Dear Potential New Client:

Recharging yourself and understanding where your brand fits into your overall communications is one step towards clearly envisioning your goals and deciding just how PR will fit into your marketing plan.  Here are 5 steps towards making your strategy a success.

1. LEARN from your consumer. By using your social media vehicles to gather information about your consumer, you can fast track the evolution of your brand, keeping it current and top-of-mind.  Make sure you have a dedicated team working social media.

2. PARTICIPATE in the conversation.  The communications mix has shifted from static to participatory.  By engaging with your consumers on all levels in an authentic and transparent manner, you seamlessly integrate your brand into their lifestyle.  Be real – engage, ask for help, opinions, these are your best brand ambassadors.

3.  RETURN to your roots.  Take a look at your original mission and vision statements and see if you are on track.  Sometimes reinventing yourself is less important than taking your brand essence and framing it in a modern fresh way that resonates with consumers today.

4.  SHOWCASE your brand where your consumer can see it.  While traditional advertising previously was the mainstay of reaching your consumer, brands now need to be innovative to drive their message.  Using creative delivery systems such as product integration and viral guerrilla marketing can breathe new life into your brand and engage the consumer in new ways.  Product publicity and public relations strategies are more valuable and important than ever before. Layer activities to meet each specific audience.

5.  REVIEW current chatter.  Instead of being a silo, stay aware of trends and inflection points so that your brand can adapt to the changing landscape.  By identifying emerging shifts, competitor positioning  and consumer variations, you can have your brand fluidly respond the market, while remaining true to its core.

We launched a new website two years ago and this week we hired someone to come in and do some tweaking.  One of the things we need immediately are tabs linking visitors to our site to our social media pages (Facebook & Twitter).  Why?   Because those destinations are where we daily update Agency and Client news and can share up to the minute successes with our audiences.  Here is a great article – the one that motivated me to get moving and get an expert to implement these changes – stay tuned – we are in the design process and should be finished within the month…

9 Tips for Integrating Social Media on Your Website

By Mallory Woodrow
Published January 25, 2012 

Are you leveraging the power of social media on your site?

Together, social media channels and your website should work seamlessly to promote your online brand.

However, if you’re like most businesses, you’re probably missing out on potential interactions, impressions and ultimately sales.

In this article, I’ll dive into a quick how-to guide to ensure your business website and social media platforms are working together to maximize your online exposure.

I’ve included examples from small- to medium-sized businesses that specialize in a whole host of fields to illustrate that you don’t have to be one of the big players to take advantage of these simple tips.

#1: Include Visible Social Media Buttons

This seems like a no-brainer, but double-check. Best practices suggest that social media buttons be displayed on the top, bottom or along the side of your home page. Links or buttons that remain in your navigation as the user moves from page to page are optimal.

To ensure that users don’t exit your web page altogether, you may want to create the buttons or links so that they open your social media pages in new windows.

Also, do not feel obligated to link out to all social media channels you’ve created or dabbled in. If you’re fonder of Twitter and have completely abandoned your Facebook page, there’s no reason to link to any outlet that is not being actively managed. In fact, linking out to inactive channels can ultimately cause more harm than good.

There are several ways in which to display your buttons or links and none of them are wrong. In this case, it is more of a design preference focused on how the user will be interacting with the site.

Below are some examples of ways in which websites have successfully displayed their social media outlet(s).

Big and bold button catches your eye.

This eCommerce site specializing in alternatives to dog and horse supplements only links out to Facebook and chooses to do so in a big and bold manner.

Subtle buttons suit some sites well.

This farm credit services business subtly displays their social media buttons at the bottom of their page.

Front-and-center buttons ensure visibility.

This artist decides to feature his along the top.

#2: Integrate Social Where it Makes Sense

If you use social media to keep your customers or clients apprised of your recent happenings and are actively managing your outlets on a daily or bi-weekly basis, it might be wise to showcase your Twitter feed or Facebook posts directly on your website.

Linking out or displaying inactive social media channels will only cripple your online efforts. If you choose to go this route, it is important that you maintain your presence.

Below are two examples of how vastly different businesses (a web design firmand an online gift card site) have integrated their social media feeds into their websites.

On this site, tweets are visible along the right-hand side throughout the website. Tweets vary from deals and contests to interactions with followers and customer service responses.

