Peter Shankman makes all the right moves.

The guy is brilliant and, if you’re in PR, you can’t help but know that he has a cat named Karma and, when he’s not jumping from an insane altitude, he’s training for an Ironman. Oh, and he’s the founder and CEO of a PR/journalism game-changing company called Help a Reporter Out (HARO).

HARO was founded on Facebook in 2008 and has since grown to be THE social media services company that connects writers and sources. In my opinion, two things make HARO particularly unique: It’s a free service for all involved and it’s a no-BS community where PR pros are held accountable for the pitches they send. Users get booted for spammy, spray-and-pray pitches and, as a result, HARO is somewhat of a safe haven for members of the media.

The lucrative HARO “sponsorship” program that Shankman created is also noteworthy. He places advertisements at the start of each email, which are chock-full of media queries, and the open rates are said (by HARO) to be about 75 percent.

In fact, this business model is so remarkable that, just last week, Shankman announced that his little enterprise had been scooped up by Vocus, a company that provides on-demand software for public relations management and manages the press release distribution service called PRWeb.

We join the industry in congratulating Peter Shankman on this significant accomplishment. According to a Mashable story, he will continue to build the HARO brand with the help of the folks at Vocus and, more importantly, the service will remain free. We look forward to seeing what the future holds for HARO – and continuing to use this fantastic service to supplement our daily PR activities and outreach!

I’ve been at Matter for almost five years and in the PR agency biz for a dozen. I can safely say that I have never experienced a busier, more demanding time than Matter is experiencing right now (yes, yes…much better than the alternative!). Between new clients, new projects, new people, multiple launches and an upcoming tradeshow (at which several of our clients will be present…oh, and we have our own booth!), we are are all redlining. A slightly less obvious, but perhaps more persistent demand on us all is “staying informed” through reading/watching/listening to content related to our clients, industry and interests. (Information overload is familiar to you, no?)

We have tools to combat this threat on our sanity, however. They are called organization and efficiency.

While I believe it is critical for everyone to have a productivity system, there is no right one for everybody and others explain those better than I would anyway. I’m going to focus this post just on my favorite tools for managing information, which is an important part of any productivity system.

Information sources

News, correspondence, status updates, brilliant musings in 140 characters…these are the streams of my personal fire hose.

1. Email – at work, we use Microsoft Outlook / Exchange. For personal email, I have a couple Gmail accounts (each with a distinct purpose). My preference for Gmail has less to do with liking Google’s way of handling email (it’s fine, but it doesn’t wow me) and more to do with the tight integration with other Google tools (see below).  My iPhone is indispensable for being able to check them all from one screen. I aim for Inbox Zero in each. I’m probably 80% there. I am a liberal user of “unsubscribe” and “add sender to blocked list” functions.

2. Twitter (and related) – I’m in a constant on again / off again struggle with Twitter. (I think it is tremendously valuable for businesses and I personally hate using it.) During “on” cycles, I use TweetDeck on the computer and Echofon (formerly TwitterFon) for my iPhone.

3. RSS – I’ve tried a bunch and have settled on Google Reader. Again, this is more because of my desire to centralize on Google than because of a particular preference for its handling of RSS.

4. Social networking sites – I have LinkedIn, FriendFeed and Plaxo profiles, but Facebook is the only site that I actually use. I don’t love some of the newer features, but it has helped me re-establish some old relationships and strengthen existing ones. And there’s definitely some decent entertainment value.

5. General news – I have the luxury of reading daily industry news summaries my teams put together for our clients, so the only news source I actively go to daily(-ish) is the New York Times. At my computer I go to the site and Iaside from industry-specific stuff

Information processing

I have a rule that any session checking Google Reader must end with zero unread items. Here’s how I do it:

1. Scan headlines and preview posts that look interesting (ignore posts that don’t)

2. For posts that I can / want to read in preview mode (e.g., aren’t too long, don’t have embedded audio or video), I do

3. For posts that don’t lend themselves to preview reading, I click through to the full post. If it’s too long or off topic for that moment, but I want to read it later, I use the Firefox add-on Read It Later and, naturally, its iPhone app. (Tip: I like to save things for offline viewing, too, so I can read things on planes or trains.)

4. Items that I want to save long-term all find their way to Evernote. No more bookmarks of the browser or social variety for me!

Email processing is similarly simple and decisive. I preview subject lines and open items that appear interesting (or required), while delete those that don’t. Upon opening an item, I either…

1. Do and delete / file

2. Respond and delete / file

3. Delegate and delete / file

Information capture and storage

Matter has a server for client and company files, but increasingly, we are also turning to Google Docs. In addition to the ubiquitous access it provides and the fact that it’s right there in your Google account with Reader, Gmail, Tasks, Calendar, etc., the benefit of Google Docs is it allows easy collaboration and version control without the hassle and confusion of emailing drafts around. If I won’t have access to the server or the cloud, I rely on Lexar JumpDrives (yes, a client plug, but it’s true!)

Finally, for capture of offline info, I love Field Notes and Gold Fibre Retro Writing Pads. (I’m a sucker for Old School.)

