Excellent post for PR Grads to ponder: Measuring PR Value

May 29, 2013/in AM:PM PR /by Allison McCormick

Posted May 28, 2013

So, how much have you really learned over that four-or-so-years you spent in higher education? Below are 13 questions every new PR or communications school graduate should be able to answer. At least if you want to get a decent job in PR, social media, research or communications. (Does not apply to those who consider being a greeter at Wal-Mart a career.)

Those of you who have been out of college for a while might want to test yourselves, too. Don’t worry if you are stumped, we’ve included the answers below.

1. What is the formula for the calculation of ROI?

2. What’s the difference between reach and impressions?

3. Define a SMART objective.

4. How do you accurately measure public awareness of a topic?

5. What are Grunig’s six components of a relationship?

6. What’s the difference between causation and correlation?

7. What’s the difference between owned, earned, and paid media?

8. What is a LIkert Scale and how is it used?

9. What are Katie Paine’s 7 steps to a perfect measurement program?

10. What are the three requirements of influence in social media?

11. What’s the difference between outputs, outtakes and outcomes?

12. What does HITS stand for?

13. Name two methods of measuring the value of PR.

Bonus question: Who is your favorite character on NCIS?

Answers:

1. ROI = (Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment)/(Cost of Investment)

2. Impressions are the total eyeballs that have possibly been exposed to a story or a post – more accurately described as opportunities to see (OTS). Reach is the extent to which you have reached your specific targeted audience group. For example, if your target audiences is young men between the ages of 15 and 25, you may generate 100 million opportunities to see your messages in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Business Week and the Financial Times, but you have only reached about .0001% of the U.S. population that are boys between the ages of 15 and 25.

3. SMART is: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

4. Awareness is measured with a survey.

5. The six Grunig components of relationships are Trust, Commitment, Satisfaction, Control Mutuality, Exchange, and Communal.

6. Correlation is a statistical test that examines the relationships between variables. Causation is a relationship between variables in which a change in one variable forces, produces, or brings about a change in another variable.

7. Owned media are promotion channels that you control, such as your website, Facebook page, or Twitter account. Earned media is exposure gained through promotional efforts other than advertising. Paid media is exposure generated by advertising.

8. A Likert Scale is a standard response to a question on a survey in which the respondent is offered a five- or seven-point scale to express how much they agree or disagree with a particular statement.

9. Katie Paine’s 7 steps to a perfect measurement program are:

Define the goal
Define the audience
Define your investment
Define your benchmark
Pick your Kick Butt Index
Select a tool
Analyze and repeat

10. Influence in social media requires engagement around an individual, relevance to a topic, and frequency of posts around the topic.

11. Outputs are the products of a PR or communications program, like press releases. Outtakesare the changes in awareness or attitude that the outputs produce. Outcomes are the actions that people take as a result of the outputs.

12. How Idiots Track Success

13. Cost benefit analysis and cost efficiency ratio.

*** This is a post on measuring PR value. this is a bullet point to boost SEO.

I couldn’t have said it better myself – lessons for anyone online

May 17, 2013/in AM:PM PR, Guest Post /by Allison McCormick

Lessons for Anyone Online: Borrowed from the Washington Post Blog, ComPost:

Amy’s Baking Company vs. The Entire Internet

By Alexandra Petri, Published: May 16, 2013 at 1:28 pmE-mail the writer

If you were, for some bizarre reason, to gather children at my knee and ask me to impart to them the hard-earned wisdom of my years, I know exactly what I would say:

“If you do something stupid on the Internet, children, never, under any circumstances, try to pass it off as a hacking. This just makes you look like someone who has done something stupid on the Internet AND who does not understand how the Internet actually works.”

I would go on to point out that seldom in history has any self-respecting hacker come dashing in and made you look stupider than you were to begin with. Sure, hackers take over news accounts from time to time and release startling tweets about assassinations and cause the stock market to fluctuate. But when it comes to private individuals, no hacker of note has ever gone waltzing in to your account and started firing off sexual innuendos, CAPITALIZED TIRADES or emailed Images You Would Just As Soon Did Not Reach The Public Eye to the more nubile of your followers.

