Public relations is an important part of every business, and it’s usually a good idea to involve experts when dealing with such an essential aspect. Let’s look at what’s involved with outsourcing this important part of your business.

To start, let’s look at some pros and cons:

Pros

• Less work: If you’re constantly busy and don’t have time to write emails and make phone calls, outsourcing PR may be a good idea. You may also feel your time is better spent doing what you do best, i.e. design, engineering.
• Particular skills: A PR company that has skills you or your team don’t have means they can do things you aren’t capable of (i.e. Google Adwords, although you can find specialized companies to do this).
• Relationships: If the PR company you’re thinking of hiring has a solid relationships with the media in your industry niche, they’ll be able to reach out to people you may have a hard time getting through to: For example, if they have an in at CNN, they may be able to get you featured in the Business section: If you’re a new, unknown company to CNN and you try to make the contact yourself, you probably won’t hear back from them.

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As I sit and type this, it’s nearly three in the morning. Working late, once again.

Or am I? What IS working late? Is working late just working past 5:00 pm – or is it working for a certain amount of consecutive hours in a row? Or is “working late” just a term we often use when we think we should be elsewhere, i.e. with the family?

In today’s day, business happens 24/7. If you’re a startup company – or any company for that matter, you probably can’t get away with 9-to-5 hours.

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The idea of ‘filler’ content is nothing new in publishing. Magazines, newspapers, even TV has filler, it’s the stuff that bulks up and fills out your editorial calendar. But online, filler content has the potential for a whole lot more than just plugging gaps, and it all rests on search traffic.

For most online publishers, search traffic makes up a reasonably large bread and butter base of visitors. On our Envato blogs, for example, search traffic generally makes up about 20-30% of visits. That’s a pretty substantial amount of traffic for us, but for some publishing sites those are some really low numbers.

You see there is a way to grow search traffic that has nothing to do with tinkering with the keywords on your articles, or even building link-backs. Instead it’s about publishing masses and masses of content, and that’s where filler content is taken to a whole new level.

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They may not be aliens, but they aren’t your next-door neighbor either.

So how do you go about contacting a new media contact for the first time? Do you follow them on Twitter and send them a DM? Do you email them? Make a cold call? Or do you simply just show up in person, and knock on their door?

Depending on the industry you’re in, the first medium of contact can differ. If you’re contacting someone in the web or tech industry, chances are an electronic form of contact will work best. Sometimes though, an old-fashioned handshake can work best.

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Dealing with fast growth can be tricky, just ask Bruce Banner. One moment he’s a regular comic book uber scientist, then someone has the bad judgment to make him angry and next thing you know he’s a 10 foot green monster who uses guns for toothpicks and likes smashing things. That sort of growth always comes with consequences. In Bruce’s case, it’s his clothes that suffer. Inevitably we see the Hulk burst out of his shirt as he transforms, all the while counting ourselves lucky that his pants managed to hold on for dear life.

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