Learning to balance

Things are finally starting to take off for my little one-woman business. I've secured some project-based clients and have recently secured my first monthly retainer-based client. I'm starting to get busy and am delighted by it.

So for the first time since starting Blabbermouth Communications in October of last year, I'm running into a problem of balancing my time. As I see it, I have three places in which I need to focus my energy and time:

• Servicing and maintaining my existing clients
• Finding new clients
• Promoting my business

I'm trying to decide how much time to award to each of those three each week. I think it's obvious that servicing the clients needs to come first. After all, they are the ones paying me, and without them, I don't have a business.

But when it comes to the other two - finding new clients and promoting my business - I'm in a bit of a conundrum as I see the two as being linked in many ways. I certainly can take the time to meet with potential new clients and follow up on leads given to me, but I still need to actively promote my business since I don't know where my next new client lead is going to come from.

Right now, promoting my business means maintaining my Twitter account and this blog with regular postings, as well as my Facebook fan page. It also means attending networking events in the Lehigh Valley which can become time consuming if I go to enough of them. So perhaps my question really is about those second two bullets.

Out of 100%, if I spend 50% of my time maintaining existing clients, how should I divide up the remaining 50% between finding new clients and promoting the business? Or should I be allotting more than 50% to maintaining existing clients. What do you think? And what advice can you offer?

To follow up, or not to follow up? That is the question.

In my early PR agency days, it was common practice to send out a press release (by snail mail back then!) to a long list of media that we thought might be interested in it. Our hopes were that they would either want to write an article about it, possibly attend it or visit it, or at lease write a short blurb and run it along with a photo.

And since these writers, editors and reporters received so many press releases every day from PR folks like me, it was common practice to call them to follow up and make sure they received the release. The real goal of the follow-up phone call was to develop a relationship with them over time but I am not so sure the journalist on the other end of the phone felt that way.

Often those follow-up phone calls were seen as annoying and they were usually dodged. Most journalists would never answer a live call and would instead only screen voice mail messages. As a PR person, it was never our goal to annoy them but rather to connect with them on behalf of our clients in the hopes of ensuring editorial coverage.

In today's modern age of e-mail press release distribution and making connections through social media, I think that the follow-up phone call has gone by the wayside. No longer is it common practice to call every media member on a press release distribution list to see if they received your release and were planning to use the information contained in it in some way. Still, some clients expect the follow-up phone call to take place. But since this is an outdated practice, I am disinclined to do it.

If you are someone who practices PR or media relations, do you still do follow-up phone calls on all of the press releases you distribute for clients? If so, do you call everyone on the distribution list or just a select few with whom you have relationships? Or do you trust that the journalist received your release and that they will use their best judgment as whether or not to use it?

What do you think today's best PR practices are when it comes to follow-up phone calls? Share your thoughts with me.

How to handle Twitter spam followers

One of the first things I did last fall when I decided to start my own marketing and PR consulting business was to set up accounts for Blabbermouth Communications with all of the key social media sites. Since social media marketing was a service the business was going to be offering, I had to practice what I preach, right?

I very quickly set up a Facebook fan page, created a LinkedIn company profile and established a Twitter account. I use a free desktop software program called TweetDeck to manage the five Twitter accounts I am currently maintaining for work and personal. I am able to monitor new followers without having to log into the Twitter web site to see who is now following me. But it's getting harder to tell which followers are legitimate and which ones aren't.

Since there are a ton of spam Twitterers out there, I've started to automatically block any new followers that don't have an avatar image or a written profile description. But the spammers are smart and have started using avatar images and short descriptions that sound semi-legit. So I'm having trouble knowing who to block.

Obviously if a follower is using profanity or sexually explicit pictures in their profile, I automatically block them. But as for the others that are questionable, if they really are spam, is there any real harm in letting them continue to follow me?

I've read articles about the importance of scrubbing your followers list for spam and removing anyone that is even remotely questionable. And while I wouldn't want a client to check out my list of followers and find something objectionable among them, I still have to wonder what the detriment is of letting the questionable ones continue to follow me. So long as they don't send me spammy Tweets, why should I block them? Is it hurting my credibility somehow, somewhere?

Can someone tell me what my best practices should be when it comes to my business's Twitter followers list? I'd like your advice.