The vast majority of PR consulting firms are 1 or 2 person shops. They’re often the best avenue for outside PR help as the principal (the true expert) is the one that works on your company’s account, not a lower salaried associate working their way up the PR chain. Of course, a big challenge in the 1 and 2 person company is that this expert also has to do all the time consuming ‘busy work’ necessary to do a good job for their client.
- Research editorial calendars and past articles by targeted media
- Find comparable messaging from competitors
- Get contact information for specific blog and media professionals
- Do surveying and testing of ideas and concepts to groups of people
- And so on…
A $10/hr intern would be perfect for much of this busy work, but the time it would take an intern to amass much of this and the sporadic nature of when you need this help still adds up to a healthy expense.
Jeff Rutherford and Maria Colacurcio joined our Thursday tweetchat to share their experiences with crowdsouring their busy work done.
Maria also guest posted a very instructive article in Women Grow Business called: Overcome Entrepreneurial Shock with Online Project Collaboration
“Increasing my billing rate
Now, the really cool part is how the virtual gopher has increased my effective billing rate. While I don’t charge my own company, my normal rate is $125/hr. Were I to charge normal rates on the typical research time to accomplish the above example, the client would have paid me $375. Subtract the $5 I paid the virtual workers and divide the resulting $370 into the 5 minutes of data gathering plus 55 minutes of actual value added planning, and my effective billing rate is $370 per hour. “
It’s only a matter of time before more PR professionals take the plunge into making more profit while doing less work.
-Brent
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