Social Media at the VTIC

I apologize for the lack in postings! And right after I teach two workshops on social media at the Vermont Travel Industry Conference. How very bad. But, in my defense, it is because of the social media workshops that I have been slacking. Those were two mother load of workshops to pull together - they were like research papers pulled into presentations after the research paper had been written!

The first workshop I taught - Alleviating the Fear of Social Networking: The Basics of Social Media - was geared to the 1.0 crowd. I wanted to cover social networking and social media in a very basic way - from history to current applications to help folks merely understand why it showed up and how it is used. And I think it worked! The feedback I have received has been very positive. One woman even wrote, "I learned more in your workshop than I have in entire conferences."


She was definitely NOT referring to the Vermont Travel Industry Conference. That was by far the best conference I have ever attended and for so many reasons. The Equinox is stellar and just being in Manchester was a delight. Cindy Delaney and her crew from Delaney Meeting & Event Management did an absolutely spectacular job. They even dealt with me exceptionally. I had to be the pain-in-the-butt presenter who got all nervous when there wasn't a projector in the room and asked the Equinox for help, when of course the Delaney crew had one all along. Guess I know what I am asking for next Christmas. Thank you very much to all who helped.

There was fantastic networking and excellent exhibits as well as a bunch of workshops besides mine that were chalk full of varying levels of pertinent information to a multiplicity of niche groups within Vermont's vibrant travel industry. I was especially keen on the Orvis dinner event - the Orvis flagship store was turned into a networking outdoor department store with wine, beer, pasta, salad, and desserts being served between the fishing hats, dog beds, and uberlicious Vermont clothes. Here I am (wearing my new Orvis hat) with Vermont's Commissioner of Tourism, Bruce Hyde.


The second workshop I tackled has a much longer name - Implementing New Media Marketing: Practical and Cost Effective Ways to Integrate Social Networking & New Media into Current Marketing Plans - and that is because it was a much meatier workshop than the first. I do not feel the need to explain because the ridiculously long title should be enough! But I do want to share some of the tips I presented and offered in hand outs to my loyal blog readership. Hopefully we picked up a few more after the conference!

Marketing Tips for Utilizing Social Networking & New Media Tools:

-->The Blog
• Is Not A Way to Publicize What You May Want in a Press Release
• There is no place for marketing mumbo-jumbo
• Blogs are used to spread news, but news that is pertinent to the audience, NOT what YOU want to be pertinent to your audience
• The audience often changes from what you originally thought it would be
• Blogs are a great way to act as a reporter in your community
• Before you try to start a blog, begin by getting engaged in blogs; take an area you are personally interested in outside of your work and find a few blogs on it, subscribe to them, tinker with using social media bookmarks like DIGG and Delicious, and comment on the blogs while figuring out how to share with others in your social networks, like Facebook or Twitter
• Do not fear the blog – if your messaging is consistent, it will not be lost
• Blogs can be free to set up, or paid for if you want them to feed directly through your website
• You do not need to now HTML to blog, only how to insert hyperlinks, insert photos, and insert already created HTML codes from social networking sites
• Whoever is the blogger must like writing!!!!
• Blogs are so worth it when done right because they have free search engines the marketing of your business is done through SEO placement in the wording on the blog.
-->Get really comfortable with SEO keywords, do not just leave it to the computer professionals, they need to be consistently used in all marketing efforts; they are the backbone of creating links that bring people to your website
-->Sign up for Google Alerts
-->Subscribe to RSS feeds in areas of your own personal interest
-->Start “photoblogging” which is really just using Flickr or Photo Bucket to index your photos
-->Create a YouTube account and spend some time checking out videos and seeing how it works, also share some videos with friends so you know how to do it
-->And yes, join Linked In & Facebook!
-->Engage! Join user groups that relate to your interest, give your email when asked, post on message boards on sites you visit, make public profiles instead of hiding or “trolling” – your public profiles are public, so don’t put up info that you don’t want to be public
-->If you have a tough boss to crack, there is even more of a reason to engage in new media because then you’ll have examples to back up why you need to utilize new media.
-->Accept that there is no quick fix in online marketing; it is an ongoing process, no matter what else you want to believe.
-->You must engage! There is not a cheap or costly solution, it is all about time and engagement.

