My transition from intern to full-time account coordinator at Nuffer, Smith, Tucker required much more effort than the average stealthy operation. While I failed to refill the candy dish my first week, I did take away a few important lessons in office warfare. First thing to note is there may be a secret preference in smartphone brands and also their color and what kind of phone cases the office considers as “cool” and “not so cool” like team mascots and battery packs, respectively. I also discovered that Saturday Night Live videos make for great conversation starters when seeking classified information and that I am definitely in for a tricky but hilarious challenge when the next team building retreat rolls around.

While all of these are equally important, my favorite lesson is one I think applies for most new graduates/agents. I realized that for most of us, soon after we are handed our diplomas we move straight into Mission: Find A Job (any job). While this is an admirable assignment, I discovered that the mission I was on had a special target. Not only was I on a search to find a job, I was on my way to finding a company with people who made me want to work harder, learn as much as I can and form relationships that moved beyond, “tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

Finding a job after graduation is very important, believe me, I know. However, finding a place to learn, grow and prosper was the reason we embarked on this mission in the first place. To all of my current covert agents infiltrating agencies and offices, keep going, work hard but remember your job needs to be just as good a fit for you as you are for it.

Good luck my friends,

Agent Jazmine Allen

P.S. Having the most recent AP Stylebook in the office makes you a prime ally.

Perpetually curious. Always questioning.  Thirsty for knowledge.  Unsatisfied with the status quo.  This is what being an “explorer” means to me. I believe it is a trait developed early on in life, perhaps even innately. On some level, you either got it or you don’t.  At Nuffer, Smith, Tucker, I’d like to think we all “got it.”

Earlier this year, we adopted a new value: Push ourselves, each other, our clients and our profession to explore.  While we finally put pen to paper on this one, the value is one that I believe has always been at the core of NST.

In a dynamic industry, success isn’t possible by resting on your laurels. What worked in the past, may not work in the future. Change is a word we must be comfortable with. More importantly, we must embrace and push for it by continual exploration.

I recently asked our team to tell me what “exploration” means to them. Here’s how they define exploration:

• Moving past the “guide book” to see what else is out there.  Is there a different route that we can take? Is there a new way of tackling a problem that has not been thought of before? Are there new tools we can use to go farther than we have been able to go before?  (Bill Trumpfheller)
• Taking chances and not worrying about outcome because all that matters is the experience/knowledge you will gain from having the courage to take that chance in the first place (Mary Correia-Moreno).
• Learning through experiences, having a desire to know and do more, and being present and aware no matter where we find ourselves (Jazmine Allen).
• Avoiding complacency and constantly innovating; no block-and-tackle tactics (Price Adams).
• Not only learning about the latest trends, technologies and ideas, but also learning (or even re-learning) the basics – including grammar and writing style – that ultimately create the sturdiest foundation on which to grow (Natalie Haack).
• Wondering. Searching … an ambitious drive to find the next great adventure (Michelle Livermore).
• Constantly investigating trends and what others are up to, searching for new techniques and ideas, helping clients see things in new ways, and creating campaigns that help them navigate through the noise (Greg Kershaw).
• It’s about movement. It’s about exploring what I’m not familiar with and using what I’ve discovered to grow and better myself. It’s about having that itch or desire to constantly be doing so and being propelled by the excitement of what exploration can deliver (Krystin Williamson).
• Constantly having your eyes on the horizon, looking forward at what’s to come, and actively planning for the future – even if it’s unknown (Katie Rowland).
• Trying to improve upon the method of solution that I’ve used before and always striving to improve upon my own work using the latest and greatest practices (Aaron Blomberg).
• Not letting the fear of failure prevent you from trying something new and taking a risk. This can apply to going after new business, pitching a new campaign idea to the client, etc. (Rebecca Howe Schmidt).

Reading these thoughts from our team reminds me – once again – what makes Nuffer, Smith, Tucker so special, and why on Monday mornings when others dread going to work, I don’t.  It’s this culture of exploration that unites and drives us.

AT&T Park, San Francisco

The return of baseball season is an exciting time at Nuffer, Smith, Tucker– it’s something to follow, discuss and tease each other about.  It represents hope (although Kerry has expressed “limited optimism” in the Padres management this year) and a renewed excitement in our downtown office, where we have a great view down the third-base line at Petco Park.

If you’ve walked by my desk, it’s not hard to tell I’m a San Francisco Giants fan (hint: you may’ve noticed the “Beard Yourself Like Brian Wilson” poster behind my computer or the Barry Bonds bobblehead on the file cabinet), but above all else, I’m a baseball fan.  I can watch a 0-0 tie going into the 9^th inning of any game and be perfectly happy.  I’m intrigued by matchups, left-handed pitching vs. right-handed hitting, fielders playing close against certain hitters, late inning switches… It’s all fascinating and predicated on the idea of playing to one’s strengths.  Sure, you can put a lineup out there and hope for the best, but good managers are active – they know their competition inside and out, they know who hits better against certain relievers, and they’re thinking several steps ahead for the good of the team.

