Author: mlavens

PR can be used for more than companies, it can also be student for student organizations on a college campus.  In my PR2 class, one of our projects consisted of having to come up with a PR Plan for an organization on campus.  I’m an active Circle K International (CKI) member, so that’s the organization that I’m making the PR Plan for with the rest of my group members.

Since this is our main focus, I was doing some research and came across a great article written by International President, Amanda Marfisi.  She lists of the Seven Best Ways to Market CKI, and these techniques can be used for other organizations as well.  The seven ways are listed below:

1. Tabling: don’t just sit behind a sign and hope people come to you! Have free food, handouts, fun music, or even a small service project. Getting people engaged as you talk to them is important.
2. Flyers: think of all the flyers you have seen around campus. Typically 8 ½ by 11, black and white, sometimes with color if you are lucky. Think outside the box! Use publisher and try different size paper, make a long skinny banner type flyer, or a vertical skinny tie poster! Be sure to use graphic standards
3. Chalk: this is not just a kindergarten past time, bring out the child in all your members and have them go out around the campus and chalk! In front of dorm rooms, University Centers, the library, etc.
4. T-Shirt Day: in one year of CKI you usually end up with at least 3-4 shirts (one from DCON, Fall Leadership Conference, the club, and ICON). Pick a day during the week where all your club members where the same CKI shirt (this works especially well on a small campus).
5. Door-to-Door: with technological advances, we sometimes forget the importance of a personal invitation. Each week send your board members out to a new dorm on campus. Flyer or brochure in hand, pair up and walk down each hallway knocking on each door. Personally hand them the flyer, explain who you are, and say how excited you would be to see them at your next meeting
6. Personalized Facebook Messages: going back to the technological, how cool would it be to get an individualized message from the president!? After a tabling event, and collecting several names, take an hour or two to send each person who signed up an individualized message on facebook. You don’t have to “friend” someone to send a message, they see the extra effort that you want THEM there, and you might be able to gain a new facebook friend!
7. Follow-Up: for those members who signed up, but didn’t make the first couple of meetings… don’t let them slip away! Or for those members who just stopped coming, follow-up. Send them an email message along the lines of “we missed having you at our meeting this week, we were really hoping to see you there. Hope to see you next week at this time, location. OR let me know if you want to see a list of the service projects to sign up for.”

These methods can be applied to almost any organization, not just CKI.  I would suggest if you’re a student group in need to some new marketing idea, try these out!

*Credit for this entry goes to Circle K International President, Amanda Marfisi based off her article call “Marketing CKI-7 Best” found in Circle K District Publications.

A tweet can go a long way. Although tweets are usually personal opinion, what someone states on twitter can have a huge impact on followers perceptions of a product.

Tonight in my PR2 class we started an assignment involving twitter. First, we had to pick a company or product follow them and see what others say about the product.

I’m a big fan of twitter, so I figure this assignment gives me an excuse to play around on twitter. The company I decided to do was Vera Bradley because I’m a big fan of Vera purses. Now, not every tweet was right for my assignment, but there were some that could have an impact on the products. I saw plenty of links on where to get Vera bags for cheap, which would be considered a good tweet. But, I also found negative tweets. There were tweets that compared Vera to a cult and that young girls that purchase Vera Bradley have old lady souls…I can’t see how either of these are positive for the company.

This also made me wonder what kind of tweets other companies got. I searched for Coke by Coca Cola and got mostly good things about the product. Even found good things about Tiffany & Co. So why is it that when I searched for Kia or as mentioned above Vera Bradley I found plenty of negative things? And how much influence do these tweets have on the company’s products? That’s the next thing I’m on a mission to find out…

Over the weekend I was elected to the District Board of the Michigan District of Circle K International.  I will be serving as the District Bulletin Editor meaning I make the newsletters to send out to all the clubs in the district.  I’ve been beginning to think what I want them to look like so I started going through bulletins the past editor has made and resources I got.  I really wish I had read everything on them sooner, because I have thousands of ideas I could have had for my publication at the club level.  The good news is I can at least take some of these ideas and use them this year in the district publication.

So my advice, when you get good resources and information from people, don’t just skim it…read everything!

Blogging about blogs; this should be interesting.

My question is, are blogs a helpful tool? In my PR1 class we had to create this very blog to answer the questions from the chapters compared to writing them on a sheet of paper and turning them in.  This way people could comment on them and give their own feedback to what was posted.  Most people in the class thought blogging was silly.  I remember my professor saying, “I don’t think you realize how important blogging is in the PR world.”  Is it?  I updated the blog for Adrian College last semester (link is on the side bar) and I’m pretty sure no one ever read it.

Due to that, last night in PR2 we had high school students attend that gave us a list of things they would want to read on a college blog to give them information about the school.  Knowing what your audience wants to hear is going to help increase how many people read your blog and respond to it.  I know people have been reading my blog, but haven’t received any comments on this blog since the assignment ended.

So here’s my question to you…what would you want to read about?

For Christmas I got a SLR camera, and I love it.  Not only did I get a job at the PR Office on campus because of it, I’ve also had to use it for my PR2 class.

Recently, Paver Smith posted at PR Tip of the Day about photography, so I decided that would be a great tip to share, seeing I have learned so much in just the few months I’ve had the camera.

Paver Smith states, “a good photo is a great way of anchoring a page” and this is because photographs are a great way to catch someone’s attention.  Your news release may be a great story, but if you don’t have a great photo to go along with it, it might be overlooked.  Editors try to have great publications, so they want “good publicity photos or graphics.”  Having high quality photos will increase the chance that you’ll get coverage.

It’s also good to know what kind of pictures the publications you’re targeting use.  Make the subject matter match the publication and add a bit of a twist to make it more interesting.  This will all help you get your photo and news release published.

For more information and other PR Tips check out Paver Smith online or download their iPhone App.

It’s important that you know your client.  Understanding the client is key.  Having open communication between the PR agent and the client is a major part of communication.  But knowing the client isn’t the only person the PR people need to know.  They also need to know their audience.

In the news this past week Hacienda Mexican Restaurant posted billboards in Indiana that attempted to be humorous with a cult, mass-death reference. (Picture can be seen below.) Within two weeks of billboards being posted they were removed due to excessive complaints. Apparently, Hacienda didn’t know their audience.

“The use of such a sad event, the mass suicide of a cult, probably was inappropriate in Hacienda’s advertising campaign. Although the reference was used in a clever and humorous way, the billboard still crossed a line because it offended Hacienda’s potential customers. A billboard advertisement, controversial or not, should appeal to the population it’s trying to reach.”

So if you’re planning on advertising for a client, make sure you know the audience they want to appeal to.

To read the whole article visit Yahoo!

According to Paver Smith, “the success of a PR campaign hinges on the ability of the agency to take an effective brief from the client.”  The brief is possibly the most important thing to convey information from a client to an agency.  Everything should flow from the brief.

So what are the key things to ask for a brief?  The things you’re going to want to ask are:

• Where are they now? – Things like the client background, services, current market position, business opportunities or threats, etc.
• Where do they want to be? – Find out who the target audience is, what are the growth areas of the business, key messages, etc.
• What are the client objectives? – Things like what they want you to do, and the timeline to accomplish it in.
• What do they want to achieve from PR? – This would basically be the results.  You must understand what success looks like to the client and the results must be measurable.

*See Paver Smith’s website, http://www.paversmith.co.uk/ for more information or other PR Tips.