Marketing Tips for Incorporating New Media into Existing Marketing:

-->SEO > Marketing Consistency
• Consistent Content > keep the message the same, keep the message easy to understand, keep it under a 10th grade reading level, and synchronize it with your Search Engine Optimization, website descriptions, and metatags
• Get the advertising adjectives out of your descriptions
• Google search your own SEO terms and competitors for new opportunities
• Integrate your direct mail campaigns into your e-campaigns so they support one another in theme and message

-->Incorporate with Public Relations
• Use social networking and new media to help tell your story
• Utilize links to boost your web presence!
• Make your press room more of a media center, not just for traditional media, but fill it with your own social media endeavors
• Do not use traditional public relations to promote your social media work! Use them to support one another
• Pick a few social/new media avenues and do them well for your audiences
• Let the information you discover going through this process drive your advertising and public relations and get the two of them in sync!
• Do not think of marketing as linear any longer! Public relations should never come at the end – you should get those tools up and running while you update the website and all of your messaging!

-->Outsourcing
• You WILL NOT SAVE MONEY if you do the web work by yourself!
• What you need to outsource is the technology, but not until you have a clear idea of what you want to get out of new media, which you will not be able to determine if you aren’t using it yourself. And when outsourcing, be collaborative! Are trainings and ongoing consultations going to be more beneficial in the long run so the work can be more effectively and financially distributed?
• Before hiring someone to update the website, get your messaging in all areas of marketing and SEO words in collaboration. And before you do that, get a few unofficial consultations from people who use your materials, both internal and external and some who have never used you materials and get some feedback. Review and integrate before you determine the final outcome. Research websites you like while engaging yourself in new media – make note of these so you can share once you do hire someone to update your website

-->Bring In House
• Create a new media type of position - A new media type of position should handle researching and updating all social networking and new media components (including photography and video skills) and as they are an ongoing engagement, not a quick fix, it is most cost effective to have someone on board – have that person work with outsourced experts to get your social or new media components up and running
• Integrate social networking into the culture of your business. Do not block social networking sites!

-->Audience Integration
• Think about your different audiences – the more options/services/amenities you offer, the more audiences you are going to have; NOT the larger your audience is; use this in determining what new media outlets will work best for different audiences
• Create your own word of mouth marketing campaign - the key is the message CANNOT BE CONTROLLED, but is messaging is consistent, the conversations will be consistent
• Look at your existing customer lists – don’t overuse the e-newsletter that targets your audience as one big mass every time you have information you want to share; instead think about using different social media tools to get the same information out so it resonates with your different audiences
• Once you have customers/guests/clients engaged with you through social networking, ask them to send you YouTube and Flickr/PhotoBucket links from their experiences and ask if you can use in your marketing efforts and then integrate into your marketing

Hope these come in useful for folks! Brought to you direct from Rachel Carter - owner of that corporate hippie driven Vermont public relations firm.

Go Red For Women Luncheon!

I have been meaning to get this posted but I have been feeling the sand tightening around my head as my arms flail trying to get out. I am so grateful for all the excellent press I have gotten recently such as this week's Burlington Free Press, but I must apologize to those great folks contacting me for appointments as it's busy season in PR and I must focus on my current clients and their deadline oriented projects. Thanks all for understanding!!!


In the meantime, I thought I would shift the focus to some other fabulous women business owners, specifically those who sat at the table I sponsored at the Go Red For Women Luncheon to benefit the American Heart Association and to raise awareness on heart disease and stroke in women.

I'd like to give some shout outs to:

Kathy Blume, the fabulous Vermont actress and proprietor of Might Ruckus - an entertainment company that keeps Kathy performing across the country both on the stage and at conferences with her feisty political commentary. www.kathrynblume.com

Starr Jewell, a long time co-worker and friend from the agency world and current collaborator on marketing work for clients. Starr now owns and operates Starr Jewell Marketing Services and handles the whole kit-n-kaboodle. www.starrjewell.com

Markey Read, an entrepreneur guru as well as avid urban homesteader, Markey owns Career Networks - a career and development center (great option if you are looking at your "Plan B" in the economic drama). Markey has also recently instituted a series of "urban homesteading" events which I attended one of this weekend. www.careernetworksvt.com

Kim Reynolds, and excellent writer and editor of Woodstock Magazine, part of Vermont's Mountain View Publishing group. Kim publishes the lovely magazine depicting the lovely Woodstock, Vermont, the location of my first large travel PR account and her editorial standards are most admirable. www.mountainviewpublishing.biz

Not able to attend due to sickness and schedules, but still table members and supporters of the Go Red For Women Luncheon were:

Diana Jones, owner of bookkeeping and tax service firm, Double Entry Bookkeeping - www.doubleentrybookkeeping.net

Stephanie Raccine, co-owner of website design firm, Off the Page Creations - www.offthepagecreations.com

Diane Langevin, owner of interior decorating company, Signature Interiors - www.vermontinteriordecorating.com

Mary Beth Quinn, owner of the business coaching outfit detailed below, The Growth Coach - www.thegrowthcoach-vermont.com

Also in attendance was my amazing mother, a school district superintendent (not in VT) and the loving force behind so much of my success. I love you Mom!!!


