When pitching a natural living product, there are specific green publications that will be instrumental in your public relations efforts. While editors at major lifestyle publications may not ask the tough questions, green publications that pride themselves on providing the most current and accurate information will. Below are four tips every public relations representative must know before venturing into the world of green.

1. Differentiate between Healthy Living and Natural Living: While there is a lot of overlap between healthy living and natural living, there are also a lot of differences. Items that are good for you, may not be good for the environment and items that are natural may not be healthy. Understand which category your product fits in and then research the appropriate green publications, healthy living outlets, or both. It’s easy to categorize them together, you know how everyone in Oregon grows their own vegetables, wears Keens, and drives a Prius? But the reality is caring about your health and caring about the environment are two different things. Just because your product is organic, it doesn’t mean the packaging it comes in is recyclable or the company that produces it is sustainable. Which brings me to my next point.

2. Know Key Terminology and Definitions: What does “green” mean? Since when were there 7 types of recycling? CFL’s or LEDs? Is this product sustainable? Am I sustainable? And now the gas pedal on my Prius might stick? All the labels for healthy and natural living can make your head spin. Doing your part to help the environment is quickly becoming a lot more complicated. Before you write a pitch, fact sheet, or release (let alone call a green publication) know which terminologies apply to your product and which don’t. Know if the bottle is recyclable, if whatever is inside is organic, the difference between vegan and vegetarian, or whatever else could differentiate your product from another. Sometimes this means getting to know the product AND the company. While it’s great if the company subscribes to the same ideals as it’s consumers, that may not always be the case.

3. Understand Your Clients Strengths (and Weaknesses): If you get lucky and your client is organic, completely recyclable, sustainable, donates to CoastKeeper, and practically has a negative carbon footprint,  then skip to number four. Otherwise, you need to know what makes your client special and what doesn’t. If your client donates to a green charity, play that up. If they are going to make the change to solar energy,  note that. But also know that with all the green buzz, green publications are going to want the facts. Any good public relations professional can pinpoint the not so glamorous aspects of there clients and this is going to come in especially useful when dealing with green publications.

4. Prepare for Different Knowledge Levels: All journalists have different knowledge levels about any given subject and, as a public relations person, you need to be able to talk about your product to the most beginner green writer or the most experienced green editor. Knowing how to explain the new process your client just created in layman’s terms will help when calling a green publication. Especially when you only have 15 seconds.

When ordering pizza with friends a few days ago, I was surprised at the level of interaction Domino’s Pizza offered their customers. Here are five of the ways that Dominoes is giving consumers what they want online:

1. Real time tracking of your order. Minute by minute, your order is tracked from “Order Placed” to “Out for Delivery.” The tracker even shows you who is making your pizza and who will deliver! Social media and online ordering has created a real time consumer.

2. Sharing every moment of your life. No matter how boring. Domino’s made it easy for me to connect to Facebook and share that I am about to have pizza. This message is then displayed on my wall and the news feeds of my friends.

3. Domino’s monitored social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp and listened to their critics. They took all of this feedback and re-created their pizza. Then, they went on the road and found the people that were their “harshest critics.” They called this promotion the “Pizza Turnaround.” They showcase their videos on their YouTube channel and on their own website.

4. Notice in the picture just above that they highlight their Twitter stream about their new pizza. They realized they needed to listen to their customers and make things right.

5. They genuinely want to know how they are doing. They make it easy for you to leave comments and feedback about your pizza and your experience.

6. Last but not least. The email follow-up not only confirms your order and tells you that you can track your order online, it also has a “come back” message:

Bailey Gardiner is looking for an art director or graphic design intern for the spring quarter/semester.
A little about you:

• A college student (junior or senior) majoring in advertising art direction, graphic design or something similar
• Must be able to obtain college credit for the internship
• Willing to commit to a minimum of 16 hours per week, set hours are preferable
• Student portfolio of design work
• Working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite. Experience in Flash/Fireworks/Dreamweaver is a huge plus
• A well-organized, self-starter who shows ownership over assignments
• Some production experience preferred
• Excellent communication skills – both oral and written
• Must have a good attitude and aspire to do award-winning work
• Eager to learn
• Creative

A little about your responsibilities:
Assist the creative team with the following:

• Assist team members in research, concept development, designing and mounting of logos and creating collateral pieces, websites, identity and stationery packages
• Accompany senior team members to photoshoots, press checks, client meetings and assist in photo and art research when necessary

This position is unpaid and only open to current college students who can obtain college credit through the internship.

