project. I tend to get too obsessive over little things and that keeps my creative juices from flowing. A break, that can range from 15 minutes to a day, depending on the task, helps me reset.
  - Julia

• I just focus on the task and make a powernap, then the brain will do the magic.
  - Tolgahan