The amazing Jennifer Spivak started with us as an intern and continued as a community assistant – her energy and drive have truly been a constant inspiration! As she continues down her path toward becoming a full-time independent consultant, Jennifer’s decided to share some of the insights she gained as part of our community.

For the last 10 months or so, I’ve worked part-time as a community assistant for the queen of #solopr, Kellye Crane. As we’ll soon be parting ways, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on my experience and share what I’ve learned with all of you, the wonderful independent PR & marketing pros who help keep this thriving community alive:

• Internal deadlines are a must.
• In #solopr, EOD actually (and awesomely) means 11:59 p.m.
• If you’re directing a conference, you’ll probably get sick the day before it begins.
• We DO have collective power!
• And of course, even independent PR practitioners need a vacation sometimes.

But more important than the real-world insight I gained through my work with Kellye and my time at #solopr is the affirmation that working independently is without a doubt what I am meant to do. And the best part? When I do go solo – which I don’t think is more than a year or two away from now – I won’t be starting from scratch, wondering how it’s done and where to turn when I need guidance.

I’ll know to look to Get It In Writing when I approach my first client. I’ll remember that the best way to get an overflow of answers from some seriously smart people is to pop in to a #solopr chat. And I’ll most definitely know that the #solopr community is always there; to encourage me, to inspire me, and to remind me that THIS is what I want to do with the rest of my life.

Though the last time you all heard from me I was still in school, I have since graduated and starting working at a small social media marketing agency while pursuing freelance projects on the side (of which I now have several). I know I’m not there yet, but at some point in the future I’ll be ready to transition these side projects to becoming my only source of income.

The idea of this, I’ll admit, is somewhat terrifying to me. But that fear isn’t something that’s going to stop me. Remember my name, solo PR pros – I’ve got big plans and big dreams, and with a community like this one, I think its safe to say I just might be unstoppable.

I have no doubt that Jennifer is right! The fact that she is planning her entire career with the end goal in mind is a testament to her maturity and self-awareness.

What would you have done early on, if you knew independence was in your future?

This is a guest post from Mary Ellen Miller, President and CEO of MarketingMel.

Dan Eldridge, a highly successful local businessman, called me seemingly out of nowhere one day to tell me he was planning to run for County Mayor in Washington County, Tennessee. This position is known as County Executive in most states. What he would like me to do, he said, was to “write a press release” for him. Once we got together I realized he was at the earliest stages of a campaign, and I advised him that he was going to need a lot more than “a press release” in terms of campaign communications.

That was August 2009. At that time no one thought Dan stood any chance of winning. This youthful forty-something entrepreneur was about to face a formidable gray-haired career politician in a Republican primary that would be a winner-take-all contest May 4, 2010 (there was no Democratic opponent). Here is the story of how a dark horse ran to victory in part through social media.

Facebook Friends

During our first meeting I advised Dan that he needed to be on Facebook. We created his personal page and he quickly enjoyed connecting with old friends and family. Next, MarketingMel worked on his logo and web site creation, and from there I created his Fan page linking it back to his web site. At first Dan was hesitant about the fan page, but I assured him that his natural transparency would shine on the web and I would be there to administer the site.

Turn naysayers into advocates

As it turned out, there were few naysayers on the Fan page. One man from the start had lengthy, negative questions but we always responded positively and asked him to attend our town hall meetings. Although he declined, after the election he came back on the Fan page and said that he didn’t vote for Dan but he would now support him as Mayor.

How to multiply your friends: Neighborhood gatherings and photos

As part of our campaign strategy, we held a series of neighborhood gatherings. Local movers and shakers from throughout the region hosted Dan in their homes. Each time they did I would post and tag the photos of the event hosts. This became an “ah-ha” moment for many who didn’t know Dan but perhaps knew his friends or his friends’ friends.

Flipcam fan

My Flipcam became a trusty friend. I can remember the first time I used it as one of the party hosts, Tommy Greer, Dan’s CPA, was introducing Dan with a ringing endorsement. The camera was so tiny Dan had not seen me with it and he turned to me in front of the crowd and said, “I wish you would have gotten that (introduction) on tape.” It was a great feeling to smile and say, “I did.”

I used the Flipcam to get third party endorsements of Dan throughout the campaign and we posted them to YouTube and his fan page. The Flipcam came in very handy for an interview with his three children as they walked the trail with him and again on election day when his cute, 18 year old daughter Meredith voted for the first time with her parents. The local TV station loved that angle as well, and eagerly showed up to interview her and her parents on election day.

