It’s funny how we change, and it’s funny how we don’t. While I don’t write here often enough, I’m glad I’ve jotted a few things down here so I have them on record as a reference point for moments like this. The quote above was part of a blog post published two years ago about my next chapter, which at the time was starting my new job at Mall of America. It is equally as applicable moving into this next chapter as it was then.

I want to share with you what my next chapter looks like. I realize after discreetly changing my job on a few social profiles that a lot of people are curious about this move, so let me address some of the questions and comments received.

New job???… You quit the Mall?!?

Yes. After a marvelous few years leading social and digital strategy for Mall of America, last Friday was my last day as digital brand manager at MOA. A job I loved, presented tremendous opportunities for professional and personal growth, and most importantly afforded me the opportunity to work with some of the most wonderful and talented people I’ve met thus far in my career. I am eternally grateful for my time and experience at Mall of America.

Where are you going?

I’ve accepted an incredible opportunity with Imagination Publishing (fabulous little content shop out of Chicago) as senior social media strategist.

Are you moving to Chicago?

No. I’ll be embedded full-time at General Mills leading social presence, social strategy development and brand/product integration for Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Eat Better America and Tablespoon. All phenomenal brands – and all food related, so I’m in heaven.

Is Mall of America replacing you?

No. However, Mall of America is hiring a digital PR coordinator.

But… you had such a sweet gig at MOA…

This has been a really interesting remark made by a few folks. My gig at MOA was sweet, and I loved it, however, I have plans and priorities that are best served in my new endeavor and the sweetness of that trumps the sweet gig I had at MOA.

An anecdote…

I happened upon this great quote by Carl Jung that succinctly describes a little bit about me (and this is a slight psych rant because I can’t help myself):

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with objects it loves.”

Play instinct. It is a precious thing. It is different for everyone (if developed) and is important to understand what your play instinct is, or in other words, what you gravitate toward; what allows you to discover, connect with and uncover what you need. When you have, understand and are always aware of this, identifying the next step (I’ll argue in anything, although this pertains to business and change) is relatively simple.

My play instinct is curious in nature and always looking to unveil something new about humanity, my own or those in my frame of reference (I’ve never run out of stuff to play with;-). I love people, I love what motivates them; I love helping them, I love seeing things through a different lens and I love finding new ways to explore all of these things. These experiences, full of answered questions and unexpected discoveries help me to understand myself better; what’s next and how I might best get there. In essence, it’s not about what I know or status, but how I seek meaning and am fulfilled by it all. The creative mind does indeed play with objects it loves and I can’t wait to start playing with the new objects in my sight line. If for some reason this makes no sense to you, then ask me. Happy to elaborate;-)

Supportive and Amazing People

Big decisions are kind of nuts. While at the end of the day it was my decision to make, having the support of Chad (my amazing husband), awesome family (MG, JK, JK, MP) and friends made it a hell-of-a lot easier. I’m so grateful for the awesome people around me. Life and all of this would mean little without them. Thanks to the several folks who’ve reached out with congratulations, questions and comments. I have a solid network of folks, that’s for darn sure.

I truly can’t wait for what lies ahead and can’t wait to share about it down the road.

“How do I convince management that social media is a conversational medium when they just want to use it to push content?” 

This question, asked by Natali Zheng, at the recent Social Media Breakfast -MSP on community management, ignited a bit of controversy over my answer: “Quit your job.”

My co-presenter, Meg Knodle, answered the question first (more gracefully and logically than I) by sharing that: Data is the best way to sell up (I’m paraphrasing) and that you need to prove value to management in order to get them to understand what happens you talk with people instead of at people.

I completely agree with Meg, and have fought many of my own battles with clients and in organizations about how social media will be used as a tool in a marketing communications plan. I’ve sold up many times and been very successful, but I’ve also been in situations where it is clear that the business culture I’m dealing with is not one that wants to establish a human connection with its audiences, which is what I believe using digital marketing and social media is for. When someone asks a question like Natalie’s, I reflect upon my experiences and wonder how long one should expend energy on the good fight before looking onward to find an environment where passion to foster community among and organization and its audiences can thrive.

