Let’s face it— there’s no such thing as a straight print journalist anymore. If you’re in the journalism field, never has going multi-platform been more important.

Miami Herald reporter, columnist, blogger (and tweeter!) Cindy Goodman agrees, encouraging all journalists to use new media to enhance their brand as well as the quality and readership of their stories.

This is 2011. If you’re not on the new media train, you are most likely soon without a job.

Goodman was one of the first writers at The Miami Herald to start a blog (eight long years ago!), The Work/Life Balancing Act, and is an active voice on Twitter. She has additionally developed her own blog, Raising Teenagers in The Digital Age, uses a website for her own personal branding, and has Facebook pages devoted to her stories.

Goodman is an awesome example of using new media to stay alive in journalism, without sacrificing her journalistic integrity. Here are some tips and tools you can use to follow this new media maverick into the realms of multi-platform journalism:

BLOGGING

• Have fun with voice and personality in your blog. It’s a platform where there’s some wiggle room for editorializing. But don’t go overboard! You are still a journalist at heart.
• Make sure your blog has a consistent theme, voice, or message to establish yourself as an “expert” or “go-to” on your topic.
• Use your blog as a place to put ancillary, fun, less relevant information that didn’t necessarily fit into your stories.
• Keep up a conversation with your readers on your blog. Listen to their opinions and give them what they want!

TWITTER

• Be smart about your tweets to bring traffic back to your news story rather than give it all away in 140 characters.  Always try to tweet with links to a bigger story unless you are giving periodic updates from an event.
• Create a conversation with your followers. Don’t simply promote yourself, your brand, and your stories.
• Be careful about retweets: even if you’re not the one writing them, they still reflect on you and your journalistic voice and integrity. Make sure your retweets are reputable and that you are willing to be liable for them.
• Follow and retweet relevant sources to expose your readers. Twitter is all about vanity, so retweeting twitpics from your followers will encourage others to send in their photos, and ultimately follow you.

VIDEOREPORTING

• Be sure your videos complement the print/online story. They should not reiterate the print but augment it.
• Keep your videos short, from 90 seconds to 3 minutes.
• Sometimes you can use footage from an interview as online video; an interesting fact that didn’t necessarily fit into the story could make it in to the piece this way.
• Again, don’t shoot video for the sake of shooting video. There has to be a reason for people to play it.

With regards to all of this new media, take a deep breath before you post or upload. Think, do you really want to say this? Once you click submit, your words, pics, and video have free reign in the online vortex. You can never really take anything back! So next time you write a story, grab your flip-cam and your smartphone, because you’ll need them!

As a journalist, you may be entering uncharted waters, but with street smarts and adaptability, you should be a-okay.

Legal Aid Service of Broward County and Coast to Coast Legal Aid of South Florida will host its 10^th Annual For The Public Good Gala on Friday, October 14 at the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina. The event is Legal Aid’s annual fundraiser with proceeds benefiting families and individuals in gaining access to equal justice.  Our very own Account Executive Michelle Friedman was named as Publicity Chair this year and has secured outstanding media placements.

Boardroom Communications is a proud sponsor and looks forward to seeing everyone there! For more information call 954-736-2429.

Twitter is no longer just a resource for teenage girls to follow Justin Bieber’s daily happenings, or to track down the nation’s favorite food trucks. According to an article on Mediabistro, SEO firm BrightEdge has found that having a Twitter share button can drive up to seven times more exposure via the social media universe. SEVEN times!

Even with these statistics, less than half of the top 10,000 websites use this share button on their pages, according to the same firm.  The share button for Twitter, the Facebook “LIKE,” and the “follow” option for both sites are all free tools- why aren’t these websites tapping in?

With these tools, your website can travel from social network to social network, and reach more people through retweets. Twitter and Facebook are no longer just social platforms, but are really becoming business tools. Knowing how to target your Facebook page and Twitter account or website, whether personal or for your business, can help you expand your audience. While the “share” button is of course a great start, there’s much more you can do!

