Feeding the headlines and of course, feeding herself! Amita Hanspal has a lot on her plate

My day

6.30am: Wake up, put on the kettle and feed my pet rabbit who likes to follow me around whilst I make my tea. I then get ready, make my morning smoothie and head to the tube station.

Most of my journey is spent reading the Metro on my phone and having a sneak preview of my emails before I get into the office.

8.45am: Get into the office and grab my newspaper to review, this week I’m on the Financial Times. We have a rota so everyone in the company is assigned a different newspaper for the week and it’s their responsibility to read it, summarise the main stories, flag any stories relevant to our clients and send it to the whole company.

In addition to this, it gives us a chance to discuss all the main news stories in the office, from updates from CeBIT to the Oscar Pistorius trial.

9.15am: I read all the reviews and find a piece that would be interesting to one of my clients so I send over and file away so it can be referenced in any future content we put together for them. I then look through my emails, respond to any urgent queries and then add any extra activities to the to-do list I’ve prepared the day before.

10.00am: I then turn my attention to the social media. I look after the Twitter account of one of my clients and I’m also part of our social media team so I look out for any relevant news stories, any coverage from our clients and tweet updates throughout the day.

10.30am: I’m organising a press tour for a client at the moment so I’m doing a bit of research to catch up on what a few journalists are currently writing about. I then narrow my search to give the relevant journalists a call to see if they are interested in a meeting and go back to my client with any feedback.

12.30pm: I grab some food and do a bit of lunchtime reading, mostly BBC News with a side of Den of Geek to catch up on the latest Joss Whedon news.

1.00pm: Catch-up call with a client this afternoon so I use this opportunity to update them on what the team has been working on and go through a few ideas for activity I have for the next few weeks. Once these ideas are agreed, I divide up the work with our junior account exec on the team and we get writing to put media alerts suggested together.

3.00pm: Call with a client to discuss an opportunity to contribute an article to a key publication in their field. In this instance, I’m looking for some specific background details so we can build out a strong story and draft for the publication.

4.00pm: I’ve just been given a new client so I have a meeting with our MD to discuss what they do and their focus. I then come back to my desk to do some more research and write up a press release for a new announcement.

5.00pm: It’s fast approaching the end of my day so I run through my to-do list to make sure everything urgent has been done and write up a list for tomorrow. I then complete my timesheet and make sure I’ve responded to all emails.

6.00pm: Time to head off to dinner at Busaba with a few friends, make my way home to catch up on Hostages and get myself to bed!

Amita Hanspal, senior account executive at PR consultancy Spreckley Partners