I have to be honest. I've never once heard anyone say, "I can't wait for spring so I can clean!" Yet almost everyone is familiar with the term "spring cleaning." Believe it or not, it is spring (though Mother Nature was very hesitant to let Chicagoans enjoy those warm temperatures).

So, ladies and gents, start your vacuums! It's time to tidy up your public relations tactics to make your efforts more effective. Here are three ways to do just that.

Trim Your Talk
When you are trying to promote your book, using too many words can sometimes shorten to your audience's attention span. The more words you use, the more your audience forgets. The trick to being remembered is to make it short, relevant and clever. Throw out all the excess wordy garbage. It sometimes helps to think in terms of headlines. Headlines are meant to be attention grabbers, so come up with a one-liner that accurately conveys your message.

Clean Up Your Contacts
Editors, reporters, anchors, managers, producers and journalists are constantly changing positions and companies throughout the year. So if you want to reach out to someone in the media, you'd better be sure you have the right contact information in your database. An up-to-date system is an extremely valuable tool and can make your PR efforts painless and efficient.

Choose to Be Charitable
Often I see things in my closet that I just never wear (Strangely enough, the majority of those items are things I bought for myself.) Spring is the time to be generous and donate those old clothes to Goodwill. Similarly, you can decide to donate some of your book proceeds to a charity or become involved in a charitable activity or event. This is not only worthy of a press release, but also is an opportunity to bring attention to your book.

Trust me. A little "trimming" here, "cleaning" there and "charitabling" everywhere, and your book will be a front-runner for news faster than you can say: "Hooray for Windex!"