One of the common mistakes in modern business communication is the separation between the tactics being executed all day every day and the bigger picture that surrounds them.
Asana’s hierarchy makes this mistake much harder to slip into.
It consists of three parallel panes. In the left most pane, you organise projects for key parts of the strategy. Clicking on any project reveals a second pane, where tasks appear that relate to that project - each of which can be assigned a due date, owner and attachments from services like Google Drive, Dropbox and more. Clicking on any task then reveals a third, final pane in which you can see all details relating to that task.
Within this ‘details’ pane, every task has a full comments history, just like Facebook. Instead of email, this is where most conversation happens, punctuated by any changes to the task, like a file being attached or someone adding a subtask.
Strategic thinking in a browser
Because Asana is the only tool we use for this, it means you’re always focusing on where your current task fits into the bigger picture. You can see how far along you are with strategy by how many tasks are ticked off. It’s very simple to see if something might be a threat to the plan - and to discuss how and why you are going to fix it as a team.
This is key to public relations taking a more strategic responsibility and being more dynamic around the way it plans. It also means you have to accept you are in a live arena with your client. They can see your team talking to each other. They can see when you moved something off your to do list for three days in a row.
They can see the truth. You have to be able to handle that. But if you do, you realise that it means them ‘hearting’ (the equivalent of a Facebook Like) updates in comments rather than having to waste time on email. They can find files with a quick search. They can see progress on Objectives and Key Results right in the tool we use every day.
Greatness through process
Asana is more flexible than it may sound. Like any business, public relations needs great systems in place to survive, thrive and maintain standards. This is another area in which Asana means we can make sure our team is grasping every opportunity and we’re delivering consistently great projects.
One way is by creating template tasks for common bits of work. Something like a client kickoff, employee onboarding, customer case study process can be honed into the perfect form for regular execution across the team. You can also link to best practice reading about each step, directly within the task list. What better way to help junior members of the team get up to speed - and show the client that you take this kind of development really seriously.
Alongside that, we also have a library of reading around various topics that can be searched to find important information and helpful resources. This also includes ideas for improvement projects, which we can vote for across the company.
This is the tip of the iceberg. But it should demonstrate some of the key value that we get by building a stronger stack underneath our agency. So far, clients have loved the fact they have one place to find everything related to their public relations and the transparency it gives them into the work being performed.
For me, I hope you can see why I think the value of a #PRstack can go beyond just helping people find better social media monitoring tools. It can help us build better businesses, develop margins we deserve and ultimately, deliver far better, more strategic work for clients and organisations.
