I’ve created a page - PR Apps (for lack of a better name) – to list web applications that will be useful to PR professionals and agencies.

This is definitely work-in-progress. Flickr, YouTube and other tools that enable PR professionals (or any web worker for that matter) to do more / be more productive, deserve to be on the list, but I will only list them along with tips on how to best apply it to our work.

If you wish to contribute to this list, please send me an e-mail with links to the application and your blog post on how to make full use of it. I’ll be glad to add it in.

As part of our counsel to clients/colleagues, we track the news regularly and provide analyses on the issues discussed.

The Problem
Very often, the administrative hassle – of collection, collaboration, formatting, sharing and publishing – impede our personal efficiency and ability to get the real work – of analysis and counsel – done quickly and effectively.

The Solution
Google Notebook - which just came out of beta last week - seems like the perfect solution.

As you search for news articles online, you can easily add them to your Google Notebook by simply cutting and pasting. It’s even simpler with a Firefox Extension - you can “add clippings of text, images and links from web pages to your Google Notebook without ever leaving your browser window”.

More importantly, you can type in your analyses in the ‘Notes’ section at the bottom of every notebook entry – just as you would comment on a blog post.

Organize, Collaborate, Publish
You can create sections to categorize your news clippings by date, topic or in any way you please. And you can collaborate, share, publish and even export your entire notebook to Google Documents and saved so that it can be stored offline.

I used to think that a blog was a good way to keep a shared record of news articles with relevant commentaries, but Google Notebook offers a far more intuitive interface for this purpose. Plus it has collaboration features that blogs don’t.

What it Lacks
My only gripes at this stage are:

1. We can’t add tags to each entry. This makes sorting quite difficult if we have a massive amount of entries.
2. We cannot post images, and audio and video news clips, directly to the notebook. But this problem is easily solved by hosting the clips on an ftp site or a file sharing service like YouTube.com and linking to it.

But still, I love it. If you haven’t already, you should certainly take a tour and see how this can dramatically improve your personal and team productivity.

Maximising the Value of Conferences and other PR Events… Virtually.

Chris Brogan wrote a very useful piece on “attending conferences without [actually] being there”. But let me explain why this is absolutely vital to PR folks who plan and manage conferences (and other events) as relationship-building measures:

• Yes, people are now “attending conferences without being there”.
• But, short of bugging the venue with video cameras, they can’t do it unless someone makes it possible/easy for them.
• And, knowing this is going to change the way you plan conferences.

Observably:

• The savvy Netizen today will find more ways to be at an event without actually being there (physically).
• Conference participants-cum-bloggers will be a vital part of the equation.
• The long tail effect dictates that worthy information gets carried as far across the globe as it is relevant, and stays alive online… forever.
• In fact, ‘second-degree audiences’ may even get a better deal because in addition to a blow-by-blow account of the conference, they get expert and mass opinion. (Not really, I’d rather be there first-hand!)
• The recent New Communications Forum in Las Vegas and the ongoing SxSW 2007 in Austin, Texas are excellent case studies.
• Content is even more important today. Audiences have greater choice over how much they choose to be engaged – it’s easier (less embarrassing) to close a browser window than to doze off in the middle of an auditorium when a speech is given. And online audiences can definitely gripe about how bad an event seems to be going!

The reason for this:
The Social Web – and Web 2.0 technologies – is increasing our ability to engage a virtual audience along with the real one. And this does a lot for your event ROI.

The possibilities are clear and the trend is apparent – to get more bang for your buck at conferences; you need to engage more participants than just those who can attend physically.

The impetus on PR:
To be truly effective, PR folks and conference organisers should think about the (potential) ‘2.0’ dimension for every PR event or conference – Can you hold a real-time webcast? Can you invite a blogger/s to blog about or create podcasts of the event? Are you making it easier for the audience (who are also bloggers) to report on what’s happening in real-time? Are you reporting it well enough through your own channels?

Here are some questions to ask before developing a conference plan:

The ‘real audience’

• Who am I inviting? Who are my ‘real’ audiences?
• What am I saying to them?

The ‘virtual dimension’

• Who are my ‘virtual’ audiences? Who did/could I not invite, but are reading and hearing about the event on blogs, podcasts and instant messaging, as the conference unfolds?
• What are they talking about?
• How will their presence be felt? How will/can they interact with the crowds?

Bridging the gap between the real conference and the virtual event

• How can we get them connected virtually? Think webcasts, podcasts and virtual tours (a concurrent Second Life version of the event?).
• How can I enrich their experience?
• How can I extend the virtual reach of the conference? Establish the right infrastructure (wireless Internet access); make URLs visible and accessible; make them easy to relay in print and by speech (it should be short and simple to read); make content immediately available and easily accessible.
• How can I get accurate feedback on the event? The feedback from the ‘real audience’ will be easy to collect (and measure) through feedback forms. But you shouldn’t ignore the feedback from the ‘invisible crowd’. This can possibly be more authentic, given that conference participants tend to be easily swayed by inherent biases found in many feedback forms. Some ways to obtain this feedback are by analyzing blog entries, comments and web traffic etc.

Having said all this, while we extol the virtues of pleasing the virtual audience; don’t neglect to give the real audience something special so that they’ll remember the conference fondly. After all, they paid for it and took the trouble to travel down!

If you manage a PR agency team responsible for constant engagement and follow-ups with journalists and bloggers, you will definitely want to watch out for Highrise – a shared contact manager that, according to creators 37signals, “helps you keep track of who you talk to, what was said, and what to do next… …Highrise helps you collaborate on people. You can use it alone or with your co-workers. You can think of it as a company-wide, web-based, shared address book with a few twists.”

Brilliant!

While this concept is not exactly ground-breaking, the problem is - past attempts at building this (either professionally or in-house) has never won much favour. Execution is everything, and, in this case, 37signals has the right track record to get us excited over this productivity and collaboration tool.

The company blog offers a preview of Highrise; and you can sign up here for upcoming product news.

This is going to be good.

Update: Highrise is finally released. Go straight to the tour here. For quick insights into some potential user-issues, have a look at the comments following the blog post announcing its launch. But despite concerns on issues over the limited-features and upgrade cost, this is well worth considering.