On this B2B site, recent tweets are found at the bottom of the homepage and are mostly comprised of industry-related blogs, recent events and projects in which they’ve participated.

These businesses vary significantly in what they do and the way they make use of social media, but both have found a logical method of incorporating social media into their sites.

#3: Include Up-to-Date Buttons

Social media changes fast—dare we say in real time? So if you added your buttons a year ago, they are probably palling around with the dinosaurs. Facebook fans morphed into Likes, group pages died, +1 is spanking new and LinkedIn improved significantly. Do research to find the most current social media terminology so you don’t get caught mumbling about “The Facebook” and “The Twitter.”

Social Media Examiner stays up to date.

In order to maintain credibility within this ever-changing realm, it is important to stay with the times. However, staying up to date with your terminology does not mean that you need to jump on every platform that springs up. It is important to be tactful with your social media choices and do your research before blindly forging into unknown territory.

#4: Include Share Buttons

If you sell a product or run a full-fledged eCommerce site and you haven’t added share buttons to your product pages, you are missing out on a whole host of potential social impressions.

Share buttons should enable website-goers to seamlessly share or recommend a product.

If you find yourself hard up for a broad solution for this, check out AddThis orShareThis. Both provide efficient and easy-to-use solutions for social media sharing across eCommerce sites with the added benefit of analytics to see how the content is getting shared.

As illustrated below, these buttons are easy to see.

The easier you make it for customers to share your product, the better.

Similar to eCommerce sites, if you have resources, articles, a blog or other valuable content on your site, you should attempt to make it as simple as possible for readers to share it with others. Social media share buttons should be displayed somewhere easy to see. Nicholas Creative does a decent job with this, as seen on their blog below.

If you enjoy an article, you won’t want to keep it to yourself.

#5: Use Analytics

Pay attention to the way in which individuals are using your social media buttons by tapping into Google Analytics. How many people are actually clicking on your outbound social media links?

An easy way to explore this is by setting up Event Tracking in Google Analytics. If you’re unfamiliar with Event Tracking, Google provides a step-by-step guide on how to incorporate the correct codes into your site.

Google Analytics allows you to track the number of individuals who click on outbound links by setting up Event Tracking.

If you find that few individuals explore your social media outlets once landing on your page, perhaps your social media buttons aren’t in a convenient location. It’s always best to have actual numbers to back up your choices.

#6: Pay Attention to Terms and Conditions

This goes hand in hand with staying up to date and knowledgeable, but I continue to see major brands using social media in ways that violate platforms’ terms and conditions.

You cannot use Google+ for contest entries, a personal Facebook page shouldn’t be used to operate a brand and there are certain rules to adhere to when running a promotion on Facebook.

The way you use social media reflects on your website, as well as your brand as a whole. If you’ve accidentally violated some terms and conditions in the past, delete those pages and do not link out to them even in the interim.

I’m not sure what Pita Pit is doing with this personal Facebook page or if it was created by an unaffiliated party. Whatever the case may be, steer clear of using a personal page as a brand page.

#7: Don’t Over-Do It

You want to make sure that compelling information is easily shareable, but littering social media share buttons all over your webpage isn’t the way to go. Before adding share buttons to a page, ask yourself, “Is there information here that people would find worth sharing?”

If you find yourself on your “About Us” page and don’t see any added value to website-goers being able to share your administrative assistant’s contact information, then forgoing buttons in this instance is totally acceptable.

#8: Stay Knowledgeable

Don’t get it twisted. With the changing social media landscape and array of rollouts these days, it is easy to confuse social media features. Keep in mind:

• You won’t be directing individuals to your Facebook page by installing a Facebook “Like” button on a specific website page. Instead, you are allowing individuals to “Like”/share the information, content or product that is found on that specific website page. There is no correlation between Liking a specific website page and directing users to “Like” your branded Facebook page.
• Similarly, directing individuals to your Google+ brand page is different than adding a +1 button to a page. At this time, there is no correlation between the two.

As illustrated below on this pool supplies website, social media pages and social media share buttons can be found on the same page. Verbs such as “Tweet” and “Share” often help distinguish between share buttons and social media pages.

Be sure you know the difference.

