In addition to the downloadable transcript in PDF, the following highlights some of the most popular tweets from the chat:

Be sure to check out the transcript in PDF for the full discussion. Note that the transcript is in reverse chronological order.

If you weren’t able to join us this week, weigh in on the chat questions below!

The #solopr chat – held each Wednesday from 1-2 p.m. Eastern – is a weekly ritual for some of the most savvy Solo PR Pros on Twitter. Anyone with a Twitter account is welcome to participate – see Join Us for the #solopr Chat on Twitter to find out how!

In addition to the downloadable transcript in PDF, the following highlights some of the most popular tweets from the chat:

Be sure to check out the transcript in PDF for the full discussion. Note that the transcript is in reverse chronological order.

If you weren’t able to join us this week, weigh in on the chat questions below!

The #solopr chat – held each Wednesday from 1-2 p.m. Eastern – is a weekly ritual for some of the most savvy Solo PR Pros on Twitter. Anyone with a Twitter account is welcome to participate – see Join Us for the #solopr Chat on Twitter to find out how!

By Kellye Crane and Heather Rast

PR consultants that move away from excessive team emails and adopt a useful solution for collaborative project management are able to take on bigger and more lucrative client work. In this series, we help you make sense of the myriad of options by sharing our experience with a few of the top systems.

In Part One, we covered free collaborative project management tools. In Part Two, we focused on “freemium” and low cost options. In this third and final installment, we look at three tools designed to meet more robust needs, including those of larger groups servicing multiple projects or campaigns.

Basecamp

The granddaddy of project management software, this 37 Signals product is road-tested and large team approved.  You can get a taste for the software by signing up for a free trial which allows you to create one project with up to 10MB of storage for files.

Pro tip: Break big (even if they’re ongoing) projects down into more granular components like month, quarter, or subset. It will be easier as time goes on, messages stack up, and milestones get added, to go back and find something later.

PROS:

• No contract required, pay as-you-go. Plans start at $24 per month for 15 projects and unlimited users
• Recommended by 98% of the people who use it. That’s a remarkable satisfaction rating, and the fact that it’s so widely used means your subcontractors and/or clients may already be familiar with using it
• Provides a calendar feature that allows both events and milestones to be applied. If your work is date-based, then these can be good ways to capture progress to completion
• Create lists of standard tasks and assign people to complete them. Re-use the list on your next project or create new task lists based on milestones or whole projects

CONS:

• The dashboard can be jarring to someone joining a project mid-stream. Unless you’re familiar with a projects’ background and goings-on, the dashboard doesn’t really help orient new users at all
• It doesn’t provide a way for a project leader or administrator to view all tasks assigned to a specific team member
• Available via mobile browser, but no native mobile application

Central Desktop

Central Desktop is a full-featured online collaboration tool offering many of the same functions as Basecamp, plus some additional benefits, including online diagrams such as flow charts, org charts, and wireframes. You can also open, edit, and save Microsoft Office documents while within Central Desktop.

PROS:

• Extremely powerful program, with excellent tutorials and help documentation
• Allows custom branding (colors and logo), a nice way to extend the look and feel of your brand into the tool touched often by employees, vendors, and clients
• Integrates with Microsoft Office products (Office, Excel, Word, PowerPoint)
• A mobile app is available for iOS, Android, and Blackberry operating systems to help you stay current while on-the-go
• Keep engagement high by pushing out messages to team members via Twitter and Facebook

CONS:

• The price is out of reach for most solo PR pros. Workgroups start at $99 per month and jump directly to enterprise-level workgroups (price isn’t published). The basic workgroups allows for up to 30 users and 50 GB of storage with 5 workspaces. On a price point level, Central Desktop is expensive compared to Basecamp and DeskAway
• The Wiki-based interface is very customizable. While the flexibility is a definite advantage, it could easily be a case of not knowing how you’d really like spaces to be arranged and organized until it’s full of information and active members. At that point, it could be cumbersome to pivot

DeskAway

DeskAway (affiliate link) is used by the team here at Solo PR Pro. After a lot of research and trials, Kellye decided DeskAway was the best blend of powerful features, usability, and price to serve as the central hub for work across all her projects and teams, including client programs, business projects, the Solo PR PRO Premium membership site, and the Solo PR Pro blog (she even uses it for personal tasks, as well).

