Grappling with Tech. PR

Tech. PR is the future. All PR professionals know it and have apparently been gearing up for it. Everyone wants to know what the new-age PR techniques are and how those can be effectively leveraged on behalf of clients. How does one use social media and mobile communications to put individuals and companies in a position of being instantly able to connect with their target audience in an intimate and interactive manner? Driving this change in the way that PR and Communications are being conducted is the inexorable migration of traditional media to the online platform. At the same time there is the growing influence of the hitherto ignored bloggers and even podcasters.

While using technology has enormously benefited all PR professionals-after all one can easily send a press release to thousands of journalists at one go, it also has its own pitfalls to deal with.  Journalists are more likely to dismiss this sea of press releases as spam and reject even genuinely meritorious stories.  However the area where most traditional PR practitioners find themselves at a tremendous disadvantage is in addressing the Internet generation who source all their information online and inherently resent being instructed in a heavy handed fashion in their social media dominated world. They are most likely to take an opinion from bloggers and contemporaries on social media. One is required to join the community when it comes to this set and learn to talk their lingo in all honesty.

At the same time as web and mobile technology continue to rapidly evolve newer digital PR strategies have to keep apace. Perfecting social media and mobile outreach requires for content to be appropriately optimized. Skills increasingly will involve the right insight, technology and creativity abilities. Increasingly the trend is for small PR firms to partner with companies, especially start ups and stay the course right through the product life cycle of the products or services in question. The organic nature of how technology PR helps products connect in an evolutionary manner make this possible. While all this goes on there will be increased scrutiny of the level of privacy maintained by PR firms that handle large volumes of data.

With e-commerce becoming an integral part of most companies' marketing strategy, tech PR will see a burgeoning of demand for its services and expertise, with the spotlight on social and visual media. There are in fact going to be ever new imaginative ways of reaching out to one's focused target audience, and the PR companies who get their act together and master these techniques first will get a first mover advantage.

The changing face of PR

The face of the PR industry is changing at a rapid pace, even without many of the people who are a part of the industry and should know better, realising it. The landscape that is evolving is increasingly dominated by digital media, and those that are unable to discern in which direction the wind is blowing will eventually fall by the wayside. Quick results are expected in an era where social media get the news out way faster than traditional media platforms. As a result traditional media outlets are metamorphosing into digital news platforms, putting out news content on their websites, which is shaped by the expectations of a social media savvy target audience.

There is no denying the fact that the younger lot joining the PR workforce has a more instinctive and organic relationship with technology and are able to understand its nuances and can leverage its power far more effectively than their seniors. It is for the latter to pick up a few tricks on how to do that and thereby learn to use technology in a way that enhances one's ability to outreach, profess and obtain effective consumer attention(not media attention), like never before.

In these changed circumstances the PR agency model

as we knew it will probably change dramatically from the way that it is structured right now. There is already a perceptible shift underway  in the nature of PR agencies. More and more PR outfits are smaller and specialised outfits that are better able to service the quick turnaround expectations of their clients. It may not be the case today that PR firms that pay lip sympathy to tools like blogging, social networking profiles and online video, and so on, will fold up, but they will surely one day- as surely as the email enervated snail mail. The writing is on the wall, and PR professionals ignore it at their own peril.

As time marches by one will see a decline in influence of traditional journalists and opinion influencing analysts and the rise and rise of the power of the blog.  This is not surprising in a scenario  where three new blogs  are being created every two seconds! Brands now have to receive inputs and evolve and not attempt to bring the consumers to speed as was the case in the past. The best way to find out about the reputation of a brand is not by referring to all the ads, newspaper and television coverage one has garnered, but the rank it obtains in an online search. It's time for the PR thinking heads to change tack or other specialists will take over.

The 5 key challenges of housekeeping

The 5 key challenges of housekeeping

The quality of housekeeping may not be the first thing that a guest thinks of when choosing a hotels to stay in, but is probably the most significant determinant of the overall impression they carry with themselves, once they have checked out. The best of restaurants, bars and the top amenities in the business will come to naught on account of sloppy, bad, or indifferent room service. More than the front office staff, it is the room service people who provide the much needed human touch. Efficient and courteous housekeeping make a hotel stay as close to being at home as it is possible for a hotel to be. You get this right, and you will have the guest not only grateful, but coming again to stay at your hotel.

Housekeeping needs to be efficient yet courteous and punctual yet friendly. Seems like an easy enough thing to do, but every so often there are slip ups. Given below are five essential challenges that housekeeping has to contend with and the ways to deal with those:

1. Entering a room: Housekeeping staff are a harried lot with schedules to adhere to and tasks to complete. So it is not uncommon to have cleaning staff  knock and peremptorily enter and go about their business. This is just not on. You have to firstly remember that you may be in a hurry, but the guest is not.

You have to pause after knocking and enter only after the guest has given you permission to do so. If the guest does not respond at the first knock wait for a few seconds before you knock again. It would be a good idea to introduce yourself as well. These little precautions can save the hotel a world of grief in the shape of disgruntled guests and save the latter from a potentially embarrassing situation.

2. Security of personal effects: Nothing can be more harrowing for a guest to than to lose a personal effect or valuable in the room that one is staying. Needless to say this would be catastrophic for the hotel’s reputation. So a fool proof security system has to be put in place and the use of an in-room safe for valuable items should be actively encouraged. Great care should be taken in ensuring that the staff should never get involved in filching guests’ belongings and effects.

For this both the selection and training of the housekeeping staff has to be of the highest possible order. There should be a standard procedure always in place to trace and track down guests who have checked out, in case any effects have been accidentally left behind.

3. Linen and Towels: Linen and towels kept in the rooms have to be clean and fresh and changed and replaced regularly. Not only is this basic courtesy, it is also a matter of hygiene that impacts the health of the guests. As a matter of fact there are medical standard prescribed for cleaning and washing beddings that hotels have to abide by.

Of course nothing can be as distressing and indeed offensive for a guest than unclean linen and towels. This lets them form an opinion and rightly so about the kind of overall standards maintained by the hotel.

4. Replenishing toiletries and towels: Any guest who is staying at a hotel has paid good money to be able to do so, and it is incumbent upon the hotel to make their stay as comfortable as possible. Now if things like re-stocking toiletries and towels are not taken care of and the guest needs to call and remind the staff, there is not only gross dereliction of duty, but the gust has been short-changed as well. Of course the guest would be grossly offended, and not only would  they not visit the hotel again, but would also severely bad-mouth it.
5. Tweaking the controls: Housekeeping staff quite often reset the controls in a room to their own preferences. Things like the temperature setting, the music playing in the room, or the number of lights that are on are quite often changed by the housekeeping staff, which may just not be the way the guest had left them. Besides it may also not conform to what the hotel may have prescribed as ideal settings.

This kind of gauche and uncouth behavior on the part of housekeeping though unexpected is surprisingly common, human nature being what it is. Such aberrant behavior needs to be stamped out, if the hotel aspires to have a sterling reputation in the business.