Abby Nelson, Author at Ketner Group Communications

Coffee, Pitches, and Taylor Swift: A Day in the Life of a Remote AE

Posted on October 27, 2025 | by Abby Nelson

In my past three years at Ketner Group, I’ve seen season-after-season of what PR entails, and I’ve come to one staggering conclusion: you simply never know what is going to happen! A big news story interrupts the day? You capture a surprise top-tier media hit? A crisis turned into opportunity? All of these are par for the course in PR.

As an account executive (AE), I’ve seen all sorts of PR surprises firsthand. And I’m hoping this blog can shed some light on what the day-to-day experience looks like if you’re considering stepping into the PR world.

Ketner Group Offers Remote Work, Real Connection

Ketner Group is a remote PR agency, and we focus on retail tech comms. Many of us, including myself, live in Austin, but we don’t meet daily in a designated workspace.

Working remotely can sometimes make it difficult to keep every day fresh, but what I love about Ketner Group is that our culture holds fast and true no matter the distance between us or the time between seeing each other face-to-face.

Another great thing about Ketner Group: our leadership advocates for work-life harmony. Have an appointment to get to? No problem. It’s a joy to work within a team that’s flexible and leaves room for life to happen.

Now let’s dive into the day!

An Early Start: Kicking Off the Day With Coffee

If you know anything about Austin, you know the coffee scene is no joke. Everywhere you turn, there’s a new coffee truck or window in the side of a building serving up matcha, coffee, tea or whatever you fancy. My personal favorite spot these days: Terrible Love.

Terrible Love serves a mean latte, it’s in the heart of my favorite Austin neighborhood, Hyde Park, and I have always received great service. The cherry on top? It’s just a couple blocks away from our coworking space.

And after I grab my latte, that’s where I’m headed.

The space is called Switchyards. Catered toward remote workers and designed very intentionally, Switchyards has incredible natural light and comfortable seating! We joined Switchyards after our colleague Kirsty raved about the work club in her hometown of Atlanta.

Another cool aspect of Switchyards’ business model is the sense of community it fosters. After you set up shop there enough times, you’ll start recognizing other regulars.

Morning Productivity: Focusing on Writing and Awards

At Switchyards, I prepare for my day. I use Asana to keep on top of ongoing campaigns and timely tasks, so I launch that project management tool to see what I need to focus on.

First up: drafting awards. As we near the end of the year, that means it is awards season! Given our B2B, retail tech focus, a couple of my clients are submitting for relevant retail-focused awards, and I’ve been helping to draft these submissions. (If you’re ever wondering why submitting for awards is valuable, I recommend giving Jeff Ketner’s blog a read!)

From there, since I’m enjoying the flow of writing, I dive into my next writing-focused task: byline article drafting. As the content lead on one of my client accounts, I focus next on outlining a draft of a byline article for their team.

As lunchtime nears, I pack up and make my way home. Before leaving, I always set my Slack status to “bagel” – my favorite lunchtime treat.

Enjoying My Double Monitor: Locking In on PR Campaigns in the Afternoon

I’ll finish my day at my desk. It’s nice to have my double monitor, comfortable chair and good-smelling candle to inspire productivity. I put my headphones in, hit play on the newest Taylor Swift album and I’m locked in for the afternoon. (My team members know I’m a Swiftie, and I enjoy chatting with them about the latest album in our “Watercooler” Slack channel through the afternoon.)

When folks think of PR, they often think pitching. And it’s true! We’re always ideating and crafting proactive pitch ideas. This becomes a priority task for the afternoon; since the pitch will be sent to journalists tomorrow, I’m taking advantage of my post-lunch, re-energized brain. Once it’s drafted, I send over to the team for feedback and then prepare it for early-morning distribution.

I dive into email to make sure I haven’t missed a priority task from my team or a client. We communicate via email with clients all day, and aim to reply to emails as soon as we can, and stay in touch with our internal team members via Slack.

I wrap up my day focusing on coordinating a newsletter for one of my clients, which they send out monthly to media to keep reporters up to date on the client’s latest news and insights. I’ve been working on it with my colleague, Catherine, who has been integral to the project. We hop on a quick Slack Huddle to discuss some revisions, and I make a note of the campaign status in tomorrow’s agenda for this client’s ongoing PR Update call. The newsletter has been a fun project and change of pace for me!

Watching Our Efforts Bloom Through Collaboration

And just like that, it’s been another successful day of helping my clients achieve PR success! I love to look back and see how far we’ve come with clients.

You don’t always see the fruit of PR efforts immediately, but if you invest the time, sunlight and energy, the flowers will come eventually.

For example, just last month I was glad to be a part of a press release campaign for my client, Birdzi. Their new customer announcement was picked up in nine articles, due in part to my pitching the news with our trade and general business publication contacts.

Curious about how we help retail tech brands tell their stories? Don’t hesitate to drop us a line. And if you’d like to learn more about joining the team, check out our careers webpage.

Getting the Media 411 From CMSWire’s Dom Nicastro

Posted on June 23, 2025 | by Abby Nelson

Media professionals are often behind the scenes and telling the stories of others, so it’s a joy to flip the script and highlight the work that they’re doing from time to time. This also helps us learn directly from the source how we as PR professionals can be better resources.

One media professional I have had the privilege of working closely with recently is Dom Nicastro, editor-in-chief for CMS Wire. Dom is an award-winning journalist, editor and media personality with over 25 years of experience, currently covering customer experience (CX), marketing and digital transformation. Oh, and he’s a proud dog parent to Mack, pictured above.