Want to dip your toe in the water to understand why she digs it? While all the plans have a 30-day free trial, there’s also a limited-functionality free account that offers access to 1 project for 2 users, with 25 MB of file storage (unlike others with a 30-day trial, there’s no time limit on that one — upgrade at any time).

PROS:

• Simple sign-up process, and a credit card isn’t required (who likes giving that info before committing to buy?)
• On the$25 per month plan, subscribers receive access to 25 projects and 20 users, sharing 2 GB of storage space and 5 project templates.
• Unlike Basecamp, DeskAway provides Getting Started videos and how-to links directly on user dashboards. This makes it easy to set up a new user, then allow them to get acquainted with the system at their own pace
• Numerous options for sharing information among teams (from an internal blog to file uploads) means you can pick the methods that work best for you
• One of the few collaboration solutions that allows you to easily view all the tasks assigned to a single team member, and it includes powerful reporting options
• Includes a basic time-tracking feature, that can be integrated with the Freshbooks invoicing solution
• Provides for 3 levels of user permissions (Super, Regular, Limited), which offers tight team member controls
• Branding is available; use your own logo and colors to customize the look of your work space
• Synch your Google calendar with your DeskAway calendar to simplify scheduling
• Import Basecamp projects into DeskAway should you decide to migrate from one tool to the other

CONS:

• It’s not very intuitive, so there is a learning curve initially, and the user interface isn’t beautifully styled
• There are a lot of options packed into each tab and sub-menu, making it easy to get lost or derailed from the activity you set out to perform
• The mobile version is lacking (Kellye gets around this by using the full Web version on her iPhone)

All of these programs integrate well with email, meaning users can reply to tasks by email and their comments are stored within the system. That makes this most basic functionality easy to use for new (or more limited) team members, without requiring them to dive into the more complex features.

No matter which tool you choose, once you’ve entered your projects and timelines, the process becomes much easier — get started today for a more organized tomorrow!

What’s your favorite project management solution? Let’s learn from each other in the comments!

Photo credit: woodleywonderworks

Many in the Solo PR Pro community have asked what I use — in this video, I demonstrate the “system” I’ve developed over my 15 years of consulting, which uses folders to organize clients and track my time.

If you can’t see the video above, you can watch it on YouTube.

It’s important to note that I also use this same system for volunteer positions and pro bono work, tracking time regardless of whether I’m going to get paid or not.

Obviously there are many software programs that may be more efficient, but for me, I found that I just wasn’t as religious about tracking my time when I have to open a software program to do it. Your mileage may vary — I firmly believe that the best system is the one you’ll actively use!

What about you — what’s your system for client organization and time tracking? Looking forward to hearing your personal experiences and recommendations in the comments…

While some people rush in because it’s their job to be among the first to try a new tool (they know who they are), others are just curious, afraid of being left behind, or looking for bragging rights (why else do people wait in line at the Apple store to be among the first to have the latest gadget?).

As they did with Google Wave, Google+ upped the “cool” ante by being accessible only by invite. Thus, as is human nature, everyone who can get past the velvet rope wants to try it out.

Need to Know Basis

But if you wait, you have a chance to learn from others who have kicked the tires. And often, as was the case with Wave and Buzz, a new tool or service completely runs out of steam within a month or so.

For example, the last thing the social media squad got excited about was Empire Avenue. It’s a network/game where you “buy and sell shares in your friends” with virtual money. So, popular people become worth more, and you can sell shares of your less popular friends to invest in the more popular ones. I’m not kidding. Many social media folks were buzzing over Empire Avenue a couple months ago (apparently it was fun), but most people have grown bored with it.

How Much Is Enough?

If you’re in a position of advising a typical client about social media (one that isn’t trying to establish itself as a social media thought leader), you’ll want to become familiar with the basics of an uber-hyped tool like Google+. Just learn enough about it so that you can speak intelligently about its pros and cons if asked, but there’s no reason you have to become an overnight expert (and I mean this literally – there are many among the social media-obsessed who stayed up all night on Google+ the day it was launched).