My preference is to simplify, consolidate and prioritize whenever possible (hard to do in this biz!), so there is WAY more absent than present on my list. This isn’t to say there aren’t other good tools out there. I’ve tried a bunch and these are just my current favorites.

More interestingly, though, what are YOURS?

At any given moment, there is an overflow of information streaming into our lives. From magazines and the Internet, to TV stations and billboards, it seems as though we can’t make a turn without the news hitting us smack dab in the face.

In the PR world, staying informed is key to reaching success. Not only is it important to be knowledgeable about our clients, but it is imperative that we are aware of what’s happening throughout their industries. We must know about the conferences and tradeshows that are happening, relevant awards and of course, what the competition is up to.

We could spend all day scanning the Web and reading and watching the news, so how can you stay informed efficiently? For me, it isn’t about reading one magazine or following a set of analysts on Twitter. In order to stay abreast of what’s happening, I use a combination of different tools and software.

Each morning I start my day with a large cup of green tea. From there, I dive into my day. I open up TweetDeck, which allows me to closely track Twitterers and tweets relevant to my clients, and immediately see what’s happening on the Web. While my TweetDeck loads, I head over to a series of core trade publications’ Web sites. Since blogs have become a key source of information, I am regularly checking my Google Reader account for up-to-the-minute blog updates. Having one place to check for new entries, rather than going to each and every blog, saves me countless minutes (and hours) throughout the day.

This is what’s working for me right now. In a few weeks or months from now, I may have a different routine. We all use different resources to stay informed. So, how do you stay informed about your clients and their industries in an efficient way? What tools are you using? What works best for you?

I was on the phone recently with a senior reporter from one of my client’s top-tier trade publications, and we were talking about Twitter. It turns out that his publication has a Twitter feed, but the reporter doesn’t have his own account or contribute to the pub’s feed. He claimed that he didn’t know what he’d use it for, but was still a bit intrigued by the communication medium. I saw the opportunity to offer him some information and suggestions outside of the normal thought leadership and company news I would normally pitch, and I promised to write up a list of ways he could use Twitter.

So I sat at my computer , unsure of what to say, and getting increasingly agitated at the unmoving cursor as it blinked away, mocking my inability to come up with the ideas I promised. Eventually, I figured there were a few basic things he could do, like tweet about his articles to drive traffic to them. I mentioned sending out appeals to his PR followers for sources for upcoming stories (I suggested this one rather selfishly – I thought it’d be clever to respond to one of his first tweets with a source). I also suggested he use Twitter to provide sneak peeks to upcoming pieces, and announce new webinars that were scheduled for the pub’s Web site.

And while I feel like my suggestions were helpful, especially for a person who wants to use Twitter but hasn’t before, he still hasn’t signed up and used it. Naturally, being the neurotic PR guy that I am, I worry that what I provided wasn’t creative or specific enough for him to become a full-fledged Twitter-freak like so many other journalists.

So I ask the larger PR community: How can journalists use Twitter to make their jobs easier? What are some of the ways we, as PR and communication professionals, would like the media to use this tool.

If you’re juggling multiple Twitter accounts and you’re not using HootSuite yet, your life is way too difficult.

As a busy PR account executive who enjoys a healthy dose of social media each day, I’m currently managing and/or contributing to more than five Twitter accounts. I have one personal account, but, like all of my colleagues, I also chime in on our company account and help Tweet new and interesting news on behalf of a number of our clients. This seems to be a lot of work, but it’s actually a lot easier than it sounds.

That is, of course, if you have a handy-dandy tool like HootSuite. Now, before I go any further, let me be perfectly clear that while I would love a little kickback for this healthy endorsement, there aren’t any checks in the mail. I’ve simply test-driven a couple Twitter tools and I happen to like HootSuite the best. Well, actually, I like HootSuite for Tweeting on multiple accounts and I love Tweetdeck for keeping track of it all. Someday, when someone develops an application that combines both tools’ best features, life will be even easier.

So, what is this glorious, self-proclaimed, “ultimate Twitter toolbox”? It’s an easy-to-use interface that allows you to manage all of your Twitter accounts from one place. You simply enter all of your usernames and passwords, and they are forever stored on your HootSuite account. Then, when you are ready to Tweet, you use a drop-down menu to view those accounts or simply click on the account icon to Tweet from that username.

There’s no logging in and logging out of your various accounts and, if you want to, you can Tweet from several accounts at once. Aside from making it really easy to jump from account to account, there are two other things that I really like about HootSuite: it allows you to schedule Tweets for a later date and its built-in URL shortener, ow.ly, tracks and collects stats based the number of times people click on the links you Tweet.

Rafe Needleman, CNET’s Webware editor, recently did a nice piece about HootSuite and another similar, yet now unavailable, technology called CoTweet. My colleagues and I have had several conversations about what Twitter tools are best and, in general, it often boils down to personal choice. I’d encourage everyone to take a few tools for a spin to determine what works best for you. In the meantime, check out Needleman’s piece here. Happy Tweeting!