The children would probably have wandered off by this time to seek sandwiches, but they would know I was right.

Well, if the Anthony Weiner scandal didn’t do it for the hacking excuse, the Amy’s Baking Company meltdown certainly has.

For anyone not familiar with Amy’s Baking Company, this is the most amazing non-news story that has happened all week.

In Scottsdale, Ariz., there is a restaurant so far gone that even Gordon Ramsay’s shouting cannot save it. In fact, its owners so terrified the man behind “Kitchen Nightmares” that he decided to quit working with them rather than endure them any longer.

If you haven’t been in the nooks and corners of the Web where this has been bouncing around, you are missing out. It’s brilliant and unhinged, in the way all things that go truly viral are. First, the “Kitchen Nightmares” episode itself, which features the classic lines from Amy, “We have three little boys but they’re trapped inside cat bodies. They’re cats.” It shows the owners taking the waiters’ tips, berating the customers and insisting that they do not know the kind of food they want, firing the waitstaff, shouting at Gordon Ramsey and completely refusing to accept any criticism of any kind.

Then, if viewers had any nagging fear that this insanity was staged for the cameras, the Facebook page of Amy’s Baking Company lit up with insults, as co-owners Amy and Samy inveighed against all the Web sites where the “online bullies” had given them negative reviews. Most of them are unprintable, but some highlights include: “To all of the Yelpers and Reddits: Bring it on … Come to arizona. you are weaker than my wife, and weaker than me. come to my business. say it to my face. man to man. my wife is a jewel in the desert. you are just trash. reddits and yelpers just working together to bring us down. pathetic.”

“I AM NOT STUPID ALL OF YOU ARE. YOU JUST DO NOT KNOW GOOD FOOD. IT IS NOT UNCOMMON TO RESELL THINGS WALMART DOES NOT MAKE THEIR ELECTRONICS OR TOYS SO LAY OFF!!!!”

As a general rule, if you are the one typing in all caps insisting that everyone else is wrong, they are not wrong.

The couple has been doing this for some time, but suddenly they announced that “Obviously our Facebook, YELP, Twitter and Website have been hacked. We are working with the local authorities as well as the FBI computer crimes unit to ensure this does not happen again. We did not post those horrible things. Thank You Amy&Samy.”

If so, this hacker has an awful lot of spare time and an uncanny ear for dialogue.

The Amy & Samy story is essentially a master-class in How To Lose An Argument on the Internet. The basic steps, for anyone curious:

TYPE IN ALL CAPS
Explain that God is on your side.
Call the other person a rude four-letter, three-letter, five-letter, six-letter, ten-letter, or twelve-letter name.
Explain that you are right because the other person is an idiot, while misspelling something.
USE ERRATIC PUNCTUATION OR GRAMMAR WHILE CALLING THE OTHER PERSON STUPID ALSO DO THIS IN ALL CAPS.
Describe your cats as “little boys in cat bodies” or “little people in cat suits” or “children, but actually cats, but really children” or “non-human children.”
Refuse to stop arguing.
When the backlash starts, insist that you were hacked.

They manage to do all of these, in some cases in a single post. They do everything short of comparing someone to Hitler.

Naturally, this has been blowing up online. To call this kicking the hornet’s nest would be an understatement. They poked and poked and poked the hornet’s nest while making disparaging remarks about the hornets’ mothers. No wonder there’s a swarm.

Folks, it’s not the Internet. It’s you.

Destination Branding For Small Cities

May 16, 2013/in AM:PM PR, Influence, Tips /by Mike Phillips

A review of Bill Baker’s latest book

At AM:PM PR we like to keep a pulse on trends and thought leadership related to the public relations industry, especially in subjects that we find interesting. To this end we hold weekly meetings we call “PR 3.0” where we invite PR professionals, job seekers and business executives to join us to talk about the latest developments in social media technologies.