What the other candidates did/did not do

Most noticeably, the other significant candidate played “follower” to our leader position. It was only after Dan said that he was on Facebook and Twitter that the opponent appeared there — and he never generated the momentum we had. A third, one-issue candidate also ran but was not a key competitor.

Generate Election Day Excitement

On election day I went from precinct to precinct taking and posting pictures of the poll workers. One thing we know in PR is that perception is reality. I wanted all of Dan’s Facebook fans to think that everyone was out at the polls voting that day and by golly, they better be there too!

Conclusion: Work Hard and Think Strategically

It must be said that Dan Eldridge was and is a hard worker. He wanted to win and never took anything for granted. He was still shaking hands as the polls closed at 8 pm May 4th. Dan garnered 51% of the vote with the other two opponents taking 35 and 14 percent. In addition to all of the hard work, Dan will tell you that his social media presence was a game changer. He said other mayoral candidates from across Tennessee told him ours was now a bellwether for local campaigns state-wide. So if you get a call from a candidate asking for a “press release” you’ll still want to write it as I did. Just be sure you have a good social media strategy in place as well.

Mary Ellen Miller, MBA, is a President and CEO of MarketingMel, an innovative marketing, public relations and social media strategies firm in East Tennessee.  A former television news anchorwoman, and magazine editor, she co-founded an ad agency and worked in mar-com for attorneys, a university, a defense contractor and a digital media firm. She started her firm in early 2009 and is delighted to be a member of SoloPR. Follow her on Twitter @ MarketingMel.

This is a guest post from

What should you charge? More to the point: Why aren’t you charging more?

It’s a surprising blind spot – not just because otherwise smart practitioners get it wrong, but also in the sheer breadth of ways they blow it. Solos charge too little because they heard that’s what a competitor quoted, because that’s all they thought they could wring out of a key client, or similar excuses.

Reliable data is thin, but what’s out there is shocking: According to a 2008 PRSA survey of independent practitioners, the average responding solo had 21 years of experience, was working 35 hours a week, and pulled down an hourly rate of just $111 for for-profit work and $87 for non-profit work. This stereotypical solo practitioner billed $104,479 in annual gross fee income at the time of the survey.

Oh, and most of the numbers were trending down from prior years.

Think about that: More than two decades of experience, working what amounts to a full-time job and… you’re making less, after taxes, than a Sr. AE?

If that’s you, then you don’t own a business; you own a low-paying job. You can do better.

How? Smarter pricing and better clients. The two go hand in hand, but in this post we’ll keep the discussion squarely on pricing.

The Formula

First, let’s run through the world’s simplest formula for pricing solo PR and marcom services – it’s not the sole factor you should use, but it’s a running start in the right direction:

1.     How much you do want to gross in a year? That’s right – start with your desired earnings as the first data point. Not what others are charging, and not what some client said he or she could afford. The thinking: Nearly everyone has a number in mind, most of those numbers are rational, commensurate with experience, and, for the majority of people, that rationally selected number is pretty central to their happiness. So let’s put it front and center.

2.     How many hours do you want to work? Don’t overthink this – if you want to work full-time, the FTE standard is 2,000 hours a year, which is 40 hours a week with two weeks of vacation. Got other life commitments? Don’t feel like getting out of bed before noon most days? Fine – put in 1,000 hours or some other figure. But be honest with yourself and pick a sustainable number.

3.     Do the math: Take the number of hours you want to work and divide it in half. Take that number and divide it into your desired annual salary.

Presto – you now have a target hourly rate. It’s not perfect and, depending on your inputs and current billing level, it may scare the hell out of you. But it’s a rational starting point.

Let’s get the most obvious questions out of the way:

Why do you assume only half my hours are billable? Because you should spend as close to 50 percent of your time on business development as possible. Yes, non- billable admin will eat up a little – but hopefully you’re minimizing that.

Spending half your time on business development means you always have a healthy book of prospects and leads to work with – if it doesn’t, your biz-dev regimen is broken and needs to change. A fat funnel means you can be choosy about which clients you take, ignoring that suck-it-up voice in your head when last year’s great client wants the same work this year at a 25% discount. A robust prospect pipeline is the surest way to maintain premium rates.

What about all my other expenses? Most solos manage to keep overhead low – it’s why this formula can be so simple for most of us. If you have office space or other recurring expenses you didn’t include in that gross number you established in point 1, go back and add that in.

What about the competition and what they’re charging? What if my raised rates are as much as a full-service agency’s? You don’t care – but we’ll get to that..

