*Image Credit: Luxe Chronicles

I think I scare my husband.

Whenever we leave the house, I double and triple check my purse or Mopwater tote to be sure I have my iPhone, iPhone charger and, depending on how long we’ll be away from the house, my Flipcam and MacBook. I have to be equipped at all times because I never know what may happen once we step outside that door.

This is the mindset of the new PR pro-always ready for whatever may happen whenever it may happen and wherever it may happen. You never know when an opportunity may present itself.

Case in point, I recently attended a seminar on fashion and social media that was hosted by my PR pal James S. Walker. During the seminar, James gave a number of great ideas to enterprising fashion professionals (who are ready for whatever) to use social media to score traditional media coverage. I am sharing James’ advice in the video below:

I showed you the video for two reasons. One: James’ message resonates with this notion of leveraging the moment for public relations. You’re down in the Metro, interviewing people with your Flip cam or your iPhone and turning that into some sort of segment on street fashion. Two: I’m showing you how I was there in the room getting footage of James to share with you, leveraging the moment for my own PR. Since I’m in the business of highlighting the work of other PR professionals,  sharing new methods and giving you “tools for great PR”  one way I am able to do that is by leveraging the moment-being ready with my camera and recognizing when the information is getting good and knowing that you, the reader, would love to get the information, too.

James had no idea I was capturing that footage, but you should know that if I’m in the room and you’re saying anything interesting (at least in the realm of PR or social media), it’s liable to end up on one of my content channels

If you’re going to leverage the moment, you’ve got to be ready. You can’t ever be without your tools. Here are some of my tips for leveraging the moment for PR.

Get Equipped If you don’t already have a camera, a simple point and shoot is fine. You’ll need something that takes video (it need not be a Flip, although I am quite happy with mine) and computer software for video editing (I use iMovie). If you travel a lot, you’ll  need a reliable internet connection (I’ve been using the Sprint Overdrive and it’s great because it is a mobile hot spot that can accommodate up to 5 computers at a time.

ABC. Always Be Charged I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been equipped with a dead battery. But it’s bound to happen when you’re a heavy user like me. I’m always on my iPhone shooting photos and video, tweeting and Facebooking. Then there’s my MacBook. I’m editing videos and running multiple programs at one time so the battery takes a beating. So I try to keep my power chords with me and a power adapter for my car on hand in case I can’t find one in a room. Take a spare battery or scope out the outlet situation wherever you go.

Think Links. When you’re out there in the world, be in the moment, but always be thinking how can I turn this moment into a hyperlinked piece of content? Because at the end of the day, if another person online can’t link to what you’re doing, or retweet the link, the sharing stops. And that’s the point of leveraging the moment and making the web work. You have to make things easy for the next man to grab hold of and share.  So if you’re taking photographs with key people at an event, post the photos to your Flickr account. Or better yet, write a blog post, post the pictures and put captions naming the people in the photographs. Then tag the post with those names. If you’re capturing video, upload it to YouTube. Once you do this you have a link that you can shorten (use bit.ly) and share via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email or wherever. You can also embed the html code into your web site (on a side widget) or into a blog post to get multiple uses out of one piece of content.

Note: how many hyperlinks can you count in this post?

Share. Send. Immortalize Online. Once you have this awesome content shorten the link (the blog post or YouTube video) and tweet it, Facebook it, E-mail it, create a newsletter with it. Send it out into the world. Once you send your leveraged moment out into the online world, guess what? Your moment just became immortalized. Check back in one month, 3 months, or even one year. That blog post or YouTube video will still be there accumulating equity on the web.

Pretty cool, huh?

What are your favorite tips for leveraging the moment for PR?

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