Nerissa — she's an author.

CategoryWork

Using the Caret Symbol Selector in jQuery to make CPT-Gold.

One of the things that was on my wish list as a consultant was a way to show potential clients a clean, easy-to-read proposal. Something that was consistent with my brand, could be created and shared easily, and that I could update or customize as much as I wanted to.

CARET_final

The most important thing for me was having all the information for each proposal in one post, but I wanted to break it up into sections that could be navigated through like a typical website.

Each menu item in the navigation bar would link to a section of the proposal, but I didn’t want the webpage to reload on every click.

Enter the ^ selector and jQuery. [Thanks to slipsum for some ipsum, and some swears.]

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After planning out each section, the headings I needed, subsections and the overall flow I was able to create the custom post type. Then in the proposal template file, I pulled in each section under a specific ID, using “div_” at the beginning of each ID name.

The caret (^) selector in jQuery allowed me to select all divs with an id that started with “div_”. See here for more info.

To create the behaviour I wanted, I used .hide() on all the divs I didn’t want to show, while making sure to single out the section(s) I did want displayed with .show().

To start with, I created an intro ‘page’ that would be attached to each proposal. This would be the first thing users see when they land on the page, so all of the proposal sections needed to be under .hide() when the page loads.

Then once the user clicks on a menu item, all the “div_” sections are hidden, except for the one corresponding to whichever item was selected [I used .attr() to remove menu item links].

The title of each post would be the client’s name, so I used a .click() method on that to .show() all the sections (except for the intro) so the proposal could be viewed in full.

cmplt_sow_FINAL

Using survey results to start a conversation.

In my past life as an associate at a PR agency, I was on the account team for a major credit card company that did a survey of Canadian small business owners every quarter. After the survey was complete and results compiled, I was responsible for pitching local and national media outlets to let them know about the results. The CEO was involved in the whole survey process, so it was natural to have him speak to media.

After my third or fourth round on the project, I asked more senior co-worker on the team if there was another way we could use the results. My mistake may have been speaking off the cuff, because when my coworker asked: “what do you mean?” I didn’t have an answer.

Well now, I have one… or a few.

With so much time and money invested in creating a survey, getting respondents, compiling results and everything else, there has to be a way to get more ‘bang for the buck’.

Here are a some ideas on how survey results can start conversations and be used to share information with an online audience.

First, tracking and getting involved in relevant conversations or groups online before the survey starts and while it’s underway can be a great way to prepare for when the release goes out. The last thing you want to do is start talking to your audience only to push a product or your company.

Then once the survey’s out, start a conversation:

  1. Ask followers and fans what they think. Is there a topic covered in the survey that could be of interest to your audience? Or a certain segment of your audience? Take the opportunity to ask for general opinions and get feedback.
  2. Go beyond spitting out a stiff, scientific list of results and tell some stories. How did you and your team come up with the idea? Did anything interesting come out of the survey that didn’t make it into the release? These juicy bits are great to share in a blog post or podcast.
  3. While Twitter and Facebook might be great to ask a question + get an answer, consider using forums if you want more of a conversation. Especially if you want to reach out to a network that might not be familiar with your company or products.
  4. Are pictures or music important to your survey? Consider making a song list or posting images to Pinterest. For example, a Songza list connected to a survey that finds people work out best to music that’s over 180 beats per minute. Or linking a list of recipes on Yummly using the foods in this survey that ranks 41 superfoods according to health benefits.
  5. This one is a stretch from #4, but it could be interesting. There’s a big app world out there. Maybe there’s an app that’s easily connected to some aspect of your results. Say you’re reading a blog post about this study that found many food trucks beat out restaurants when it came to food safety. Wouldn’t it be great to find out in the same post there’s a Street Food App?!

For more reading, check out this post on why ‘most social media marketing strategies are garbage’.

And it’s a little… sell-y, but here‘s a blog post by SurveyMonkey on surveys as conversations.