“A Culture is made – or destroyed – by its articulate voices.” -Ayn Rand.

*Photo Credit* Marco Bellucci

As it pertains to business, it’s no secret or overlooked fact that we are in a new era. It is the dawn of the connected consumer who has substantially more power than ever before. Power to publish and share with a network [who has a network] in real-time no matter their geography or time zone. With this, comes the necessity and opportunity to examine what we’ve always known with a new lens and make sense of the new by inquisitively walking through it.

Asking better questions was a thread that ran through the content I took in at Blogworld LA over the weekend. In his session, “Drowning in Numbers: Turning Social Media Insight into Data,” Tom Webster did a great job of illustrating how we can seek to make sense of our often information overloaded surroundings as digital communicators. He offered four recommendations to aid in the era of big data:

Know what you don’t know
10% of people create content for people they don’t know. Social media doesn’t give you answers, but it will always give you ammo to ask better questions and draw conclusions. I talk regularly about how many awesome free tools we can use to draw conclusions from data. Some of my favorites are: Google Analytics (understand who comes to your website, what keywords are getting them there, how many of your visitors are mobile v. web based and so on. There is so much there), Facebook (search), Foursquare, Google Places, Yelp (claim your place and get data of who is checking in, how often, what they are saying, etc.), Twitter (real-time data of any search term you can think of – pretty powerful).

Ask better questions
Frosted Flakes was curious enough to turn to the Web to understand user insights about their product. They learned, from tools like Twitter (which offer free real-time data – use search.twitter.com), that people eating cereal for dinner were either drunk, broke or trying to lose weight. Out of these insights, they marketed counter-part Special K as a weight loss cereal, which has been a very successful move.

Prove yourself wrong
Science is about proving yourself wrong until you can’t. We should seek to disconfirm. For example, instead of asking what the best time of day to tweet is, seek to understand what effect tweeting at certain times/days of the week has on your community. Do the work to figure out what’s best based on your own research, not that of what others publish. Data for “content creation” is inherently incurious. Therefore, create content and measure its performance in order to create better content.

Do your own work
A naysayer of Klout from day one, I loved how Tom used it as an example of a tool that is popular because it’s an easy answer for people. Many people, those that don’t question, think it’s legitimate data because we like easy answers. They don’t think to use it with a number of other tools or fact-check if a Klout score is actually representative of influence around a particular subject. Further, Klout’s algorithm for influence is pretty sketchy. Take five minutes to dissect a few people’s Klout scores and you’ll find some interesting things [Klout bashing over]. Tom provided a few factors of influence 1) Relevance of the message, 2) Content of the message, and 3) Credibility of author. It’s good define the end point so you have a framework on how to get there.

What questions have you asked today?

A business function that endeavors to foster connections with a group of people around a shared interest or topic, and the development and execution of strategy around listening and engagement with members of that community. This function typically refers to online communities (social networks, forums, blogs and other digital media), but should complement other management functions established by an organization’s business objectives .

It was a colorful conversation (more to come about my “quit your job” comment) full of great tidbits of information about this emerging discipline. Pre-event, Meg and I bounced some questions around and of course I wrote out all of my answers like a school girl, so thought I’d share them here. For some solid soundbites from the conversation, visit #SMBMSP on Twitter search.

How do you find people who are talking about Mall of America (insert your brand or business here) online? Are they an easy group to engage?
We use a few different tools for listening and engagement. We use TweetDeck, which is a free desktop application for managing multiple Twitter accounts and other social networks. This tool offers the ability to enter search queries and pull any mentions into a column so we’re able to see opportunities to engage with folks who mention our brand, but aren’t necessarily following or using our Twitter handle.

You’ll see @ mentions, “Mall of America” and “MOA” search. Having a dashboard with notifications by the minute makes it very easy to stay up on what’s going on. In this case, you’ll notice the first comment in the second column is someone counting down to an upcoming visit. She clearly doesn’t know we have a Twitter, so we can reach out and say, “We look forward to having you for a visit, Taryn!” in order to show her we’re on Twitter and convert a follower.

