Sorry sweetheart, your personal Facebook page isn’t social media experience

Courtesy ChadKaser.wordpress.com

This seems pretty obvious but I’m willing to bet that there are some knuckleheads who get into this because they are prolific personal social media posters. They think, “How hard can social media for a brand be? You just post stuff and get likes. I’ve got 862 friends on FB and 1637 followers on TW, I’m a freaking natural.”

So what’s the difference?

• You need a Strategy to reach communication goals. You don’t post just because the urge strikes. You don’t post just because you see something funny you want to share.
• You’ve got to Research your audience. What do they want to hear? When do they want to hear it? How do they like to hear it?
• You should be Crafting a message based on your strategy and research. Just throwing out slop loses the respect of your intended audience. When you lose the respect of your audience you lose their attention. When you lose their attention often enough, you lose your job.
• Posting comes back to strategy. Don’t post when your target won’t hear it. Don’t post where your audience won’t see it. Don’t post what will lose/alienate your audience.
• You’ve got to be Listening to your audience. It’s not just what they say, it’s what they do. Look at your metrics. What do people respond to the most? When are they responding and where?
• If you’ve been listening, you will certainly need to make Tactical Adjustments. That’s your life now: making adjustments – All.The.Time. Social & digital media move so fast that everything you do will be about adjusting to changing responses from your audience, changing conditions on the Interwebs, and changing technology.
• Revisit Strategy.
• Continually Research.
• Always Be Crafting new messages.
• Ad infinitum into this ouroboros thing where the head swallows the tail – no beginning or end. (look it up)

When was the last time you did research on your personal followers before you posted that picture of the ultimate ice cream sundae on Instagram? Do you know your strategy for your tweets about your displeasure at a college football game? What message are you consciously crafting for Pinterest?

See the difference?

Have I left out any considerations or steps in this social media cycle? Which step do you like best? In which step are you weakest?

I’d love to hear from you.

-Tina

Intern every chance you get

Archive100.com

Seriously, if you can intern every semester of college – including summers – you will not regret it. Better yet, be such a good intern that you get hired while you go to school.

In Mass Comm at ETSU, you only get one three-hour credit for an internship and many students are cool with that. It was my experience however, that the first internship was just to get acclimated to the process. I did learn a LOT – most notably what I wanted and didn’t want in my future job. I didn’t get paid and I worked my ass off.

When my internship was over, I had good experience, great samples for my portfolio, and an A. Most importantly, I got a gig with the company after that. I was a (well) paid contractor doing the same stuff I was doing for free as an intern. If they had an opening I’m sure I’d be working there right now.

I did another internship the next semester after that. I didn’t get a paycheck, but I did get an in-kind payment that both my husband and I were able to enjoy. Everyone was happy. I loved that work experience, have even MORE stuff for my portfolio, and some great relationships.

Now, I’m in the internship that I hope becomes my job after graduation. You listening WETS?!

Through each internship I gained not only valuable experience and cool samples for my portfolio, I developed strong relationships and built a network. I have valuable insights into the work I want to do, the type of employer I want to work with, and I have narrowed my focus and path forward.

A lot of students think that the internship is just to fulfill a requirement, that it doesn’t matter because they’re moving away to follow their career anyway. That’s too bad for them but awesome for me (and students like me). Their attitude makes it easier for me to get a job  – even if I move away because the competition has a poor attitude.

Of course, there are students who have to work their way through college. It sucks that our system is set up that way. Because of recent Supreme Court ruling on internships, most companies now have to pay their interns. I doubt seriously they will pay very much, and the intern opportunities will most likely shrink.

That said, you may need to take a look at your finances to figure out how you can accommodate internships that may not pay well. How much spending can you cut? Living like a pauper as a college student is perfectly acceptable. Living like a pauper after college…mmm, not so much. Do you want a good career later, or do you want a good hourly job now? Do you want Nine West shoes now or Louboutin shoes later? Good internships are worth the sacrifice now for the career you want in the future.