Public relations done right is a lot like baseball.  It involves analyzing trends, assessing your competition, identifying your strengths and key differentiators, and putting together a solid game plan for success.  We’d be happy to help you think through some of those things for your business and how to best utilize that information to reach your strategic business goals through branding, media relations, online marketing, social media and/or graphic design.  And, if you want to talk baseball, we’d like that too.

“Hitting is fifty percent ‘above the shoulders.’” – Ted Williams  

At NST, setting goals is in the fabric of our company. We believe in strategy and in moving toward an objective that has clear benefits for our clients and their stakeholders. Sometimes setting and making goals comes easily. Sometimes you need a little extra motivation to get you to the finish line. Stickie notes serve as my motivation.

I was recently tasked with setting goals to grow a client’s social media following and website visits over the course of three months. Unfortunately, the “if you build it, they will come” saying doesn’t always ring true in the digital world. We had to do a little extra work to make sure that not only were the right eyeballs getting on our social media pages, but they were also clicking “like” and “follow,” ingesting our content and ultimately clicking through to our website. No small feat.

We identified monthly goals and outlined tactics that would lead us in the right direction. Then I grabbed a Sharpie and some Post-it notes, and made sure those objectives were staring me in the face every day. Ultimately, with a combination of Facebook advertising, special offers, engaging posts and blogger outreach, we not only met our goals, we exceeded them. The number of Facebook fans rose by 456 percent. Twitter impressions were up 410 percent. We created valuable conversations about our client online and increased website visits by 45 percent.

Yes, it’s quite possible we would have reached those goals without the adornment of stickie notes to my cubicle. But, for me, they served as a reminder to constantly be focused on the end results of our plan and push myself to guarantee we surpassed our client’s expectations. They helped motivate me every day. What do you use to motivate yourself?

I never guessed that someday my first topic for work-related blogging would be about bugs. This is usually left for professional bug collectors and pest exterminators. But, at an Albondigas meeting for politicos recently, I found myself pulling out an amber casing with two bugs inside so my colleagues would get a visual of my number one client – the Asian citrus psyllid.

While not harmful to humans or pets, this bug is a death sentence for citrus trees, if the population can’t be controlled.

Southern Californians love their citrus trees – just peek into millions of backyards and you’ll see orange, lemon and lime trees dotting the landscape. Unfortunately, so does the Asian citrus psyllid and it is trying to stake its claim in neighborhoods across Southern California.

NST is currently working with the Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program (CPDPP), a non profit organization funded by citrus growers that is dedicated to protecting the citrus industry from invasive pests and diseases. Currently, public enemy number one for CPDPP is the Asian citrus psyllid.

NST is tasked with an education-based mission to keep elected officials and the general public informed about efforts to treat for the Asian citrus psyllid and to raise awareness about the fatal danger this pest poses to citrus trees.

In a nutshell, we were asked to wedge our foot into a public universe that encompasses five counties, 60 cities, 180 community groups, and a total population of nearly 8.5 million people.

With any size budget, this is a daunting task for a grassroots public education campaign. But, by employing some previous research to hone solid messaging and capitalizing on strategic communication principles, NST is tackling this challenge.

One of the key concepts we analyzed for our outreach strategy was credibility of message. A large body of research indicates that people are more likely to trust and believe a message if comes from a source they deem credible.

Our research also found that while low levels of approval keep buzzing around the United States Congress, local governments are seen as prized pupils in the eyes of the public. A recent Gallup poll reported by Politico details the public’s trust and confidence in local government at a staggering 70 percent – consistent over the last decade.

This is why we decided to parlay the education-based mission requested by the CPDPP, to include a solicitation of support from local governments to help communicate our message. City governments provide a gateway to their constituencies. By utilizing their mediums we have successfully disseminated our message to more than 170,000 mailboxes, inboxes and households in the last three months. Additionally, it gets an important segment of our target audience – elected officials – active in our client’s public education campaign, rather than just watching on the sidelines.

As the longest tenured public relations firm in San Diego, NST has a storied history of providing clients with cutting-edge public relations and media relations strategies. Our most recent chapter incorporates public affairs and government relations into our wide-ranging array of capabilities.

In this case, NST was already providing CPDPP with a robust media outreach campaign, but the client needed assistance to strengthen its presence in communities throughout Southern California. By integrating a messaging platform from the media outreach operation with a public affairs strategy, we are helping our client discover a new approach to meet their goals that maybe they wouldn’t see on their own – a core value at NST.