However, we take this interest to all aspects of our work and last week I purchased a book by local Portland author Bill Baker titled “Destination Branding for Small Cities.” In this book Mr. Baker draws upon over 30 years experience working in over 25 countries helping communities with their branding and marketing. His book illustrates the case for the destination branding and marketing of small cities and towns.

Interestingly, the book arrived into my possession around the same time The Oregonian published an article saying Bicycling contributes $400 million to Oregon tourism. Do you think this isn’t destination branding? If anything, it’s a warning shot to all bike-related businesses in the region, telling them that they’d better rope themselves into the branding language if they want to take advantage of this large portion of the local economy.

The bike piece comes after a piece from CNN that says Portland is America’s top beer town. Then in the Huffington Post, Portland was cited in a study by Intuit as a top city for female entrepreneurs.

This could all be crazy coincidence, but in reality it’s the result of a successful destination branding campaign that has consciously (and sometimes, subconsciously) been part of the collective marketing efforts of cities and businesses in the region during the past decade. Bike lanes, pet friendly hotels, famous bands, beer tours, distillery row and words like “artisan”, “craft”, “eco” and even our food carts are all under the umbrella of a successful destination branding campaign. It’s successful because the campaign comes from the top down and is adopted by other businesses and organizations looking to take advantage of the media limelight. Further, our regional campaign is based upon an authenticity that builds when families move to the area seeking a quality of life that we foster and encourage in Portland.

I found the book to be thought-provoking and a must read for anyone sitting on the board of a chamber of commerce or related tourism organization – even if you aren’t directly involved in the marketing, public relations or branding committee. It’s important for people to have a better understanding of the principles presented in this book so they act as a resource, team player, or in the case of small businesses – identify the greater destination branding at play, and use it to their advantage.

For more: “Destination Branding for Small Cities.”

PR 3.0 gets all up in Linkedin

May 8, 2013/in AM:PM PR, News /by Mike Phillips

This platform has been adding new features and updates during the past month that may dramatically alter how PR professionals, small businesses and jobseekers use the platform.

At PR 3.0 on Thursday, May 9th we’ll discuss some of the latest developments including the new Facebook-style mention feature, visual portfolio feature – and discuss how they’re trying to corner the market for both job-hunters and established professionals.

For a primer, check out the following links. Feel free to share any additional links or comments that may facilitate further conversation.

LinkedIn Now Lets You Add a Visual Portfolio to Your Profile

LinkedIn Adds Facebook-Style Mentions Of People And Companies In Status Updates And Home-Page Comments

LinkedIn’s New Recruiter Homepage Gives Headhunters Better Search, Status And News

The other Buffett Rule: If Warren Buffett joins Twitter, you should too

May 6, 2013/in AM:PM PR, News /by Mike Phillips

Last Week Warren Buffett joined Twitter.

This must come as a shock to many small business owners who’d gobble up his investment advice, but would just as soon do everything in their power to avoid using Twitter. (This must also come as a disappointment to self-proclaimed social media gurus who spend hundreds of hours trying to gain followers, whereas Warren Baby {as I call him} already has 390,000+.)

A late bloomer, perhaps, but when an investment tycoon joins up with a web platform that is currently overlooked from many in the small business community, maybe it’s time to give it another look?

If you’re ready, here are 6 uses for Twitter (compliments of AM:PM PR) that may help you on your way:

1. Demonstrating thought leadership. You’re an expert on your brand and in your field and your target audience is already looking for you.

2. Demonstrating your brand. You can demonstrate your brand image with tweets related to your expertise or related to your business or products. You can also share related industry news to show you are a source for news and related information.

3. Search Engine Optimization. We’re guessing that you established your other social media profiles because you recognize that different people use different technologies. Further, Twitter has its own search engine independent of Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Myspace, etc., etc., etc. Therefore, when people search for information using Twitter, they are potentially discovering information unique from those other search engines. How can you brand your Tweets so that your target audience can find you more easily on Twitter?

4. Research. We’ve worked with businesses and non-profits who’ve been “discovered” by journalists researching a given topic for a story. Conversely, you can use Twitter to research targeted bloggers, podcasts or publications that may not be so apparent when searching with Google.