The experience you will receive at Bailey Gardiner is invaluable. We will take the time to teach, support, provide you with responsibility and of course, have some fun.

For a little more information about us, visit our portfolio or get an intern’s perspective on working here on the blog by our interns.
If you are interested, please email your student portfolio, cover letter and resume to kelly@baileygardiner.com

No phone calls please.

At BG, we have a team where each member specializes in a specific area of the digital marketing field, including mobile marketing, social media,  SEO, PPC and blogging. This team compiled a list of our predictions for 2010 in the five most popular areas in the advertising and public relations world today.

Social Media 2010 Predictions

1. As social networks mature, the value of using each tool (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) for business will become more defined and specialized. Companies will become increasingly strategic about where their resources go and we may see some pullback on tools that aren’t yielding results, while explorers will start testing less mainstream networks such as digg, del.icio.us and foursquare.

2. Company sites will become increasingly social. Applications like Facebook Connect will allow customer engagement within the site while communities, blogs and targeted pages, eliminate the need to jump onto Twitter, Facebook, etc. in order to engage.

Email Marketing 2010 Predictions

1. We will see a simplification in email creative design, to cater to mobile users, while retaining speed-to-market.

2. Expect to see a lot more calls to engage via social media in marketing email in 2010. Around 60% of marketing emails today have no social media elements in them, which is a huge missed opportunity to gain additional brand touch points with engaged consumers.

PPC 2010 Predictions

1. Rapid responses to market news, and the buying up of relevant keywords early, will give marketers an edge over the competition.

2. As search engines get smarter, many SEO techniques will become less effective, making PPC and blogging must-haves instead of nice-to-haves. Shrewd keyword choices that don’t have a lot of competing bidders, and close watchfulness of keyword performance will be the hallmarks of successful marketers in this arena.

Mobile Marketing 2010 Predictions

1. As apps become more popular, advertising within the apps themselves will dramatically increase, especially with free apps. These will become more frequent and the design element will become more savvy, which in turn, will make skipping/avoiding these mobile banners/messages almost impossible.

2. Messaging that is targeted to someone in a specific location (i.e. in Downtown San Diego) will become the new thing. Strategically placed nodes will pick up Bluetooth signals and serve a person an ad relevant to the exact location they are in. They will be given the option to opt-in or opt-out. These preferences that you select will follow you around like a puppy.

Blogging 2010 Predictions

1. Blogs will look more like news sites and news sites will look more like blogs. As bloggers become more sophisticated, blog designs have more functionality than ever. Many top blogs now resemble news portals with featured content and categorization. Simultaneously, as traditional news sites become more and more social with the integration of Facebook fan boxes and tweetmeme buttons, they are beginning to aesthetically look more like blogs.

2. Development of niche blogs will increase. With the plethora of blogs out there, new blogs will have to be extremely targeted and identify a niche audience. While this limits the potential number of readers, it ensures that the blog’s traffic is relevant. It is also a new blog’s only hope to compete for search traffic.

There you have it. Those are BG’s 2010 marketing predictions on where Social Media, Email, PPC, Mobile Marketing and Blogging are heading in 2010. I will be curious at the end of the year to look back and see how on (or off) we were on our predictions for the year. Do you think we missed any key changes?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the Super Bowl is one of the largest platforms for traditional advertising. The Super Bowl TV commercials have almost become just as big of a deal as the game itself, especially to those who don’t know the difference between a quarterback and a cornerback. Airing your ad during the ‘big game’ not only provides an opportunity for TV revenue and unmatched exposure to the big guys, but also allows businesses to pitch, plug and promote their products.  While the big swingers are paying upwards of $2.5-$3 million per 30-second spot, other companies are getting their exposure through the use of more affordable traditional media platforms.

