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.

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.

NST's Young Influential Teresa Siles

She’s young. She’s influential. She’s NST’s very own Teresa Siles! Recently named a Young Influential by the San Diego Daily Transcript, Teresa was recognized for her knowledge in social media and her efforts to ensure our agency plays a leading role in the industry.

Teresa joined NST more than 10 years ago as an intern and worked her way up to become a vice president of the firm. In fact, she’s the youngest vice president in NST’s history! Through the years, Teresa has developed a well-deserved reputation of being a leader in public relations and social media. She is creative and is constantly pushing not only her clients, but also her colleagues, to try new things and stay on the edge of change.

In addition to managing client accounts, Teresa leads NST’s social media practice. In 2009, she created the San Diego Social Media Symposium, which is now an annual one-day conference that brings together leaders in public relations, marketing, academia and the business community from across Southern California to talk about social media and how it is impacting our respective industries. The most recent symposium was held March 1, 2012 and drew more than 200 attendees.

Teresa is also a two-time graduate of WOMM-U or “Word of Mouth Marketing University,” and received her bachelor’s degree from San Diego State University (SDSU).

In her spare time, Teresa also finds time to give back. She leads a monthly social media workshop for SCORE San Diego, and serves on the marketing committee for LEAD San Diego and the advisory committee for the Digital and Social Media Collaborative at SDSU. As if all this was not enough, Teresa has also recently returned to SDSU as a student in its Executive MBA Program.

Please join me in recognizing Teresa for all her hard work and dedication not only to the profession and her clients, but also to NST and her colleagues. She is a true influential leader.

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  

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?

It was a glimpse at a life that many people will never see. As we stood in the guard area looking out at the incarcerated men, I overheard someone from the LEAD cohort say he felt strange looking at them “like they are animals.” It was a no doubt an odd experience.

From the safety of the guard’s quarters, we received an explanation of the different colored wristbands worn by inmates. Men who committed among the most disturbing of crimes (sex crimes or crimes committed against children) wore yellow bands.

While many – myself included – may find it difficult to have compassion for the men behind bars, a more thoughtful look would reveal the situations that put many men there are complex and varied. Further, the solutions for what to do with them are far more complicated than what I’ve heard proposed many times: lock ‘em up and throw away the key.  It’s this thinking that has caused many to dub America the “incarceration nation.” And while many people prefer to think of the situation as “not my problem,” the reality is as taxpayers, it is our problem. For some, it’s a fiscal problem; for others, it’s a moral one.

“It’s a sad commentary on our society when people don’t care about what happens to inmates,” said San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore.

Even if you are among those who “don’t care,” Gore shared with the LEAD cohort a fact that may pique your interest. It’s also one that many people would prefer to ignore: more than 95 percent of inmates are released back into society. Then what? Many are lacking basic skills such as reading and writing.  Many others struggle with addiction. Unfortunately, California has among the highest recidivism rates in the nation, which are estimated by some to be as high as 80 percent in our state.  Without skills for integration with society, many return to their former lives that got them in trouble to begin with.

After touring two detention centers and the San Diego Regional Firearms Training Center, and hearing from several experts in rehabilitation, I left the day still a little unsure of what to think of it all. Later, I realized that in many ways, the people behind bars represented a culmination of societal problems and issues the LEAD cohort had been exposed to in earlier sessions.  The most obvious tie is to our discussion of behavioral health issues, including mental health and substance abuse disorders, which put people at greater risk of ending up behind bars. But ties can also be made to our education session and our discussion of developing 21^st century leadership skills.

The incarceration system has problems with no easy answer, and it’s critical we think beyond simple solutions.  While undoubtedly there are incarcerated men and women who should never be allowed to walk the streets again, there are others who – like it or not – will. These men and women are someone’s child, mother, father, sister, brother, aunt or uncle. As a society, we need to be more compassionate and not take the easy way out by sweeping it all under the rug.

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.

