A blog beckons, spurred on by a reply to a LinkedIn message that I have sent out this morning. I wanted to raise awareness of some annual countryside awards in my home county of Hampshire, for which I am handling the PR. We launched the awards in March and we are looking at finding new news angles, features opportunities and updates worth telling people about - all with the aim of stimulating more entries from businesses, schools and voluntary organisations.
So, thinking creatively I have been searching for trade magazine contacts, as well as considering more use of social media, including publications' forums (I want to write 'fora', as I did Latin at school); Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
So, I chose the maximum 50 contacts who may know of worthy institutions in Hampshire that might wish to enter the awards. An answer winged it's way back to me before lunch-time from Mr Adrian Bold http://twitter.com/#!/adrianbold. Thank you to him.
After lunch I returned to my office to find another reply via LinkedIn - from my office Landlord!!! I see him several times a day, but it took the international LinkedIn network to bring us together. Sweet.
Does this mean that, in general, some of the chitter-chatter by the coffee-machine has dropped off more than might be healthy nowadays?
Talking face-to-face is a good thing and keeping up-to-date with what your colleagues are working on can be helpful to client service and company success.
However, at the same time - social media works. This latest contact and the hoped for fall-out from it, may bring extra success for the client in due course.