Meanwhile, I’m learning about the development stages of an invasive pest. I used to think that the only bugs I had to worry about were in the light fixtures and telephones, but I guess I was wrong.

It’s the announcement that everyone in marketing has been on the edge of their seat waiting for – Facebook Timeline for brands. Recently, a few NSTers were able to sit in on some webinars about the new features.  We had so many notes on the new features that we’ve broken them out into a three-part blog series, starting below with “above the fold” features.

Although the changes affecting brand pages will require us to make a few tweaks to our clients’ pages, overall, we’re excited!  Some of the features are downright cool, like the new cover photo.  Here are a few of the new elements you should be aware of:

• Default landing pages are no more.  Visitors will automatically go to a brand’s wall, or Timeline.  This, along with some of Facebook’s other changes, highlights the importance of posting and engaging with fans regularly.
• Brand cover photo.  Brands now have an 851 x 315-pixel area at the top of the page for a cover photo, which will be public to everyone.  This can be a fun or artsy photo or design, but cannot include:

• Smaller profile pictures.  At 180 x 180 pixels, the profile photo overlaps with the cover photo.  There are some creative ways to have this work with your cover photo, as these brands show, but the profile picture is still a prominent feature when interacting with a brand, so it’s important to have it work by itself too.
• Application changes.  The applications that were previously listed as tabs on the left sidebar will now appear as boxes below the cover photo (see Coca-Cola’s four applications above: Photos, Likes, Home, Your Stories).  However, there are only four spots immediately visible and one will be taken up by photos, which is a static feature.  Therefore, you should design custom icons (110 x 74 pixels) for at least three other tabs that will be visible “above the fold” without clicking to see more.
• Once visitors click on those application boxes, the tabs they see will now also have a larger area (810 pixels wide).  Current tabs (at 520 pixels) will be centered, but you should consider filling the extra space.

What are your thoughts on losing the welcome page option and gaining the cover photo?  Leave us a comment with your thoughts and stay tuned for Part 2 in our 3-part series on the subject.

How many times have you heard someone say, “I don’t want to be on Twitter. I don’t care what you ate for lunch or that you’re brushing your teeth.” Countless, right? While most marketing professionals understand the impact social media can have on a business or issue, the general layman may not.

This week’s “Kony 2012” campaign, created by San Diego group Invisible Children, may change that perception. The nonprofit organization produced a video highlighting the travesties committed by Joseph Kony, the leader of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, who has led the organization as it has kidnapped tens of thousands of children and forced them to commit heinous crimes in African countries.

As we witnessed with Libya and other uprisings in the Middle East, social media has become more than a platform for communicating with friends, but a tool for social change. These technologies have the ability to break down geographic barriers and help us create human connections.

A lot more interesting than what I had for lunch, huh?

Read More:

U-T San Diego

Los Angeles Times

Each year, I’m excited when the San Diego Social Media Symposium (SDSMS) comes around. It’s a great time to get together with my peers and learn about the ever-changing world of social media.

While listening to the dialog on compelling brand content, online reputation management or word-of-mouth marketing, there was an overriding theme throughout the day. A brand/company needs to be authentic and strategic in their online efforts and even ask if having a social media presence is necessary. At NST, helping our clients strategically think through their own situation is at the core of our firm’s being, so it was wonderful to hear others share our philosophy.

The day kicked off with an insightful presentation from @JasonFalls who discussed the seven business drivers of social media marketing and ways to measure your social media ROI. He presented excellent case studies that reinforced how focusing on those business drivers will allow brands to ultimately drive sales and how to attribute those sales to social media efforts.

Other insights from @JasonFalls:

• Never measure brand awareness in dollars. Measure in interest (i.e. conversations, engagement).
• Social media allows brands to protect reputation by speaking directly to consumers and brand ambassadors.
• Social media marketing is an extension of public relations and belongs with that scope of work.
• Build communities around the topic and not the product or business.
• You can perform customer service for free by using social media—spend time not money with your customers.
• Build a following and then market research is almost free using social media.
• Social media marketing can allow small business to engage in research and development at a low or no cost.
• Goals, objectives, strategies, tactics and execution are needed to implement social media marketing efforts.
• What does social mean? You need to be at the table and a member of the community.
• Don’t tell me you are on Facebook or Twitter, tell me why I should follow you.
• People buy from people they know, like and trust. If you provide good value, people will like you and over time will trust you.