Radio – The Monday before the ‘big game’ the Super Bowl Media Center opens up, which has become the home of “Radio Row.” Almost every sports radio station, both national and local, has a table set up at the Media Center where they do their live feeds from. It’s here that sports radio talk show hosts do live interviews with past and present NFL stars, as well as actors, musicians and comedians.  And why would all these famous people want to do interview after interview with various stations?  Because they’re capitalizing on the ad money generated from their involvement.  It took me a second to realize that Marshall Faulk was paid every time he said “Hass Avocados” during an interview with a local San Diego radio station a couple years back.  He must have said “Hass Avocados” like 30 times.  Ladanian Tomlinson, yet another NFL player capitalizing on the endorsement opportunities, raked in money by promoting Campbell’s Soup.   Adam Sandler used Radio Row as a way to promote one of his new movies.  It’s unclear exactly how much stars get paid for promoting but one thing is for sure, everyone has one.

Print Promotion - The nightlife in the days leading up to the Super Bowl offers a whole slew of traditional advertising and promotional opportunities as well.  Every major men’s magazine, such as Playboy and Maxim, throws huge Super Bowl parties where famous people and promotional items are plentiful.  Victoria’s Secret has jumped on the Super Bowl party bandwagon this year.  The competition from year to year seems to be increasing as everyone tries to one up the other on the party/promotional circuit. This influx of party throwers can only mean more opportunities for exposure for companies.

Direct Mail – Local retailers are also flooding in with advertisements. The front page of Vons’ weekly special includes coupons for everything from chips to frozen pizza and beer.  Meanwhile, Target is doing their own ‘Super Bowl sale’ for flat screen TVs.  Most, if not all, direct mail advertisements received in this week leading up to Sunday’s game is geared towards the Super Bowl in one way or another. It’s insane.

My point – TV commercials are not the only way to effectively reach the Super Bowl audience.

*This post is part of Bailey Gardiner’s Public Relations Tactics series, which highlights tools and best practices to ensure a successful public relations campaign. The series will run weekly.

If you work for a public relations firm, why wouldn’t you do your own PR and practice what you preach?

A while back, Jennifer from our advertising team blogged about Bailey Gardiner’s ad in USA Today. But like she mentioned in her post, advertising is only part of the strategy in branding yourself and working with the types of clients you want to represent. Creating an integrated strategy by adding public relations and social media to the mix is like the one-two punch. Ready? And go.

Here are just a few ways to PR your agency’s work:

Share Agency News

You’re proud of the work you do, right? Announce new hires and share your agency wins with PR trades like PRWeek and Bulldog Reporter as well as local business publications and online. PitchEngine is great service that makes it easy to create a social media news release and your own social media newsroom.

Utilize Social Media Platforms

Whether it’s creating mobile video or doing industry-specific public relations,  showcase your agency’s brilliant thinking on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, or make it easy for people to find you with a Twitter handle or Twitter hashtag.

Position Key Staff as Experts

Another way you can use PR to promote your agency. Pitch senior staff as experts available for interview and for speaking opportunities.

I’m hearing a lot of rumbling about Foursqaure being just another social media thing that no one has time for. Everyone wants to know why they should care where people are, or who just became the Mayor of Subway in Hillcrest… Well if you are running a business, or you are in charge of the marketing for a business, it’s my opinion that you should care, and here’s why.

First off, what is Foursquare?

Well, it’s a location-based, social networking game. In the most basic sense, it allows you to use your phone to alert your friends, in real-time, of your exact whereabouts. You can build a friend network on Foursquare and simply elect to alert those people, or you can connect your Foursquare account to your Facebook and Twitter, in order to update your already existing friends of your whereabouts.

When you check-in places you are given the opportunity to leave a little tip about the venue (eg Try the portobello mushroom sandwich, it’s fantastic). Those tips are then shown to anyone when they check-in to a nearby location. If they like your tip, they can then save it as a “to-do” for themselves. Foursquare also lets you tag a location with descriptive words to let other users know what to expect.

As you begin to use Foursquare you can earn yourself badges (remember this is a game) which tell fellow Foursquarers exactly what kind of Foursquare user you are. Then if you go to a venue enough times, you become the Mayor of that venue. This is a very prestigious honor (ok not so much) but it is super fun to say you are the Mayor of places. Just ask Jason, the current Mayor of Bailey Gardiner…

You’ll earn points every time you check-in somewhere, and you get more points for being adventuresome and checking into different parts of the city, or for going more than once place in a night. You also get points when someone else takes one of your tips or when you complete one of your To-Do’s. The best part of the game is that the stats get reset to zero every Sunday, which gives everyone a fair chance at playing the game – no matter how long you’ve been a Foursquare player.

