Visual bookmarking: My new social addiction

Maybe it’s because after seven years of Facebooking, my attention span is spent, or maybe it’s because my friends — who now have just about all settled down — are not posting as captivating updates as they did during our college days.

Either way, I am now faced with a serious void of quality social content consumption. What am I to do with all the time that I used to spend devotedly perusing my newsfeed? Enter Pinterest.com, one of the newest “it” sites — and my new favorite way to get my social media fix.

Unlike my original web addiction, Pinterest isn’t about what you’re doing. It’s about what you’re into — your passions, interests and motivations — which means it never gets old. It’s about sharing ideas with your friends, or whomever, and getting other new ideas in return. But the best part is it’s totally visual: the site is photo-based and requires just a short caption for each post.

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Deal: Google trades search results for your privacy

Digitally speaking, we love the convenience of all-in-one, such as email, calendar, social, photo, video and now screen sharing. After all, these already exist separately. Google has aligned these offerings with its mission to become a part of our everyday lives.

What has individuals creeped out is the privacy issue, even though the integration and custom search results are a potential advantage.

Google’s updated privacy policy states, “Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products.”

These privacy changes have social networks like Twitter freaking out. Why?

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LinkedIn 101

I was at a recruiters’ breakfast event recently and was seated with a pair of very talented women who work in new business and sales positions. Imagine my surprise, however, when the topic of LinkedIn arose, and one of the women said, “So what’s with LinkedIn, anyway? Should I have my picture on there?”

As a recruiter, I spend a good portion of my day looking over the profiles of various LinkedIn users. To hear that these women weren’t using this tool was surprising. Talk about a lost opportunity.

While LinkedIn may not be as visually appealing as Facebook, it offers amazing potential for job seekers, recruiters and sales professionals alike. If you’re a little late to the game and haven’t made the most of LinkedIn, this little LinkedIn 101 tutorial should get you up to speed.

LinkedIn 101
1. Realize the importance of LinkedIn. Whatever your reason for putting it off, there’s no better time than now to start learning how to use this tool. You’ll benefit from greater exposure and simple networking. Additionally, filterable search capabilities will make finding the next sales opportunity/client/employee/employer easy.

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Things that should NOT go without saying in social media: Common sense and preparation

“Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.”
— John Wooden

Leave it to a basketball coach to stress the importance of planning.

Colleen Grams, a group leader in our PR department, recently wrote a post about the social media failures that have been bombarding our news feeds lately. The common ingredients in each blunder were a jarring lack of both common sense and advance preparation. Here are two quick tips to give businesses active in social media some important points of self-reflection:

1. Issues management is job No. 1 and a 24/7 responsibility.
Who gets the call when a social media issue arises? Who are the key stakeholders that need to be in the know and voice input on the decision-making process? If you can’t reference a decision tree or social media policy that quickly answers these questions, your

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What's on YOUR LinkedIn profile?

Want to take a guess at what the most-used buzzword on people’s LinkedIn profiles is?

Creative.

And oddly enough, that word didn’t even make the top 10 list last year, according to a recent TechCrunch article. Last year’s top buzzwords list was topped by “extensive experience.”

I caught up with our recruitment director, Megan Rouleau, and she informed me that she often sees the following phrases on resumes coming in for all of Bader Rutter’s job openings:
• Proven strategic thinker
• Results-driven marketing professional
• Effective and organized project manager

One word she suggests avoiding at all costs? Guru.

“When candidates use the word guru, it seems a little egotistical. There are plenty of other ways to express your experience, such as ‘well-versed in social media,’ especially because everyone has room for improvement,” Megan says.

And she’s not alone in feeling that way. Plenty of articles have warned job applicants that using strange new titles like “fanthropologist” and “Creative Undertaker” decreases your credibility and may even cause confusion.

What buzzwords are on your LinkedIn profile?

Ice sculptures and blue martinis

Bader Rutter has seen some amazing growth over the past year. Even though you will find new people working in every nook and cranny of our Brookfield office, you don’t really realize how much we’ve grown until you see the whole group in one open space.

BRers and their guests filled the rooms at Coast Restaurant to capacity this past weekend for the 2012 New Year Party. It was amazing to see everyone dressed up and having a wonderful time. Through a spectacular ice sculpture, bartenders poured specialty blue martinis, new associates danced around with maracas and a video honoring employees who’ve been with us for many years had the entire crowd in stitches. It was truly a special and elegant evening.

Want to relive our fun? Click over to our Facebook page to view some of the party photos.

When it comes to data, seeing is believing

I’m a sucker for data. Call me a nerd, but somehow percentages and simple bar graphs appeal to my curiosity. Surround those factoids with pretty colors and images, and I’ll be happier than a bird with a french fry. And according to Dartmouth College, I am not alone.

Fast Company recently posted an article about this phenomenon, stating that you might win more arguments if you show your facts with visuals, rather than present them only in written form. Apparently, it’s harder to twist the truth if it’s in the form of a graph.

Believable theory? Maybe. Read the article for yourself to see what Fast Company has to say, and make your own decision. I, on the other hand, will be gawking at the following cool infographics we’ve stumbled across recently:

Click on the images below for the big picture.

Email marketing and social media

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Starting fresh in 2012

Image from www.rizzotees.comThe beginning of a new calendar year signals a time to start fresh. Fresh plans. Fresh budgets. And a fresh (and optimistic) outlook on the year ahead.