As part of the experience, the IMPACT group also toured the USS Howard, where we were greeted by several sailors who took us on a ship tour.  I was struck by how young our guide looked and thought about my own brother, who is now 15 years old and considering entering the military; it was a thought I kept with me throughout the day.

The most poignant moments came at the Naval Medical Center, where we heard from the San Diego Military Advisory Council (SDMAC), and service men and women from the center. SDMAC told us the facts: the military’s presence in San Diego is responsible for $30.5 billion in economic output, $16.3 billion in household earnings, and 354,627 jobs, or about one out of every four jobs in San Diego.  We then heard about the work done at the medical center and saw a simulation video that moved us all.

It was a training video used to prepare military medical personnel for what they may see in combat. Designed to mirror real life situations, the explosions, injuries and operations were so life like that the video was stopped to make sure everyone in the class was comfortable watching it. Even knowing it was not real, it was hard to sit through.

“When people come back, they are changed. They see things most of us will never see,” said Commander Langlais, who discussed her own experiences serving. The cohort talked about the increasing instances of post-traumatic stress, and how the military is helping men and women cope.

Watching the video, I thought about what it must be like to witness the tragedies of combat in real life. I thought about what this sacrifice means not only to the individuals who serve, but to their friends, families, communities and to us all as Americans. We owe our service men and women a huge debt of gratitude. Langlais summed up well the lesson for the LEAD cohort and those in the San Diego community.

“We expect a lot of them out there, so they should expect a lot of us back here,” said Langlais.

To those not in the armed forces, let us remember the important work of our service men and women and their contributions to the fabric that makes up San Diego. Thank you to all those who serve for your important work on duty and off for our country and for our community.

Sponsored Story Ads
The content of Sponsored Story ads is what brands are already posting in their Timelines. The ads can be a status message, a poll, a link, an image or a video. The ad will first show consumers which friends like the brand page and then the ad will show the content of a recent status. Fans of the brand page can comment, share and like the ad unit.

Examples of Facebook's Sponsored Story Ad Types

Also, advertisers can still run Facebook campaigns that drive to third-party tab applications, even though pages lost the ability to designate a default-landing tab in the latest redesign. So if a brand is running Facebook ads to announce a contest or other promotion, the ads can still direct people to the app highlighting the promotion.

Facebook hopes these new ads will discourage brands who were not providing engaging content on their pages, or who are simply using Facebook as an advertising vehicle, from advertising on the platform. Facebook is focused on the user experience and it feels advertising should mesh with that philosophy. A study from Nielsen showed that, on average, people are 68 percent more likely to remember seeing an ad with social context than without, twice as likely to remember the ad’s message and four times as likely to purchase.

Types of Facebook Ads
Premium ads: require a $25,000 per month ad buy and will provide privileged access to certain aspects of the Facebook marketing experience.

Premium ads will be located in four places on the platform:

1. Right hand side of the page.
2. Inside the news feed where a brand’s fans and friends of fans will see the posts. These will appear higher in the newsfeed and will remain in the newsfeed longer.
3. Mobile ads will also be featured in a news feeds for fans and friends of fans.
4. Log out ads will be shown when users log out of Facebook.

Facebook is also offering a new product called Reach Generator for Premium Ads. Reach Generator broadens the scope of an ad’s message by increasing the overall percentage of a brand’s fan base who will see the Sponsored Story.

Marketplace ads: (also known as self-service ads) can also created Sponsored Story ads. Marketplace ads do not have the $25,000 minimum ad spend and will only be located on the right side of the Facebook page/newsfeed.

Finding the right Facebook ad for your brand can be tricky. Have you used a certain Facebook ad that worked well for your brand, or do you still have questions on all the elements available to you? Leave us a comment here.

This blog post is the third in a three-part series. The first and second blog posts can be viewed here:
Facebook Timeline for Brands: Creativity Above the Fold 

Facebook Timeline for Brands: Organic Content and Engagement