Actively listening online has the potential to teach a brand so much about how people relate to their surroundings and what’s important to them (gee, imagine that) − and information is everywhere and mostly public! Whether a blog post, Yelp/Trip Advisor review, Facebook post or a Tweet – it is silly to not be peeking in on what’s being said about your business. There is endless opportunity here.

When on the go (mobile), we use Boxcar for iPhone which allows for the same exact notifications so we can listen, and engage where necessary, but just pops up as a notification. We use this in tandem with the Twitter app. Facebook for iPhone allows us to manage Mall of America fan pages mobilly (comment, delete spam, etc.). We use the same tools for iPad.

I’m fortunate to work for a brand that people mention often, and that it’s typically relevant for us to reach out and acknowledge a comment, share in guest excitement, solve a guest service concern, and a multitude of other engagement points.

In addition to these tools, we use a Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) called JitterJam. This alerts us of brand mentions across social media and traditional media. Note: We use our SCRM tool to send content to Facebook and Twitter so that we can measure its performance among our community. The problem with SCRM tools is that they’re building products based on other products, like Facebook, whose interfaces iterate regularly, so I caution you to make sure that whatever third party you use, vet it substantially. Make sure your content is showing up and not being penalized by Edgerank (Facebook’s algorithm for how things show up in a news feed).

How do you separate your personal and professional identities (or do you)? 
I don’t believe in this. Just like I don’t really believe in “these opinions are mine and not those of my employer.” I do strongly believe in wherever you go there you are. While I may wear different hats in life, I like consistency and find that who I am is represented in my respective roles (wife, friend, daughter, worker, dog mom and so on). I believe this question asks bigger questions:

Why are so many people so concerned about ‘doing it right?’

What has happened to humanity that we question how to have conversations and connect with other humans; as people and as businesses?

At another recent event, I was baffled by how many people went up to a microphone and asked this very question. I understand social technologies are new, but the fundamental mechanism of it, the conversation, is not. There are a few things at work here.

 We have lost the art of conversation, partly as the result of innovation in technology and mass media. Essentially, people have become accustomed to making a message for a large audience that they never hear back from.

 We, as a people, have been trained to do things a certain way and are so concerned about not doing them right that we don’t move forward and tackle scary things.

May sound like and extreme assessment, but that’s okay with me. I just believe that we are who we are and we bring that everywhere. There’s professionalism and there’s your personality. There shouldn’t be a disparity if you’re in this business.

How do you tell the difficult stories? Store closings, accidents, etc?
This largely depends on the story. Mall of America sees an average of 100,000 people a day, so there is so much to share, positive and sometimes negative. Our number one priority is guest safety and guest experience, so we communicate about on-site issues with mainstream media and via Facebook and Twitter when appropriate. As far as social media is concerned, we usually participate in the conversation if it’s started, but don’t necessarily start it on our own. We let our community dictate that and are happy to give factual information and direct people to the best source to answer questions people may have.  Something important to remember is that we’re the house to 520+ tenants, so sometimes communication comes directly from them. Crisis situations are more difficult due to their unpredictable nature, so those are handled on a case-by-case basis. It is important to note that we have a protocol for digital crisis communication that lays over our traditional crisis communication plan.

For a little more in depth, read “How Community Management Spawned a Social Business Strategy at Mall of America.” What do you peeps have to add?

Please share any must-cover topics or questions you have surrounding community management in comments so we can try to incorporate into our discussion, okay? I look forward to seeing some of you there, and if you live in Minnesota and aren’t registered to come, you should;-) Happy Wednesday!

