DIY PR by Penny Haywood Calder

This is the start of a series of posts, re-visiting the 30 low cost or free publicity techniques featured in PHPR's MD's best-selling book: DIYPR, the small business owner's guide to 'free' publicity by Penny Haywood (pub: Batsford 1998). They are a mix of sales, marketing and PR tools because you need to work all three disciplines to effectively boost a business.

As the series develops, choose a few to trial for a few months. The aim is to work up to 10 varied publicity techniques that work for you and your business to create a rolling PR Plan for success.

The techniques can be used for most sizes of business and organisations.

At PHPR, we mainly work with business-to-business clients. We need to ensure that clients get the best possible PR, sales and marketing advice, so we have evolved a list of several hundred techniques to ensure we can cover most bases in most industry sectors.

These 30 techniques are more than enough to get started on. We are kicking off with one of the least used: Ambassadors.

Ambassadors have the potential to bring great benefits to any business that thrives on recommendations - and that is most of them!

1) Ambassadors

Ambassadors are common for countries and NGOs, but companies rarely use them.

I believe ambassadors can particularly benefit small businesses and they should be a more widespread phenomenon. Why?

Followers of this blog will know I had a problem with a frozen shoulder. That sort of injury spirals into all sorts of energy-sapping hassle that can affect a small business owner. In particular, it becomes all too easy to neglect to promote the business - and that spells major headaches further down the line.

Trapped in painkiller haze and a massive reduction in fresh air and exercise (it is just too painful), how do you keep the show on the road?

Here's a few ideas:

1) There's no point in networking if every handshake means you need to be scraped off the ceiling, so just focus on the things you can do easily, like short blog posts, phone calls and tweets.

2) Can you get others to help? Delegate what you can by outlining what you want to achieve. Relinquish control and still get the job done by showing people your vision of the end result. Set some basic parameters and targets. Let them find their own best way of achieving the results. They may do better than you, freeing you up for the things you enjoy doing.

3) It's harder to generate new business leads when you are not in much of a state to deliver presentations, attend meetings etc. Focus on existing clients and see if there are additional services/sales you can make to them. And follow-up on potential clients you have presented to, or people you know, so hopefully you can get away with a call and don't have to go to see them.

4) Time is precious when you don't have much energy, so weigh up how much work you can cope with and plan just how little promotional work you can get away with to tick-over. Just never stop promoting the business altogether or you are likely to create a desperate famine. That sparks a feverish promotional drive, creating a feast of work, which leaves no time for promo work. That in turn creates a famine.....

5) Invest in your health. Once you have a diagnosis, discuss with your medical adviser whether recovery might be accelerated through recommended alternative practitioners. Well qualified people that offer massage, physio, chiropractors, osteopaths, the Bowen technique, reiki and other healers are worth looking into if it gets you back on the road faster. Plus doing something positive makes you feel better.

6) Explore the oddly named Hospital Saturday Fund for a cost-effective way to take some of the financial sting out of getting faster medical and health services, and they cover some alternative therapies.

7) Obvious really: take extra care of yourself.
Get plenty of rest and sleep.
Drink lots of water.
Eat well with lots of fruit and veggies.
Take supplements if you need them.
Explore whether you have any underlying allergies or conditions that might be dragging you further down.
Any environmental factors that could be impacting on you like damp, mould, too many household chemicals etc?
Are there emotional situations you need to deal with - an enforced rest allows you to consider your options.
Get fresh air and as much gentle exercise as you can manage, even if it is just opening the window and clenching and relaxing your muscles.
De-stress with relaxation exercises or meditation.
Re-assess your working day and your lifestyle and research improvements.
De-clutter when you feel a bit better to improve your surroundings and feel more in control again.

8) Any health problem focuses you on your body and prompts ideas about how you can look after yourself better in future. This is a time to gain valuable life-lessons that will boost your health for years to come. Unlike general diagnosis and treatments, these lessons are unique to your body. There is usually a reason why you fell ill. Were you stressed-out? Angry? Negativity, bad diet, lack of exercise and fresh air, pollution (including self-induced smoking, drinking etc) all affect your health, although how you react can be down to your genetic inheritance.

9) It's tempting to rush back too early and tire yourself out, quickly losing any insights you gained. No-one on their death-bed ever wished they had spent more time in the office (unless they were sad little souls). Take something positive out of the experience about looking after number one.

10) And are there any useful things to be learned from the temporary enforced change in your working practices?