After finding out my husband and I were moving from Charlotte to Milwaukee, I decided to use Twitter as a means to reach out and begin communicating with new contacts residing and working in the city. Through my networking, I quickly came to realize who the social media gurus were and what companies were most appealing to me. One that stuck out was Comet Branding. Then to my luck, @cometbranding tweeted about a position on Thursday, February 11, that had recently opened up and my creativity sparked!

I am a huge believer in “things happen for a reason” and “life is about taking risks,” and this is exactly what I sought out to do. Comet Branding posted the PR and Social Media Strategist position opportunity on the same day SquarePik, an iPhone app allowing you to add a photo with each Foursquare check-in, launched itself to the world. I utilized this social media outlet to tell my story as to how, after all of my personal and professional experiences, I thought I would be a good fit to join the Comet Branding team.

With some quick thinking on the night Comet Branding posted the job opportunity, I created their logo as a large poster and took a YouTube video to kick off my #LauraGainorToMilwaukee campaign. My husband and I happened to be leaving for Milwaukee the next day to find a place for us to live. My plan was to bring the Comet Branding logo poster with me on the plane from Charlotte to Milwaukee, where I would capture creative photos of the logo in each venue I checked in at through SquarePik and Foursquare. Throughout the process I strategically tweeted to @cometbranding to notify them of each check-in, hoping to get their attention.

As you checked out #LauraGainorToMilwaukee on Twitter, you could see the full list of my Foursquare/SquarePik check-ins with links to my Pikchur account, featuring creative photos I took with the Comet Branding logo poster at popular venues around Milwaukee. At the same time, it was also a creative way to show my husband around Milwaukee!

After returning to Charlotte that Monday, I looked to create a non-traditional presentation that showcased my social media efforts as to what I did, and how I did it. As I was creating the presentation, Al Krueger and Sara Meaney provided some great feedback after noticing my tweets from over the weekend. I was able to incorporate their immediate feedback into my presentation.

That afternoon, I launched what is now the Slideshare Presentation that got me hired at Comet Branding. Within this presentation I started out with a virtual resume of what I’ve done throughout my career, while also showcasing my creative and strategic talents. The presentation enabled me to tie the #LauraGainorToMilwaukee campaign together as a means to show I wanted to become a part of their team.

The reaction was incredible! Within 36 hours the Slideshare presentation had reached over 1,000 views. I was gaining more Twitter followers and people were contacting me as to how I somehow inspired them or wanted to share my story with other job seekers.

SquarePik tweeted: @lauragainor used SquarePik to document her trip 2 Milwaukee http://slidesha.re/c8XJui (slides 24-36) @cometbranding hire her!

Chaos To Clarity featured my presentation as to how job seekers can make the most of social media.

Following the community responses, Comet Branding contacted me to setup a Skype interview from Charlotte! I had a successful, 1-hour-long interview with Al Krueger and Sara Meaney on February 19^th. On March 1^st I arrived in Milwaukee, as promised, and went to their office where I had my second interview and was immediately offered the position!

I feel very honored to have had my first day in my new desk at Comet Branding on Wednesday, March 3^rd. I look forward to being a part of such a growing team and continuing to utilize my knowledge and talents to help our clients grow their brands! It will be an exciting adventure and I invite all of you to stay up to date, via my Flickr account, with daily photos of my experiences of working for Comet Branding. Please be sure to also connect with me on Twitter! @LauraGainor

Thanks for saving the day, Souperman. Saving the Third Ward from hunger, one day at a time.

I have the coolest job in the world.

Seriously.

As co-host of Comet Radio, I get to talk to some of my biggest heroes in the profession. George Wright, VP of Marketing and Sales for Blendtec, is one of those heroes.

If you haven’t seen Will it Blend? before now, you may be living under a rock.

It is one of the best (and my favorite) examples of what makes social media so powerful for brands – resulting in direct and measurable business results.

Described by Entrepreneur.com as one of the 13 best marketing ideas of all time, George Wright’s Will it Blend? viral marketing campaign has changed the face and the future of online marketing. Seen by more than 400 million people on the Internet and reported on by traditional media outlets like the Today Show, the Tonight Show, the History Channel and The Big Idea, Will it Blend? continues to deliver unprecedented corporate awareness through social media channels. This new form of marketing has delivered a 700 percent increase in sales for Blendtec, a small Utah based blender manufacturer, with an initial investment of $50.

But here’s the kicker: George will be a keynote presenter at the upcoming PR + Social Media Summit co-hosted by Comet with Marquette University on April 8th. And he has a few surprises in store for that event. You won’t want to miss it. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.

It doesn’t take a genius to tell you that people don’t read things online the same way they read in print. However, have you ever wondered just how different those reading behaviors actually are? I did.

People do not read online. They scan.

When I came across this fantastic research summary from Jakob Nielsen of Nielsen Norman Group, I nearly fell out of my chair with excitement (I’m kind of a data geek). Let me summarize the findings and share a graph to make the point clear.

Research proves it.

A very large sample of a collection of online page views – 45,237 to be exact – was analyzed to determine the relationship between time spent on a Web page and the number of words on the page itself. Conclusion: the MOST an online user could read per page, on average, is 28% of the words on the page if all their time on the page is spent reading the text (instead of scratching their nose, looking at images or doing something else). The real number is more likely 20%.