When it comes to social media, specifically, some businesses are likely wishing for a fresh start and a clean slate. We’ve been inundated lately with stories of PR and social media efforts gone terribly wrong.

Take the @VinosFinosCafe story for example. It’s a perfect example of how not to build relationships with your customers. Can you imagine shopping at a store, walking out without buying anything, and being scolded by the business owner? That’s exactly what this incident feels like. And it’s almost as bad as the repulsive actions taken by Boners BBQ.

If you’ve already repressed the memories of these PR failures, let me remind you of a handful more. The Ocean Marketing fiasco left me feeling stunned — how could any PR professional talk to a customer like that? And we can’t forget about The Bloggess being cursed at by another PR pro attempting to pitch her.

It amazes me that some professionals still haven’t learned the difference between right and wrong. This year, let’s resolve to create sensible social media engagement strategies that focus on building relationships — even if that is common sense to most of us. Agreed?

Stand out from the crowd

There are thousands of public relations majors in the country, and it can be hard to stand out when you’re a “dime a dozen” to future employers. To get their attention, I was told I needed to do a few things: Know how to write, know how to speak and get a top-notch internship.

This past semester, I was lucky enough to land an educational internship at Bader Rutter & Associates. For all of you PR majors scanning internship websites, fixing your resumes and updating your cover letter, I would highly recommend an internship like this one.

Working at an agency that has both B2B and B2C clients offers new experiences and insights into the role of PR. I was assigned to mostly B2B clients — and I must say, I never thought I would know so much about dairy conferences or insurance policies at 21 years old!

Sure, the press releases and pitches looked the same when written for B2B businesses, but I found that the content and angles were vastly different. Therefore, my Bader Rutter internship made me better-rounded in my chosen field.

In my classes, I find that we discuss B2C markets about 90 percent of the time and hardly touch on B2B.  This means that, as writers, we’re learning how to sell products by focusing on emotion and imagery. But I’ve learned that with B2B, the sales cycles are longer, and you need to build relationships and offer rational reasons for buying that are based on business value. I’ve learned to tailor my messaging in a very different way.

Of course, an internship is about what you learn, but it is also about your experience. This is not one of those places where everyone keeps to themselves and always has their eyes on a computer screen. I have never seen so much camaraderie during the holidays in an office than I did here.

My time at Bader Rutter was short, but sweet. The skills that I took away from this will no doubt help me in my future career. To all other students looking to get an internship where you not only learn but you also get to enjoy yourself, Bader Rutter couldn’t be better.

SOCIAL happens in real life, too

When I stumbled across Jay Baer’s blog post about his latest flight, I couldn’t help but smile. Basically, the story goes that Baer was on a flight back from a speaking engagement, and he witnessed a little act of kindness.

The flight attendant came over the loudspeaker to announce some delightful art created by a young passenger. Just think about the pride this little 9-year-old kid must have felt when his art was displayed for all the passengers to see.

And it’s a great reminder for businesses and agencies everywhere that social business isn’t about your Facebook followers or your number of retweets. It’s about that genuine relationship you build with your customers.

In a world where people are bombarded by inauthentic marketing messages all day long, it’s nice to witness an unscripted experience that is both meaningful and memorable.

The kind of experience people are going to be talking about.

Take a look back at 2011

With 2011 quickly coming to a close, I was happy to stumble across this touching montage video by Google through Twitter. While Ryan Dunn wasn’t exactly the loss of a historical figure, and the Google+ references throughout were a bit self-gratifying, this video is about as good as it gets when it comes to year-end wrap-ups. Google once again showed the world their videos can tug heartstrings through jaw-dropping visuals, slick editing and catchy tunes from solid, underexposed musicians.

In 2011, BR passed the 200 employee mark and our digital and social media offerings continue to scale up to meet market demands.  So what will 2012 bring? Well, you’ll just have to wait and see.

The unfortunate fate of cursive handwriting

A recent JSOnline.com poll about cursive writing in schools.
While reading the news online during my lunch hour, I learned that public schools most likely will not teach cursive handwriting to students in the future. Advocates of cutting this from curriculum say more time can be devoted to reading and math — subjects that are part of standardized testing. And, as schools develop and integrate more technology in the classroom, much of a student’s schoolwork will be done with a computer or tablet device, eliminating the need for work done with a pen and paper.  Standardized tests for

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No, but/Yes, and

Seth Goden strikes again. Take a look at this recent blog post, titled “No.”

He doesn’t take a position in this post. But it’s certainly thought-provoking, which was his point, I’m sure. It’s easy to see the allure of saying “no” and standing firm. If you say “yes,” you might lower the bar and have to perform limbolike acrobatics to achieve your

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BR takes celebrating the holiday to a new level — the garage!

Last week, I attended my very first (of hopefully many) holiday party at Bader Rutter. During the weeks leading up to this long-awaited event, stories of parties-past swirled throughout the halls and offices. Needless to say, the anticipation was killing me.

If the holiday decorations were any indication of the fun ahead, I was in for the night of my life.

Click this photo to see the decorations photo album on Facebook.

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Second to none

The BR Gang at Second City

Some folks from the Chicago office recently kicked off the holiday season by seeing the “Dysfunctional Holiday Review” at Chicago’s world famous Second City. What made the evening particularly special was that our own Nicole Hastings was the star of the show!

Four years ago, Nicole moved to Chicago from San Jose to go through the Second City

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