Happy surveying!

Twitter for people who don’t like blogging + noobs.

If you’re an entrepreneur, solopreneur, freelancer, or you own a small business and you don’t like blogging, here are some steps you can take to build your profile on Twitter. It’s one way to engage with your audience that’s more interactive than blogging or emailing and doesn’t require intense writing.

  1. Follow people. Find customers and clients, potential customers and clients, business partners, competitors (yes.), thought leaders in your field / industry, people you admire, companies or groups you want to partner with someday, friends, family, pancake houses. In other words follow as many people as you can who are relevant to you and your business. Everyone you follow will get a notice telling them that you’re following them.
  2. Carve out five – ten minutes in your day to check what’s going on with the people you’re following. When you see something you would have said, retweet, or if you see something you like, fav it. If you find something interesting or have a comment about something someone else tweeted (and you don’t mind it being public on the internets), respond.

These two things really make up half the battle. The best thing is if you just follow others and retweet / fav / respond you’re building engagement without tweeting anything yourself. But chances are if you follow people, people are going to follow you. And once you start building engagement you’re going to have some things to say…

  1. If your business relies heavily on dates / schedules (fitness studio or gym, for example) time your tweets to coincide with this schedule. If you have a big event coming up, consider telling your followers about important milestone dates leading up to the event (space or performers booked, sponsorships, etc.). Put all this in a calendar, if that makes things easier.
  2. Following that, tweet about your events! Sales, classes, talks, special appearances by celebrities, even personal things like graduating from school, finishing a program or taking a trip to attend a conference.
  3. Share stuff. Yes, there’s a lot of “noise” out there. A lot of people saying a lot of stuff about a lot of different things. But this doesn’t mean no one wants to hear what you have to say. Share things you find online, things you overheard or events that might be of interest to your followers.
  4. Share YOUR stuff. Take a picture of a new product your company is developing, a new shipment of clothing or accessories to your store, something cool happening right in front of you. Maybe you own a fitness studio and someone in your class is mastering a move for the first time. Get their permission to send a photo out to the universe and share it.

As with anything else, you determine how much (or little) you’ll get out of using Twitter. I’ve been on it for a couple of years and I know I can do a better job of being more engaged. But that’s the great thing about it – it’s easy and quick to join the conversation when you’re ready.

Are you ok, PR?

Update: 10/29/14

Check out this Whitepaper from Vocus that talks about how to combine traditional PR tactics with Content Marketing: How to Use Content Marketing to Generate Engagement and Coverage.

I’m no doctor, but I’ve been in the PR industry for a few years and from what I can tell the prognosis is not great.

There are a bunch of jobs specifically for people who work solely online who do the same things PR folks are supposed to do. Content Marketers, SEO Specialists, Community Managers, all of them are writing, managing influencers and stakeholders, monitoring, and putting out fires.

Ironically within agencies and large companies the social media and PR specialists are often in different departments entirely, completely forgetting about each other except to tweet out a release or manage an issue that is already out of control.

It’s like social media and public relations are soulmates but just can’t/won’t get together.

Part of the problem is many people still don’t understand PR and relegate it to the ‘press release and translation’ department. Another part of the problem is PR is like that bad kid in school that’s always doing something bad. No one pays attention when that kid behaves but everyone talks about every bad thing that kid does. And then there’s this.

While the PR industry tries to figure its shit out, those of us in the trenches have to navigate our own careers if we want to move forward with the rest of the world. Luckily if you have or are starting a career in the PR industry, there are lots of resources… online… that can help sharpen your skills, covering everything between web and content development, to social media strategy and community management. Here are a few that have helped me and a few I found for this post:

Last but definitely-not least, full disclosure I’m a student at this place so it’s special to me: HackerYou.

So what do you think? Is the PR / communications industry in danger of falling through the gap?

*Jennifer Aniston image from allure.com, John Stamos image from accessatlanta.com