Here at Boardroom Communications- here’s what we’d suggest to help you broaden your online exposure:

• Be smart about your Facebook posts and tweets. You want to keep your information fresh and current, but don’t go overboard!
• If you own a small business, use your personal Facebook page to plug your business, but subtly of course.
• Keep up with those in your social networks that can potentially benefit your business; after all, information is power!
• Always stay up to date with the various apps and tools that can further link you to the social media universe.

With these tools and tips, you’ll be sure to expand your online exposure. It’s all free and there’s absolutely zero risk involved!

As consumers, we are bombarded with advertisements on a daily basis. Ads come at us from all directions – when we’re sitting in our cars on the highway, when we grab a newspaper or magazine with our daily coffee, when we log on to the Internet…the list goes on. The average consumer is unaffected by most of the ads, rendering them ineffective.

When the Internet started displaying ads based on the user’s search history, the number of insignificant ads declined. And now marketers are turning to a new kind of advertising strategy to cut out more pointless ads from our lives – facial recognition.

Digital advertising displays can now identify the age, gender and race of an individual and will only show ads that would be relevant to them. For example, the Venetian resort and casino in Las Vegas uses facial recognition to provide suggestions for restaurants, night clubs and other entertainment to passersby.

How it works: Essentially, when you stand in front of a display, the camera analyzes your facial features to determine your approximate age. Using that information, the system will only display ads that are marketed towards that demographic. For example, if the system decides the person in front of the display is a woman in her mid-20s, it will show her advertisements for shoes, handbags, cosmetics, and so on.

Companies like Adidas and Kraft Foods Inc. are looking to implement this technology to their marketing efforts. The belief is that consumers will be more likely to buy something if they are offered the right products quickly.

While the thought of getting rid of trivial ads sound great, is it worth giving up your privacy?

Some people fear that the use of this technology will be an invasion of privacy. Proponents of facial recognition think it’s another way for companies to gather information without the public’s knowledge and permission.

In a similar fashion, when Facebook Inc. unveiled their photo tagging system using facial recognition, users were in uproar at the lack of privacy.

Is the risk of losing some privacy worth evading the ads that have nothing to with us? What costs are you willing to pay to avoid being exposed to a plethora of advertisements?

For more information about facial recognition technology and how it works, click here.

In the wake of the Weiner scandal, Spirit Airlines has proved that capitalizing on hot topics in popular culture can be an effective marketing strategy.  As explained in a recent Miami Herald article, the Miramar-based company is now roasting up “The Weiner Sale”—a 9 dollar fare with round trip purchase.  Though Spirit never mentions the congressman specifically, the jabs do anything but shy away from Anthony Weiner. The airline touts that its Weiner deal is “too hard to resist” and that patrons should “hurry to book now, before this sale gets hacked!”

While Congressman Weiner faces public humiliation, Spirit might just make bank off its “shock marketing” strategy. Current pop culture crazes like Weiner’s lewd photo or Rebecca Black’s hit single “Friday” can serve as potential marketing platforms, outlines for jingles, puns, wordplay and instant consumer recognition.

Spirit’s charade has garnered the airline national attention, with spreads in The New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal and a segment on MSNBC. As Arun Sarma, marketing professor at University of Miami explains, “They’re quick decision-makers in the sense of, ‘Why not take advantage of this?’” Why not, indeed.

You don’t have to be as big as Spirit Airlines to take advantage of a public relations opportunity like this. If you see a chance where you can tie into a hot news story that could make sense with your campaign or your product, as Sarma says, why not? The publicity you could generate via email and word of mouth could bring you just as much buzz as Weiner himself!

In a tough economy, businesses everywhere are looking for new ways to stay alive – including nurseries. Flamingo Road Nursery and Farmers Market was recently included in a round up story about innovative ways that nurseries are bringing in more business. Jim Dezell, owner of Flamingo Road, has introduced a farmers market and deli, and uses novelty items, such as double-yolk eggs, to lure in new customers. Coupled with free gardening classes and festivals throughout the year, Dezell says that his business is thriving more than ever before.

