In marketing and PR, you have to wear many different hats. You have to always be there for your client to help get word out about their product and so forth. And you certainly always need to be ready to troubleshoot.
You may think that simply having your smart phone on you will keep you connected and able to prevent anything from going wrong. But what if you’re in the middle of nowhere with little to no cell service. What do you do?
This happened recently at a great event I attended with Randolph Engineering, the Matt Light Celebrity Shootout. In the middle of a forest in Rhode Island I was in charge of social media. Right off the bat, the first tweet I composed wouldn’t send, due to lack of service.
Rule of thumb: don’t panic. Use the one thing that can’t get shut down, your mind. Think it through.
“Hey, I have my laptop, is there wi-fi available?”
I hunted down four or five people, with the same response: “Hey go ask that guy in the blue shirt.”
After searching for “that guy in the blue shirt,” I ended up at the gun shop. Finally, I got the wi-fi code.
Success? Not so fast my friend. There was still another speed bump. The wi-fi only works in close proximity to the gun shop. The area I need to cover is over 200 yards away.
Again, don’t panic. Laptops are called that for a reason, and cameras, of course, have memory cards which are removable.
The social media updates weren’t as instantaneous as we would have liked, but we worked as a team and got our work done in a timely fashion.
And we didn’t panic.
-Stephen Ciaccio
