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Students have always been big customers for many businesses. However, with the rise of the technological era, getting sales from these students is becoming harder and harder. Young people from high school to master's degree programs know exactly what they want, and with the Internet at their fingertips they're more willing to reach companies online than go out of the way to do business with anyone else. Unless you want to exclude students from your customer base (which few businesses can afford) you have to learn how to use the Internet to your advantage, and nothing does that better than social media.
Since the advent of services like MySpace, FaceBook, and Twitter, the majority of students have become a deluge of socially networked users. Social media give them ways to keep with the second-to-second and minute-to-minute dealings of friends, family, and even businesses. Many students connect with businesses online through these services, if only just to know when they are having sales or updating their product lists.
If this sounds like an opt-in mailing list, it should, because it basically is. Few marketing materials have the same power as a simple social networking page. Students can find these pages very easily, so you don’t have to worry about search engines mucking up your rankings. Failing to take advantage of this marketing method is like pulling all your commercials, stopping the mailed postcards, refusing to send e-mail, and erasing all your newspaper and radio ads. Doesn’t sound very smart, does it?
When you use social media to reach students, you can't be timid. That doesn't mean you have to be brazen about everything, but have some confidence in what you're saying. Speaking of which, what should you be saying? This is the problem many businesses have at first, because they aren't used to reaching out to students as a particular class of customers. Talk about what's going on inside the business, share a funny story, mention discounts, or talk about that new product launching in a few days.
Also, always reach out to the students and ask them to comment back. Nothing is worse than a post with absolutely no comments. Even if other readers think the post is interesting, they may dismiss it because no one is saying anything. It’s like having a commercial that everyone watches but no one responds to. Of course the number of comments your business' posts receive depends a lot on how many customers have connected with your social media presence. On the other hand, keep in mind that more comments may lead to more followers as other users see what their friends are commenting on.
Always add a small something at the bottom of your post to invite comment or interaction. Oftentimes opinionated students are more likely to take you up on this invitation than other kinds of customers.
Building up a social media page to help your image and connect with students is a great idea sure to help you build a list of loyal customers. The time investment to maintain a social media presence is quite minimal, but the payoff for businesses is immense. The investment is most worth the effort when you target your social media use, and in doing so it's critical to keep in mind that students are the prime users of social media and your most receptive audience.
Provided by Guest Blogger Cyndi Laurenti - While she figures out her next career move, Cyndi Laurenti works as an online writer and editor. Her primary interests are education, technology, and how to combine them. She enjoys the trees and beaches of the pacific northwest, and looking things up on other people's iPhones.
We know social media has taken off like wildfire. Ten years ago if you’d even said the phrase “social media” you would have gotten funny looks. But today’s it’s a fundamental part of our everyday lives. Why is that? Here are six reasons why social media has become so huge:
Have I missed something? Are there other factors? Or, do you disagree with some of my rationale? Please share your comments!
Daniel Mark Wheaton is an Internet and Mobile Marketing Consultant with Flipside Marketing. He is a self-taught internet guru with a background in journalism who’s been dabbling in web design and online marketing since 2000. He enjoys showing small businesses ways they can reach out to new customers and build relationships with their existing customers using the internet and mobile technology.
Thanks

by Daniel Mark Wheaton, Flipside Marketing
The phone’s ringing and you know there’s a reporter on the other end of the line. How you handle the call that can be the beginning of a mutually beneficial ormutually
antagonistic relationship?
The good news is that the choice is, largely, yours and there are a few simple things you can do to make it a good one.
If you’re looking for other pointers on media relations, visit www.SeventhEstatePR.com/blog or check out the Top 10 Dos and Don’ts Lists that reporter Alison DeLory and I recently presented to a third-year PR class.
If you have any questions about media relations, I’m happy to answer them.
Colleen
Colleen Gareau has 20 years experience providing public relations services to public, private and non-profit sector clients. She was a senior consultant on the overhaul of Canada’s pension systems, created the national communication department for the RCMP and developed and implemented the first communication programs for the Force as well as organizations within Health Canada and at the Nova Scotia Public Service Commission. She has handled public affairs at a natural disaster site, led a crisis communication team, and provided advice to senior officials on highly sensitive issues. Colleen taught the public relations program at Eastern College for two years and launched her carbon-neutral company, The Seventh Estate Public Relations Group, last year. She was a recipient of the 2011 Halifax Regional Municipality Volunteer Award.
Public relations professionals regularly deal with people’s perceptions – how individuals see a particular situation and figuring out how to deal with their reactions.
Perceptions of service
Colleen Gareau is the principal of The Seventh Estate Public Relations Group, a carbon-neutral, goal-focused communication firm in Halifax, NS. She created the communication branch at the RCMP and the first employee communication programs for a branch of Health Canada, and had a planning role in media relations for the 2011 Canada Games. Seventh Estate PR specializes in public relations counsel, communication strategy and implementation, internal communication, media relations, social media, change communication, training and facilitation, writing and editing, and website advice. Seventh Estate PR publishes PR to Go each Monday and Wednesday. Please visit http://www.seventhestatepr.com/ for more information.