This was the inspiration of the Community Management: How to Develop a Social Business Strategy presentation Bridget Jewell and I gave at MIMA Summit Workshops last Tuesday. When MIMA contacted me to speak, we were asked to speak about community management activities  at Mall of America, which is a core function of our communications team and social media strategy. Instead, we really wanted share the story of how community management was the impetus for what is fast becoming a social business strategy and practice at MOA, with emphasis on successes as well as how incredibly difficult it can be. Here are a few presentation highlights:

Mall of America Gets Social: How an Online Community Was Discovered
Mall of America entered social media  in a casual way in 2009… literally. Someone in marketing just decided to start a Facebook Group (it can be that simple). After a PR gal (Bridget Jewell) thought that there may be an opportunity for new engagement with a new audience, she sought to bring Facebook (converted to a page) into the corporate communications function. It was quickly realized after 15,000 people liked the Mall of America Facebook page in its first month that it was a medium in which some time should be spent. Between conversations on Facebook, Twitter and the MOA Fashion Sense Blog (now the MOA Blog), the community grew to 75,000 fans, 4,500 Twitter followers and regular comments to the blog in one year. A few things were quickly realized: A) We love helping, talking with and learning from our online community. B) Conversations, connections and power of technology have the ability to transform our business. C) More resources and structure need to be allocated toward this communication initiative.

Culture Is Key
I interviewed for my position at MOA when things were still very unclear in terms of what a ‘social media specialist’ should do for an organization (frankly, it’s still unclear most places). I noticed very quickly during the interview process that MOA leadership was behind and engaged with this function and role 100%. Among the most important questions (and really, requirements) – in addition to a brutal social media test that vetted knowledge and practical application – was that this person love the MOA brand and cultivate relationships with guests, prospective guests and internal audiences online and off.

Social Media Strategy
After getting settled, we embarked on developing the company’s social media strategy. The 20-page document lays over the company’s business goals, and more specifically MOA’s marketing communications goals because, and this is important, social media strategy is not a bolt on or something that should be yet another silo within an organization. It should work to complement everything else, and further, to actually accentuate and enhance it. In our presentation we gave the framework for how this strategy is outlined and examples of our own strategy and how it works from goal setting to measurement. The basics that you need to understand in order to plan anything are (see deck for MOA example):

• Goals – Define the big picture aim; your general intentions
• Objectives – Outcome that represent the achievement of your goal(s); THESE HAVE TO BE MEASURABLE
• Strategy – The action plan to reach the objective
• Tactics – Pieces and parts of strategy
• Measurement – What worked and what didn’t
• See our deck for MOA’s goals and examples of planning.

Internal Communication is Key
Before getting into tactics (the tools you’ll be using for marketing communications), it’s vital to make sure that key messages are aligned among communications, marketing, advertising (sales, customer service, HR, etc.) and hopefully everyone else in the company. THIS IS REALY HARD, especially depending on the size of the company, but if your strategy is buttoned up and internal communication is strong (or even somewhat strong), then the tools you use to execute your strategy will be more far more successful. Which brings me to social business strategy.

Social Media Strategy to Social Business Strategy
Community Management and many other strategic digital initiatives have us working across most departments in the company. As our community grows, we mine more and more information that affects all moving pieces of our business (leadership, marketing, operations, IT, legal, accounting, events, etc.). Our current planning and implementation has us developing a core group of stakeholders in the organization to align earned, owned and paid media functions with the end goal of creating a unified experience, whether you enter the doors of Mall of America, or our doors online.

Here’s our deck and a little recap video courtesy of Minnov8. I’d love to hear your thoughts or any questions. Happy Friday:-).

P.S. I can’t stress enough how amazing MIMA Summit is, with a special shout out to content coordinators Julie Kosbab and Lauren Melcher. It’s one of the most fabulous and well produced conferences in the country. Thrilled it’s in my own backyard. Thank you for inviting me to speak – and to the entire team that produces the event.

Accountability
He went after the impression metric right away and classified it as HITS (how idiots track success). “Pure unadulterated crap!” he exclaimed when referring to the person who says, “We’ve touched 500,000 customers this year.” It’s important to actually measure. The bounce rate is the best accountability metric… It means, “I came, I puked, I left.” To drive this one home he called out the Star Tribune, who has 407 links on their home page, to which he said, “Here you go, here’s all this info. Go find everything for yourself.” U of  M, on the other hand, focuses on the person, not page views. A little visit to University of Minnesota‘s website is an experience geared toward the user and focuses on assisting them through its vast house of content available. Definitely worth checking out and taking some notes from. So, we were left with…

Extract insights from everything you do! Deliver delight across digital activities. Be authentic! Don’t guess.