Recognizing what sets our clients apart from their competition has made Boardroom Communications a successful public relations agency for more than 21 years. We spotted the booming trend of nurseries in South Florida and capitalized on it by including Flamingo Road Nursery and Farmers Market in the article.

Click here to read the full story.

The world has gone gaga for Lady Gaga— Stefani Germanotta, that is.  Germanotta’s pseudonym formed the foundation for the outrageously fabulous pop star that dominates the music scene on an international scale. But would the meat dress have been cool if NYU grad Stefani wore it?

As Fast Company magazine article “The Quest for The Perfect Name” reveals, Gaga’s genius is all in the name. Now everybody wants an original name that pops for their product. Authors of the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard and contributors to the article, Dan and Chip Heath, use boutique firm Lexicon’s branding strategies as an example.

They explain that Lexicon has come up with some of the most recognizable brand names: BlackBerry, Dasani, Febreeze, OnStar, Pentium, Scion, and Swiffer.  Lexicon’s founder and CEO David Placek will even trick his own staff into coming up with the perfect name by splitting them into three teams of two and often withholding the name of the client. Meanwhile his team of linguists brainstorms buzz-words that describe the selling point of the brand.

For BlackBerry, Placek wanted to counter the annoyance we feel when our phones buzz and vibrate. They thought of long walks on the beach, a glass of wine, or strawberry-picking. Eventually strawberry became the favorite, until someone mentioned the word straw sounded like “slow.” So the “Strawberry” became the BlackBerry, which grew to be the king of the business phone world virtually overnight.

This is just one example of successful brand marketing. After all, can you imagine text-messaging someone from what was almost called the EasyMail?

There are over 126 million blogs on the internet according to a Miami Herald article. So the question is how do you make your business blog stand out? Tasha Cunningham, web entrepreneur and PR expert, suggests the following tips to help boost your ranking in the search engines.

Tip #1: “Be Free” – Creating free blogs through Wordpress or Blogger will increase your chances of ranking higher in search engines.

Tip #2: “Good words are key,” – Instead of using your companies name all over the blog, pick a keyword related to your business and center your blog around that word.

Tip #3: “Think like an editor,” – After you have found your key word, do not over use it. It is recommended to use it in every other post.

Tip #4: “Inform,” – Make sure that when you post you are informing your readers about your business, not just using the blog to post advertisements.

Tip #5: “Educate,”- In your blog posts, teach your readers something they didn’t already know. You can also post instructional videos.

Tip #6: “Persuade,” – In each post, end with something that persuades the reader to try something or view something else. For example add a link at the bottom of the post relating to what you just wrote about.

Tip #7:  “Compliment your competitors,” – It is recommended to comment on the blogs of your competitors. Do things like talk about how well an article was written and then post a link to an article you wrote on the same topic.

For more blog marketing tips visit www.BizBytes101.com

Almost everyone you speak to seems to be in the process of a website redesign.  
They are recognizing website-of-old a.k.a. “brochureware,” just won’t due in today’s dynamic marketplace. 

A short read by Phil Edelstein appeared in a recent issue of Website Magazine.  One of the most important take-aways you will glean from the column is the importance of not destroying the rankings you already have with the major search engines by essentially deleting your old site completely.  Specific website pages that already garner good rankings for your targeted keywords should be maintained on your server in the background with redirects attached to them bringing the visitors to your corresponding pages contained in the new site.  This will ensure that you do not essentially lose the seniority you have already earned with Google, Bing and Yahoo.

To read the Phil Edelstein’s full article and for more tips click here.

 It’s interesting to see a traditional business magazine like Inc. grasp the importance of optimizing your website via a sound search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.  According to Inc.’s recent article, ”Even companies that do big business online struggle to be noticed by Google users….Traffic is directly related to your site’s rank among Google’s searh results.”

It’s important to understand how the search engines decide their rankings. Each website should consider important factors, begining with the strength of keyword usage and the organization and functionality of the website. 

The Inc. SEO guide is a great read and checklist for those considering a proactive internet marketing program for their business. For more tips, read Inc. full article here.