A good work day
Today was good, if a bit busy. Had a conference to go to at the Excel in London. Picture ecommerce stands with lots of freebies, talks, and absolutely nowhere to sit and work once it hit midday. But today was good. Here’s a round-up of what happened…
Sent comments from a spokesperson to a magazine that I used to work with quite closely. The journalist writing the story is new, junior (going by their title of junior reporter) and I don’t know them, and they didn’t use our comments. I’m going to use AI tomorrow to do a deep dive and analyse their article and figure out why they didn’t. Was our quote weak? Too long? Not quite right? There could be a number of reasons why. It’s just annoying when that happens. So I introduced myself to her via email and offered to buy her a coffee. I’ve offered this to journalists before and nothing materialised, but thought why not try?
Got a thought leadership piece accepted by a local news outlet. Now I just have to write it. Told my boss’s boss (who tasked me with getting it picked up) and the director whose voice it will be written in/from. They’re both delighted. Phew.
The op-ed I was worried about before, that the spokesperson might not do, they’re doing it. So i’m writing it and they’ll tweak it. It’s due in a few days, so fingers crossed.
Tweaked comments from our CEO to send on to a news outlet, with a deadline of 5pm today. This request for comment came via a different party (rather than the journalist directly), which was odd, but they’re quite high profile, so think it’s legit as we’ve worked with them previously (I haven’t but colleagues have). Sent in signed-off comments before the deadline with thanks. Shall be keeping an eye on this as this outlet in particular tends to only write about us when it’s a negative news story…
Spotted a media opportunity to send in comments from an expert, and contacted all my experts in the topic for it. Deadline by the end of the day. Finally got 3 comments sent over, so fingers crossed. It sounds like the journalist will take one of them, since they asked for pictures of one of my experts. Didn’t see their request for pictures until I got hom however, so don’t know. But if this comes out, we’ll get national news coverage, which would be grand.
And… a little press release I sent out earlier this week, a cute news story, came back with some interest from a local news outlet, who had some follow-up questions. I’m hoping to build a relationship with this journo and maybe they’ll run our story. They’ve got a small audience and readership, but every little piece of news coverage helps.
And this is all whilst I’m at a conference, attending talks around working. After walking the length of the building and back, I ended up sitting on the floor with my work laptop plugged in. Got some stares but after a while, people joined me and also sat in order to eat their incredibly overpriced lunches. £16.50 for a burger? Really? No thanks. Just a plain sandwich and bottle of water cost me £10.25.
Oh and today is launch day for one of my books, a new historical romance novella. It’s like a rite of passage it seems, the only review up there so far is a 3 star one where the reader specified they would give my book 2.5* if they could. They spotted a few typos and errors, but overall disliked the book. That’s fair enough. I had a few sleepless hours where I’d flagged to my publisher but they are a dream team and are fixing them, which massive thanks from me.
Cue the end of the day, where it’s time to go home. I attended some good talks, but didn’t get many freebies. I love marketing conferences and all the freebies, but can’t be bothered anymore with potentially having a 10 minute conversation about a service I neither need nor want, just in order to get a free stress ball. But my colleagues got free t-shirts, tote bags, stress balls (I got a cute cat one), pens, ice cream, coffee, dutch pancakes, popcorn, water bottles, the list goes on. They even had free massages there, but I don’t like getting touched in general, there’s no way I’m doing that in public.
Missed the train home by seconds. Got another train and a seat (shocking) and tried not to fall asleep the entire ride home.
Bring on Thursday!