So why should you care about Foursquare?

If you own a business, work at a marketing agency or are a marketing director for a company, there are five main reasons you should care about Foursquare.

1. Monitoring – As more and more people begin using Foursquare, it’s imperative that your business knows what is being said about you on the platform. Between tips and tags, people have a lot of opportunity to talk about you, and like any social media platform, we recommend you are monitoring what they are saying.

2. Rewards programs – Many companies have already started integrating Foursquare into their customer loyalty/rewards programs. Take Tasti D-lite in NY. They’ve created a comprehensive social media rewards program that utilizes Foursqaure (and therefore Facebook and Twitter) to reward their regular customers for their social media involvement. On a smaller scale, some companies simply put a sign out in front of their venue, offering a free drink, sandwich, whatever, to the Mayor of their place. This inspires people to check in regularly to compete for Mayorship, while rewarding the venue’s most loyal patron.

3. Events - Word on the street (and by street I mean Mashable) is that there is possibly an events layer coming soon that will reward Foursqaure users for attending events. As a public relations professional, I can only imagine how helpful this might be when trying to throw a big event for a client, to have yet another way to give people an incentive to attend.

4. This is just the beginning – Foursquare has some smart developers, who are on their A-game, to say the least. They’ve got some big plans and are in no way done creating Foursquare. Think how much Facebook has evolved since it began (anyone out there remember when it was just your profile picture and some information about your interests?) Foursquare is growing fast. Hop on now so you can be along for the ride.

5. And finally, Foursquare is the next big thing – not to sound trite, but this is getting a LOT of buzz from the higher ups in the social media world. These people know a good thing when they see it, and with so many companies already beginning to adopt Foursquare, I think they may be right. These are the same people that were telling you to pay attention to Twitter back in 2007, when most of us were going “Tweet what?” or “That sounds ridiculously lame.”

In addition to getting involved as a business or as a marketing/PR representative, there are some benefits to using Foursquare as a user:

1. Foursquare answers the question, “I’m here, so now what?” – Foursquare can do everything from help you choose what to order, to seeing what other great places are nearby, to learning about drink specials and deals. The developers told Mashable in an interview that they want to be more than any other location based service by focusing on the “So what”.

2. It will help you connect offline - You spend all this time making connections with people on Twitter that you have never met, which, to me, is kind of a bummer. In fact, it was one of the reasons I so enjoyed going to Blog World this year, because it was fascinating to sit next to some of the people I’ve been communicating with for the past two years. Foursquare helps make this process even easier because you are able to see where you Twitter friends are even if you aren’t all at a conference.

3. It’s fun - There’s a reason people like games. Everyone loves a good competition and what’s better than being rewarded for places you are already going and things you are already doing.

So, what do you think? Are you convinced? Want to be my friend on Foursquare?

It’s really the antithesis of SEO because it leads you to believe that we’re just talking about one word around which to base all of your content.  In most cases, you’ll get nowhere with one word, there’s just too much competition. Today we’re throwing the tricks of the SEO trade out of the window and getting back to the basics to remind ourselves that, aside from stellar content, increasing traffic to your blog is all about the niche keyword.

The goal is to find the “word” (more typically a phrase) that is so niche to your site that very few people use it but just enough people search it, bringing them directly to your site.

If your company has a blog, you are in an excellent position to increase traffic to your blog via search because blogs provide a way for you to get to the top of search results for multiple keyword phrases.  Here’s why: Search engines judge each of your blog posts as a new page.  If every one of your pages used the same keyword phrase, you would be continuously competing against yourself and losing your niche.  By choosing a new phrase each time, you have endless opportunities to get to the top of search results for a variety of niche phrases.

For example: Don’t Drink the Koolaid Blog is all about marketing.  Our keyword phrases may include things like: “search engine marketing,” “public relations” and “San Diego advertising.”  But those are so broad they wouldn’t get us very far.  So, rather than focus our efforts on words that would cause us to compete with every marketing site in the world, we write posts about very specific things like eco-friendly marketing tips, how to use Google Analytics and social media for non-profits. After all, those terms like public relations are going to be included naturally, and naturally, Google will count them towards our SEO.

