Posts Tagged ‘communications’

Saturday Morning Reads: Celebrating Mom-Centric Marketing

It’s Mother’s Day weekend! Let’s celebrate moms and how they have turned marketers upside down.

As a marketer, I have been impressed with how moms have worked with companies to make their voice heard and to get companies to understand that if their needs (and the needs of their children and families!) are met with applicable solutions, they will become brand loyal. As people become as comfortable with social media tools and sharing their voices as moms, I am confident that they will follow this path and forge partnerships with the companies that serve them.

I have tapped into four wonderful moms (of all boys!), Christa Miller, Shelli Johnson, Jeannie Cusick Walters, and Becky Carroll who just also happen to be some of the smartest communicators I know. Here’s the advice they’d like to share with fellow marketers and communicators:

Christa Miller, owner of Christa M. Miller Communications and mom to two boys:

“Don’t assume that all mothers’ experiences are alike. Some are very similar, of course, but motherhood is so intensely personal that even our reasons for (example) going back to work, self-employing, or leaving the workforce altogether to stay home are not as cut and dried as the actions you see. (Mothers forget this, too.) Parenting cuts to all our deepest wishes, hopes and insecurities, our most personal life experiences and the way we see this awesome responsibility. Respect that, whether in humor or seriousness, and you’ll win my trust.”

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Your “Industry Experience Only” Requirement Is Hurting Customers, Employees and Shareholders

“Industry only experience” is not a new requirement, of course, and exceptions have always been made for talented candidates. However, in a down economy, it seems industry experience becomes a highly enforced criterion used to close the door on marketing talent.

I am not in Human Resources (HR), so I cannot tell you why it happens (I have my suspicions though). However, I have been a hiring manager and will say industry experience is something I avoid like the plague when reviewing resumes. Why? Because industry experience has absolutely NOTHING to do with the level of experience, talent, drive, problem-solving skills, enthusiasm and passion a candidate has to offer, which should always be the benchmark when hiring. A smart employee can learn any industry. It isn’t rocket science—unless you are handling marketing and PR for NASA.

[Sidebar: Please do not use the ‘regulations excuse.’ Again, a smart employee can learn regulations. An exceptional employee, however, learns them and then figures out how to stay within mandatory regulations without allowing them to chokehold company goals and objectives (Read: Growth).]

According to Executive Staffing Solutions’ latest newsletter, there is good news and bad news when it comes to filling open positions. The good news is that there are many good positions opening up for candidates. The bad news is companies are not recognizing top talent when it comes through the door.

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Saturday Morning Reads: What’s the Return on Investment (ROI) of Content Marketing?

As content marketing becomes a continually popular strategy to connect, engage, and hopefully provide value, there is no doubt that the question of return on investment will rear its head.

As you can imagine, content marketing takes time, planning, and effort. It is hard work. How then will content marketing find its rightful and respected place in our short-term, short-patience, short-strategy marketing world?

There is evidence revealing that shortsighted interests— just like with social media—are driving marketers to dive into content marketing with a tool first mindset. Cool tools are fun, sexy, and popular. Who wouldn’t want to be seen as all of that? There is just one little thing to consider, tools are worthless without objectives and strategies dictating which tools are required to meet a set goal.

The tools first philosophy is akin to buying a money pit with the intention to flip in it a down real estate market and then asking what went wrong when it does not sell.

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Is Personal Social Media Experience A Negative For Job Seekers?

(Note: This is a personal post.)

As you might know, I am looking for my next career opportunity.

What you may not know is that I have been looking for over 3.5 months with barely a nibble from potential employers. And I am not alone; there are a lot of exceptional marketing and PR professionals who have been unemployed for years.

Recently, a recruiter helped me to understand today’s job market with this advice:

“Remove all of your personal speaking, writing, blogging, and social media (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, SlideShare links, etc.) items from your resume. Companies don’t give a crap about that, they only care what you will do for them. Those items are red flags letting them know that you’ll request to be out of the office speaking or on Twitter all day and that you will not be helping to solve their day-to-day problems (i.e. tactical work).

There it is. A dose of reality.
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For Hire! Searching for My Next Career Opportunity

You may have heard around the social media water cooler that I am looking for a job. It’s true!

The economy is in the tank and jobs are limited—especially marketing, PR and communications jobs. Thankfully, I have been able to tap into a network of friends and colleagues that have been supportive, generous, and helpful.

People have been asking me “What are you looking for?”

One can hardly provide a smart response in 140-characters, no matter how many years they have been on Twitter.

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The Harte of Marketing by Beth Harte is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.theharteofmarketing.com. [If you have a question about what you can use from this blog, click on the above Creative Commons link to learn more.]

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