Thanks ladies and enjoy the pictures!

Who Wants to Grow your Business??

You do! I am not a Vermont business grower, I am a Vermont business publicist, but the two are often very much intertwined. So much in fact that sometimes people want to meet with me to talk about how to grow their business before they have the kinks worked out so that they are ready for the PR. This is when I refer them to Mary Beth Quinn - The Growth Coach of Vermont. Of the many people I have met while launching and getting my Vermont public relations firm up and running, Mary Beth is truly one of those people who, quite simply, gets it. And as someone who gets it myself, I love to surround myself with like minded folks.

I figured Mary Beth and her strategic business coaching company would not mind if I stole some great pieces of advice for my loyal and new readers and gave her full credit. So, here are some tips from The Growth Coach of Vermont (edited into my own words), tips which I fully integrate into growing my own business. And from business owner to business owner, they are working!

1.) Identify your best referral sources over the past year and not only thank them, but keep them updated on your business and what you are looking for in clients today.

2.) Build up those relationships with businesses with whom you are the paying client and get yourself some informal sales agents.

3.) Ask your current customers and clients for referrals and introductions.

4.) Build strategic alliances with other businesses that have the same client base.

5.) Make doing business with you easy - especially do not ask potential clients to assume any risk in working with you.

6.) Consider, not resist utilizing telemarketing - especially with follow-up.

7.) Influence many in one niche market with events or seminars and collaborate with other business partners in reaching potential customers with events.

8.) Utilize public relations! For real, that is one of Mary Beth's tips!

9.) Revisit past customer and client relationships and heal those that may be tarnished.

10.) Leverage indirect competitors to gain new customers - leads can flow in both directions.

The Growth Coach of Vermont offers a variety of ways to work with Mary Beth including retreats, workshops, seminars, one-on-one coaching, and special projects. To learn more visit www.thegrowthcoach-vermont.com or contact me and I'll introduce you!

Vermont Sustainable Exchange

Doing business in Vermont?
Stressed by the economic drama?
Interested in looking at ways to change your business to be able to sustain yourself through these next several years and into the future?

I think most business owners I know would answer yes to all three of these questions. So, for those who answered yes, I want to share information about the Vermont Sustainable Exchange - located on the web at www.changethemarket.com.

Vermont Sustainable Exchange operates an online business to business marketplace that allows Vermont businesses to measure, grow, and coordinate their trade with fellow Vermont businesses.

Businesses pool the credit they issue to each other into a common marketplace where local goods and services are bought and sold, loans are issued to willing entrepreneurs, and the cost of doing business is lowered by consolidating expenses and buying power.


I plan to investigate Vermont Sustainable Exchange as a place to search for an Apple specialist to help me learn how to better use the IMac I am running Windows on. I am hoping to find someone more cost effective than going through Small Dog Electronics, but more importantly, someone who will help me learn a Mac, not just be irritated that I bought a Mac and am running Windows. Instead of paying, I pay with my time and someone else will be able to benefit from my Vermont public relations services. It will be interesting to see how this works, and I would love to get feedback from folks that are currently using Vermont Sustainable Exchange!

A Great Example of Grassroots Marketing on a National Level

If ever there was an organization that did exceptional grassroots marketing, including social networking, it would be the Fresh Air Fund. The Fresh Air Fund is an independent, not-for-profit agency, which has provided free summer vacations to more than 1.7 million New York City children from low-income communities since 1877. Vermont is one of the places where many of these children come to experience fresh air in the summer. Right now they are looking for local college age kids to serve as counselors for this upcoming summer. More info is available here - http://freshairfundcounselors.smnr.us/.

As a marketer, if you click the above link, you will be treated to one of the best uses of social media based public relations I have come across. The release offers embedded codes for bloggers like me to share the video:



It has online applications for camp counselors (which is what they are looking for with this particular release). It has embedded codes for banners, logos and tons of others stuff:



It has the background info (templated paragraph for my clients who read this!) and all media contact info. And my favorite - it has all the social media tags so you can Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube the heck out of it - if you want.