In December, I wrote a post on what you should expect from your PR person. I’m following up on that today with a few thoughts about what your PR person should be able to expect from you.
Honesty:
Don’t make claims about your product, service, experience or company that aren’t true. I have had two clients who made false claims. Neither are clients anymore.
The first claimed their line of leather products were made from Inuit seal hides when the items were made using seal hides from Newfoundland. I am not making a moral judgment about either, but you can’t market something using a specific cultural reference when it’s a lie. Just imagine the position I was in when, at a trade conference in Yellowknife, I was faced with questions about why this company wasn’t buying sealskin from Inuit hunters.)
The second was a client selling a luxury good. She insisted she was the sole Canadian distributor of this item. It seemed far-fetched to me and so, over the course of three meetings and a number of emails, I pushed for clarification. She finally admitted that others carried the product, but that she was the manufacturer’s recommended distributor. Quite a difference.
How can a trust relationship develop – and there must be one to be successful – if your consultant can’t be sure of what you’re telling him? What if your consultant were to claim an expertise she didn’t have?
Exactly.
Respect:
It won’t come as a surprise to you that good relationships are based on respect. It’s just as true in business relationships as it is in friendships. The most common ways clients disrespect consultants, in my experience, is by wasting time and misrepresenting their intentions.
Your consultant’s time is as valuable as yours. Meetings, phone calls, texts, emails all take up limited time. There is no question that you must have good communication with your consultant and should be able to contact you’re her/him as frequently as a project requires. (It can be numerous times a day, for example, before a special event or once-a-week on a longer-term research project.) Once discussions have been had, however, decisions have been reached and you’ve reviewed your decisions – let it go. Calling your consultant nightly or over the weekend to discuss anything that isn’t urgent isn’t the basis for a good relationship. I once had a client who called me almost nightly for two to two-and-a-half hour rants about the difficulties of her project. She invariably called during the dinner hour and on Sunday afternoons. Her rants had nothing to do with communication, I might add, she just needed an outlet. I finally started to bill her for these calls. As you can imagine, they ate away at the budget quickly – a situation that was satisfying to neither of us. (Yes, I did tell her in advance.)
This brings me to the second issue: intentions.
In the same way that a consultant couldn’t ask you to renovate her bathroom and not pay when the job is done, don’t waste consultation hours with the announcement that you have no budget and “just wanted someone to tell you what you should be doing.” Most PR people are happy to answer a few questions over the phone. I know I am. I am less happy about driving out to a meeting location, perhaps paying for parking and picking up the tab for refreshments, chatting about your communication issue and discovering that you have no intention of hiring me – or anyone.
Ability to make timely decisions:
You should be prepared to make decisions as required. “No kidding,” you may be thinking to yourself. If you are, that’s because you haven’t taken on a client who is incapable of making decisions when they are needed to move a project forward. Not only does this waste time, but can cost you in the form of missed opportunity. One client, for example, vacillated on an advertising opportunity and missed out on a once-a-year vehicle that would directly reach her target audience. It was a tactic that she had agreed to in the plan that we were implementing, but when the time arrived, she couldn’t make the final decision on time so the deadline was missed.
Final words:
I believe that the Golden Rule is a good one in business relationships and one that both clients and service providers must employ. Ultimately, you and your consultant are in this together. You should have a partnership in achieving the results you want for your business.
I’d love to hear what your experiences with your clients or customers have been. Have you run into any of the above?
All the best,
Colleen
Colleen Gareau is the principal of The Seventh Estate Public Relations Group, a carbon-neutral, goal-focused communication firm in Halifax, NS. She created the communication branch at the RCMP and the first employee communication programs for a branch of Health Canada, and had a planning role in media relations for the 2011 Canada Games. Seventh Estate PR specializes in public relations counsel, communication strategy and implementation, internal communication, media relations, social media, change communication, training and facilitation, writing and editing, and website advice. Seventh Estate PR publishes PR to Go each Monday and Wednesday. Please visit http://www.seventhestatepr.com/ for more information.
By W. Lau, who is interested in obtaining a forensic science education and has written about the ins and outs of attending a sonogram technician school.
Social networking sites, such as LinkedIn, are growing in popularity as a job hunter's resource. LinkedIn has more than 85 million professional users signed up to its site. A greater number of recruiters are also relying on social networking sites to find job candidates.
We know that one of the most effective methods to find a job candidate is through direct referrals from employees. Another method is through networking, which is what social networking sites, like LinkedIn, allow you to do.
So, is signing up with LinkedIn's basic account good enough for job hunting or is there value in paying LinkedIn for premium service?
Whether you choose to maintain a basic account or spend and obtain a premium account with LinkedIn, if it helps you secure a job, the money you spend to upgrade your account will pay for itself. However, even if you don't upgrade to a premium account, LinkedIn offers many features that add value to your job hunt to help you get hired.
