A little while back Danielle Meder of Final Fashion asked me to appear in her regular (and celebrated) Career Karma column (she interviews fashion pros like journalist Andrew Sardone, publicist Michelle Reagan and stylist Jen Tse). I remember delightedly tackling her (good) questions. I talked about owning my own business, blogger relations and tried giving some advice to PR hopefuls. I even attempted to “describe a typical day as PR entrepreneur.”
It was fun to be profiled and it was REALLY fun to give some insights into the day-to-day doings of a publicist. I’ve decided to take it a step further and describe my Friday, July 9th, 2010, in detail. As an added bonus, I asked Knot intern Lane to track her experiences as well.
Morning
6:28 send first email to Lane.
6:30ish first tweet of the day sent via ubertwitter (best app for blackberry), glance at my google calendar (which is still not synced to Knot PR’s new apps account).
[rain pours, my "umbrella" is pitiful]
7:45 duck in to Starbucks for a yogurt parfait, no coffee, (saving myself for Little Nicky’s, the office go-to).
7:58 Little Nicky’s not open, continue to Knot PR headquarters on Adelaide Street.
8:02 in office – organize files for big meeting, eat breakfast and apply makeup.
8:09 check emails, flag some for later (I use a combination of the gmail superstars lab and labels) , respond to anything urgent, send a note to UK first thing (always must be conscious of time change).
8:10 change my gchat status.
8:11 check twitter: looks like the Economist has a new website, @saulcolt is tweeting about an amazing WIRED magazine article I read last weekend at Indigo.
8:14 make a mental note to get tweetdeck (I miss my fave follows as I recently added a few hundred to the list).
8:16 Chrome crashes, perturbed (for the record, Chrome treats me well).
8:17 do some online banking, play around with freshbooks for 10 mins, print some financial reports for Big Meeting.
8:30 dive into Dropbox, open my task list and scan twitter intermittently, respond to a DM and check my follower stats – I lost 6 followers last night (higher than usual). Take a long look at google calendar and review my google tasks for the day. Check out flickr stats for the day (over 100 views already) and review analytics (Lane’s recent blog post still doing well).
9:00 switch from flip flops (mistake) into silver ballet flats, leave office enroute to Big Meeting stop at Little Nicky’s and run into lane at 9:08, tell her to check her email as I have a “good idea” (i.e. the concurrent day in the life of blog posts), is that micro-managing? Scan twitter in cab and respond to a friend’s txt.
9:30 glance in the lobby mirror (note to self: hair = awful) on way to Big Meeting.
10:45 [end Big Meeting], scan bberry for messages and pleased to see a couple good ones (a new business opportunity is progressing, some good advice and a meeting confirmation). Subway back to the office.
11:06 waltz into office and greet Lane, “hey Lane,” and ask her if we’re still on for our nooner, check bberry voicemail (voicemail is dead to me), work on a draft client proposal and send a few emails.
11:42 make a quick client phone call, more emails, check out the new Jessica Jensen website and confirm with Charmaine Li, Knot PR Social Media Intern, that we are on for tomorrow (we meet on Saturday mornings, Charmaine has helped us with populating the website and training the team on WordPress).
Afternoon
12:00 meet with Lane to discuss her task list, she’s handling the multi-tasking-under-pressure-thing well. Review Flickr tagging project, her Knot PR Wikipedia ideas and get briefed on media monitoring progress. This was a good meeting.
1:00 meet with fellow publicist Ashley Bartlett, she works at Brill Communications and like me, is very interested in the role social media is playing in fashion communications. We meet at Little Nicky’s, Ashley has an iced latte, me: Turkey club.
2:05 back in office, scan twitter and click on interesting links. Tweet about the start-up term and who it applies to and decide that Knot PR is a start-up communications agency vs. ’boutique agency’ (I’m just not feeling that for this company).
2:30 review google reader – Lane has been setting up an account for the office and it looks great! A client contact transfers some files via skype and needs a quick photo id for a blog post their working on, me: “no prob that’s Anita Clarke from I Want — I Got and stylist Corey Ng.”
2:40 call from friend – gossip.
3:00 read this post by @copyblogger on the Social Media Press Release and decide that we should gather top reads for the intern manual. Open a new bank account online and link my Paypal account to my Freshbooks system — Knot PR accepts Visa!
3:10 sister calls the office and surprise-books me for a workout later. Try and decline but fail to come up with a reason, end up agreeing.
3:11 Lane admits that she uses her intern manual on a daily basis, this pleases me. Tell Lane we should add an ’essential reading list’ page to the manual with top web reads on a variety of subjects. More internet reading, tweeting, emailing, confirming meetings.
3:32 in need of distraction create a new list on twitter for just this kind of moment, call it ‘distractos‘ and add 2 people.
3:40 back to work on the proposal and some networking emails.
4:20 leave office for a friendly meet-up with Nikisha Reyes-Grange, we met at an L12 dinner party in 09.
4:30 first-ever Foursquare check-in. Signed up aaaages ago but never put it on my blackberry, excited to get competitive and will avoid lazy foursquare tweets at all costs (will stick to low frequency + comments).
After Hours
6:00 bail on workout (must go back to the office to send off a reference letter and don’t have my gym clothes on me — not-so-secretly relieved).
6:15 head back to office and scan bberry — a meeting confirmation, a client’s holiday notice and some emails from Lane wrapping up the week.
6:25 miss a client call.
7:17 see missed call and go to check voicemail, get sidetracked by a BBM and start writing this post.
7:49 realize I’m missing a dinner at a friend’s place (and she’s an awesome cook too). Decide to leave office but must stop by sister’s place before calling it a day.
8:14 client email troubleshooting a facebook issue – book phoner for Saturday AM to address.
11:45 txt from sister: forgot bberry charger – a publicist’s worse nightmare!
Thinking next time we will do a photo diary…