Also, for the love of pete, don’t wait until the last minute to find an internship!! Start thinking about your next internship before the next semester starts. Be ready to apply, do some due diligence to make sure it’s a good fit. You are more likely to get the internship you want when you start early because everyone else is lazy. Don’t be lazy.

Speaking of lazy competition, imagine what your resume is going to look like when it shows college full time and a roster of awesome internships! Seriously, it makes a difference.

What do you think about internships? Are they worth the trouble?

I’d love to hear from you

-Tina

So many resources…

Courtesy NerdyorCool.webs.com

I love marketing communications. I dig the data-driven strategy combined with the possibility of innovative tactical maneuvers. I thrive on thinking outside the box and project implementation to achieve measurable goals.

I’ve learned that just because you love something doesn’t make you good at it. You may have the best of intentions, but if you don’t have some knowledge to pull from you’re going make bad mistakes. (I’ll talk about good mistakes in a later blog.)

So where can you get marketing communications knowledge? I have some awesome resources that I pull from for my personal edification that you might want to check out.

1) Social Media Examiner  I recently discovered this one and I LURVE it! They have revived my enthusiasm for email newsletters. Their newsletters are short, heavy on links, and don’t employ “click bait.” I hate click bait. (hmmm that sounds like a blog subject.) These folks are also on Twitter and Facebook. They do podcasts and online summits. SME is pretty pimp if you dig this stuff.

2) Social Media Today  This is overall industry news. I like it because they have neato infographics (which I love), and they talk about developing technologies and other things I may not go looking for but will impact my work eventually. I’m usually the first to know about a lot of tech stuff because of these guys.

3) Mashable  I like how they integrate pop culture and social media/tech news. They are also rife with click bait. Mashable is worth it because that fusion of pop culture and social media keeps me on the ball and informed.

4) MarketingProfs  They are geared more towards larger businesses. I like keeping up with what the Big Boys are doing because I want to know what my potential employer is doing. They also offer a lot of VERY useful hints and primers. Unfortunately, most of the good stuff you have to be a PRO member and that is $$$$. I guess it costs a lot of money to be so big and slick…

Anyhoo, those are my big references, and they are in order of value to me. If you aren’t familiar with them you really ought to check them out. They are all in my Twitter and Facebook feeds so I have knowledge being pushed to me all the time. Of course, I’m a nerd and read this stuff for fun. Did I mention that I LOVE this stuff…..?

What resources do you rely on? What do you like about them?

I’d love to hear from you.

Tina

Working from home

courtesy static5.businessinsider.com

If you’re getting into this line of work thinking you can just hang out all the time in your jammies at home to work, you’re going to have a bad time.

If you aren’t engaged and productive when you work at home, you will a) have a hard time getting work done and/or b) have a tough time advancing in your career. Let’s look at the pitfalls to watch out for if you work from home.

a) You will have a hard time getting work done.

Check out this video that describes why it can be hard to work at home:

• you will be distracted by your life. You will clean house, make dinner, clean up cat vomit, pick up doghair tumbleweeds, eat, sleep late (because you can work into the night, right?), etc. You can develop bad habits fast. You will get lazy.
• people you work with won’t send you what you need. They will forget about you and why your work is important, and – most importantly – why it benefits them to communicate with you. You will lose touch and become a poor spokesperson for the organization.

b) You will have a tough time advancing in your career.

• you won’t know the people, the culture, the brand well enough to speak for them. You need to have a pulse on what’s going on.
• you will miss opportunities for the message. People downplay the role of “the watercooler,” but that is where you get the real story from the customer service reps on how consumers view the product because they are the ones who hear from the people who buy the stuff. That’s where you pull the subtle nuances you need to craft your message.
• you will miss opportunities for your career. It’s not just that you are “out of site, out of mind” for that promotion. It’s that you don’t know what your boss REALLY values and is looking for. Sure, you’ve got great organic engagement numbers, but is that what your boss truly values? (“value” is often different from “metric” as a measurement of good work and I’ll blog about that at another time)

I’m not saying that you have to sit in a cube, sucking down coffee and pecking away at your keyboard, heck no! This job is about relationships and you have to develop relationships at work to be successful at your job and in your career. When you do work from home, you have to go the extra distance to develop and maintain those relationships.