While LinkedIn offers an opportunity to be social and network, keep in mind that this particular networking site is meant for professional networking. All information, photos and links you post to your profile should continue to project a professional persona. You never know whether an HR contact or recruiter is viewing your profile. Even if you are job hunting through some other means, more and more employers are conducting audits of potential candidate through social networking sites to see if there is any information or impression they find that can help disqualify you for a position.
Part-time blogger A. Matthews has an online accounting degree and is enrolled in other courses online to improve his education and strengthen his resume.
Like an artist critiquing their work, any good blogger must be able to step back and objectively take a look at their blog. A good blogger can look at their work, both individually and as a whole, and think hard on what is working and what is not, and more importantly, what is attracting readers and what is driving them away. Remember, a blog is not for the writer; it's for the people currently reading, the people you want to be reading, and hopefully, the advertisers who are going to pay you to write. Looking at your own work objectively is not always easy, so here is an Objectivity Checklist to get you started.
Hello Activ8 Blog Readers:
It’s a pleasure for me to be with you as a guest-blogger on Lynne’s blog. I’m always happy to reach out to anyone interested in public relations – it’s an area that isn’t only my business but my passion.
I hope to hear back from you on your thoughts about what can be a polarizing topic: public relations and the difference between good and lousy service.
It’s a particular soapbox of mine. I see, far too often, the budgets of small- and medium-sized businesses (big business too, but they can usually afford the loss) being squandered on some silly publicity campaign or other communication project that won’t pay off for them.
Let me tell you what to look for so your communication budget isn’t blown.
First, please believe that you need PR. Yes, I am biased. It’s how I make my living, after all. But you wouldn’t accuse a dentist of being self-serving were she to tell you to get twice-yearly check-ups, would you?
A good public relations program helps create a positive environment where potential customers and clients will get to know you and will want to buy from you. Good PR is more than flash. It’s about building solid relationships with the individuals and groups your success depends upon.
The challenge for you as a business owner is this. How do you know where to spend your finite resources so you get the most return, and how to know if you’re getting the best advice for your business?
Let me tell you.
You have to be willing to focus, which means sometimes having to say, “No.”
That’s it. Focus. And a good PR person should be able to help you with that.
If you’re working with someone who doesn’t care about your business, doesn’t seem to understand what you do or what your goals are, someone who spends your money like you mint the stuff, find someone else.
I work with a few small business owners. One recently spent $4,000 on a radio ad campaign that did not result in one new client. Not one. Another spent nearly $5,000 on a special event with little result. Another buys up print advertising every time an ad rep from a newspaper calls her – the scattershot approach.
I am not suggesting that any one of these activities might not be good ones. They may be, in the context of a larger plan with clearly articulated goals. But a one-shot deal that blows your budget for the year isn’t going to get you anywhere. A communication or publicity program must be sustainable.
A good PR person should be keen to learn your business and understand your clients (current and wished for).
Certainly, all your clients are important, but there are one or two or three groups upon whom your business really depends. Without this group or groups, you’d flounder. Unless you have a large communication budget, these are the key people you have to spend your PR budget on and no one else.
It’s harder than it sounds because you are likely bombarded with advice and great deals.
Each time one of these great deals comes along, you should confer with your PR person and/or ask your self the questions:
You also have to be willing to plan for the long-term. The truth is that PR takes time because relationships take time to build.
If a PR person is guaranteeing a particular result for you, run away. Not only is that unethical, it’s a lie. It’s the old saw about having crystal balls and being rich. If we had the former, we’d be the latter.
Your PR person should ask lots of questions about your business and what you want to achieve. S/he should set communication objectives that help you meet your business goals, that target your key clients and that set out tactics to reach and appeal to those groups.
Did you know that it takes between seven and 30 “touches” before someone buys from someone? That’s right. A potential customer has to have heard of you or about you or from you between seven and 30 times before they buy.
That’s why it’s so important to build name recognition and a great reputation while they’re deciding.
And that’s why a long-term plan is necessary and why a one-time radio ad or single event won’t get you the results you want.
Here’s a quick checklist you can use next time you’re shopping for PR expertise.
I hope this has been more than just a rant for me and has been helpful to you. I really hate seeing new business owners being taken advantage of through a flash-in-the-pan offer.
I’d love to hear what your experiences with PR have been and where you have found success.
All the best,
Colleen
Colleen Gareau is the principal of The Seventh Estate Public Relations Group, a carbon-neutral, goal-focused communication firm in Halifax, NS. The company specializes in public relations counsel, communication strategy and implementation, internal communication, media relations, social media, change communication, training and facilitation, writing and editing, and website advice. Seventh Estate PR publishes PR to Go each Monday and Wednesday. Please visit http://www.seventhestatepr.com/ for more information.
On to the real 8 steps...
Getting back into the swing of things after the holidays is often difficult. Children everywhere suddenly become ill with tummy and head aches. My nephew said it best. After arguing strong points on why he shouldn’t have to go to school, he left the house declaring:
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