5. Social Interaction. The “social” in social media insinuates that you use the media to interact with others, and not to simply trumpet your ego to the world. If you’re not interacting with others, you’re not doing it right. Find Twitter users who are sharing information relevant to your brand, and build rapport with them.

6. Promotion of your brand. I made this last, just because it should be your last priority. It’s cool to share exciting news, achievements or great interviews – but if you’re constantly sending off self-aggrandizing tweets, you’re doing it wrong.

In conclusion, you’ll notice that Warren has only posted two tweets since he joined up last Thursday. This is not a technique or strategy that we recommend, unless you are already incredibly famous. We’d recommend that you carve out a minimum of 15 minutes per day for regular social media upkeep.

Medium: A blogging platform for writers

May 1, 2013/in AM:PM PR, News, Tips /by Mike Phillips

Last week I learned about a new social media platform called Medium and was given an exciting directive to explore their new website and report back to the rest of the team. I didn’t know much about Medium going in, other than it proclaims to be based on the belief that the sharing of ideas and experiences is what moves humanity forward. Sounds great!

Truth be told, after several days of exploration I’ve come to the conclusion that Medium is my kind of platform. It’s for the 1% of us that like to write opinionated quasi-intellectual notes on Facebook that unintentionally alienate half of your friends. The best part is that your parents, employers and colleagues haven’t discovered Medium yet, so it’s like Facebook circa 2006 when you could still get away pouring your heart out over the course of an evening (and a bottle of Chianti) with no repercussions.

Medium is currently in über beta start-up mode, but I thought it might be fun to poke and prod around their website with the proverbial stick. The following is what I’ve discovered.

Blogging Platform Reimagined

When I went to explore Medium, I did it from the perspective of their motto, ie, someone trying to move humanity forward, and I was immediately drawn to this post: Stop working (so hard).

You don’t have to worry about that, Medium.

But in all seriousness, from what I understand, Medium is trying to reimagine the concept of a blog by making it more socially interactive than current designs allow and by facilitating longer conversations and extraneous dialogue in the process.

It became immediately apparent that this platform is geared towards a certain type of person. You know the Facebook friend who posts cute kitty photos and gets all twisted whenever someone talks about politics, science or demonstrates critical thinking? Yeah, this site is not for them. Medium is more accurately for people who like to write, or those who like to critique what other people write.

Comment Makeover

In a typical blog format (Tumblr, Facebook, Blogger, WordPress) all of the comments on a given post are archived at the bottom of each post. With Medium, the comments are displayed to the right side of the post, which results in a more fluid interaction. When you comment on a given post you can highlight the exact word or phrase you want to comment on, and subsequent users can comment further. This feature makes for more functional interactions with a post, and I like it.

Check this out:

Formatting blogs

Do you remember how crazy Myspace got when people could add pink backgrounds and floating sparkles and snowflakes to their landing pages causing your Pentium III computer to freeze up? Do you hate it when you arrive at a blog with an orange background with white typeface? Medium has simplified the way people format their blogs by eliminating choice, essentially subtracting a lot of the functional ability and formatting options that you may be used to with other platforms. They also allow only a single headline image for each post. I think this works because it makes their blog system cleaner and easier to read.

Here is an example of what I mean:

This is what the blogging tool looks lik

You’ll notice the following:

You can only add one image
Your title is large and bold
The body of your writing is in smaller font

That’s it. You cannot change the font, add italics, underline things, create orange backgrounds or add snowflakes to accentuate a wintry theme. This is blogging simplified.

Categorizing Blogs

In the following image you can see that Medium allows you to review posts, and collections of posts (demonstrated below).

You can customize your own collection of posts under the heading “Collections” or if you don’t want to go with the ones that they select for you, you can create your own, which could be a fun way to stimulate conversations about topics that are relevant to you personally. My favorite category is “Armchair Economics” because the topics flatter my unquenchable thirst for knowledge and/or ego.

Who should use Medium?

