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?

Social Media is a term you didn’t hear very often several years ago, today, however, it’s all people are talking about.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogger, Myspace, YouTube, Ustream and so many other social media sites are ripping at the seams with activity.

Whether you are a nonprofit or for profit, social media is important.

At Thursday’s Young Nonprofit Professional Network panel discussion, two of Houston’s most knowledgeable communications professionals on social media—Fifth Ring Houston PR Leader, Ed Davis and Principle of The Black Sheep Agency, Aimee Woodall--were set to take questions from 30+ nonprofit communicators in an sterile, classroom setting. However, due to a monster thunderstorm, most of the attendees failed to show.

With all manner of poise and grace, Ian Ord, Director of Business Development for Fifth Ring, quickly saw the lower turn out as an opportunity to take the event across the street to a local eatery, feed those who came and engage in a more intimate discussion on social media.

With the panel and its dozen attendees relocated, Ed and Aimee began the conversation by jumping into the top question on everyone’s mind: “How can I get my followers to be more engaged with my organization using social media?”

“You need to reach out to your followers, or those you want to follow you. The more you do, the more people will talk back,” advised Woodall “ Engagement does not happen over night. It is easier for people to make comments if you have met them face-to-face. “

Davis followed up with the suggestion of building “offline” relationships. Take the opportunity to meet people at social events, volunteering opportunities or any business function. Make the “offline” connection with them and then direct them to your social media channel, which will then help enhance your “online” connection.

Another suggestion Woodall recommended was to follow them on their social media sites and make comments to their posts, this will also help build your creditability with those you want to engage.

Here are a few other tips the panel shared on social media:

•  Carefully select your social media outlet depending on your message. See examples below:

o   Twitter is best used for “blind” outreach. This is a faster paced outlet

o   Facebook is great your reaching out to your loyal followers.

o   LinkedIn is for professional’s only

•  Pay attention to what your followers are interested in, explore all different subjects to see who is commenting on what and tailor your message to their interests.

•  Ask yourself, “who are you trying to target?” Once you know your target audience, listen and understand what they are saying before you engage.

The weekend of 9^th to 11^th September was here at last – it was time for the IAStival down in Englandshire. A Fifth Ring posse of party-goers from the Aberdeen office packed their (many) bags and squeezed themselves onto the first of what was to be seven eventful but fun-filled train journeys at Aberdeen’s station. Mr Potter and his sidekick Asa got on at Stonehaven (I think it was platform 9¾) and all eight of us were now on board and very much in the mood to party.

Having survived the journey down, we played the ‘how much can you fit into two cars?’ game at Macclesfield station and somehow made it to the festival site itself – and what a site it was too. One huge field, several marquees including our favourite food and drink specific ones, a big stage for the bands with all it’s electronics and lighting, tent town, portaloo corner, sand covered cow ‘presents’, a load of IAS’ers (some who had obviously been there a while – if you know what I mean) and a generally great vibe. In short, everything you’d expect at any of the top festivals.

Once we’d all been labelled with our colour-coded wristbands we set off to tent town and pitched our tents. William cheated however by bringing with him a pop-up one – I think it took him longer to unpack his travel chair, but the rest of us were to have the last laugh as he tried, and failed, to fold it back down to it’s original size and shape when the weekend was over.

Wellies on, and the first stop on our ‘lets check the place out’ walk was the drinks tent (don’t act surprised) and we got mingling with the locals who were all extremely welcoming and seemed genuinely happy that we’d made the journey down south. The first of what seemed to be an endless weekend’s worth of excellent bands plucked their first guitar strings and this, interspersed with some excellent DJ’s pumping out the beats, kept things going. It was a party atmosphere that Russ Abbot would have been proud of (one for the oldies among us).

I think it’s fair to say that the eight of us got into the mood pretty quickly (the free drinks vouchers may have helped) and we partied late into both nights – the ‘silent disco’ being an obvious highlight as we went into the early hours so as not to disturb the neighbours (this essentially involved everyone wearing headphones and dancing like maniacs next to the bar).

