#muwrites

[cheech-marin-blog]

My takeaway

The class is over I gave my final presentation and I am left to think about what lessons did this class teach me and how will I use what I learned in the future. 

Well the one big takeaway that started from day one was: 

WHY BEFORE WHAT!

So, this is important when sending messages for our clients because we as PR people have to make our audience care about us. Why are we important? Why do we matter? Once we can master our why then we can move onto the what. Simple enough right? Wrong. 

It takes time to make sure that we understand why we are important why do do we do what we do. Why are we unique or important or matter. This takes time because we inherently think we are important and we think that we are the best and that we just produce the what without really thinking about the why. So, for anywhere I work in the future I will think about the why before the what. 

Now that is the lesson I learned and it is what I will takeaway. Though I could end here but I won't. 

In my personal life I am now thinking about why am I important and why should people care about what I do. This leads to me to thinking about the positive qualities and negative qualities I possess. I then strive to make my positive qualities better and stronger while working my negative qualities to limit them. Though no one can be perfect right cliche but it still it does not mean I cannot strive to constantly be a better me. 

So, I guess the real takeaway is to always be better and to know everything  about myself before I produce my own (what). 

There it is my last blog for PR writing. 

[thespencerrose]

Analyzing the Analytics with Sprout Social

Another week, another blog post.  Let me get the usual out of the way. 1) No contact. 2) No progress. 3) No problem (for me)! Vintage Spencer post. Now I'll talk about what I learned. This week we learned about using Sprout Social to analyze how our posts are doing. Because our Twitter feed is never retweeted, favorited, or followed, we used Facebook as our guinea pig. What we saw really helped our learning process because Sprout Social gives Facebook impact in terms of percentages which makes the actual success of... um.... I swear I know it... Housing Earth?... no... Habitat for the World?.... Ideas people have already come up with and implemented successfully that we were told were revolutionary?*... nope. Close though! Forget it. Moving on.

What I saw here that was important was the most successful types of posts that I've been making were the ones where I linked to outside content and included a relevant photo. The second most popular were the ones that linked to documentaries or YouTube videos that were not produced by Ol' Whatstheirname. So, you sit there reading this Tumblr and you think "Boy, what did you do with this knowledge, Oh Great One?" I will tell you. Fear not. I've adjusted my strategies in two ways: I don't post nearly as often and I make sure that each post links to articles/videos. Looking back, some of the more unsuccessful posts were fluff pieces where I simply put "Help these people" and linked a picture. I thought the pity card would work. It didn't. People want to watch videos and pretend watching a short film will help the situation (WOAH. CYNICISM, MUCH?).  (KONY 2012) Back on topic, this was pretty useful. I'm surprised that I didn't copy any Kony 2012 tactics earlier because they were successful despite not actually changing anything. Because there is no money or progress behind Housing Worlds (or whatever), I need to use the same stall tactics that Invisible Children did. Nefarious? Yes. Realistic? You betcha. Unethical? I'm just a college student trying to learn.  So all 50+ of our facebook fans will become guinea pigs in my great experiment of radically different posting techniques thanks to my new knowledge of analytics.

*I was really disappointed watching this video (not in the project, that part is great). This whole time I thought HtW's idea was never implemented and that's why the prototype was taking so long. Nope. We got hosed.

[muwrites]

Don't create an SEO bridge to nowhere

If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. 

And if you don't know your target audience, any keywords will do.  

This is why it's important for PR people to be involved with SEO strategy. You can't optimize a page until you know why and for whom you're optimizing it. 

The key concept of SEO is to know what you provide and what your customers are looking for -- and then create a bridge between these worlds with the right links and copy.

This sounds straightforward, but it can take some investigation to get it right. 

Jen Keller, a Milwaukee SEO consultant, shared a story about one of her clients who sold furniture to facility managers and purchasers at universities. 

Originally, they wanted to rank high in search results for "dorm furniture" related terms. 

The only problem was that people searching for "dorm chairs" or "lofts for dorms" are parents and students. That wasn't the client's target audience. It would have created a bridge to nowhere. 

Their real audience -- the ones with the power to make purchasing decisions for universities -- referred to their product as "residence hall furniture." So that's what they went with when they optimized their pages.

"The details, Keller said, "make a huge difference." 

Want to learn more about SEO strategy? Here's a link to Keller's SEO presentation. 

