Effective use of time: Reading list triage

• • No Tags

As I sit here choosing whether to dive into the half foot high pile of “things I really want to read” or to find time to blog (after a hectic week in which I had time to do neither), I have to admit I’m stretched too thin. So what to do?

Kathy Sierra offers some great advice for cutting down on the backlog of reading. While she has written primarily for a tech audience, these ideas can be put into action by anyone who needs to cope with exploding information flows – and that’s all of us. The picture accompanying Kathy’s post sums up the problem:

Keeping Up

She offers practical advice for what I call “reading list triage.” Some of the best tips:

  • “Find the best aggregators.” There are websites and services that filter content and feature the best (That’s one of the ways I use blogs.)
  • “Cut the redundancy!” (Is the news really different in three daily papers?)
  • “Unsubscribe to as many things as possible.” In my experience this is particularly useful. I periodically unsubscribe from blogs and let magazine subscriptions lapse. It’s surprising how many I can live without. And I can always resubscribe to the ones I really value.
  • “Recognize that gossip and celebrity entertainment are black holes.” Oh yeah. Playing solitaire on your PC is as good a use of time.
  • “Be a LOT more realistic about what you’re likely to get to, and throw the rest out.” The ultimate solution. Don’t be afraid of this step. Before I leave the office every Friday, my last act is to clear my desk. And that doesn’t mean filing things. That means discarding the things I just don’t have the time to read. And it’s amazing how rarely I have to ask for a copy of one of the things I’ve dispensed with.

    • Kathy offers additional tips in her post. I think you’ll agree that reading it is time well spent!

    A giant leap forward for PR Measurement in Canada

    • • No Tags

    Experienced PR practitioners agree that measurement of what we do is one of our industry’s most pressing challenges.

    Tomorrow, a group of volunteers sponsored by the CPRS and NewsCanada will take a major step forward to provide Canadian public relations practitioners with MR2P, a valuable new tool to measure the effectiveness of our media relations programs (disclosure: David Jones, a Vice-President of Thornley Fallis worked on the volunteer committe that developed MR2P and 76design, our webdesign firm, developed the MR2P blog.

    And there’s more good news. On the eve of the launch of MRsP, Bowdens announced that it is fielding its own upgraded measurement offering.

    Canadian PR practitioners can only benefit from better tools to measure the value and results of what we produce. And the twin offerings by Bowdens and the MR2P group provide choice now and the promise that no one will rest on their laurels.

    Congratulations to the MR2P team of PR volunteers, NewsCanada and Bowdens.

    FeedDemon 2.0: PC Magazine Review Gets it Right

    • • No Tags

    Nick Bradbury points with justifiable pride to the positive review of FeedDemon 2.0 in PC Mag.

    PC Mag calls FeedDemon 2.0 “simply the most comprehensive, feature-rich, and intuitively organized RSS feed aggregator/reader for Windows.”

    The review concludes by pointing to FeedDemon’s

    amazing combination of simplicity and flexibility that lets you easily organize feeds into folders, sort and share feeds, subscribe to new feeds, and generally manage everything from within a single interface. Keeping track of your feeds (sometimes even seeing them all) is generally much harder in browser-based RSS readers. You’ll save money using them, but you’ll lose time. If you can’t live without your RSS—and a whole lot of it—and you prefer to keep your feeds in a standalone application instead of teasing them out of an Outlook add-in or a browser, the FeedDemon 2.0’s $29.95 price tag is a bargain.

    Amen to that.

    I'm back

    • • No Tags

    … and where have I been, you ask?

    Two weeks ago, I was sitting in my office. The world was in order. Business was good. All was fine. When….

    One of our consultants walked into my office, closed the door and said, “I have bad news. I’ve accepted a job with a competitor.”

    These aren’t words that an employer ever wants to hear. But they are words that we all will hear sooner or later. And when we do, we have to be ready to put in the extra effort to meet the expectations of clients and honour commitments made to them.