Visitor Loyalty
He used this opportunity to talk about brand destruction. He challenged agencies (and even inferred a bit of doom) to asses data on the micro and macro level, which means helping them to innovate and leave certain metrics (that don’t really tell a story) behind. Give clients data they actually need and can use; that helps dictate new direction or revisit one that’s worked previous. Help clients to see where their audience is and what they need and want.

Influence People in the world
Simple. We’re losing our ability to control the conversation. We are in a human and conversational economy. If you do not understand this, you’re going to have some serious problmes moving forward in digital – and probably life.

FANTASTIC one-liners that sum it all up!

• Don’t pimp yourself! Give your customer what they want.
• If you don’t think about multiplicity in everything you do, than you won’t do great things.
• Think differently and increase innovation in your company.

Four Different Ways You Should Be Measuring
Avinash closed his presentation by sharing four different ways to measure the performance of our digital content in order to truly understand our audience(s), and with that knowledge (hopefully), create a better experience for them through content and conversations.

• Conversation Rate – Number of audience comments or replies per post
• Amplification Rate – Facebook/G+ = # of shares per post | Twitter = # of retweets per tweet | Blog/YouTube = shares per post  and clicks per post
• Applause Rate – Facebook/G+ = # of likes per post, +1 | Twitter = # of favorite clicks per post | Blog = # of +1 and likes per post, video, etc.
• Economic Value – Sum of short and long term revenue and cost savings (per visit goal value). This is a custom metric that needs to be assigned. Much like how we give value (as PR people) to impressions. You set this up in Google Analytics.

In addition to being one of Google’s masters of awesome, Avinash blogs about analytics and digital marketing at Occam’s Razor. Visit Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value for his kick ass blog post that lends far greater detail and explanation of these four metrics.

This keynote did indeed delight this digital gal, and gave me inspiration to continue on my little path of seeking business success by way of building an experience (holistically) for people instead of thoughtless and ridiculous things that people will never care about. I’d love to hear your thoughts, and I hope to share a few more MIMA Summit session highlights in the coming days. God, it feels good to write. I don’t do it enough. Hoping someone enjoys it. Also – a HUGE THANK YOU to the organizers and volunteers of MIMA Summit. Talk about a professional organization who’s crushing it. Way to be an example of the awesome.

Happy Thursday:-)

My husband and I just got back from an amazing road trip to the south. We drove from Minneapolis to Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA last week. The Sunday before we departed, I picked up and watched “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” a 90s film set in Savannah (originally a popular book) to get in the Savannah state of mind.

Much like I enjoy ‘checking in’ to places, I also like to check in to the media I consume with a nifty application called Get Glue. Get Glue hit the market in late 2010 and allows users to ‘check in’ to what they’re watching, reading, listening to, reading, thinking about, etc. You can then upload these check ins to Twitter and Facebook, and use Foursquare if you’re checking into a location and media at the same time.

I checked in to “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” on Get Glue and added “In preparation for our Savannah getaway” as a status and uploaded to Twitter.

Moments later, *literally* I got a tweet from the @VisitSavannah Twitter account that said: “Watching ‘Midnight’ is a great way to get into the #Savannah state of mind.”

Bam! Sunday night and Savannah’s CVB is actively listening and engaging with people mentioning “Savannah” on Twitter. I was impressed, and thrilled as we had been investigating ghost and historical tours on Trip Advisor that day, but weren’t left with a solid conclusion on what to do based on varying user reviews. In my unexpected interaction with Amy Brock, Visit Savannah’s community manager, I was able to quickly establish what to do (some of which was consistent with Trip Advisor, and some was likely insider info, which rocks) and where to go when we arrived in Savannah – something that would not have happened had she not sought me out based on search.