Photo credit: Praline3001 on Flickr. 

[jessszramiak-blog]

Mailchimp- The Future of Email Campaigns

This past summer I interned with Jockey International. Yes, the underwear company my family and friends referred to it as. I was the marketing/communications intern and a lot of my tasks involved the PR/marketing world. Don't worry, there's a point to this story. I promise.

One of my duties was to create promotional and rewards emails for the Jockey Rewards  members. I despised these emails. I would spend hours and hours on Publisher formatting and creating these emails. Mailchamp, where were you this summer when I needed you most? I wish I had known about this site because it would have saved me hours of work and money spent on Starbucks and Diet Coke to keep me alert and focused on these emails.  

I have never been more fascinated by a program that Tim has showed us as I was with Mailchimp. A site that provided hundreds of email designs and templates to easily create emails? I was tempted to email my former bosses and suggest that they use this site. 

Back to the assignment- create an email for your client. Since this was a test email to get us familiar with the program, Emily and I decided to create an email campaign reminding future MU students that the due date housing preferences/deposits was coming up.  Here's what Emily and I came up with: 

We chose an image that represented all of the possible Residence Halls for incoming freshmen, giving them a glimpse of all of the buildings on campus and reminding them of their options. The text of the email reminds students what is due May 1 and also includes a link to the Res Life website where any questions may be answered.

We also used the same Res Life logo that is on their Facebook and Twitter pages. Why? So when students/parents received these emails they would know that it came from Res Life. What's really cool about Mailchimp is that it also creates a mobile version of the email you create. Amazing, isn't it? 

Thank you, Tim for introducing us to Mailchimp. Although it was a struggle becoming familiar with the website at first, I found this site to be extremely helpful in creating emails for campaigns. I will definitely use this site in the future especially because it is a free, quick and easy site to use. 

It's amazing how much I have been learning in the past month. Who knows what else I will learn in the last 6 classes. (Cue the Vitamin C  song 'Graduation' as I begin to weep)

[thespencerrose]

If Monkeys Can Email, So Can I

This week we learned how to use a service called Mail Chimp which companies use to send mass emails to their target audiences. It's nifty, especially since I've always wondered how these things are sent. 

For my client, House the World, I decided to use the good ol' infographic approach because I'm still proud of that. My intro paragraph was based off of something our client sent us in an email, so it flowed nicely into that huge chunk of information. Rather than plead for donations, the infographic is better because it spreads knowledge. People will read at least a little of it and gain something from it. If we sent a "Give Us Money" email, there's no guarantee that anyone will follow through and it will a huge waste of time.

I sent the proposal in an email to our client, but surprisingly received no response.

Just kidding. Totally saw this one coming. That's alright, though. It's the end of the year and this is a longterm goal. I'm sure any email blast would not be at the level of needing a service to do so. Like the SEO suggestions, these are exactly that: suggestions. I can't make whoever is in charge of House the World change the way they do business. I don't know nearly as much about nonprofits as they do, so I feel out of place telling them what to do, even if I think it's the right move. I think my frustration comes from having no stake or reason to believe in the success or failure of HtW. All I've read is proposals and promises and haven't seen progress or follow-through which I would have been happy to write about on Facebook or Twitter.

Even my blog posts ranting about how slow this whole thing is going are starting to sound stale. At this point there's not much we can do for House the World. We're cruising towards finals week and don't have time to do anything major.

Do I feel bad?

No. I did nothing wrong here. I'm a busy person, too, and if an asset like free public relations help and consultation goes unused, that's fine by me. I'm not the one trying to house things.

[jessszramiak-blog]

SEO- The beginning of the end

I'm not a very emotional personal, but writing this blog reminds me that it is one of the last required blog posts of my college career. In 37 days to be exact, I will join the group of Marquette Alumnus in the city of Chicago. But enough with the Lifetime saga, let's talk about SEO. 

In last week's class we worked on ORL's  SEO and how we can help optimize their search results. We quickly learned that ORL's major problem with not optimizing their SEO was that more people searched Marquette 'dorms' than residence halls. Because ORL does not refer to housing as 'dorms' (I'm sorry Sean, I know you hate this word!) Emily and I had to find a way to make ORL and Marquette residence halls more searchable. 