I’m answering this question wearing my PR professional hat as clients are often asking for the return on investment (ROI) on social media platforms. I haven’t done enough digging around to fully understand Medium’s policies, but if you have a business or a brand that relies on the dissemination of ideas and information to relevant communities, Medium may be a good platform to keep your eyes on.

I’m a little conservative when investing too much time in new platforms – I like to watch others jump in to see how they may be benefiting before I invest my most precious commodity, time. It is unclear to me if writing a blog-like post in Medium will create any less or any more SEO for your brand.

Medium challenges the notion that attention spans are getting shorter or that people require all information to come in 140 characters or less. Medium is embracing the idea that everyone can write long, drawn-out prose, and that there are people out there that want to read your meanderings.

Go ahead, check it out and explore for yourself. http://medium.com

On branding and social media

April 19, 2013/in AM:PM PR, Reputation, Tips /by Mike Phillips

Have you found yourself censoring images, ideas or other posts on social media platforms because you feel they might cause negative feedback from certain members of your online community? This is an example of managing your brand identity, whether you’re conscious of it or not, and many people and businesses have been struggling with the act of branding ever since the first adorable baby animal images started circulating on the Internet.

Make no mistake, managing brand identity on social networks is a difficult task. Additional considerations include when to post, what to post, how to post, where to post, how to respond to criticism or a communication crisis. With all this pressure, some folks are on a personal quest to determine a special formula or to instill a set of rules to follow that will ensure social media success. I don’t know that there really is a secret formula, but I suspect it comes down to one of the first social lessons that most of us learn at an early age: you’ll be far more successful being authentic and empathetic to others, versus a self-aggrandizing type-A loudmouth. In other words, just be real and be aware of your audience.

There have been some pretty atrocious examples of brands and business leaders failing to “be real” on social media and it’s had disastrous (if not amusing) effects on their brand identity. Curiously, many of these missteps have occurred after national or international tragedy, in some ill-advised effort to capitalize on a hot topic of media intrigue. Other missteps have occurred when brands have taken a stance on social issues, temporarily unaware of the people that inhabit their target audience that they’ve spent building over a period of years.

In recent days we’ve seen the following PR disasters:

* Epicuroius advertising some scones and breakfast treats, tying the promotion into the Boston marathon bombing

* Eden Foods opposing the contraceptive measure imposed in the new healthcare law (do they NOT know who their target consumer is?)

For a list of more social blunders, check out this article from Mashable. These examples offer a teachable moment for AM:PM PR friends and clients.

We’ve drummed up a list of five additional suggestions on branding and social media to ensure your brand doesn’t follow in these footsteps.

Don’t try to attach your brand to a crisis. I would argue that you shouldn’t do it at all, but some folks have big hearts and feel the need to express their sympathy for a tragic event. If you must, let your audience know that the employees of your business have their hearts and minds in the right place. That is real human emotion and it’s fine to express. Once. But trying to tie a product promotion or sale into a disaster is just gross, and above all, not what a real person would do. Several brands including Kenneth Cole and The Gap have had their brand images tarnished by thoughtless Tweets.
Share information that interests real people. I like kitty posts as much as the next person, but for brand integrity I try to limit myself. As challenging as it is, I do so because sharing kitty images and related social media memes does nothing for my brand. If I do ten kitty-like posts and then one post related to something business-related, my target audience may have already tuned out (or worse, hidden ALL of my posts).
Don’t oversell yourself. When I was a kid, this guy Jack Roberts was famous in Seattle-area TV commercials for his many, many commercials saying “I wont be undersold.” While his marketing message has stuck with me for 25 years, it’s not an effective strategy for social media. People will get annoyed and tune you out. However, if you get a windfall and want to buy a bunch of TV advertising, give it a shot. Also check out Chuck Curcio for inspiration.
Don’t create alter egos to bash your critics or competitors. Falling under the “be real” requirement, the founder of Dilbert and CEO of Whole Foods have something in common. Both created fake alter egos to praise and defend themselves online, generating some negative publicity for their brand as a result. Here’s a feature in the NY Times for John Mackey, which is usually a good thing, but this time it wasn’t.
Make sure you know your customers before sharing your beliefs. In the case of Eden Foods, CEO Michael Potter (no relation to Harry) obviously had temporary amnesia of his customers when he sued against having contraception covered for his employees. Then he kept digging that hole deeper, as shown in this piece from Salon. You have to be careful when taking political postures that represent your public brand or image.