If you have the latitude on your work schedule, set times for when you’re in the office and stick to those hours. Make sure folks know when those hours are. If there is a deviation you must be sure people know it. Add your contact schedule in email salutations, include your contact info and monitor your contact devices constantly.

You can work from home and be productive and engaged, just remember that you may have to compensate for not being physically present in your work relationships.

What have your experiences been in working from home?

I’d love to hear from you!

-Tina

Social Media is a 24-Hour Gig. Can you hack it?

Courtesy under30CEO.com

You’ve gotta sleep sometime!

I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t be on 24/7. Since I can’t be the 24-hour-a-day Social Media Mama I’d like to be, I’ve found a couple of easy hacks to help me get the message out and stay engaged around the clock.

I’ve taken a tip from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. It’s the idea of putting all your big rocks (in this case, your message) into your glass (your schedule) before it gets filled with other stuff. Trust me, it will get filled with other stuff if you don’t take control of your schedule and get the important things scheduled first.

Since you have a finite amount of time, attention, and space to communicate in, make sure you have the important messages out there first. I do this by scheduling my posts at least a week into the future.

I figure out what is the most important message/s to get out this week and schedule those posts first, typically one post a day at different times. Those are my big rocks. No matter what goes on in the world, this is what must be communicated.

Then I have space in between those rocks. I can play in this space. This is where I bring in breaking news, polls, funny videos. I can engage fully and respond quickly when I’m not worrying if I’ve fully communicated my message/s. I can focus.

Zack Levine via HudsonHorizons.com

To schedule posts, I prefer HootSuite to any other scheduling options out there. It’s fairly comprehensive; you can schedule & monitor Twitter, FB, Google+, LinkedIn, WordPress and others. It’s also easy to manage many accounts in one place. There is a free version for up to five networks. I highly recommend tinkering with it if you aren’t already in HootSuite. Of course, they do have an app for smartphones and tablets too.

I also use the smartphone and tablet apps for the various networks I’m on. So far, I’ve set my notifications only for retweets, shares, comments, new followers. This makes it manageable for me to respond and engage immediately without much negative feedback from friends and loved ones. (Stay tuned for my blog about monitoring digital media 24/7 while having analog relationships.)

What do you use to hack your social media posting schedule? Are you managing it all or crumbling under the pressure?

Speaking of being under pressure, enjoy this sweet video from the incomparable band Queen. Do you ever feel like this?

I’d love to hear from you.

-Tina

Share this:

Alfred Eisenstaedt / LIFE

This grumpy-looking old cuss is George Bernard Shaw. He said, “I dream things as they never were and ask, ‘Why not?'”

I’ve always believed this. Being the nerd-bird that I am, that was my senior quote in high school. I see opportunity everywhere – even in things that are said to be impossible. Impossible only means that something hasn’t been done yet.

WETSFM had always had RTVF interns, but never a PR intern. I’m a constant listener of the station, and I followed their social media. I could see that they needed a PR person desperately!!

I contacted the person who is the RTVF internship liaison for WETS and asked how we could do this. Some emails and a meeting later, I was the Fall 2013 PR intern for WETSFM. Woo hoo!

It totally boils down to creating your own opportunities. I had my passion for public radio, I was a consumer of WETSFM, I recognized the need I could fill and I went for it. I connected the dots.

That’s what everyone has to do in this life. You have to look for how your passion can fill a need for someone. You have to always be paying attention and follow your passion and you have to always put that passion to work for you.

This video is of Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement speech. He is talking about connecting the dots in life. It’s less than 15 minutes and totally worth listening to for inspiration.

I’d love to hear from you.

-Tina

Welcome Fans!!

WETSFM

I’m glad you found me! I hope you enjoy the wild public radio ride with an intern.

We’re going to have fun and learn a lot about the pain and the pleasure of real world digital/social media.

Learn from my mistakes and hacks. I want to learn from your experiences too so leave comments. I’m all about collaborating – just like Ken Blanchard!!

I’d love to hear from you.

-Tina