#9: Use Social Media Insights Alongside Google Analytics

Many types of software allow you to see your social media insights alongside your web analytics in order to pick up on trends and to better understand the successes or failures of campaigns.

SproutSocial allows users to compare web analytics and social media reporting information from specific timeframes side by side. Being able to see the way in which your social media and website analytics relate proves useful in establishing goals, measuring successes and identifying areas in which you can improve.

Here’s an example of the correlation between website traffic and a social media campaign via a SproutSocial report.

There you have it—a quick-and-dirty guide on immediate steps you can take to make your social media an

Google is an important search engine and has replaced the Yellow Pages for most people when looking for information via their smartphone or computer.  When was the last time you used a phone book?  Or called 411?   We use Google all day long at C.I. Visions in accessing a myriad of information. Its perfect for all of my blonde moments!  When I am searching for the perfect word for a press release, need to know if a celebrity wore one of our clients on the red carpet last night, or what more information about a potential client’s product category…  It is essential that information about your business is available to anyone using Google.  An important way to do this is to make sure that your website is up to snuff in terms of SEO.  What’s SEO?  Simply –  Search Engine Optimization which makes the content and HTML code of your site search engine friendly.  Google also offers ADWords Express – locally targeted paid advertising on google you can utilize to build your brand.  (those sidebars you see when you open Google.  These ads ensure that you site appears in the box at the top of side of the computer screen when someone types in a key word. For example, when someone  is searching in your area for something you sell or a service you provide (“pr agencies in NYC”), or if they are already in NYC just (“pr agencies”)the listing for your business will appear above or beside the regular search results.  Your located will be marked with a blue pin on Google Maps.

A great article filled with insight what it takes to secure great business press with the leading media insiders… http://blog.prnewswire.com/2012/01/04/pitching-business-editors/

Blah, blah, blah, this blonde has not had much to say recently (hard to believe) and to establish your voice in the blog-o-spere…well you must communicate more often.  So, here on the 11th day of the New Year – I set a new intention (forget those over emphasized and broken new year resolutions) to reach out and touch you more with my musings, business savvy, agency news, trends and other written words to inspire each of you and most importantly myself – to be the change we want to see in the world!

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending my boyfriend’s Grandfather’s-okay, “Pap Pap’s”- 85th Birthday party! It was a night full of fun consisting of fabulous food, great company, and the ultimate dance party. While preparing to meet the family (and by family, I mean the huge Italian family who all seemed to know everything about me) I had to figure out just the right outfit to wear. Talk about stressful! As you can imagine, I wanted to look as best as possible…put together, polished and well, absolutely fabulous! I took a stroll in some of NYC’s great stores, yet nothing jumped out at me. I wanted to appear attractive, yet stay more on the conservative end.  Oh yeah, and actually be able to afford the dress without setting up monthly payments.

AHA! Enter Ali Ro. This line has exactly what I was looking for. Not only are the dresses extremely trendy and cute, but this dress did just what I wanted. I felt great, looked like a million bucks and most importantly did not show too much skin. It was absolutely perfect and so appropriate!  So there I was, dancing with “Pap Pap” in an above the knee, synched waisted dress that was too cute for words. A fabulous print, a great cut and beautiful detail. I could not have asked for a better dress! It was definitely a hit and I received compliments all night.  Ali Ro is my new go-to for all sorts of occasions!

After recently looking through old family folders, I realized that throughout my childhood I was raised a typical girly girl. I took ballet and violin lessons, had a best friend named Barbie, and played dress up like it was my job. Some of my earliest memories are of me trying on my mother’s clothes, and applying sloppy makeup that I was sure looked fabulous.

It’s funny how our past can resurface.

Today I would consider myself a seasoned girly girl. I still love to dance and, although I gave up playing with Barbie quite some time ago and stopped playing violin once I reached college, through much practice, I like to think I now know the tricks of the trade when it comes to applying makeup. And needless to say, dressing up in glamorous clothes continues to be a passion of mine.

You can only imagine that I was on cloud nine when I was told that I would be wearing some of Sherri Hill’s newest designs on Monday. As I slipped into one dress after another, I couldn’t help but think that five-year-old me would have been in awe by the gems, jewels, glitz, and glam that I was now experiencing.