This is a snapshot of some considerations to keep in mind when branding your online business or persona, based on our observations from recent events. While the platforms are always changing, the same general rules always remain. Be authentic, be real, and in the immortal words of George Carlin’s character Rufus, from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, “be excellent to each other.”

Video Branding – Guest Post by Mikee Shattuck

April 12, 2013/in AM:PM PR, Cultivation, Guest Post, Tips /by ampmpr

By Mikee Shattuck

Technology and the rise of social networks over the past decade have put practices used by communications professionals in a constant state of flux. It’s admittedly difficult for organizations to determine which tactics will elicit the greatest return on their marketing investment and it’s common for many small business owners to overlook opportunities that are actually within their budget.

Video is often overlooked due to what is perceived or imagined to be extraordinary costs. However, due to recent improvements and cost reductions in camera and software technology, you can now produce a slick video for a fraction of the price. When coupled with developments in e-newsletter and social media technology, your return on investment with video starts looking pretty good.

Benefits of Video

Brand Personality

Video offers a way to put a personality or personal face on your business, which in turn allows you or your business to connect with prospective customers on a “real” level, if that makes sense.

Demonstration

You can use video to communicate directly to your target audience or to demonstrate: how to use a product, new ideas, your areas of expertise, or the practicality or application of a new product or idea.

Virality

When coupled with social media, a thoughtful and creative video can be shared among audiences through various social media channels – which can actually make it it one of the most measurable marketing tactics too. In Software Advice‘s recent B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Survey for 2012 video was shown to be one of the most successful ways to generate engagement through content.

Video is Popular

Some crazy facts:

YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine.
More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
25% of global YouTube views come from mobile devices

Speed and Simplicity

Finally, video is easy for your end user: your target audience. Unlike a well-written essay that requires your target audience to spend 5-10 minutes of brain power to read and digest, a thoughtful video can get your messaging across in less than a minute.

Video doesn’t have to be expensive or take a lot of time to produce, but it does have to be well planned and shot as thoughtfully as possible. Hiring a video producer will help to amplify online campaigns and may share insight and personal connections to your audience in a manner that is hard to reproduce otherwise.

Mikee Shattuck is a Portland, Oregon native with over 10 years of marketing and advertising experience. He offers quality and efficient video production service for an insanely affordable value. Mikee can be reached at: http://www.mikeeshattuck.com

Check out examples of Mikee’s work:

BioLite CampStove from Mikee Shattuck on Vimeo.

Dick Hannah Service Xpress from Mikee Shattuck on Vimeo.

MapleXO Vulture Couture Fashion Show from Mikee Shattuck on Vimeo.

The economic case for immigration reform

April 10, 2013/in AM:PM PR, News /by ampmpr

– by Bill MacKenzie

“It’s the economy, stupid,” a strategist famously stated in Bill Clinton’s successful campaign for the presidency in 1996. That’s still true today when making the case for comprehensive federal immigration reform that would cover both legal and undocumented immigrants in Hillsboro.

A more practical guest-worker program would ensure a dependable supply of labor for Hillsboro’s agricultural industry, which now struggles with a costly and unwieldy federal program allowing foreign nationals in for temporary or seasonal agricultural work.

It’s not just farmers and nursery operators who would benefit from an overhaul of the immigration system. Revision of federal laws that unnecessarily restrain the hiring of foreign nationals would also aid Hillsboro’s cluster of technology companies.

Local tech companies use what’s called the H-1B visa program to employ foreign nationals in specialty occupations — such as scientists, engineers or computer programmers — that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialized fields.