Given his coverage focus, I often work with Dom on behalf of Ketner Group’s more technical clients.

Take the MACH Alliance, for example; Dom has been an excellent collaborator in telling the Alliance’s story. He has attended events, conducted numerous conversations with spokespeople and generally been a wonderful contact for them, for our team at Ketner Group, and for me personally as a PR professional relatively early on in my career. Dom keeps me on my toes but also keeps me in the know regarding the coverage he has planned, which is something I certainly appreciate when juggling multiple clients!

Given a media landscape that is more crowded than ever – and artificial intelligence (AI) now being a huge part of the equation – I asked Dom a few questions regarding what trends he is excited about and what he looks for in the PR professionals that he works with. I have already learned so much – see for yourself below!

Since 2020, it feels like the media landscape dramatically changes just about every six months. What has your experience been through these transitions?

COVID didn’t change my world of journalism too much, except for sources were more available because they couldn’t go anywhere. It changed more for my audience of marketing and customer experience leaders. The big other change was us having to keep up with changes in their world — and ensuring we’re delivering great service journalism that informs.

AI has had a much more transformative effect on media since ChatGPT debuted on Nov. 30, 2022. We’re constantly iterating and finding new ways for LLMs to support our journalism efforts. We see it as an additive tool, more so than a content-generation one. We are using AI to make us faster and better.

AI in journalism on its own is like a pizza without cheese. We need to constantly humanize the outputs.

Has the type of coverage you’re focused on writing changing?

Not entirely. We’ve doubled down on customer service and support coverage. It’s an incredibly exciting space with lots of evolution in the age of AI. We’re speaking to leaders who manage contact centers. We see them and their teams as the frontlines of customer experience. They play such a critical role for customer experience, which we all know can make or break a brand.

A big topic is how agent experience can be improved, and turnover rates in that world decreased. It’s scary for agents where you see brands like Klarna moving to replace them with AI. But AI can empower agents, too.

It’s a space we need to keep strong tabs on to inform these CX leaders.

What are the biggest resources you need from PR professionals, whether they are working in house or for an agency?

Introductions to quality sources.

The foundation of good journalism is producing genuine content that resonates with your audience in some way, and that only happens with connecting with genuine, passionate people. It motivates, educates and informs. And maybe it inspires them to challenge what they consumed, and that can lead to healthy conversations in an environment like LinkedIn.

I want to connect with as many people as possible advancing the dialogue.

Amazingly, we’re nearly halfway through 2025! What are you looking forward to in the second half of this year? Any stories you’re excited about?

Our editorial calendar is a good way to see what we’re excited about.

Personally, I’m closely watching the evolution of the CMO/marketing leader. This is becoming one of the most critical leaders for brands. And many CEOs or CFOs are not convinced they are ready to adapt. I am a believer, though.

The skillsets good CMOs bring — customer-focus, analytical thinking, thought leadership, creativity, UX design, communications, brand ambassadorship, etc. — fit so nicely into the age of experience. They need to have a pulse on what every brand brings to the table for experiences, and not just in their verticals.

And, of course, AI’s evolution into the marketing and CX games. No one, including us, knows where AI will ultimately make the most impact for brands and customer experience year after year (day after day?), but this might be more transformational than the internet. And that’s a big statement.

And to wrap us up with something fun, what are you reading right now?

I’m a news hound, as they say, so I like to keep tabs on the most impactful news around marketing and CX. I have 72,000 tabs open on my desktop with articles I am currently getting around to reading.

Get To Know Abby Nelson, Ketner Group’s Newest Account Coordinator

Posted on July 5, 2023 | by Abby Nelson

Hello readers! My name is Abby Nelson, and I am a brand new full-time member of Team Awesome.

Once upon a time, i.e. five months ago, I started my first ever, agency-side internship with Ketner Group. I remember feeling intimidated by the retail technology niche. I was trekking into an unknown world of artificial intelligence and tech jargon. Having no idea what to expect, I was just grateful to have a part-time job that accompanied my last semester as a college student at UT.

Somehow Ketner Group made its mark on me, and next thing I knew, I applied for an account coordinator opening. Spoiler alert: I got the job.

Why did I return to Ketner Group?

Internships can be tough. Sometimes interns sit around in a cubicle waiting to be assigned a task. Sometimes they’re heads down for 40 hours a week without so much as a nod.

Luckily, Ketner Group was neither of those experiences.

As an intern, I was seen and heard. I was also challenged. My superiors entrusted tasks to me that ultimately led me to feel capable. In a niche like ours, that’s a hard feat to accomplish. From onboarding to offboarding, Ketner Group made every process smooth and clear.

Ultimately, that is why I stayed. I want to continue to be challenged, and I want to be part of the culture that they have built.

Personally, I love to make noise

I love discovering the ins and outs of my city. Austin, Texas is the perfect place to live because it is impossible to get bored; my list of places to try and activities to do grows longer every day. Please feel free to email me recommendations for Italian food, frozen margaritas and scenic walks. I’m all ears!

On a personal note, one of the biggest things to understand about me is that I love to make noise. I talk a lot. I sing even more. If you catch me on a good day, I might even perform an original rap or two. I can’t, however, guarantee I won’t give you secondhand embarrassment.

Professionally, I make noise with PR

Public relations is the ability to make noise on a grand scale. It may not directly be my voice that is heard, but through the relationships I build and the content I write, parts of it always end up shining through.

What makes that even better: I am able to tell the stories of my clients in the process.