I can only describe Sherri’s new styles as nothing less than exquisite. The extreme amount of detail and thought that clearly went into making each dress made me feel as though I was wearing a piece of art.

Both the little girl in me, and my 21-year-old self could not have been happier at that moment.

One dress in particular must have struck a chord with Sherri herself, because she asserted that I need an event to wear something sparkly to. I could not agree with her more. Since then, I have desperately been trying to find a reason to wear one of the beautiful dresses, but for the moment the girly girl in me is plenty happy with the fact that I had the opportunity to dress like a princess.

xo

Summer means vacations, weekend trips to the beach and constant traveling. As a self-professed beauty and fashion addict, I know from much first-hand experience that stuffing every necessary item into one suitcase is much harder said than done.  And the devastation that ensues from a potential eruption of a bottle of shampoo over my favorite summer dress is far more than I can handle.

Luckily, Mini Kittour has come to my rescue on several occasions with the Jet Setter, a deluxe travel train case that is more than just storage for your toiletries.  In fact, this luxurious 18-piece set kit includes a compartment for every item you might need on your trip; six leak-proof portable bottles, a 3-piece dual-ended brush set, a self-standing, double-sided magnifying mirror, a quilted passport cover, pill case, memo pad (with waterproof labels to personalize your products, of course), black sharpie mini pen and a removable key ring (charms included) are only some of the items included in this masterpiece of a traveling case.

And if that weren’t enough, there is still enough room leftover to pack other essentials, like lip gloss, jewelry, perfume or any other knick-knacks that your heart may desire.

Not only is the kit functional, but it is also extremely chic and fashionable, and comes in both Champagne and Chocolate colors so as to match the individual’s unique traveling style.

So just remember as you’re stressing about packing for your next vacation, when it comes to collecting all of your toiletries, Mini Kittour’s Jet Setter traveling case will take some of the stress off of our shoulders and compartmentalize it with the greatest of ease. You will be jetting off to a relaxing vacation in no time!

Enjoy!

xo

Hamptons Magazine held its annual clambake in Montauk this past weekend. I was lucky enough to be invited by a friend to the Montauk Yacht Club on the warm and breezy Sunday evening to participate in my first “Hamptons event”.

Being a Chicago suburban girl, I was thoroughly enamored by this event – it was everything I imagined it would be and more. Samples of luxurious brands were generously offered throughout the night, and extravagant cars were on display to satisfy any enthusiast’s fancy. Names such as Beth Stern, Katie Lee, Cindy Barshop, and Star Jones were in attendance and mingled with other patrons. As the night progressed, guests continued to socialize, and many hit the lawn-turned-dance floor.

Besides the amazing cocktails, the beautiful location, and the great weather, I must say that the highlight of my night was meeting Dina Lohan. Yes, that is Lindsey Lohan’s mother. Needless to say, I was somewhat star struck. But despite having an uber-(in)famous daughter, Dina was extremely down to earth and revealed to us that she was suffering from a dilemma that many people endure at one or multiple times of their lives: the plight of the lost cell phone. There wasn’t much we could do to help her since she seemed thoroughly distraught (she has four kids – one of which is Lindsey – that she has to keep in touch with), so we gave her encouraging hugs and said our goodbyes.

All in all, the soiree was the type of event that I would absolutely love to experience again. The people were friendly and relaxed – who wouldn’t be with a view of the sun setting on the water as you socialize with your friends and neighbors?

xo

Daphne du Maurier and Alfred Hitchcock were on to something in the 1952 novelette-turned-horror movie, The Birds. Although the reason might not be a flock of vicious seagulls that attack an entire country, birds have certainly taken over the globe… that is, they’ve taken over the fashion world.

Feathers are not just “for the birds” anymore, Au contraire, they were a definite trend at Paris Fashion Week and the trend is going global. Just ask designers Christian Dior, Karl Lagerfeld, Valentino or our very own Sherri Hill. Whether appealing to your wild side, channeling your inner peacock or aiming for subtlety and softness while wearing tan pheasant feathers, there undoubtedly exists a bird out there that will bring out the flying creature in us all.

Although birds might not be conspiring against the human race any time soon, feathers are certainly in style and, if you haven’t already, you can be sure to see this feather frenzy hitting stores soon.