Hello everyone, I'm Louise and as the new spokesperson for Fubra I thought I'd quickly tell you about what I've been doing since I started, and let you know what we've got planned for the coming months.

I joined Fubra full time in December to take over the publicity/press/PR from Brendan, who'd been juggling dealing with the press and running the company at the same time. No mean feat considering I'm now doing it full time and still find myself rushed off my feet!

My first week really threw me in at deep end, in a good way. It was the week that a splinter group of the original fuel protesters who disrupted the country in 2000 were planning to protest at refineries around the country, so after a quick briefing on the intimate working of the petrol industry, I got stuck in writing press releases for our petrol price comparison site, PetrolPrices.com. I did a radio interview on BBC Radio Leicester less that 24 hours after I'd started (!) and a series of newspaper interviews throughout the week, which got us come really good national coverage as 'the voice of the motorist'.

Since then I've done so many interviews that I don't get nervous any more – I've been on radio stations around the country, most of the BBC local station, as well as Radio 5 Live and even a TV interview for BBC News 24 (check out the gale force winds I was battling against!)



To maximise our coverage I write one topical blog article and one press release each week, both of which I email to our members and press contacts, and then it's just a case of waiting for the press to call. I quickly learnt that if you want to go home on time, don't send out a press release at 5.30pm...

To make my job easier, the web developers have made me some really useful tools. For example, I needed a place to keep all my press contacts in one place, that I could add to and edit easily, and use to email all my contacts at once. A few days later I was presented with an all-singing all-dancing database to do exactly that. Now I don't have to waste time sifting through random bits of paper with hastily scrawled numbers and email addresses on, which makes me much more efficient.

Another tool I now have to help get the most press coverage possible is the 'Generic Graph Generator'. I wanted it to be able to make graphs of our data really easily, so journalists can see at a glance if there is a story behind our data. For example, I used it to illustrate a blog about why diesel is more expensive that petrol, and how how diesel prices had risen across the UK over the last 30 years. But I can use it to make graphs for OurProperty.co.uk or any other site too, because it's not tied to one site.

At the moment only I can use the Generic Graph Generator, but we're working on making it part of a big press area for all our sites, where journalists can go to get all the information they need, all in one place. It'll have loads of other cool features too, like the ability to book a radio interview slot online, examples of our press coverage and access to easy-to-digest facts from all our sites.

Things are shaping up really well, and I'm enjoying looking for innovative ways to get Fubra in the news... like the front page lead on the Daily Express today!