But that rate… it’s so high!

Getting a clear picture of that target rate is just a first step.

Let’s say you’ve done the math and your target rate comes out at $185 – more than 66 percent higher than our PRSA average. And that’s not what you’re currently billing. Now what?

There are a handful of ways to grow your rates:

• Just start charging more. The most general suggestion, true, but also the easiest to implement immediately. It’s tough to push significant rate increases onto existing clients. So get new ones, and start charging more.
• Specialize. Some clients need horizontal-market specialties — maybe they need crisis-comms counsel or a new-product launch. Others are deeply concerned with vertical-industry expertise – perhaps they’re looking for someone with upstream oil and gas experience, or a history of working with cruise lines. With either type of specialization, you can charge a premium. Got both?  You can charge a significant premium.
• Price based on value, not hours. There are lots of times – particularly when you do significant, single-item deliverables, such as marketing plans – when you can charge based on the value delivered rather than the hours worked. Even if you bill hourly for everything else in your world, keep an eye out for these projects and negotiate fixed-fee agreements. You may find yourself happily netting out $300 an hour or more.
• Mark-up. In the 2008 PRSA survey, only 10 percent of practitioners marked up expenses. To the other 90 percent, I ask: If you’re acting as a bank for your clients, why aren’t you charging interest?
• Explore alternative rate structures. This is the kissing cousin to value pricing and often takes the form of variable compensation for work that delivers game-changing results for clients. A typical engagement might contain a traditional retainer for day-to-day work, as well as a “success fee” paid only if you help the client achieve some specific, measurable and mutually agreed-upon objective. It’s an exercise in risk pricing and, properly executed, aligns everyone’s interests.
• Team up to hunt bigger game: Solos who worked as part of a virtual team billed 60 percent more than their standalone counterparts, according to the PRSA data.

Having a high target rate doesn’t mean everyone gets charged that rate. Using the examples above, some value-priced work might pencil out at $255/hr., some of your specialized work could be billed at $185/hr. and some of the retainer work at $140/hr. What’s important is that you treat your overall book of business as a portfolio that, taken as a whole, meets or exceeds your target billable rate.

The competition, and other distractions

But what about the competition?

Some competitors – a lot of them – may charge less than you. Heck, they may charge less than you charge now, so won’t a rate increase mean you price yourself out of the market?

In a word: Yes.

Significantly raising your rates means you’ll price yourself out of purely cost-sensitive markets and opportunities – a group that also happens to have the most churn, the most competition and the most frustration. See also: Clients with the lowest margins.

It means you have to sell based on differentiation, expertise and results, not on price. It also means that significant swaths of the client landscape — very small businesses and cash-strapped start-ups are two examples – may not be fertile ground for your biz-dev efforts. But if your model is based on spending as close to 50 percent of your time as possible pursuing new business, you’ll find that there are plenty of customers willing to pay a premium rate — if you can solve their problems. You’ll also find that one of the most cherished bits of conventional solo wisdom – that you can’t charge as much as a full-service agency – simply isn’t true.

Do you always buy on price? No, you don’t. So why assume your client does?

Quit worrying about the competition and instead, look at the types of work you pursue. For many solos, the biggest competitor isn’t the practitioner down the street – it’s timidity or lack of focus, keeping them inside a comfort zone and outside of higher billings.

Quit freelancing and go build a business

In the 20-plus years I’ve worked in PR and marketing, the most significant change I’ve seen hasn’t been the rise of social media. No, the biggest tectonic shift has been a combination of enabling technology and changing workforce attitudes that combine to make the solo practice more acceptable – and lucrative – than ever before.

As an industry, we’re no longer oddballs but a permanent fixture of the consulting landscape. But too many of us still run our business like… well, like itinerant freelancers. We grub for whatever work we can get, make what we can and spend what we make.

That’s not a business. It’s a practice at best and an up-and-down rollercoaster of a life at worst. And the fix really is as simple as raising your rates – a simple act that will force you to refine your universe of prospects, think more clearly about your value proposition and spend more time marketing.

What are you waiting for?

Greg Brooks is principal of West Third Group, a Missouri-based consultancy. Established in 1999, WTG delivers public-sector communications, managed editorial services and b2b marketing strategies to clients across the nation. A former journalist, brooks speaks internationally on marketing and business-development issues.