Lisa Malloy, an Intel spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., says H-1B workers have consistently represented about 6 percent of the U.S. work force at Intel, which has regularly been one of the top U.S.-based companies using the visas.

Typically, Malloy says, Intel’s H1-B visa holders have graduated from a U.S. university with an advanced degree in science, engineering or math, and many work as component designers, process engineers and software engineers. Comprehensive federal legislation that would remove the arbitrary cap on the number of H-1B visas each year and allow visas to reflect the U.S. economy and what businesses need would be welcomed by Intel and Hillsboro’s other tech companies.

Allowing talented foreign nationals who get advanced degrees at U.S. universities to stay in the United States, rather than sending them (and their talents) packing after graduation, would also make sense.

The same holds true for foreign-born founders of U.S. start-up companies in the U.S. It would be far better for these economy-boosters to have the option of becoming U.S. citizens, and potentially building a business here, rather than pulling up stakes and nurturing their dreams elsewhere. President Obama had it right when he said in January, “Right now, in (an American classroom) there’s a student wrestling with how to turn their big idea — their Intel or Instagram — into a big business. We’re giving them all the skills they need to figure that out, but then we’re going to turn around and tell them to start that business and create those jobs in China or India or Mexico or someplace else. That’s not how you grow new industries in America. That’s how you give new industries to our competitors.”

These immigrants are already boosting Hillsboro’s healthy economy and stand to strengthen it even more if they are brought out of the shadows. They’re working in farmers’ fields, nurseries, restaurants, hotels and other businesses, large and small.

They’re starting new companies. They’re buying and renting homes. In addition to supplying labor, they’re adding to the local demand for products and services.

Making it so the undocumented immigrants already here can live and work here legally would bring an even bigger economic payoff.

Comprehensive immigration reform that allowed all of Hillsboro’s immigrants to come out into the open would pull them out of the underground economy, make it much less likely they will be paid off the books, generate more taxes and allow them to play a more vigorous role in Hillsboro’s economy.

It is also in our best interest to educate the children of undocumented immigrants so they can contribute more to the city’s economy. As Edward Glaeser of Harvard has amply illustrated, cities with educated and skilled populations will achieve more. On the flip side, cities burdened with ill-educated, low-skill populations will struggle.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported in 2011 that the United States is the only country where education attainment levels of people entering the labor market (25-34 year-olds) don’t exceed the levels of those about to leave the labor market (55-64 year-olds).

The same holds true for Oregon, where the older generation is more educated than the young. In a globally competitive economic environment, Hillsboro’s economy, and Oregon’s, will pay a heavy price if we fail to educate the children of all immigrants to their maximum potential.

Bill MacKenzie is a former congressional staff member, reporter and communications manager for a Hillsboro company.

*First appeared in the Hillsboro Tribune.

Case study: Small business boosts online revenue with Etsy

March 25, 2013/in AM:PM PR /by Mike Phillips

Last fall I met with Margaret Phillips, the owner of Vintage Passementerie, a business sourcing antique millinery and vintage ribbons and trims from around the world, and selling them at Monticello Antiques in SE Portland, and through various online channels.

A graduate of the City & Guilds of London Institute, with a diploma in Design and Embroidery and a certificate in Textile Design, Margaret’s stated goal is:

“to share these beautiful finds with textile artists, designers, costumers, textile conservators and those interested in fine quality from the past.”

The Challenge.

In late 2012 she inquired if she could use my professional services to solve her online sales dilemma. For several years she’d had robust sales at her mall space and through Ebay, yet her Etsy sales remained flat. Being a savvy businesswoman, she knew she was missing out on social media opportunities, and figured Etsy provided the chance to diversify her revenue stream. I agreed to help because I felt I had a unique insight to her specific situation. In April and May of 2012 I accompanied Margaret through flea markets in Paris and old musty shops ran by ornery German octogenarian mercers in Bath, England – all to gain a better understanding of her unique selling proposition.

Oh, and did I mention Margaret is my mother?