Becoming familiar can mean poking around with it a bit, if you have the opportunity, or taking a look at some of the many overviews and tutorials that pop up (see list below). If a new tool truly has staying power, you’ll continue to hear about it for many weeks after its launch and trusted sources (like Solo PR Pro!) will tell you when it’s a must-have for your toolbox.

The Skinny on Google+

Most users of Google+ are somewhat pleasantly surprised, because it has a clean, intuitive design that makes it easy to use its basic features with little to no learning curve. It also has some more robust capabilities – like the ability to have a multi-user video chat, called a “Hangout,” – the implications of which are just beginning to be explored by those that are part of the beta test.

What remains to be seen is whether the average social media participant (let alone the masses) has the bandwidth to learn and participate in yet another network. If Google had brought us this tool two years ago or more, it would be much easier to imagine users substituting it for Facebook, Twitter, etc. Now, are we too entrenched and committed (due to our extended networks on these other tools) to change our behavior? Only time will tell.

Fore more in-depth coverage, some of my favorite posts and tutorials to date on Google+ include:

• Google+: An Introductory Tour, a video by Jason Falls, offered for free on his Exploring Social Media membership site
• First Look Google+, by Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent
• An introduction to Google+ (YouTube), by Nathan Olivarez-Giles, LA Times technology reporter
• Why Google Has the Hammer To Make Businesses Use Google Plus, by Jay Baer, Convince and Convert
• I really wanted to hate Google Plus, by David M. Scott, Web Ink Now (it’s funny, because it’s true!)

It’s important to note that Google+ is being updated constantly, so some of the early reviews you see have some inaccuracies now (in particular, Jason Falls’ point that you have to be “in” a circle to limit your posts to that circle is no longer the case).

A Toe in the Water

As Solo PR Pros, we all have too much to do and not enough time. At this point, a basic understanding of what is included in Google+ — as detailed in the links above – is all you really need to know.

For those who are curious and would like to take a peek, I have a limited number of invites available that I’m happy to share with the Solo PR Pro community. To keep your email address private, please use this form to request one.

What are your thoughts about yet another network? How do you decide when it’s time to dip a toe in the water, and when it’s time to jump in? Have you had a chance to try out Google+, and if so, what are your impressions? Let us know in the comments!

1. This article (by a radio person) on “Why Radio Still Matters” http://ow.ly/52xFx inspired me to ask, do you think it does? #solopr

2. @TexAnne recently asked, are any #solopr pros are using ProfNet Connect with success?

3. Has PR become a dirty word in social media? #solopr

4. @Shonali is going to be our guest next week to talk measurement. What are your biggest challenges in that area (for next wk) #solopr

Be sure to check out the transcript in PDF for the full discussion. Note that our previous transcript service is down, so this week’s transcript is in reverse chronological order. We’re working to find an easier to read format.

If you weren’t able to join us this week, please let us know how you’d respond to the chat questions below!

The #solopr chat – held each Wednesday from 1-2 p.m. Eastern – is a weekly ritual for some of the most savvy Solo PR Pros on Twitter. Anyone with a Twitter account is welcome to participate – see Join Us for the #solopr Chat on Twitter to find out how!

Thanks to Jennifer Spivak for compiling this post.

1. What do you think about a sm project client that hints extra (unbilled) work could yield bigger projects? #solopr

Q1 follow-up: how do you actually respond to a client who is asking for this? #solopr

2. What do you use to track clients/campaign progress and keep it all straight? Paper? Software? Project management tools? #solopr

3. What are the best ways to prospect, sell, close, and *speed* the whole process? #solopr

Be sure to check out the transcript in PDF for the full discussion. Note that our previous transcript service is down, so this week’s transcript is in reverse chronological order. We’re working to find an easier to read format.

If you weren’t able to join us this week, please let us know how you’d respond to the chat questions below!

The #solopr chat – held each Wednesday from 1-2 p.m. Eastern – is a weekly ritual for some of the most savvy Solo PR Pros on Twitter. Anyone with a Twitter account is welcome to participate – see Join Us for the #solopr Chat on Twitter to find out how!

