Professional accomplishments land Tina Haisman in Vidette Hall of Fame

I accepted one of the greatest honors of my professional career this weekend. I was inducted into the Vidette Hall of Fame with three other outstanding Illinois State University alumni.

I worked at the Daily Vidette, the ISU student newspaper, from the first day of my freshman year until the last day of my senior year.

HOF Inductees Marc Lebovitz, Tina Haisman and Bill Mulvihill
pause for photos with Vidette General Manager Rick Jones.

The Daily Vidette has long been one of the most successful student newspapers in the country. I am grateful to have been afforded the opportunity to be a part of it during my time at ISU.

Among the reasons listed for my induction were the accomplishments I made while at the Vidette, including the fact that I was the first Business Manager to collect over $100,000 in one calendar month.

Several of my professional accomplishments were also mentioned, including my accreditations, certifications, awards and even the infamous Million Dollar Coupon campaign.

To say that I am honored would be an understatement. What a thrill!

For more information on my public relations consulting and writing business, visit www.haisman.com.

Top 3 Social Media Content Best Practices

Took another webinar yesterday about social media -- got a few great tips and reminders. 

Here are my top 3:

1. When writing social media content follow the rule of thirds:

• 1/3 about you/your brand
• 1/3 about something you've learned (to share)
• 1/3 should be a conversation -- actually interacting with members of the community.

2. Be sure to re-purpose your social media content -- for example well-written, consumer-friendly releases can become blog posts.

3. Including multimedia in your social media release increases the chances of it being clicked on.

Just thought I'd share! It's always good to remind ourselves about the best practices that are out there!

Inspiration from a Webinar

I love feeling inspired and was lucky enough today to participate in a webinar that gave me that satisfaction. I found several action items I'd like to work on for myself and my clients! I know better than to try to tackle all of them at once, but I shouldn't have any trouble picking one to start with!

The webinar was titled 7 Steps for Small Business Success and was facilitated by John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing.

Here are my three favorite action steps!

• A strategy to grow your business. Find and describe your IDEAL customer -- not just a good customer -- an IDEAL one. An ideal customer is one that values you, is profitable and refers you. Once you find them, analyze them -- demographics, psychographics, geographics and behavior. Get a crystal clear picture of your ideal customer.
• I love that! Why are we looking only for "customers," when we could be looking for the IDEAL customers?
• A tactic for differentiating yourself in the marketplace. Copy and paste into Word the first paragraph of your website. Do the same for one of your competitors. Black out all references to both of your business names. Then, read them and see if you can tell them apart. Have your employees and clients read it for you as well. This will show you if you are making yourself stand out online. 
• What a great tool to get you to spruce up your website copy if it needs it!
• A tool for media relations. Identify five or six key journalists in your community or industry, and put them in Google Alerts so you get updates on what they write. Start commenting on their articles, blogs and send them information you have when appropriate. 
• We all know about building relationships with journalists, but I just loved the simplicity of accomplishing this tactic.

The webinar also listed a few interesting Internet statistics that you can read about in the graphic above. Enjoy! 

Tina Haisman now offering Public Relations Coaching

Are you a small business owner, entrepreneur, overwhelmed public relations professional or non-profit professional who needs guidance on how to get your business noticed by potential clients and the media? Have a limited PR budget, but understand the importance of PR? Can't afford to hire a full-service firm but would like some professional guidance? 

Hire a Public Relations Coach!

As your Public Relations Coach, I can help you:

• Craft an effective public relations plan
• Identify your goals and set achievable objectives
• Determine target audiences
• Devise effective PR strategies to reach your audiences
• Develop powerful public relations messages
• Determine the appropriate media to target with your message
• Prepare for media interviews
• Navigate the social media scene
• Teach you how to write a compelling media release

This service combines my 16 years of public relations experience with my Master Life Coach certification to inspire, motivate and empower my clients to achieve public relations success. Contact me to inquire about pricing!

Using Creativity and PR to Sell my Home

Due to a job relocation, we need to sell our Fort Myers Florida home. After 3 months of letting an agent use traditional marketing methods, I took action on my own.

My husband and I came up with a marketing idea to create dueling top 10 lists of the best features about the home. We thought this would appeal to men and women who tend to look for different things when they buy a home.

I used the PR web advanced release package to distribute a release about the top 10 lists to areas snowbirds come to Florida from: Boston (for Red Sox spring training), Minneapolis (for Twins spring training), Detroit, Chicago and Columbus.

On the day the release went live, more than 30 people viewed our listing on www.realtor.com. That number may seem small to some, but from 0 hits one day to 30 the next was exciting. Those were 30 more people than would have seen the listing otherwise. In addition, the release infiltrated the news feeds on real estate websites worldwide.

I also distributed the release to my Fort Myers media contacts. As a result, an article ran Sunday, September 19, in The Fort Myers News-Press. It appeared on the front page of the real estate section and featured several pictures of the home. The publication of this article also infiltrated the web and populated the news feeds on real estate websites around the globe.

Another tactic I used for this campaign was a blog. I created a blog to tell the stories of the home to help potential buyers see what a lovely, family-oriented home 11471 Persimmon Court is. Check it out: http://11471persimmoncourt.blogspot.com. Each time I write a new blog entry, I post it on Facebook and Twitter.

One exciting aspect of this campaign was that the Florida Association of Realtors wrote an article declaring the dueling top 10 lists a new "marketing tactic" in their newsletter. This was particularly exciting since part of what we were trying to do was create some action, activity and momentum in the real estate world! Perhaps this one little idea will help generate many more!

Two books were instrumental in my inspiration to create this campaign. The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott and A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. If you haven't already read them, get going!

Will keep you posted when the house sells!