Other takeaways from the panelists:

• Create a handshake with consumers and drive them to other products/brand/content. Laura Naviaux, @Sonyonline
• Be unique to your brand and don’t go with off the shelf solutions. Seth Silver, @wecontrol
• Social media is a marathon and not a sprint. Laura Naviaux, Sony
• It all starts with strategy. It’s the same process to make a site sticky. Map out the entire user experience and test it. Seth Silver, Social Control
• Recognize that crisis communication issues are going to end up on social media. Don’t ignore it; redirect it to internally monitored sites. Laura Naviaux, Sony
• Only follow personal, unique interactions and not automated tweets. @EdwardLewisASR
• We are about to enter a new era based on the Internet and mobile and it’s going to be big. Follow the change and don’t panic. @GaryKim
• Trust is an important word in everything we do now. Gary Kim, Mobile Marketing & Technology
• A major pitfall is to have a cookie cutter response for positive and negative feedback. Lack of authenticity is the first red flag for your customers. @GQCarpenter @HiltonBayfront
• From the smallest company to the largest, everyone should have a crisis communications plan in place. @AprilBolduc @sdge
• Offline relationships can lead to online success. The key is relationships and having something to share. @realtordotcom @movetrends
• Before engaging in social media, listen and decide which conversations to engage. Then prepare procedures and policies on how to respond. Paige Perdue @originalWD40
• Voice is important. You should know who we are by reading the information and not having to see our logo. @Bcupham @FijiWater

For more on SDSMS, download the tweets at http://www.hashtracking.com/fast-report/?hashtag=sdsms

Managing your company’s community, blog or social networking page can be a daunting task.  As a community manager, you’re often responsible for balancing the needs of your members or subscribers with those of your organization, providing a consistent user experience, monitoring news and trends, posting engaging content, moderating content from others, measuring progress… The list goes on and on.  Here are a few tips, with thought-provoking questions below them, that should help you think through your community management strategy:

Define Roles and Responsibilities

• How does having a community, blog or social networking page fit within or help advance your company’s strategic business goals?
• Do you have the time, talent and resources to manage your community well?
• What behaviors do you want members or subscribers to exhibit, and what can you do to help them get there?
• How are you measuring success?

Be Consistent, but Add Value

• Does your community offer a similar user experience with your website, collateral and other materials?
• Is the tone and voice in your messages consistent?
• What are you doing to add value and encourage a two-way dialogue instead of just posting one-way marketing messages?

Identify and Leverage Community Leaders

• How often do you just say “thank you” to your members or subscribers?
• What’s the best way to incentivize increased engagement?
• How are you positioning your community as a resource?

Nuffer, Smith, Tucker has been managing communities for more than a decade, before the term “social media” was coined.  While we may not have all the answers to these questions without getting to know your organization and its key stakeholders first, we’d be happy to share our insights and ideas and work with you to make your community the best it can be.

“I live a charmed life … I try to honor it by reaching out to people who don’t live the life I live,” said Kim Bond, president of Mental Health Systems (MHS), at a recent LEAD San Diego IMPACT session dedicated to health and human services. I reflected back on the LEAD session recently when I received an email from a commercial tenant in my condo complex seeking solutions to the “homeless problems” in the building.

While reading the email – which noted the “problem” erodes our enjoyment of our properties and property value – I couldn’t help but feel compassion for those homeless individuals who end up sleeping in our building’s stairwells or commercial parking spaces. I took off my hat of condo owner and dutiful HOA-dues payer, and instead wore one of concerned community member, and thought back to the discussion recently facilitated through LEAD.

The LEAD session centered mainly around “behavioral health,” a term that, according to MHS, includes both mental illnesses and challenges, and substance abuse disorders – things that are common in our community. Some estimates say as many as one out of every four people suffer from some form of mental illness, which – like substance abuse – can happen on a continuum and includes everything from anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder to depression and schizophrenia.

“What does mental health issues look like?,” said James Lepanto, senor vice president, mental health division of MHS. “Hold up a mirror. That’s what it looks like. We often think of it as ‘other’ people, but it’s not. It’s us. It’s our community.”

The LEAD cohort discussed not only how behavioral health issues affect individuals and families, but also the impact to the workforce, economy and quality of life through problems such as homelessness and strains placed on our health care and incarceration systems.

So what do we do?  LEAD attendees were reminded of the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Ways you can help include:

• Get educated. Aspects of behavioral health issues are preventable and treatable.
• Talk about behavioral health with friends, family, colleagues or others.
• Advocate on behalf of programs that provide solutions and address behavioral health issues head on.
• Be empathetic.
• Volunteer your time and talent.

By doing these things, we are playing a role in the solution, and removing the stigma around mental illness. According to MHS, every day in San Diego someone commits suicide. Others who suffer from behavioral health issues sleep in our public spaces and on our streets. We can’t – and shouldn’t – ignore the issue.