Besides having their technology in the tip top position, they have the staff dedicated to the time it takes to effectively manage a public relations campaign. The PR folks running this campaign sure did their research in their target markets (one being Vermont) and finding ways that people in these target markets get their information (local blogs being one). Because of my popular Vermont Vibes Blog, I was contacted last summer and asked to help find some family hosts via my blog. Coincidence or not, there were definitely some families in Charlotte who signed up to be host families who hadn't been before. And it didn't end there - I am contacted on a regular basis to write on my blog again. Can that be annoying? Sure! But one of the unfortunate side effects of being a PR person is you have to be skilled at being annoying! Otherwise I would never be writing this blog on behalf of the Fresh Air Fund, because without the follow-up, I would never remember!

I do hope they use the Fresh Air Fund as a case study in those books I had to use to teach the PR classes at Champlain College. Definitely a better example of current PR than say, the Tylenol one (PR pros, I know you know that one!).

So, if you are reading this and know how to get information to college age kids - please get them this link! http://freshairfundcounselors.smnr.us/

Social Media - Grow with It...

So, times are tough and they don't seem to be getting better. How ridiculously annoying for everyone! I mean, how can you not get down when you work your butt off to have two days off to cram in all the things you possibly can that you learn from all the new ways we are learning things. What about sleeping? Visit friends? And all the never ending items on the growing To Do List? I don't know about you, but sometimes I really, really, really feel -> this close to losing it!

AURGH!!!!

Well, the only thing you can do during tough times is to be proactive and NOT just "wait it out." This is your chance to learn, grow, develop more contacts, learn new skills, etc. My backup skill is gardening and I am waiting for that call to come and someone to say, "Hi Miss Vermont PR Mama, we are the Government Organization of Environmentally Sustainable Bail-out Package Revamping the National Food Crisis Committee and you have been selected to receive a subsidy to start a heady, hippie, farm growing produce for Vermonters and we chose you because of your fabulous PR skills." But, until the government can figure out what to call the committee and who can head it up that isn't being charged with tax fraud I will have to focus my energies on other efforts during this "tough times." And I suggest you do as well...

Last week I was invited to present on a fantastic panel at CCTV's Media Maven Luncheon to a group of non-profit leaders on Communication Strategies for Touch Times, specifically the biggest buzz and raddest rave, social media. Myself, owner of Rachel Carter PR, along with Liz Schlegal of Foundline, Dr. Elaine Young the Champlain College Marketing Professor and Blogger, and Patricia Aroujo a savvy E-Entrepreneur sat on the panel and dished out some advice.

I highly suggest checking out the video of the luncheon and hearing all of the great advice firsthand. While this is aimed at non-profits, there is extremely valuable and pertinent information for small businesses as well:



I offer five tips in summation of this panel discussion:

1.) Collaborate!!!
2.) Understand that you can't be everything to everyone or you're no one to none and really apply it to your business or organization. Believe us, you are NEVER the exception.
3.) Using social media is NOT a quick fix and in this day and age, quick fixes are done, so get to work and stop complaining about the good old days, they just move farther away.
4.) Change your story at all times for every audience. You do it when you are telling the same story to your son and then to your mother-in-law - you make it pertinent to them. Now, do the same thing with the messages that come from your business or organization. There just isn't any other way and shameless self promotion is a hubris sin of the past regardless of how "good" it is.
5.) Stop thinking re-actively! While things are slow, this is the PERFECT time to shift your marketing to being proactive because while proactive works the best, it is very time consuming, so implement it now!

Vermont Business Award Opportunity

The Burlington Business and Professional Women’s (BPW) organization seeks young professional women and men between the ages of 21 and 35 to participate in the 2009 Young Careerist program on Wednesday, February 11 at 5:30 p.m. at the Best Western Windjammer Conference Center in South Burlington, Vermont.

Held on an annual basis at the local, state and national levels of BPW, the Young Careerist Program recognizes the accomplishments of young, upcoming leaders and provides them with professional development skills and opportunities. Established in 1964, the national Young Careerist Program involves a competitive selection process within local organizations and state federations, resulting in the selection of a Young Careerist to represent each state federation at the BPW/USA annual National Conference. During the program, candidates participate in interviews with a group of judges and present a four-minute speech to the Burlington BPW membership and guests. They are judged in the following areas: written and biographical information, judges’ interview, ability to help others achieve, group interaction and prepared speeches on specific topics.

To be eligible to participate in the program, candidates must either live or work in the greater Burlington area, have worked in their current profession for at least a year, be familiar with BPW, and support the national BPW legislative platform statement.

For more information please visit www.burlingtonbpw.org. To participate in the program, contact Jennifer Nachbur at 802-238-6110 or Jennifer.Nachbur@uvm.edu.

I participated last year and was not only named the Burlington Young Careerist, but also the Vermont Young Careerist! Great opportunity for young professionals - check it out!!!