A Portland Boutique: Maxwell PR

“Talk to us. We want to learn more about your organization. What makes it tick. Where it’s trying to go. Who it’s trying to reach. What it’s trying to sell. How it fits into the community. We’ll be your biggest advocate, your strongest voice, your most tenacious supporter. Call us a liaison, an ambassador, a reality check. Call us. We’re ready to get to work.”

This is the commitment Portland Oregon based boutique firm, Maxwell PR makes to its clients. Maxwell’s team works hard to find creative ways to humanize it’s clients stories and connect with its audiences.

A creative work environment, friendly, determined employees and the right tools creates a recipe for success at Maxwell. With clients ranging from the food and beverage industry to an all-natural cosmetic organization, the staff of eleven has challenging, yet fun projects to tackle on a daily basis.

As a soon-to-be college graduate looking to dive into the PR industry I’ve only really heard of large name agencies. It wasn’t until my PRSSA chapter held a regional activity on Tuesday and we took a “tour” (I say “tour” because we were able to stand in one place and see the entire beautiful modern office!) of Maxwell.

I instantly fell in love with the environment and people I met. The laid-back, creative and very motivated staff gave a great overview of their services, clients and even some job hunting advice for us seniors.

Vicky Hastings, an “all-around go-to gal”, as their Web site likes to call her, describes the number one thing Maxwell looks for in a new employee is: creativity. Hastings says if you can’t send a creative work sample, “simply write us a poem.”

From someone one who would rather work on the layout of her class assigned letter to the shareholder in InDesign (which the layout was NOT assigned), than go out on a Friday night, I thought this was a very unique and intriguing request.

Many times students don’t take the time to research boutique agencies, well frankly, because the smaller agencies names are not out there in our faces as some of the larger ones. Due to small staffs, these smaller agencies do not have the ability to allow staff members to attend career fairs and conferences to utilize recruiting opportunities. Also, they do not always have availability in their staff to take on new interns. But this doesn’t mean a boutique agency isn’t right for you! If it is the right place, the right people and the right environment all you have to do it apply!

Note to Students: Open your eyes. There is a whole world of agencies you haven’t seen yet!

Presentation Perfection

“Great presentation… just don’t be so selfish next time.”

Leo Bottary, a PRO at Hill & Knowlton received this comment above after giving a presentation. The commenter meant that Bottary shouldn’t be so nervous when giving his presentation, because the presentation is about the client, not him.

It is easy to be consumed by your nervous feelings when speaking in public, but you have to shake it off and put trust in yourself and your knowledge of your client and the service you are providing.

As a college senior I have seen my fair share of text heavy slide show lectures. They are BORING! It wasn’t until last term that I realized when a lecture is being given with a visually pleasing slide show it helps your audience pay attention.

So here are a few tips on how to give a good presentation:

• Make your point in 3-7 words. If you have text heavy slides your audience is going to get caught up reading your text, rather than listening to you
• Start with a verb. What do you want to get out of this slide? What is the core? ex: Give better presentations. No more than one idea on per slide
• Keep the slide details simple. Avoid jargon, crazy busy slides. Keep it simple, clean and concise. Your slide should compliment your speech.
• Identify questions early. Put yourself in the shoes of your client. What questions are they going to ask? Try to answer their question in the presentation.
• Make your messages sticky. make your messages simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and use stories. (tips from Made to Stick by the Heath Brothers)
• Use eye pleasing visuals. Just looking at text won’t cut it. When there is a picture that has meaning related to the content on the page, your client will know you put time and effort into this, rather than throwing words on a colorful background. For example, look at the photo above, the pencils have “points,” which goes with my first point (no pun intended)

Put these suggestions to work and you will make your clients happy, as well as your students!

Thanks to Kelli Matthews for the inspiration and check out her Slide show here!

First Clean up your act

Tonight as I was browsing through my google reader I came across this interesting post from Advertising for Peanuts about using advertisements as a cover up.

This post discusses the value of the customer experience. Yes, an advertisement may get you to the restaurant, car dealership or department store, but if you have a bad experience, So Long Lasting Customer Relationships.

If you know me personally, you probably know this, if not, here is a lesson in Staci Stringer: I am a STRONG Starbucks supporter. Probably because I worked there (Check out my Portfolio, it has a presentation I did last term on Starbucks corporate social responsibility). Anyway, my point is Starbucks focuses on their customers experience and less on advertising.

Until just recently, Starbucks didn’t advertise at all. It was ALL word of mouth and their ability to make lasting relationships in their communities.

Advertising for Peanuts made four Key points:

1. Don’t use advertising as a cover-up.
2. Stop all your advertising until you fix the customer experience.
3. Think of your customer experience (shopping, test driving, browsing your website, etc.) as the most important and expensive advertising you have available.
4. Think of the dollars spent on advertising to attract new or repeat customers as coming out of the same budget as dollars spent on the customer experience.

These are BASICS of advertising and public relations. Word of mouth is the best form of persuasion. Customers believe in humans, not products. So this becomes a matter of good customer service over good advertising.

Clean up your act before you advertise. Hone in on your customer service skills before anything else.

