Jan 31
Love0

6 Reasons Telling Someone You’d like to Add them to your Professional Network is Lame

By Communications, Social Media

You’ve all gotten this message: “I’d like to add you to my professional network.”

Here are 6 reasons why you should never, ever send this default message.

  1. It demonstrates to the contact that you don’t really know much about social networking.
  2. It is a lazy approach — you should put some thought into it instead of using the default message.
  3. It doesn’t give the contact any context at all! You owe people in your network a reminder of how it is you are connected and why you should share your professional world. Tell them WHY you want to add them. You owe them that much.
  4. It makes me think that you’re just trying to build your numbers and don’t represent any value to my network whatsoever.
  5. It doesn’t give me any detail about you — I’d love to know that I’ll be connecting to you to help you find a job or endorse your work or introduce you to a connection of mine.
  6. You’re part of a professional network; act like it. Is a default message a professional invitation?

P.S. The image above is from an actual invitation I received from someone I’ve never met or heard of. I did not accept the invitation.

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Jan 25
Love0

Community Conversations: The Face of Charlottesville Tomorrow

By Communications

This post is part of a series, “Community Conversations” featuring people responsible for the socialization and communications for their businesses. If you’re interested in contributing a post for this series, contact me at mjaggers at jaggerscommunications dot com

My name is Jennifer Marley, and I’m the Community Engagement Coordinator for Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Charlottesville Tomorrow is a non-profit, non-partisan community news platform. We cover growth, development, and local political issues facing the Charlottesville-Albemarle area. These stories are published to our site and, through a ground-breaking partnership, printed in The Daily Progress; but after that, what happens to them? That’s where I come in.

I take the content, boil it down so I can understand it (as a newbie to this community, sometimes that takes a while!), then broadcast it to our community in ways that are specific to the issue, the audience, and our strategy. For example, I may take a story that we publish to our site and share it on Twitter by posing a question; post it to Facebook and tag a group that is involved; print up doorhangers and canvas a neighborhood that is affected; and make it the subject of our monthly-ish News n’Brews events. Each tool we use has specific strengths and weaknesses, and so we try to use them to maximize their strengths. I strive for specificity and strategy with everything I share.

One of the most fun parts of my job is sharing who we are. When I was first hired, I launched a reader survey to take a general temperature check on how our community perceived us. Something I heard over and over from readers was that they were interested in the people behind Charlottesville Tomorrow – which makes perfect sense to me. We’re a small community, and while it would be nice to think we can hide behind all our fun tech toys and just broadcast content, people want to connect with other people. For some readers, making that personal connection might be a gateway to our content. So I encourage our reporters to share stories they’ve written across their own social networks; I work on getting them in front of our community at events and as speakers; and we have fun sharing what’s happening around the office across our social media platforms.

We believe this area is special and we cover what we cover because we want it to stay that way. Finding ways to make that content affect people personally is important, and that’s what I work towards every day!

Connect with Jennifer and Charlottesville Tomorrow on Twitter

 

 

Jan 23
Love0

Why I Love to Teach: Reason Number 4,365

By Public Relations

Forgive me, I’m all verklempt. I just received the following Facebook message from a student I taught in St. Louis more than seven years ago:

Got a job interview with _______________ hospital this Wednesday; second interview. It is for a Sr. PR Specialist position. Anyway, wanted to tell you because I had to draw on everything you once taught me at college in my phone interview. So thanks!

Heart; melted.

The student was one of those great students a teacher never forgets; I’ve stayed in touch with a handful of them, and this one has always stood out. His note reminded me how much I loved teaching at the college level. I taught a course in public relations to communications majors at Fontbonne University in St. Louis, Mo. I don’t teach college courses any more (although, may return to it one day). But every day I teach; here, on the blog, in client meetings, with colleagues I mentor and in workshops I deliver on behalf of organizations or under my own company umbrella.

I think a really strong education in communications and yes, even public relations is useful for every person in business for themselves. I will continue to teach in and out of classrooms, as long as I’m able — and hopefully now and again, someone will pop by to remind me why I love it so much.

Thanks “Nano,” you made this ol’ PR teacher’s night.

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Jan 23
Love0

Paula Deen, Diabetes and the Culture of Transparency

By Communications

Paula Deen, lover of butter and oil, matriarch of a Food Network empire and now, public Type 2 diabetes patient, has pissed off a lot of people. Deen revealed her years-old diagnosis of diabetes recently, conveniently coinciding with her new deal to endorse a pharmaceutical product. Representing Novo Nordisk, Deen has launched Diabetes in a New Light.  Criticism of her cooking techniques, recipes consistently loaded with fat and sugar, has been led by Anthony Bourdain who called her “the worst, most dangerous person to America.”

As Deen made her announcement about her endorsement, she declared that Type 2 diabetes isn’t changing her life. From Paula Deen Has Type 2 Diabetes:

“And even as she reveals that she is living with Type 2 Diabetes, she says it won’t stop her from eating the way she wants.

“I was determined to share my positive approach and not let diabetes stand in the way of enjoying my life,” Deen said Tuesday in a release announcing her launch ofDiabetes in a New Light™, geared toward finding “simple ways” to manage challenges of the disease.”

The lack of up-front transparency about her disease and the message that healthy living and eating isn’t a necessary component of living with Type 2 diabetes is what’s causing Deen to lose fans, fast. The health care community is beginning to demonstrate real concern over the message delivered as well and with good reason. Someone with as much of an influential footprint as Paula Deen espousing the “eat what you want” approach to diabetes management is very dangerous indeed.

It will be very interesting to see if her messaging changes as a result of the reaction to her announcement.

I come at this from a very personal point of view: many of my family members have lived with and died from complications of Type 2 diabetes. It’s pervasive and difficult, but not impossible to manage. If you or someone you know and care about has Type 2 diabetes, learn more about it from the American Diabetes Association and other resources that help in positive, healthy ways.

 

 

 

Jan 19
Love0

Measuring Success: What’s a Bounce Rate and Does it Matter?

By Communications, Social Media

If you’re a casual Google Analytics user, you may have noticed a mysterious statistic in your reports; the bounce rate. A lot of unmaintained, unintentional online management of your reputation can result in high bounce rates, in the neighborhood of 40-60% or (gulp!) higher.

Is that bad?

YES!

A high bounce rate means that a visitor came to your site, didn’t find what they were seeking and immediately “bounced” away. From the good people of Google:

“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.”

If you have a new site, or a blog on which you have not yet published enough relevant content, your bounce rate might be high. It is worth taking a look at the percentage regularly and working on reducing it over time.

I’m pretty happy that I’ve gotten my bounce rate down under 6% and suspect that’s about as good as it’s going to get.