Oh, the simplicity of all of this…
While I didn’t have an extensive conversation with Amy, I was able to establish that it’s a team of a few, with main community management activities falling on her and other staff here and there. We didn’t talk strategy, but my experience with them tells me that their time spend here falls under a goal that looks like this: Seek opportunities to generate awareness of Savannah and its CVB services in order to drive traffic to Savannah and its vendors. Their use of Twitter is just one of many CVB marketing functions I imagine, and one that they are utilizing extremely well.

The act of Visit Savannah monitoring social mentions of the word ‘Savannah’ online, and their subsequent action of engagement was timely, flawless and effective. My mention of Savannah was an opportunity for them to reach out and say hi and simply let me know that they were there. This could have been the extent of our interaction, but instead, I utilized the awareness to ask a few pressing questions about our travel there. In addition, I asked questions when I arrived, which I wouldn’t have known to do had this engagement not happened. This enhanced my experience before arriving in Savannah and my time there.

Freshly back from Savannah, which is my new favorite city in the U.S., I can say that their online brand is representative of the experience you have during a visit to Savannah. The culture, architecture, food, people, history, etc. are beyond hospitable, colorful, enchanting and whimsical – even the ghosts *smile*. I highly recommend you check it out sometime.

A big part of my job at Mall of America is managing and developing its online community. Listening to what people say about the Mall of America brand, interacting with our community and continuing to build it by having meaningful conversations. This tactic of our work fits within the guest experience and innovative marketing programs piece of our social media strategy.

Working in this space is interesting (for so many reasons), in that rarely do I (as a consumer) experience the level of digital outreach we provide our guests at MOA (and I’m not insinuating we’re perfect at this either). I’ve just had such an experience at InterContinental Hotel Times Square in New York City that I believe many brands could learn something from. 

When I booked travel for my New York trip (I attended and spoke at Blogworld & New Media Expo NYC 2011 last week), there was no particular reason for my choosing InterContinental TS, other than proximity to the conference center. Their website was pleasant and booking was a breeze. Upon arrival, I had a very positive first impression. The hotel is new, beautiful and located a few blocks from Times Square. The staff is very friendly and welcoming. When I got to my room, I was delighted by its modern, yet homey feel, the amazing bathroom, quality of the iron (I need a good iron) and amenities, not to mention my stellar view.

Being a Foursquare user and someone who likes to share where I go, what I do and experience (basically everything), I opened my Foursquare app, checked in and uploaded a picture of my view.

Moments later I received this tweet from @IC_TimesSquare:

They’re listening… and engaging… saying hey and utilizing new media (conversation) tools as a way to extend their brand promise. I dug this. Even though I spend a bulk of my time making sure people who mention Mall of America in their tweets and/or speak directly to us are acknowledged in whatever way necessary, it really blows my mind and gets my attention when brands do that for me. I appreciate it because I hang out on Twitter, therefore I enjoy it when I am followed up with or essentially, marketed to there.

Our conversation continued:

I left the hotel to grab dinner with coworkers, returning to find an envelope under the door. I thought it may be a receipt, as my stay was prepaid. NOPE! It was a lovely hand written note from Victoria, the InterContinental Times Square’s community manager on duty. It read:

Lisa,

Thanks so much for tweeting with us and we hope you enjoy your stay! Please let us know if there’s anything we can assist you with.

Best,

Victoria

It also included a ‘drink on us’ ticket for the fantastic hotel lounge.

What’s the ROI of this?
I can’t possibly leave this post without validating why an activity like this yields. Here’s my perceived ROI of my experience at IC_TimesSquare:

• Branding – @IC_TimesSqare‘s digital activities are an extension of their on-site guest experience. I can’t stress the importance of this. It is one of the biggest struggles when it comes to integrating new tools into an already existing strategy. The ROI – I’ve told at least 10 people and am writing positive media about them here.
• Loyalty – Provided superior guest service, making my stay a positive one, ensuring that I’ll pursue them before any other hotel in New York next time I travel. When I make travel arrangements elsewhere, I will be more inclined to search out an InterContinental.
• Revenue – At least $60 spent in @IC_TimesSquare lounge. Two of the most awesome dudes I know, Dave Fleet and Chuck Hemann, met me for drinks.