During a recent #solopr Twitter chat, we spent some time talking about how independents use interns and assistants. As public relations professionals, I believe we have a responsibility to help others learn and grow so they can be responsible professionals as well. At the same time, as small business owners, we know the amount of time we have to devote to helping those less experienced get their on the job training. So, how do you decide? What do you need to look at? Here are some thoughts and I hope you’ll add your own in the comments section.

Dictionary.com defines an intern as: “a person who works as an apprentice or trainee in an occupation or profession to gain practical experience, and sometimes also to satisfy legal or other requirements for being licensed or accepted professionally.”

If I look at my workload from that perspective and can parse out some things where an individual will gain practical experience, I’m on the road toward securing an intern. If I look at my workload and the needs are more administrative, I should probably look for an assistant. Don’t get me wrong – interns can definitely do SOME administrative work. We need to make sure they get a taste of the real world, but the emphasis needs to be on practical experience…something to put in their portfolio.

However, it’s important to look beyond the work I need done and look at what an intern needs. That’s where, as small business people, we need to take an honest look at the time we’re willing to invest. Do I have the time to help someone learn more about public relations or would I rather pay someone to go away and get the job done? Am I interested in building a long term relationship with a student whom I can watch grow and help succeed or do I just need to get the project done? Neither answer makes you a good/bad person but your honesty will help everyone succeed in the end.

My most successful intern experience was when I was able to give a very capable public relations student a project, meet with her regularly to determine benchmarks and next steps and then watch the final product come off the production line. In the end we were all happy and the client got a project completed they would never have been able to pay the agency’s AE rates to complete. More than 30 years later, we’re still mentoring each other. Click Here.

If you want to dedicate time and energy to an intern, which I highly recommend, take a look at PRSA’s Internship Guide. This extremely comprehensive guide was put together to help everyone get the most from the experience.

In addition, the Solo PR Pros LinkedIn group recently discussed issues pertaining to interns (including pay versus no pay), which is also useful to consider when looking at this topic.

What do you think? Is having interns worth the investment for you? Was being an intern critical to your career growth? What should professionals look for in successful interns? Interns in professional internships?

Mary Deming Barber, APR, Fellow PRSA, is president of The Barber Group, a communications consultancy created in 2000. She has counseled clients in Anchorage and San Francisco for more than 21 years. In addition, Mary has worked with variety of food organizations and worked on a successful US Senate campaign, spending time in Portland, Denver, San Francisco and Anchorage.

She serves on the Whitman College Alumni Board and as vice chair for PRSA’s College of Fellows. Mary recently completed four years of service on PRSA’s national Board of Directors and one on the PRSA Foundation’s Board. She is a past president of the Ad2 Division of the American Advertising Federation and the International Foodservice Editorial Council.

This is a guest post from Kevin Dinino, Founder & CEO, KCD Public Relations Inc.

I started out like many in the PR field, as a generalist Account Executive at a mid-size PR agency pre-Internet bubble.  Once the sky started to fall and clients such as Neopets.com disappeared overnight, I was moved to start supporting large financial firms involved in venture capital and leveraged buyouts.

It was a rewarding job, working with these masters of the universe and becoming immersed in the financial media and learning how no news  sometimes was a good thing. Two years later, I was lured to the wonderful world of Wall Street, working in PR for a large brokerage firm, promoting financial advisors in their local markets. It was great to travel across the country and drive media interest in local markets help build their brand.

A move across country to sunny San Diego allowed me to head the PR department for a similar brokerage and help craft PR campaigns with some of the larger and reputable independent financial advisors in the country. No one expected the great financial collapse of 2008 and before I knew it, my position had been jettisoned.

Eager to continue my love affair with the financial media, my former employer and I agreed that I would hang out my own shingle and offer my PR services to their clients. I was always an entrepreneur at heart and slowly started the process of founding my new firm, KCD Public Relations.

What I learned early on was that I had a very unique network of contacts and a former employer that was willing to market my business. These factors led me to the easy decision to position my firm as a specialty shop, working directly with financial services firms (and financial advisors) on PR campaigns, leveraging my 10+ years of industry experience.  I have found that clients want to work with a specialist vs. a generalist – so every marketing piece for my agency (Web site, social media, brochures, etc) is geared to appeal to a financial services firm.

The results have been tremendous – KCD PR has grown from two initial clients to close to 10 and I’ve been able to leverage more industry expertise to work on behalf of the firm. In some ways it might sound counterintuitive that the more you specialize the more success you find, but that’s certainly been my experience. Find what you do best and then reap the rewards.

What have you found in your own business? Are the benefits of specializing worth the perceived risks?