As a young reporter I had a colleague who would religiously spend time every morning cutting out his latest stories and sticking them into a scrap book. Everything from a front page splash to a golden wedding report would be dutifully clipped and pasted.
He insisted it was for his parents' benefit (he was an only child) in the 'look-what-I-did-today' method of garnering approval.
I was never so diligent, keeping only the stories that mattered to me. Needless to say my cuttings file (singular) was positively anorexic compared to my colleague's huge library of scrap books.
But I like to think mine had quality over quantity. The cuttings were selected carefully to show not just what I'd done, but what I was capable of doing.
The point of this little story is that a fat file of cuttings or a long list of links, as reassuring as they may be, are not a substitute for real evaluation. They belong in the 'look-what-I-did-today' school of approval. As lovely as that is in youngster (parents have a duty to encourage) businesses can't and shouldn't settle for such a rudimentary analysis of the value of a PR plan.
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