Thought Center

social media

Talking Social Media at LAX Coastal Lifestyle Group Event

Starfish PR was invited to be one of three presenters at the LAX Coastal Lifestyle Group’s Social Media event on Thursday, October 8th. Hosted by the LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce, the Lifestyle events always bring together a vibrant group of creative, entrepreneurial women, and this meeting was no exception!

L-R: Marci Klein, Angela Moore, Jamie Gregor and Liz Peters

Omni Online Solutions‘ Liz Peters spoke first on the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and touched several times on one of our favorite content creators — the blog. Emmy-winning Klein Creative Media shared videos for a variety of clients, illustrating the importance of strong visuals and emotional connection when promoting your business.

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LinkedIn Best Practices

Our clients often come to us for one-on-one Social Media training, and one of the most popular topics is LinkedIn.  It is as famous as Facebook but as mysterious (to many) as Reddit; what I often hear is that “everyone is on it!” and “people tell me it works” — but it’s not always clear WHY people are on it, or HOW it is “working.”

Below, please find SPR’s guide to LinkedIn Best Practices, as inspired by our most recent training sessions.  I hope this helps you brave this professional networking site with confidence — or at least a little less intimidation.

Define Your Goals

What are you hoping to accomplish by being a member of LinkedIn? Are you looking to connect with other professionals in your industry? Hoping to attract new clients? Or looking for a new job or career change?

Identify your endgame before you dive into your profile.

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Celebrate your Social Media Independence!

It has become easier and easier to stay in touch with clients, colleagues and customers. Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, Google+ shares, and numerous other channels enable us to share our thoughts as fast as we can think them. We are constantly staring at a screen, fingers flying in a mad dash to update the world.

The most effective social media messages, though, do more than just remind your readers you exist: they engage the audience. It’s not enough to just have views, you want people to think about, comment on, and share your content.

Photo Courtesy of Olympus Board Shop

One way to generate interesting content is to do interesting things. As our country celebrates its independence, I encourage you to free yourself from your computer, tablet, and phone and go out and DO something! Find something that inspires you, interests you, or try something new – whether personally or professionally.

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Social Media Tips

 

We are always coming up with social media tips and tricks for our clients, so we wanted to share some here on our blog. These are just a few suggestions to help build your following and engage your audience.

Initiate connections. Add your social media handles to your email signature and business cards. By making it present in your communications, you will give others the opportunity to connect with you and network further.

Tap into Trending Topics. Check out what’s trending on Twitter throughout the day because there just may be an opportunity for you to join the conversation and bring awareness to the organization.

Update your Profile Often. Don’t shy away from updating your social media profiles. Add personality with topical thoughts, motivational quotes or give a shout out to your favorite sports team. People want to connect with people, so be sure your personality is as apparent as your professional resume.

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14 Reasons for Marketers to Be Excited About 2014 (Part 1)

I am thrilled to be included as a contributor to this great blog post on Ezanga.com featuring many reasons for us marketing dorks to be excited about the coming year.  (Thanks Brittany Berger and HARO!)

Photo courtesy of ezanga.com

It’s important to start anything new with optimism, right? The new year should be no exception. There’s a lot to make the marketing glass look half empty, encrypted keywords and algorithm updates, to name a few. But focusing on the negative is never the way to go.

So instead, we’re going to focus on what we’re excited for in the near future of marketing. Personally, I’m excited about a lot of things, like that people are realizing that just hopping on the social media and content marketing bandwagons won’t bring success. I think this year we’ll see a lot of companies abandon the “throw it and hope it sticks” approach in favor of a thought-out and well-planned strategy.

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Bentley Prince Street Introduces Modern Motion™ – The Latest Carpet Collaboration with Robert A.M. Stern Architects

Modern Motion Represents the 9th Series in the Long-Running Design Collaboration

[City of Industry, CA – August 22, 2012]  Bentley Prince Street is proud to introduce Modern Motion, the ninth carpet collection designed in collaboration with Robert A.M. Stern Architects. Modern Motion features a lively large-scale pattern of intertwining spheres with an elegant color line and is available in broadloom, carpet tile and area rugs. Modern Motion coordinates beautifully with bestselling product Modern Block™ and is designed to visually enhance corporate, healthcare, hospitality and educational settings.

“It’s been a privilege to collaborate with Robert Stern and his associates all these years,” says Anthony Minite, president.  “They understand the marketplace and are successful in identifying the right products to deliver at the right time.

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What to Expect Your First Week as a Startern

It is back to school time, which also means that many college students are starting internships. In fact, I was inspired to write this post because we have a potential intern coming in to interview today!

Starfish PR is a small (but mighty) operation, so we get our own coffee and do our own grunt work. While our interns should not expect to be running the company by the end of the week, they should expect to jump in and do some real PR work!

We love for our interns to share their specific interests and internship goals with us. That way we can identify assignments and upcoming events that will get them excited about the field of PR. Our goal is to inspire our interns, not crush them!

Another important part of the first week, is having our interns become familiar with our clients. We ask them to visit our clients’ websites, blogs, facebook and twitter accounts and take notes, as well as ask questions.

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My Week in Wyoming

This past week I took an amazing family vacation to Wyoming and some of the surrounding states. Wyoming is the least populous state in the country and two thirds of its terrain consists of mountain ranges. These two facts alone made social networking a challenge, but I was happy to hang it up for awhile in order to enjoy Wyoming’s natural beauty, wildlife and occasional roadside watering hole.

There were a few experiences on my trip, however, that I couldn’t resist sharing with the world such as Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park, my boyfriend’s first time on a horse and a family rodeo. More often than not, when it came down to sharing a photo or two I found myself using instagram. I think this is because instagram enables everyone to take great photos. Plus, like Twitter, it lets you add a hashtag (#) to your updates, which makes it easier for others to find your photos.

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Are You Making it Easy for People to Talk About You?

Personalized Tweet Zone sign from Lakers build day in L.A.

Here’s a simple and effective tip to help you promote your business or upcoming event.

Create a sign that reminds your customers or guests to update their status about you.  Here’s an example of a “Tweet Zone” we helped create for our client Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles.  They host up to 25 volunteers on each of their build sites five days a week and you can imagine how many of them have smart phones.  They designed this sandwich board that can be updated with an event hashtag very easily.  It also serves as a reminder to move away from the building activity and hard hat areas to safely post their status updates.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money on signage, you can install a chalkboard or dry erase board at your location/event or order low cost business cards and pass them out.

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