Archives "January 2012"

Every once in a while I tweet music star, Taylor Swift, to let her know that I’d be happy to answer the phone if she ever wanted to call me. 

She never tweets me back. Besides becoming a Grammy nominated country music artist, I don’t know what more I can do to get her to notice me. Which is why I’m writing a blog post.

I need to strengthen my social media presence so maybe I might stand a chance, because power lies deep within credibility and numbers…and social media.

What are some things that we as practitioners should try to integrate into our social media life?

According to Forbes, we should be involved in a large number of channels such as YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and LinkedIn and participate frequently.

CommPRO.biz has 10 tips of their own on what to do in 2012 for social media. Here are the ones I thought were the most important.

• Add search engine optimization (SEO) keywords to social media blurbs because by doing this it helps people find us.

• A social media icons to all of our websites to make our efforts easily accessible.

• Create and announce a “we’re going to the Moon” plan.

“The U.S. went to the moon because the president set the goal, called both industry and the citizenry to action, and would not take no for answer,” said Vicki Flaugher of commPRO. “Follow this example with social media implementation. Include everyone and set the bar high.”

• Produce more original content. As I said earlier, producing content is the way to become a social media presence, but this content must be original content. Be interesting!

• Stop all third person jargon. Social media needs the personal touch because as Flaugher puts it “would you consider it professional to introduce yourself in third person at a business cocktail party?”

• Above all – find the right people in your company to use social media, but also include everyone because they may have some ideas that will help.

To read all of commPRO’s tips, click here.

For the holidays, the Fifth Ring Houston team went out for dinner. Since we are communications professionals, we notice things that sometimes go unnoticed by the public-at-large.

Once dinner was finished, the waiter brought the check and an envelope with a special offer.  In an effort to have customers return, the restaurant provided diners with an envelope guaranteeing a prize. Service-type businesses such as restaurants typically give away coupons, but this was no ordinary BOGO (buy one, get one) offer. Instead, you had to bring the envelope back after the New Year and open it in front of your server. Then, and only then, could you receive your prize of some sort. Open the envelope before you were seated in front of the server and the certificate was null and void.

Even though we understood the premise of the offer, we instantly wanted to know what the prize was. A free meal? Two free meals? Even better, free dessert? The possibilities were driving the table crazy.

We even tried to peek, however the message we saw when we lifted a corner of the envelope was “No Peeking!” They knew we would be tempted and were one step ahead.

Hmm, this was tough. It made us all want to come back. The food was good, ambience casual and the service was attentive. It was then we began to appreciate the value in their incentive. They had the same thoughts we did and decided to act upon it to help retain their business.

Brilliant.

Too often companies fail to show the proof points or the “how” in their marketing communications. How is your product or service different from your competitors? How do you increase the number of hits on your website? Or how do you entice a reader to keep reading? For this restaurant it was how do you get all these people to come back again?

The answer on this night? The perceived value in the envelope.

What keeps your (potential) clients coming back for more? It doesn’t always have to be a prize, but it has to be something they value.

Learning your stakeholder’s value is no easy task, but the payoff can be just as sweet. It takes time, research, understanding and skill. Often, it requires the expertise of professionals like our Brand Positioning team. However, mere mortals—and PR professionals—can do this too, but it does take a little know how.

Now, in any regular blog, this is where you would get three to five tips on how to do this yourself, but clearly that wouldn’t be in keeping with the tone of this post. No, if you want to know how to hone in on what your audience desires, you’ll have to just come back next month, or give us a cal.

However, if you want to know what was in the envelope, it was a certificate for a free dessert!

About two years ago I sat down to apply for my first internship without a resume and without a clue of what it should look like. I emailed my uncle and a friend from college to received their inputs and they both came back with completely different pieces of advice.

Two years later my resume looks nothing like it did when I first sat down. Not only have I added more experience, but I have also changed my format numerous times.

The Hiring Hub recently wrote a blog about how to get your resume right the first time. This blog is a few years too late for me, but I will take their tips and apply them to my resume every time I update it for a new job. I hope it will help you.

They give two great pieces of information everyone writing their resume, either for the first time or the hundreth time, should remember:

• Your resume is yours. It represents you and it is how you sell yourself.
• You can’t please everyone all the time. What one employer may not like, may be the very reason you get an interview with another.

Your resume shouldn’t include everything you’ve done in your career, only the information that is relevant to the job you want. So unless you’re applying for a job in the food/beverage industry it’s probably best to leave off your time as a waiter. The Hiring Hub says your resume is “a simple communication tool designed to show someone that you can do the job, and to help you get an interview.”

They also say the best way to make sure your resume is up to par, so you don’t have to rewrite it again and again, is to:

• “Ask someone who understands what you do or what you want to do to critique your resume. Have them critique the flow and whether or not it accurately describes what you do and the level at which you can do it.”
• “Ask someone who has corporate/agency/non-profit experience but doesn’t know what you do to critique your resume and see if they can understand what you do.”
• “Ask an industry expert to review your resume.”
• “Once you have two or three people review your resume and you’re comfortable with it then send it out. If your resume is not getting results, you may need to redo it.”

What are some tips you’ve received for writing your resume?