The Truth about Public Relations

The Public Relations Manifesto says:

“I am not a flack, a shill, a barker, a hustler, or a spinner. I do not stonewall, distort language, construct false images, or blindly follow directions in the interest of my organization or its leaders. I am a public relations professional, and what I do is serve my organization, society, and profession as a communicator, professional, advocate and activist,” (Berger, Reber).

The purpose of public relations is to help organizations make good choices and do the right things. It is a PR practitioners job to help organizations balance these needs and its social responsibilities.

Berger and Reber say, “Through communications we gain or lose trust, build or destroy relationships, include or exclude others, unite or divide. We make meanings through communication, which is the real bottom line in an organization.”

PR professionals don’t spin, they look at the WHOLE issue at hand and find the light at the end of the tunnel. Through our use of communication we find the best venues for our key messages. We use strategic communication to solve problems and maintain an open line of communication with the public and our specific publics.

We not only communicate, but we evaluate our messages through situation analysis. We believe that transparency, ethics and communication are the fundamentals to our practices and we strive to the best of our abilities to achieve our goals as communicators.

We write, edit, plan, program, place, produce, and evaluate communications.

I will leave you with this:

“The profession will be weak if we believe it is weak. It will be weak if we practice it in that manner.”

Faculty and Graduate Conference Survey

As I am finishing up my final term at University of Oregon myself and a team of my peers are conducting a campaign for the University of Oregon’s school of Journalism and Communication. We currently are researching graduate students and faculty of any university to gain insight on what they wish to gain from a strategic communication conference. If you are a faculty or graduate student (or know of any) please take the survey below it takes about 8-10 minutes and will help my group out! Also you can be a part of the making of a new conference!! For more questions about the conference and survey contact me at stringer(dot)staci(at)gmail(dot)com

Survey

Digital Dirt

When you’re preparing for a job (or internship) search, it’s time to be sure that you don’t have any “digital dirt” that a potential employer may uncover.

Currently, this is the topic of discussion on PROpenMic. I’m intrigued by this issue, because it has to deal with personal PR the branding. You never know when an employer may look you up on Facebook or MySpace and find out a little more about their potential employee.

One member, a professor, said that in order for him to get his point across he searches for his students on Facebook before his first class and when he calls role he pulls up interesting photos of his students. He says, “If I can find it, your potential future internships and employers can find it, too.” This sticks with students, because it embarrasses the student.

I’ve attended leadership conferences where speakers have found photos of the participants, enlarged them and projected these photographs on a big screen in front of thousands of college leaders. The other thing students, need to clean up, is their email accounts. Employers don’t want to communicate with HOTCHIK69@hotmail.com or BEERPONGKINGXXX@aol.com, these are simply inappropriate email addresses. Sign up for a gmail account and use your name. Make it simple and professional.

Just ask yourself, would I like to put this email address on a business card to Bill Gates?

Also, think twice before you post inappropriate photographs of yourself on Facebook. We all know how powerful social media is, You cannot ignore the fact that the industry we are trying to dive into is constantly working with social media, you can’t hide.

Rule of Thumb: The Internet is an open venue. Clean up your act. Don’t let your digital dirt get out of hand.

Looking at Social Networks: GolfingMyWay.com

Rule of thumb, one should never go into business with friends—Friends and business just don’t mix. This isn’t the case for three 21-year-old University of Oregon entrepreneur students. Jake Horton, Scott Rasmussen, and John Robinson co-founders and owners of GolfingMyWay.com, Inc. These young men believe that it is feasible to run a successful business with your best friends. With the launch of GolfingMyWay (GMW) BETA in mid-February, the site has acquired a following sole from word-of-mouth.

GMW brings a feeling of community to an individual sport. Users have the ability to discuss favorite courses, players, books, movies and video games. Also, they can compare clubs, share stories and tips all within one venue. This site helps to jumpstart a community conversation about a sport so many live, breath and dream about on a daily basis.

GMW gives young golfers a way to connect with one another. With the size of the golfing industry and the endless possibilities of social networking there is nothing but opportunities for these young men to take the basics of Facebook and Myspace and expand the features with GMW.

-My Swing: where users can upload a video of their swing and GolfingMyWay.com will outsource the video to have a professional critique the users swing.

-Pro Notes: enables users to stay connected with their pros and continue a conversation about tips they should continue to work at between lessons.

-In the Bag: feature allows users to highlight and rank their clubs, and leave comments.

GMW’s features such as In the Bag, Pros Notes, and My Swing will provide the technology to bring golf into a 2.0 world. The team is looking into patenting software, which will allow golfers to upload their score via mobile device while on the course. This device will reduce the use of paper scorecards by automatically uploading scores online to save golfers time, while also providing the ability to record a variety of stats for players to analyze where they need to work on their game.

With 42 million golfers nation-wide GolfingMyWay.com hopes to have eight to ten million users within the first five years of launching .

GMW hopes to change the way golfers not only play the game of golf, but how they communicate with one another and turn a individual sport into a group experience.

