Tesar-Reynes

If you saw my last post, you read about my suggestion to hire a social media manager. Along with that thinking, your social media manager’s first step will likely be to draft a corporate social media policy.

I’ve tweeted this post on corporate social media policies about four times the last month. In it, you’ll find excellent examples of the policies corporations big and small, from computer firms to marketing firms, have written for their workforce.

Most top managers harbor reservations about social media because their scared of losing control of message. I don’t blame them. How can a corporation as big as IBM expect to keep all their employees on message point?

A social media policy will help keep your workforce in check. In fact, rather …

Face it. If your brand doesn’t have a social media presence, you are behind the curve.

In the last three weeks, I’ve been to 3 social media Webinars from Cision, one interview for a position in new media for Valerie Denney Communications, and a 4 hour social media mini-retreat at my internship with Carolyn Grisko & Associates.

Everyone wants a piece of social media! The good news for you is that it’s still early enough in the game to jump in a get a handle on it all.

Cision innovates with their approach. For one, they don’t have a Twitter account, instead listing their employees Twitter handles and inviting you to connect with them. I advise you …

A few weeks ago, in article in ADWEEK, “The New Reality Facing Job Seekers,” addressed the thought that wages will be lower for some people looking for jobs. Thus far I have not seen it in the recent searches we have been retained upon.

The whole digital area seems to remain hot and the social media side is even hotter. Both the people in our database and the folks on my Linked In network seem to be very busy and even frazzled. There are a number of new agencies forming, strategic alliances coming together and small agencies being bought by larger ones. Salaries are definitely escalating in the mid to senior level.

Good …

2009 marks a new start for me. Resolutions are probably a good idea. I promise a status update by the end of January. We’ll see how resolved I am to see these through.

1. Be punctual. Keep a decent sleep schedule too.

2. Keep a work schedule. My most productive semester, I used Covey’s 7 Habits scheduler. Got a 4.0, thank you very much.

3. Work out religiously. I joined Bally’s last summer. Since winter hit, I’ve been making excuses because of the cold. Brad Pitt, Fight Club, is my inspiration.

4. Devote more money towards my savings. And put a serious dent in those student loans.

5. Start the …

Last Friday I went to an informational interview with Scott Meis, a social media expert I met through Linked In.

Most of my social networking activities have been devoted to that site. I’m almost at 100 connections. Small, I know, but most of those have come in the last few weeks.

(Tony, on the other hand, has over 1000 connections. He says it took him about a year and a half to build his network. It’s been very helpful with the blog. Thanks to all our new readers for all the great feedback!)

I happened to find Scott in a group discussion for Social Media Marketing. To …

In the midst of all the gloom and doom, I can report one good piece of news: interactive. This seems to be one of the only areas where there is true activity.

Right now I am working one VP search for interactive on the client side. I have two more that should kick in during the first quarter. Two days ago I was talking to a candidate for the VP search and they were looking at three other openings concurrently. I have a close contact in Europe who is starting to turn down business for site development; they are too busy.

Social media seems to be very strong too. I have one senior search that I …

In last Sunday’s Times, an article about Facebook caught my eye. The writer, Randall Stross, asks, “Do you want to ‘friend’ a detergent?”

No, of course not. But the deeper question, the one everyone seems to be asking – “How does social networking translate into cash?” – continues to go unanswered.

That’s the question Mark Zuckerberg deals with on a daily basis. The 24-year old owner of Facebook was depicted in GQ’s latest Men of the Year issue as a kid way in over his head.

As the article pointed out, “critics will mock him mercilessly…they’ll point to the exodus of executives, say he has no business plan, and call on Zuckerberg to yield control to …

The brilliant folks over at Viral Blog shared this great customer feedback campaign from Starbucks.

THAT is how you get a dialogue going with your consumers.

Can other struggling brands learn from the Starbucks campaign? Is there room for consumer-generated ideas for brands like the Gap, Chrysler, or Target?

A few years ago, Columbia College gave a scholarship to the student who created a marketing campaign that best revitalized the Gap brand. The winning scholar came …

Hello. My name is Roland Cailles. I’m a senior marketing and public relations major at Columbia College in Chicago. I also help Tony and Bob, the managing partners at Tesar-Reynes, write this blog.

I’m very excited about blogging and social media in general. When I first started college, I knew I needed to do something that would set me apart from the thousands of other marketing and PR people out there. In short, I needed a niche.

Like other college students I spend the majority of my time in front of my computer. I live on Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. I even have a couple of blogs. So I thought to myself, why not specialize in something I love doing anyway? That’s how I decided to focus my career on social media.

What I love about social media is that it’s helping to get rid of …