    That’s what I’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks. And, as I approach the Easter long weekend, I’m feeling a real sense of accomplishment that we met all of our commitments and kept our clients smiling and satisfied.

    And by the way, if you are an experienced public relations consultant working in the Ottawa region, I know of a great public relations firm that is hiring. If you are interested in applying to join our team, email your résumé to me at joseph.thornley[at]gmail.com.

    Inside PR Podcast launched

    • • No Tags

    Terry Fallis and David Jones have launched a new podcast, Inside PR, a weekly podcast on the state and future of public relations. Terry and David are President and Vice-President respectively of Thornley Fallis Communications. (I work there too!)

    In their inaugural podcast, Terry and Dave say that want to “take a look under the hood” of public relations. They plan to cover “everything from agency life to the tarnished and dubious reputation of our industry.” The guys say they will talk about “what it takes to succeed in our world and also the latest techniques and best practices.”

    In their first episode, topics covered in depth include the newly formed Canadian Council of Public Relations Firms, the upcoming Web2.0 mesh conference in Toronto and a new philosophy for media training.

    Inside PR should prove to be an interesting perspective on PR from two of Canada’s most thoughtful public relations practitioners. Congratulations guys!

    Cabinet Ministers Who Blog?

    • • No Tags

    Neville Hobson tells us that David Miliband, Britain’s Minister of Communities and Local Government, has started to blog. His blog is tied into his Ministry’s website. So, he is clearly posting as the Minister, not as a Member of Parliament.

    In Canada, where we changed federal governments early in the year, we have several Members of Parliament who are bloggers. However, the one blogger MP who became a Minister in the new government, shut down his blog within days of entering Cabinet. His final post said, “I think this is going to have be my last blog entry for some time. As the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration I’m coming to realize that blogging just might have to take a back seat to Ministering.”

    It’s refreshing and positive that Miliband is willing to open his policies and actions as a Minister to debate in the blogosphere. If only the Canadian government would follow this lead. (Highly unlikely given the government’s moves to reduce the Parliamentary Press Gallery’s access to Cabinet meetings and Cabinet Ministers.)

    Does anyone know of other Minister-level bloggers in any Canadian provincial governments or in any Parliamentary democracies elsewhere (Hello Australia)?

    PubSub Problems

    • • No Tags

    Media Orchard has pointed out that the PubSub stats are wildly inaccurate.

    I noticed a few weeks ago that ProPR’s own stats on PubSub were wonky. In fact, PubSub stopped registering any entries or outlinks on February 24.

    I wrote to PubSub about this and last week received the following response:

    Hi Joseph:

    We have pinpointed the problem.

    Thank you for alerting us to this issue with LinkRanks. You have indeed stumbled on a problem with our rolling historical data, which are maintained in separate tables to help off-load our database. Somehow an error has snuck into those tables. We plan to just rebuild those convenience tables from our daily information and the error(s) you are seeing with historical counters should go away. This will take about a week to fix

    We are also currently experiencing high loads as a result of explosive growth. Thus, some inlinks may not show up as expected. We are working hard to solve the problem and expect to have it resolved as quickly as possible.

    Regards,

    Steven

    Constantin Basturea’s PR List is a great way to help build a sense of community. But to do this, it has to be based on reliable traffic stats.

    Let’s hope that PubSub is able to resolve this problem – and quickly.

    Search Engine Optimization for WordPress

    • • No Tags

    I’ve come across a couple post that I found very useful in understanding how to optimize my WordPress blog.

    DYI Search Engine Optimization
    Soup to nuts advice from Lorelle on WordPress covering the basics of optimizing code, keywords and extending through promotion and analysis of site traffic and competitors.

    Ultimate WordPress SEO Tips
    Nifty coding tips for better permalinks, page titles and post titles from seventeen year old(!) Fintan Darragh

    Are there other sources of useful advice on SEO for WordPress that you would recommend?