So next time you write a post, think to yourself, what would someone search that would lead to this post specifically?  It may not be what everyone searches, but for those that do search it, they will be your perfect target demographic.  That is the essence of the niche keyword phrase and this is what will increase the traffic to your blog.

Fueled by a long anticipated product launch, a name guessing game for the new product, and the always fun iPhone to Verizon hopes, the expectations for yesterday’s Apple unveiling were high and the interactions on Twitter certainly reflected that. According to Trendrr.com, there were 177,000 iPad tweets within the first hour alone following the announcement. That’s an average of 3,000 iPad tweets per minute and who knows how many more there would have been had the Bailey Gardiner team been in the office (yesterday was our agency retreat and, don’t worry, there are lots of photos and video to come).

Not only is the sheer volume of iPad tweets notable, but so is the sentiment. According to Mashable, Crimson Hexagon took the time to analyze the sentiment of more than half a million iPad tweets following  the announcement. While about 50 percent of the people had negative feedback and 50 percent had positive, 29 percent of those tweets showed intent to buy the product. That’s about 145,000 people at $500, for the least expensive version, creating at least $72,500,000 in sales if everyone who tweeted about buying the new product actually does go buy one. Personally, even though I’m a Mac lover, I fall within the 21 percent who thought it had a stupid name.

The high level of iPad tweets show that more and more people are turning to Twitter as a resource for breaking news and a venue to share their opinions. When I logged into Twitter this morning #ipad, iTablet, Apple iPad, #itampon, and MaxiPad (reinforcing the stupid name theory) are still trending in the U.S. on Twitter and probably will be for a while to come. I wonder what they will come up with next?

When I read this hilarious post from The Oatmeal, I remembered back to when I decided to major in Communications/Public Relations at San Diego State University. I was informed that I had to pass the GSP (grammar, spelling, punctuation) test (I know I’m dating myself). Each student was only allowed three times to take it and if you didn’t pass, you had to take a semester-long course. It totally freaked me out only because I heard a lot of horror stories from other students.

My head was buried in my AP Stylebook for weeks and I ended up failing. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t really understand how knowing all of this information was going to be useful to me in my career. That’s what spell check was for, people. And, come on. I was a sophomore in college, pledging a sorority (insert joke here) and just wanted to graduate and get a job. This little GSP test wasn’t going to hold me back. I had things to do.

Well, after nearly 10 years of working in this profession, I’d like to go back and tell my college self just how important it is to know the difference between “their”, “they’re” and “there” and “loose” and “lose.” Now, I did end up passing the test the second go at it, but it wasn’t without some help from a study course. And, it is my mission in life to make sure that every intern I come into contact with, any aspiring public relations professional I speak to, or anyone that reads this post, knows that having an AP Stylebook handy at your desk (even it is from 1998) is the most important book you’ll own.

Why is it so important you ask? Well, pressing send on an email to a client or media contact with “How’s the whether in NYC today?”, or “Hope to see you their” in the copy probably isn’t going to score any points, or land my client the feature story in the Wall Street Journal. Even posting a status on your personal Facebook page as, “I definately can’t wait for the weekend.” is almost guaranteed a public call-out from my sarcastic and slightly critical friends.

I’ve listed a few below you should absolutely have memorized. The rest you can use a dictionary and that trusty little thing I like to call my “save me from public humiliation book.”

1. Affect vs. Effect: As written on The Oatmeal- “Most of the time effect is a noun and affect is a verb. If you’re unsure, try substituting a different verb and see if it works.”
2. Don’t start a sentence with a numeral. Spell out a numeral at the beginning of a sentence, or re-write the sentence so the number appears later. The only time you can use an actual numeral to begin a sentence is when it’s a year.
3. They’re, their and there: Honestly, this is the most commonly misused word I see. They’re is a contraction for “they are.” Their is possessive. There refers to a place.
4. “I before E except after C”: Receive- not recieve, Friend- not freind, Thief- not theif.
5. Finally, if you’re going to get one thing right, it’s “loose” not “lose.” You don’t loose your keys, or your shoelaces aren’t lose.