My Mom, at the entrance to Sandy Row in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

I should note that my trip to peruse antique ribbon galleries and vintage fabric depots wasn’t purely altruistic … the visits came during a family jaunt in which I traded time, minute for minute, in exchange for dragging her through the doldrums of Northern Ireland’s sectarian violence.

I digress …

Etsy.

We started with a question: How can we boost her Etsy sales? Upon logging into her Etsy account, the first thing I noticed is that Etsy has tools to help vendors understand the origin of their web traffic, allowing them to see the specific items and keywords that are drawing consumers to their Etsy shop. So, much like the tools we use in our practice at AM:PM PR, I was excited to learn I can use Etsy’s tools to determine which posts and keyword choices are bringing customers to her Etsy account.

SEO.

We started our work in late October 2012, and after a week of meddling around, it had already become her highest traffic month to date with 200 shop views, 323 listing views, but 0 orders. Despite the lack of sales, we felt encouraged by the dramatic uptick in traffic.

Together we performed a communication audit for her Etsy shop-profile and determined which items, images and words were drawing the most consumer traffic to her shop. We then altered the language of her Etsy shop to include more of the most popular keywords. Using the Google Keywords tool, we contrasted and tested high volume search terms and included those words in her Etsy profile as well. The results were immediate and gratifying.

This is her web traffic for all of 2012. You can see the dramatic doubling in web traffic to her shop, and quadrupling of traffic to her listings, beginning with our revived efforts in October 2012.

Social Media.

Ahh, “social media.” Are there any two words in the English language responsible for driving more disdain and nausea into the hearts and minds of the Baby Boomer generation? Just the mention of these two words cause many boomers to cringe like Dracula to a cross. In fairness, who wants to spend the afternoon sitting in front of a computer typing gibberish into the blackhole of the interwebs? Or so the thinking often goes. But when we discovered Etsy has unique social media capabilities, Margaret was thrilled … to have me look into it for her.

The first thing we noticed – Etsy allows consumers to “like” items in a given Etsy shop without actually buying them – as a way of bookmarking them. As a shop owner, you receive notifications allowing you to see who “likes” your shop, or items in your shop, and you reciprocate by “following” these profiles, presuming that most people will in turn follow you back. If they liked your items, why wouldn’t they want to be your friend?

This act of reciprocal following may seem social and friendly, but it serves a greater marketing purpose as well – alerting your followers every time you upload a new item onto your Etsy account.

After training Margaret to update posts/items regularly and follow “likers” often (two tasks that require steadfast vigilance) we got to work creating a schedule for updating her Facebook page, which I linked to a dummy Twitter account that automatically updates every time she posts to Facebook. I admit the Twitter account has been a bit of a killjoy in terms of results, but considering she spends 0% energy on Twitter, it’s merely another search engine optimized baited-hook dangling out in the ocean, waiting for an antique ribbon-loving fish to swim by and bite. Similarly, with each new Tweet, we are continually linking potential customers back to her shop and as a result we’re seeing that her small business boosts online revenue.

Listings.

Another important step has involved the increase in listings, and the updating or reposting of old listings. As she gains more followers, each new item she posts goes directly into the newsfeeds of these new followers, many of whom are likely to see what would be considered “old” items for the first time.

How effective is this effort?

The following is our results from the past two and a half months alone.

Traffic:

8,551 Shop Visits (vs. 4,176 in all of 2012)
863 visits resulting from Direct Traffic (those who bookmarked/liked the shop). This is over 10% of all visits.
165 visits originating from her newly redesigned website
Direct Traffic From Facebook has increased by 50% during the past month
Google search engines from Korea, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and more are directing people to her Etsy site

The most dramatic results come from comparing sales and traffic results from all of 2012 with the first 45 days of 2013.

Sales have tripled
Site visits have doubled

Further, with 1/4 of the month left to go (at the time of this writing) we have more site visits this month than we had all of last month.

The other beautiful thing about her results is that they are measurable. The practices I used are the same public relations practices we use at AM:PM PR to spread brand awareness and drive web traffic for our bigger customers.

Stats for 2012:

Stats for 2013:

Or, if you are a more visual person: