Marketing Tips and News

FUTURES Foundation for Volusia County Schools

3750 Olson Drive

Daytona Beach, FL  32124

Phone:  (386) 255-6475, Extension 50730

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DAYTONA BEACH (FEB. 23, 2010) – The FUTURES Foundation will introduce a new component to its well-known Bowl-A-Thon this weekend: Wii Bowl for Volusia County Schools. Those who visit Sam’s Club in Daytona Beach and donate $5 can take part in a video-game bowling challenge that benefits the county’s public schools education foundation.

Wii Bowl for Volusia County Schools will be from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 27; Sunday, Feb. 28; and Saturday, March 6 at Sam’s Club, 1175 Beville Road. For a $5 donation, each participant can play one game, plus have a chance to win prizes, including a Wii game system and Sam’s Club gift cards.

Awards will be presented to top bowlers in several categories. Tickets for Wii Bowling are available at Sam’s Club on the days of the event, and Sam’s Club membership is not required to participate. Visit FuturesVolusia.org for more information.

Media Contact:
Catherine Klasne
(386) 212-7376
Write Result for Easter Seals
klasne@write-result.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DAYTONA BEACH, FL (Feb. 18, 2010) – From Florida to Pennsylvania, shoppers are supporting Easter Seals, including our local organization, on their regular grocery trips through March 9. By visiting Food Lion during its Shop&Care campaign and purchasing specific products – or contributing at the checkout – they are making a valuable donation to help children who are receiving Easter Seals services.

These money-saving coupons and painless charitable opportunities are available:

• Kraft will donate 25 cents to Easter Seals for every Shop&Care coupon redeemed (plus consumers will save money on Kraft products).
• Food Lion will donate 25 cents for every 24-pack of store-brand water purchased during the campaign.
• Procter & Gamble will donate 5 cents for every specially marked Pringles potato chips package purchased.
• Customers also can donate at checkout and write their names on special hangtags for $1 each.

Food Lion LLC and subsidiaries Bloom, Bottom Dollar Food and Reid’s raised $3,300,000 for Easter Seals in just four weeks through the 2009 Shop&Care campaign. That program featured special cereal boxes with pictures of children from Easter Seals Volusia and Flagler Counties. Over the last 19 years, Food Lion LLC has raised more than $21 million in support of Easter Seals nationwide.

Easter Seals is the leading non-profit provider of services for individuals with autism, developmental disabilities and other special needs. Easter Seals is proud to partner with Food Lion, LLC to support services that offer help, hope and answers to these individuals and their families.

Locally, participating Food Lion stores are at 1382 Howland Blvd., Deltona; 1603 Nova Road, Holly Hill; 4178 S. Atlantic Ave., New Smyrna Beach; 101 East Granada Blvd., Ormond Beach; and 3826 Clyde Morris Blvd, Port Orange.

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Have you thought about using social media to get leads and find potential customers? You should. Social media is the new word of mouth marketing and listening to it will help you find new audiences. The #8 conversation you should be listening for through your social media engagement is The Question/Inquiry.

If you provide health, medical and care services to help elderly adults stay in their home, listening to the questions people are asking about your industry can provide an opportunity to position yourself as an expert on the subject and help attract clients.

When people post a question using social media, they are doing so in the moment when they are looking for a solution. Listen, respond quickly, be a resource. The time you invest in this new form of word-of-mouth marketing is time well spent because you are speaking directly to someone who needs your services. It’s targeted, personal and impactful.

Social media is the new word of mouth marketing, an important component of any strategic marketing and communications plan. But if you think social media is all about “talking” and “posting” you’re wrong. It’s mostly about listening.   The #9 conversation you should be listening for through your social media engagement is The Problem.

If something isn't working properly, wouldn't you want to know?

More than ever before, consumers are using social media to find help with a problem. Consider this example, which is a post I placed on my Facebook page recently.

“Does anyone know how to change the privacy settings on Facebook so that I can pick and choose who can see certain information on my page? I’ve looked at Facebook’s FAQ and made what I think are the right changes to my profile, but Facebook won’t let me save the changes. I think there’s something wrong with Facebook’s settings. Help!”

Now if you are Facebook, and your system is encountering a problem that is preventing people from changing and saving their privacy settings, you’d want to know about that and fix it as soon as possible. Monitoring what people are saying about your organization, your industry, your service or product when they talk about a problem is one of your biggest opportunities to clarify information or correct misinformation. Don’t be afraid to help tackle a “problem” using the social media platform as it helps to manage the expectations of your audience.

A public complaint can be useful, even though it seems embarrassing.

Social media. It seems like that’s all anyone is talking about lately, and for good reason. Social media is the new word of mouth. We all know how important word of mouth or person-to-person marketing is to businesses and organizations. If you’re not using social media to engage your clients, customers, donors and constituents, it’s like not picking up the phone when they call.

At Write Result, we know which conversations you should be listening for through social media and how and when to engage your audience.  We’ll identify some of the top 10 conversations to listen for on our blog in the coming weeks. Let’s start with conversation #10 – The Complaint.

Complaining about a company, product or service was one of the most common initial experiences of social media.  But why should someone’s complaint on a blog post, a twitter feed or their Facebook page about your organization be looked at any differently than a complaint letter sent to your customer service center? The public nature of social media makes it different.

Receiving a complaint from a client or customer is not a new experience for businesses and organizations. But responding to a complaint in social media requires a much more immediate action.

The culture of social media is one that values transparency, immediacy and validation. While you may not be able to solve the problem right away, just letting the complainer know that you are listening and that you want to do something about it right away can make a significant difference.  You might be surprised at the positive reaction you will get just by letting people know that you’re listening, that you took the time to notice and reach out. Timeliness is key in social media. And timeliness is also one of the benefits of engaging your audiences through social media.

So don’t be afraid of complaints delivered through social media. Realize the opportunity you have to quickly and efficiently turn a negative into a positive and showcase your organization’s customer relations skills in a public way. This type of engagement will engender trust and loyalty, the ultimate return on investment!

Bob Turk, with the Economic Development Department for the City of DeLand, e-mailed Tuesday afternoon with an offer of free help for local businesspeople. The purpose of this blog is to share, so here goes:

Get Your Business Ready for the Good Times To Come

The City of DeLand, the DeLand Chamber of Commerce and the Small Business Development Center at Daytona State College will be co-sponsoring a free three-hour workshop on “Getting Your Business Ready for the Good Times to Come” conducted by FastTrac, a program of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

We realize that all our local small businesses need all the help that they can get during this recession. All you need to do is register.  This is a free seminar! A $35 value!

Tuesday, February 16th from 8a.m. – 11a.m.
DeLand Campus — Daytona State College
Building 8, Room 113
1155 County Road 4139, DeLand

Questions That Will Be Addressed:

• What do I want from my business?
• How do I get it?
• How can I sell more?
  

We hope our local businesses will take advantage of this wonderful opportunity. For more information on FastTrac, visit www.fasttrac.org

To register, call (386) 506-4723 or e-mail sbdc@DaytonaState.edu.

Sure, it would be nice to have a service like Vocus or Cision.

It would take care of or automate a lot of the drudge work of PR, such as tracking down media contacts for your campaigns and keeping track of results. But it’s not cheap!

The least expensive option a company like Vocus can offer — without many of the bells and whistles that make it so attractive in the first place — is about $4,000 a year. Since we deal mostly in locally oriented companies and our clients are deeply rooted in the communities of Volusia and Flagler counties, it’s easy to see that the national media contacts one of these big services can provide  would not be a good value for them.

We are always looking for ways to give our clients a lot of bang for their buck, and that includes doing as much as we can for free. Of course, it takes some digital elbow grease on our part. But, if we need to, we can use traditional methods, plus social media and other means to pitch for attention on a national level. Here are two free services that can be useful:

• pr.com: Experts say this is one of the few free news release sites worth the bother, but it can be tricky to keep from racking up a bill here. The “free” news release distribution is bare bones — no google or Yahoo news, no links, no embedded images or videos — but it does do pretty well in straight-up search engines and will be seen by a good number of people. I recommend the video above to see how it works. (If you can’t see it, it’s at http://www.youtube.com/v/w9DW2vbCiXE)
• pitchengine.com: I just learned about this from a Vocus Webinar — many are free and I recommend you check out the Vocus link that opened this post for a list — and it offers a lot for zero investment. In your pitch, you can include videos, audio, images and social links. Pitchengine shares your release with “your media contacts via link or email or with thousands of consumers via social sites like Facebook, Twitter and others.”

In Time for Capitol Steps Show

Hannah Gonzalez and her family, from DeLand.

DAYTONA BEACH, FL (Jan. 28, 2010) – The first of several encores for the “Faces of Ability” photography exhibition, which opened earlier this month on the main campus of Daytona State College, begins today at the college’s News-Journal Center.

“Faces of Ability” features the everyday lives and triumphs of 13 young Easter Seals clients and their families as photographed by Daytona State College and University of Central Florida students. Easter Seals Volusia and Flagler Counties and the Daytona State College Foundation are the show’s presenters and will be mounting the exhibit at various locations throughout the two counties.

This stop at the News-Journal Center, 221 N. Beach St. in Daytona Beach, is just in time for the audience of tonight’s Capitol Steps performance at the facility. Other visitors can see the photographs for free during the center’s lobby hours throughout February.  Details of  “Faces of Ability” will be updated periodically at www.facesofability.org.

Media Contact:

Catherine Klasne,

(386) 212-7376

Write Result for Easter Seals

klasne@write-result.com

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In Time for Capitol Steps Show

DAYTONA BEACH, FL (Jan. 25, 2010) – The first of several encores for the “Faces of Ability” photography exhibition, which opened earlier this month on the main campus of Daytona State College, begins on Thursday at the college’s News-Journal Center.

Photo by Jean-Marie Appleby, Daytona State College. “Faces of Ability” subject Auburn Smith, center, and her mother, Linda, left, both of Port Orange, look at additional photographs by Tara Koenke.

“Faces of Ability” features the everyday lives and triumphs of 13 young Easter Seals clients and their families as photographed by Daytona State College and University of Central Florida students. Easter Seals Volusia and Flagler Counties and the Daytona State College Foundation are the show’s presenters and will be mounting the exhibit at various locations throughout the two counties.

This stop at the News-Journal Center, 221 N. Beach St. in Daytona Beach, is just in time for the audience of Thursday’s Capitol Steps performance at the facility. Other visitors can see the photographs for free during the center’s lobby hours throughout the month of February.

Updated information about the “Faces of Ability” collection will be posted periodically at www.facesofability.org.

Media Contact:

Catherine Klasne,

(386) 212-7376

Write Result for Easter Seals

klasne@write-result.com

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It’s hard to believe that January is already halfway over. Kathy and I already got to attend a highly anticipated Easter Seals event at the Mori Hosseini Center on Daytona State College’s campus, and it proved to be everything we promised in our publicity efforts!

I particularly enjoyed guest speaker Jane Conner-ziser and felt inspired by her to get a little more creative with my computer. If you ever have an opportunity to see a presentation with Jane, I highly recommend it!

Easter Seals’ young clients and their families who were on hand also made the evening especially uplifting. The children and their sisters and brothers were all dressed up and looked beautiful/handsome. Consider this a blog-hug from both of us. (What would that be? A blug? Not a hog, I think.) We are proud to be associated with you. If you’d like to see some photos that

Susan Moor, Vice President – Gift Planning for Easter Seals Volusia and Flagler Counties, took, check out the new Facebook page she’s just set up: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Easter-Seals-Volusia-and-Flagler/195124067611

I promise to get back on the stick this year in keeping the blog updated. I enjoy posting so it won’t be a burden. By the way, in case I haven’t said, have the happiest new year!