Thanks to Jennifer Spivak for compiling this post.

1. What do you use for time keeping programs/systems?

2. How can you make connections with the media when they don’t know who you are?

3. What are some creative/low-cost strategies/tactics to generate publicity for sm biz?

Be sure to check out the transcript in PDF for the full discussion. Note that our previous transcript service is down, so this week’s transcript is in reverse chronological order. We’re working to find an easier to read format.

If you weren’t able to join us this week, please let us know how you’d respond to the chat questions below!

The #solopr chat – held each Wednesday from 1-2 p.m. Eastern – is a weekly ritual for some of the most savvy Solo PR Pros on Twitter. Anyone with a Twitter account is welcome to participate – see Join Us for the #solopr Chat on Twitter to find out how!

Thanks to Jennifer Spivak for compiling this post.

Because I get a number of referrals from the social media community, attending events where I’ll not only learn a great deal, but also maintain and build relationships with my network, is an investment with demonstrable ROI.

But have you ever gone to a conference only to come home without seeing someone you really meant to meet up with? Or perhaps you’ve found out after the fact that someone you really admire presented an awesome session? Any time I’m attending a conference, I make the following “plan:”

1. Make a list of people I want to be sure I see, including a few I’d like to get to know better and/or meet

This might seem a little stalker-ish, but I’m quite harmless – I promise! We all have lots of social media friends we’ve never met face-to-face, and if I have an opportunity to do so, I’m certainly going to take it. And you know those people who travel in similar online circles as you, but you’ve never really had a chance to chat or meet? An event like SXSW is great for saying hi to them, since you’ll be surrounded by those mutual friends.

I make a full list of these folks, and if I know we’re going to be in the same place at the same time, I include that information. I do this in my smartphone so I can refer to the list throughout the event, and then I check the people off as I go (like the OCD freak that I am).

2. Arrange a pre-appointed time/place to meet key friends

First, make a list of buddies you know are going to the conference (yes, write it down), and then contact them to arrange a meetup. This doesn’t have to be a separate meeting/meal – you can decide to both be at the same event/panel/spot. At SXSW, this often means a particular party. Make a date and put it on your calendar.

3. Know the quick answer to the question, “what are you working on?”

I’ve learned this one the hard way. My clients tend to be super technical and sometimes on the boring side, so I’ve sputtered and stammered more times than I’d like to admit when asked this question. You will be asked, so be ready.

4. Identify my must-see presentations and load them onto my schedule

For many events this is easy and a no-brainer. For huge events with multiple tracks (in conference rooms that are spread out), making the most of your time requires some worthwhile forethought.  Also check out the exhibitor list to see if there are any vendors with demonstrations you’d like to see – if so, add some time in the exhibit hall to your schedule, as well.

5. Leave plenty of time for chance meetings

Frequently, the best thing about a large conference is the ad hoc conversations you can have there. Finding out what others are up to, and discovering their opinions on hot topics, is often a much better learning opportunity than what you’ll hear in the official sessions. Don’t over-schedule yourself to the point that you can’t enjoy this important part of the conference experience.

6. Have fun!

People who are having fun are much more pleasant to be around, don’t you think? So not only will you have a better time, you’ll meet more people and have more educational conversations.

What do you do to make the most of your attendance at events? Any tips you’d like to add?

1. What is the best smartphone platform and apps for #PR?

2. Do you have any tips for getting started as a #solopr, when simultaneously moving to a new city?

3. Have you ever had a TV or radio show ask your #PR client to cover the production costs of the segment? Is it legit?

4. What are your favorite time management tips as a #solopr? How do you get it all done?

Be sure to check out the transcript in PDF for the full discussion. What’s your take on these interesting questions?

The #solopr chat – held each Wednesday from 1-2 p.m. Eastern – is a weekly ritual for some of the most savvy Solo PR Pros on Twitter. Anyone with a Twitter account is welcome to participate – see Join Us for the #solopr Chat on Twitter to find out how!

Thanks to Jennifer Spivak for compiling this post.