Heather here 🙂

I can’t believe it’s already (practically) November! I haven’t even gotten my Halloween decorations up yet. It’s on my to-do list, though. Must try and beat my next door neighbour and his spooky signpost which conveniently indicates that “Witches” can be found to the left of his petunias (hint: so can my house…but I’m sure it’s only a coincidence)…

Back to matters at hand.

It’s been a learning curve this week in terms of stepping up a notch! First things first, let’s talk about PR! 

 

PR

This week was all about cranking up the outreach! 

We’ve been reaching out to the websites of various tools we use and love and asking if we can write a testimonial. It turns out most people are very happy for positive reviews, so I’ve spent time this week sending those out. Hoping to see some go live on websites very soon!

We’ve had some new people start pitching for HARO this week as well, so I’ve been helping onboard and guide them through the process. Rajiv (a new content writer who’s joined the team) sent his first pitch off yesterday, and I’m sure he’s going to get some great media mentions for PL very soon! Anthony has also joined our partnership team as of today, and will be helping out with PR as well. The more, the merrier!

I’ve also been prepping for a call with a marketing director for one of the tools we’d like to review. This will be my first time working on a case study (a detailed customer testimonial) and I’m a little nervous – but excited at the same time.

Moving on….

Content Writing

I’ve managed to produce four or five decent guest posts this week. While it’s not a personal best, I feel like I’m finally getting faster at churning them out. 

A lot of this has to do with my goal for the next few weeks: progress, not perfection. Essentially, I’ve noticed that I get so focused on creating a flawless piece of work (this is definitely a hangover from writing 1.5k word university essays about soliloquies) that it slows me down a lot. 

Instead of constantly second-guessing myself, I want to be confident enough in my abilities to produce content faster. Edits suggested by the team are always faster to implement than playing a waiting game with my own self-doubt. 

I also now know all about federal student loans and 529 plans. Writing guest posts about unfamiliar topics has its perks!

 

Expert Round-Up Post

This week saw Tenny, Deepak and I putting the finishing touches on Pearl Lemon’s first ever expert round-up post! From sending out the query via HARO, to sorting through over 90 responses, compiling and editing the quotes etc., it’s been a fantastic experience. 

First off, it’s genuinely fascinating reading what about expert predictions for 2021 SEO trends. It’s also an amazing opportunity to network and build relationships, as we’ll be asking contributors to share the article, as well as keeping in touch for future collaborations. 

Can’t wait for the post to go live!

Highlights: 

After a quiet week in terms of media mentions, three interviews we’d done on behalf of Deepak went live yesterday (two of which I’d done, so it felt pretty good). Not only that, we discovered a couple of other mentions we hadn’t noticed before.

Deepak also had an interview with Sandra Beckwith, a U.S journalist whose HARO query I had pitched. Setting that up successfully was certainly an achievement!

Challenges: 

Late trains, uncooperative laptops, university tutorials and life in general were all issues I could’ve done without this week. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to turn my front garden into a Haunted House…