Emily and I played around a bit with an article on ORL's website and inserted different words like - Sean don't have a heart attack- dorm and housing into an article on ORL's homepage. But as you can see from the image below, it really didn't work that well. 

Yesterday during our weekly meeting with Sean, we came up with an idea. Sean was more keen with the idea of using the word 'dorm' when it came to social strategy, but he wanted it behind the scenes. Our plan now is to try and figure out a way to imbed the word 'dorm' in MU residence halls so when people search Marquette dorms they are directed to the residence hall page.We have no idea if this can be done....Tim, we're looking at you. 

Another solution that we came up with (well Sean did but still it was a cumulative effort)  was to create a page explaining why Marquette uses the word residence halls instead of dorms. But who knows, maybe Marquette's ORL will be the first University to start a social media revolution.

While there were many other topics brought up at our meeting, you'll have to wait until my next blog. 37 more days y'all. 37 days. 

[jessszramiak-blog]

ORL Shines Bright Like a Diamond on Social Media

While the rest of our classmates were trekking across Milwaukee to meet with their clients, Emily and I walked the short distance to Carpenter for our weekly meeting   with Sean. I've really started to have a greater appreciation for meeting with Sean in person rather than communicating over email. There's so much more to be said in person and allows for us to get direct responses from Sean. Besides, if we didn't meet with Sean in person we never would have gotten on the subject of Disney World. 

On another note, we do have some breaking news: ORL's Pinterest boards are being published! After getting Sean's approval of the pins that we have already made, the secret boards are now becoming public. In addition to the three boards already published, each residence hall will have a board with the hopes of posting room layouts and pictures. I'm most excited for ORL's presence on Pinterest because now I have an excuse to be on Pinterest during the day and can't wait to help in building dream hall rooms for incoming students! 

This week we also started working with Sean on planning the Residence Hall spotlights, which is part of ORL's current student housing fair. From March 18-22 we will feature a different residence hall each day. Sean thought that spotlighting the Residence Halls in alphabetical order would prevent favoritism of certain Halls. Each day we will post the featured hall of the day, floor plans, hall fun facts and a link to the halls website. We want this to be a fun and interactive campaign to get students involved in their housing selection process. 

The only problem with our Residence Hall spotlight week? Sean will be out of town  for the first two days of the campaign. Although my throat started closing up a bit when Sean let us know that he wouldn't be there for our Monday meetings because he will be meeting with Mickey Mouse (FYI, he'll be in Florida for a conference), I am confident that Emily will be able to tackle the Residence Hall spotlight week. This is one of the biggest parts of our campaigns and where we can really let our work shine. And definitely brighter than a diamond. I know super cheesy and the worst pun ever, but this is what no snow day during midterm week has done to me. 

[thespencerrose]

Making a Difference, One Like at a Time

So today's edition of the House the World client update features good news for once: We're finally getting a little traction!

This past week, Cheech and I have been hard at work putting up new posts and tweets, while also focusing on growing our audience. Our Sprout Social report says we're doing a pretty okay job so far because we got 1.3K impressions last week alone from our recent spree of activity. I began to follow some sage advice I received where I post pictures with information describing them because the masses love to click "like" and feel like they're saving the ruined village in the picture. That last sentence was extremely cynical, but I meant it in good jest. If we didn't have someone asking to be a part of the House the World team on Facebook this week, I would have been more serious about that joke. But, as I said, people are finally starting to get active in the HtW community again. This is a good sign, especially with co-founder Chris Dolls heading over to Jamaica to test out the data-mapping application once again. We'll have a good ol' fashioned "Cornucopia of Content" when he gets back. Hopefully we can toss up an interview and shop it around on the blogosphere.

Last week, the situation looked dire, but these past few days have really brightened my outlook. Our client finally got back to us with some content that wasn't just facts and figures, too. We've already begun to work on scheduling this content into our rotation for Spring Break and beyond. I wouldn't say I'm totally optimistic about the future of this project, but I'll gladly accept a week of not pulling my hair out. I'll have plenty of time (and plenty of luxurious, well-groomed hair) for the hair-pulling stress after college. 

  Everything's coming up roses this week! (GET IT!? THAT'S MY LAST NAME!)

Also, a special shout-out to the mother-in-law of one of the co-founders who is consistently posting on the page that she is proud of her son-in-law. I'm proud of them, too, lady.