There were also dodgems, an ice-cream van, the hula-hoop guy (love his ‘Lord of the Rings’ business card) and even a free cocktail bar (thanks to our BBN friends for that one) – what more could we want!

There are obviously many stories that I could not possibly publish on here in a ‘what happened at the IAStival stays at the IAStival’ kind of way – but they were all perfectly harmless I promise you. Dog toys, a monkey suit, Kenny the mad neighbour, the rude Scotsman (none of us), gel mouth spray, fluorescent pink bands, straw cowboy hats, ceilidh dancing to hardcore dance music, annoying couple on our train seats who got ‘removed’ (eventually), a bouncy castle, Zara Vaughan’s missing bag (with strapless bra), Percy Pigs and loads more all played their part towards an excellent weekend and I will leave it to you to use your imagination as to how.

It wouldn’t be right to not say a final, and very big thanks to all our friends at IAS and to everyone who organised it. It was a very successful and memorable event that we wont forget in a hurry – in spite of our alcohol intake.

Let’s hope they do another one – they’d better as I found a stray ‘free drink voucher’ that I need to use up and there’s no expiry date.

Andy 'Monkey Suit' Wainwright

(download)

Click here to download:

fun-fest-at-the-iastival-nmueFHsfAwnxCgfursJt.zip (7.49 MB)

So here I am, my 10^th anniversary at Fifth Ring has just passed. So what’s happened over the past decade? Well, quite a lot as it happens…

On a personal front it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride (that probably wont be the last cliché I use so will make my apologies to Reuben Webb right now). I became a father (planned), had a car accident that resulted in an operation and 3 months off work (not planned), travelled to lots of nice places, made some great new friends and got back in touch with some old ones, contracted arthritis (by contracted I don’t mean that I raised a Purchase Order, I just have to now avoid that bumpy rollercoaster I mentioned earlier), fell in love with the game of poker (well I need to supplement my income somehow – hope the company Directors are reading this) and have struggled to sell my house during the worst market slump in  decades (40 months and counting). All of this with my understanding, patient and far better half Michelle at my side.

As for work, well, in my best X-Factor contestant voice, it’s been a journey (told you the clichés would continue). The company has grown dramatically from when I started all those years ago from an Aberdeen-only agency with around 15 employees to what is now a leading international B2B agency with additional offices in Houston and Dubai and a five-fold increase in staff numbers (give or take). Not all solely down to me, granted.

Our visibility, our offering and our expertise have all increased greatly and we’re now proud, leading members of the prestigious BBN network to help take us to that next level.

It’s not all been plain sailing though. Like all companies, we’ve had our ups and downs, our good times and our bad. I’ve seen people come, people go and even people return. Like everyone else, we were not recession-proof and it took its toll, but we’re coming out the other side stronger for it on several fronts. We’ve made some big strides of late, not least of which was to increase ties with our friends at IAS, an extremely successful, award-winning B2B agency from south of the border. Just doing our bit for Anglo-Scottish relations – it’s not been the same since Mel Gibson sacked York.

Don’t get me wrong, we’ve still got a lot of work to do and are already in the process of making some very positive changes to benefit both the company and our clients. You can’t stand still in this business without falling behind pretty quickly so it’s onwards and upwards for us (couldn’t resist squeezing in a couple more clichés there but hey, it’s true).

As for me, well I’ve gone from Production Co-ordinator to Production Manager and now Operations Manager over this period of time. Much of my work is now done behind-the-scenes but impacts on everyone and at all levels to varying degrees – though most people don’t realise it half of the time, which tells me I must be doing something right. Either that or they’re just keeping me on for my good looks and great sense of humour. I like to think it’s all of the above. Anyway, who else is going to organise and run the office sweepers, poker evenings and quiz nights?

As for what’s going to happen over the next 10 years - well, who knows? Life is just not that predictable. No doubt it will be full of twists and turns and highs and lows, with a few surprises along the way (though less of the ‘unplanned’ events please). Bring it on.

Now, does anyone want to buy a house…?