How do you do this too?
This impressive experience made me curious (of course), so I sought Victoria to ask about how Intercontinental manages social strategy. This was her answer:

“Currently the set-up for InterContinental hotels is that each property is set to look after themselves – with cross promotion and educational opportunities offered from the corporate level. At this property specifically, I work on-site with a team off site to help feed relevant and interesting content as well as making sure there is a constant conversation happening with our customers.”

I liked her answer. While short, it covers a lot of ground and also remains consistent to the experience they’re providing. They’re offering autonomy to employees, while also providing framework at the corporate level.

So… make sure you know what your key messages and marketing communications strategy are, develop social strategy (which really is a human approach to your marketing – that’s all) around existing marketing communications strategy, and the tools will follow. Easier said than done, of course. If you’re looking specifically for listening tools, etc. Google it. Many have written on the topic, or I’m happy to provide recommendations in comments.

Big thanks to InterContinental Times Square for providing me this experience. Made my trip to New York that much better!

I’ve just wrapped hiring a social media intern. This experience has made clear a few things: 1) People are aimlessly applying for any internship these days, and 2) There is little research, care and preparation put into the process (Note: Not all candidates, but about 95%, which is a lot). Needless to say, I’ve been supremely disappointed by a consistent lack of applicants’ desire/ability to research and/or ask questions pertaining to what they’re applying for. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations. I’ve just never applied for a job before looking at the company website, understanding what they do, seeing if they were social – and even going as far as to ask my PR contacts what they know of the prospect – to establish if I was interested in and well-suited for the opportunity.

In a time when the PR landscape is changing considerably, there are fewer stellar opportunities for the up-and-coming young pro in a highly competitive market. I realize that this fact alone accounts for a surge of applications when an internship or job is posted, but please guys and gals – don’t let some of these challenges prevent you from doing the basics before applying and interviewing for prospective opportunities and staying true to yourselves in the process, okay?

Here are a few of my condensed (because this could be a REALLY long post) thoughts on how you can effectively apply and prepare for your interviews.

Know Yourself
This post is really about knowing yourself, not about writing a good resume. While that is important (see below), it is by knowing what turns you on, why it turns you on and what you want to do with what turns you on (professionally, of course*smile*) that will propel you in this life. When you have this stuff figured out, presenting yourself everywhere (resume, interviews, in your relationships, etc.) becomes much simpler because you are operating with confidence – gained only when you’re sure of what you’re doing.

The pursuit of knowing yourself can be accomplished many ways. Perhpas we can go down that road some other time. In the meantime, start by seeking answers to the questions you have about everything in life (for more on this, see Curiosity: An Essential in Every PR Pros Tool Kit) . The common denominator in ‘knowing yourself’ is work. If you have done the work to figure these things out in tandem with some education (either self or academic), good things are likely to happen because you’re operating within parameters that make sense to your spirit. Doing stuff because we have to or should is fine to a point – and we need to put time in, etc. – but if it’s not enjoyable or teaching you something – or you just have no desire for it, then move on. Life is too short. Hoping this all made some sense. It is the only conclusion I’m left with after what I’ve witnessed.

Take Five
It takes five minutes to uncover a lot of information that will 1) Validate your interest in an internship/job, and B) Arm you with all the information to walk in during an interview and knock your interviewers socks off. And really, I mean this – because few are actually doing it.

Do you care?
Ask yourself, do I actually want this job, or am I applying it because I have to? There is a big difference between wanting a job and needing a job, and your HR/prospective employment person knows the difference.

The Basics (Yes, I know this seems obvious, but it’s not – I promise)

• Read the job description.
• Look at the company website (Google is your friend).
• Get a feel for what prospective company does and who they are.
• See if they’re social and understand how they position their brand online.
• Ask any PR contacts  (professors, mentors, PRSA people) what they know of the prospect.
• Establish if you’re really interested in and well-suited for the opportunity.
• Tailor your resume (which should be no more than one page) to the job.
• Have an awesome objective that articulates your value add to the company and shows personality.
• Write a simple cover letter that illustrates who you are and what value you’ll provide based on experience you have.

Thoughts? What would you add?