I’m so amazing I don’t need a Cover Letter

What is the point of sending a cover letter if I have an outstanding resume? Seth Godin explains why it is important to attach a cover letter with your resume. Why not have a cover letter? A resume consists of short but sweet bullet points of the type of work you’ve accomplished, but especially as a writer a resume gives you little to no justice in your writing ability. Use your cover letter as a blank canvas to market yourself.

Godin says, “I think if you’re remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a resume at all.” As a student this strikes me as a sticky message, because most graduating college students are not that remarkable, so why be lazy and send just your resume. If you don’t have much experience you need to explain what experience you’ve had and why you’re qualified.

By including a cover letter with your resume you have the opportunity to further explain jobs, projects and accomplishments you’ve had along your professional and pre-professional career. With no cover letter you’re nothing but words on a page. Potential employers will simply toss your resume in the trash. When you have the ability to share with employers the details of jobs, you open their minds to your capabilities-take advantage of it.

If you feel as though you don’t need a cover letter because you’re resume says it all than you need:

• Stellar letters of recommendation
  
• A portfolio- which shows your capabilities in multiple areas
• A blog- which demonstrates your thought leadership in the field you wish to pursue

Without these key items you are in need of an outstanding cover letter, which explains why you’re better than the next resume in the pile. Never let your resume speak for itself, because you’re simply telling your potential employer you’re lazy and you like to throw amazing opportunities out the window.

I hope more graduating students who are applying for jobs will think twice before they send their resume with no cover letter.

Tweet Tweet Twitter Tweet Tweet

What are you doing? Can you tell me 140 characters or less? Try it on twitter a microblogging application. For those of you on Facebook it is much like a Facebook status. When I was first introduced to this application three months ago I didn’t truly understand the phenomenon of this site. Who cares what other people are doing, thinking or eating every waking moment of the day? I don’t have time to pay attention to random bits of information. People do everything from promoting blogs, suggesting resources, and talking about the book they just finished.

My instructor was shocked when she shared this application with our advanced PR writing class during our three week focus on social media. But soon I joined and became hooked. Soon after my classmates jumped on the bandwagon. After a video lecture from Aussie PR Pro and blogger Paull Young my classmates and I soon began following him on twitter and interacting with him.

Twitter became a great tool for us PR wanna-bees to ask questions and gain insightful feedback from the insiders. Soon other PR students from across the country were friending me and we were reading each others blog posts ( I even found my good luck charm Michael Allison) and we began friendly banter. I found that Twitter was a great way to have ongoing conversations and build relationships with PR students, Pros and get quick answers to questions and get pointers to useful links.

But Twitter can be used for more than just an update on what I just ate. You can:

Promote your Blog Post: Reach out and grasp an new audience. Not all of your followers have read your blog. So invite them through a tiny URL link that twitter provides for you.

Get updated on Breaking News: There are multiple twitter clients such as twhirl , which allow you to access twitter from your desktop. You have the ability to upload via mobile device, which means someone on the East coast could inform me of the latest secrets of LOST before I view it!

Interact with Professionals: Many of the bloggers that I had on my feed reader before I began blogging and tweeting are on Twitter. Now I have access to them and have the ability to pick their brain. It’s also been a great way to get a hold of my PR instructor!

Conduct Research: you can pose a question and get a response in an instant!

List job Opportunities: There have been multiple PR pros that have posted job opportunities through their own firm or company, as well as passing along the openings they stumble across themselves.

Pass along resources: Among my new twitter friends and my classmates, we’ve shared application deadlines, and good blog posts on how to make a podcast. The passing along of helpful hints from one PR lover to the next is the way we will make this profession a step above.

I’ve found myself as a Facebook-stalking college student to be checking twitter more than I have been checking Facebook. But it has also been a helpful educational tool. My first real interaction with twitter was on Super-Bowl Sunday. I was only following about four PR pros, but it was more interesting to sit and watch what they were saying about the advertisements, than actually watching the advertisements.

There are many great ways to use Twitter other than finding out what you ate for breakfast. Come see what all the tweeting is about!

Email Etiquette

An email can make or break your credibility. If you’re a small business or a large business, without proper email etiquette no one will trust your product or service. With email being the main form of communication many have yet to be educated with the proper way to write emails.

I personally have been victim to reading a long painful email with poor grammar. Many peoples thoughts are in their heads and not in their fingers. This doesn’t mean you must be a good writer to be a good email writer, it means you may need to put some more effort into your daily emailing activity. Try to put the main point of your email in the first few sentences because many people are in a rush when reading and don’t have the time to shuffle through a bunch of 5 paragraph emails. Keep it short and to the point.

Brian Zafron gives some great tips on how to write a quality email. Many people find email an impersonal form of communication, which it may be, but it’s becoming the most common form of communication, so one cannot ignore the etiquette of a well-written email.

One thing to remember when writing an email is that your reader can’t hear you. So be aware of the tone of voice you are using, it may come off differently to your reader than it does to you.  Zafron says, “the quality of email correspondences has influenced the quality of relationships,”and I couldn’t agree more. Your laziness with writing says a lot about how how you could potentially act with a client in a relationship.

If you’re looking to do anything in our techno-world you must pay more attention to your emails, they aren’t just something something you can squeeze into your free 5 minutes. Take your time and draft and quality email.