Maximum words read per page, by word count

People read 1 in 5 of the words you write online. At best.

For those of you who don’t feel like thinking through this graph, here’s the punchline. Visitors to your company or personal blog, Web site or lifestream channel will not read more than 1 of every 5 words you write. On a good day. So you need to choose your words wisely and format your content strategically to keep their attention as long as possible before they click away and you lose them forever.

How to write to improve the odds of getting your point across.

Here are 10 guidelines for making the most out of the precious few moments you will ever get from your audience online.

1. Write killer headlines and section headers to draw attention and keep the eye moving down the page. On-point is better than clever.

2. Front-load with keywords. Most of the scanning takes place within the furthest left hand side of the page. And usually just the first two words.

3. Numerals catch the gaze better than written numbers. 5 is better than five.

4. Images catch the eye and can help pull the attention to new sections, as long as they are relevant to the content.

5. Know your audience and write with them in mind. Write at their knowledge level to maintain interest and add value to their lives/profession.

6. Inverted pyramid works best. Don’t save the punchline for the end. Share the point up front, then support it throughout.

7. Aim for 1/2 the word count compared to writing for print. Or less. Be brutal with your editing. If the word doesn’t add anything, cut it.

8. Key words are more important than fancy vocabulary. Think in terms of Google search terms, rather than being a human thesaurus.

9. Bulleted or numbered lists are easier to scan than paragraphs. Embrace the scanning behavior and make it easiest to grasp your content.

10. Deliver on your promise. Give the audience what they came for. Don’t mislead them or make them download files. They’ll just leave, frustrated.

What other guidelines do you follow when you are writing for the Web? Am I missing any? Would love to hear from you and add your experience to ours.

Following this interaction, we continued to have a conversation with the bartender and received some great recommendations of places to visit. My friends and I had an enjoyable experience at Comet Cafe, which was enhanced because our bartender was eavesdropping on our conversation.

In my opinion, the same is true in social media. Just look at Twitter. How many tweets are sent each day? I don’t even consider myself a highly active Twitterer but according to my TweetStats, I average 2.6 tweets per day. Multiply that times the number of users on Twitter and you have a lot. If one of those updates is something negative about a business, it’s important to respond immediately. By not responding, it might show to your followers that you’re not listening. Social media has given companies a tremendous opportunity in terms of customer service. The ability to listen and respond to the online conversation personifies a business and that personality is something that I look for as a consumer.

Likewise, the conversation is constantly happening in traditional PR. Editors and publishers build out content calendars and journalists are out reporting. In PR, it’s our job to listen to that conversation and decide if our client has the right voice to contribute. There are even Web sites dedicated to connecting reporters with proper sources. Help a Reporter Out is an excellent example. Through this Web site, journalists receive the expert opinions that they need to construct a credible story and sources get the earned publicity that they need to grow a business. Each day, HARO sends out three emails from journalists requesting expertise insight on a particular issue. If a client has some information that will enhance the story, we pitch it. It’s the definition of win-win.

Do you look for and support companies with an online presence?
Any personal stories of social media interaction with a business?

At Comet, we often receive advance copies of new books on the topics of public relations, marketing and social media, some of which are noteworthy and others that are not. However when this book arrived unannounced, I was stopped in my tracks. The name alone piqued my interest.

As the left brain of this outfit, I’m absolutely titillated (yes, titillated) by the abundance of data and statistics collected in Socialnomics, to prove the point. It’s my kind of book. But it’s not just a book for data nerds like myself. It’s a book for skeptics who are holding out on their conclusions about the influence of online media upon our way of life. It’s a book for believers seeking more proof for their dinner table arguments. It’s a book for business people looking for more information about how the world is changing around them.

Even after a few pages, the conclusions are undeniable. Something is happening. And a lot of it is happening online.

It’s an exciting time of information evolution and communications revolution. So what? Well, the so what is determined by what you decide to do about it. You have two options: 1.) keep on doing what you’re doing or 2.) get on this high speed train before it leaves without you.

Have you seen the video companion to the book? If you haven’t, you are missing out on something 1.45 million other viewers have found fascinating.

Erik Qualman (@equalman) is the author of Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business. Socialnomics made Amazon’s #1 Best Selling List only after three weeks of publication & has been in the Top 100 Best Selling Business Books List consistently since its launch in August. Qualman is a frequently requested International speaker of the Fortune 500 and has been highlighted in numerous media outlets including: BusinessWeek, The New York Times, CNET, San Francisco Chronicle, Mashable, USA Today, Forbes, CBS Nightly News, and The Huffington Post. He has been fortunate to share the stage with Alan Mulally (Ford CEO), Lee Scott (CEO/Chairman Walmart), Jose Socrates (Prime Minister of Portugal),Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (Nokia CEO), Julie Andrews (Actress) and Al Gore (former Vice President).

Join us on Comet Radio to hear from Erik about his insights, his experience and maybe some of his predictions for what comes next. It’s sure to be an interesting conversation. LISTEN NOW.

The logo for my fictitious PR firm from college.

1. Getting a crash course in traditional PR in the real world – Wisconsin Lutheran College is a small, private liberal arts college that doesn’t offer a ton for students looking to pursue PR. I majored in business and communications and took whatever classes my advisors and I believed would translate well with the PR profession. One of my PR classes had us create our own PR agency and gave us an actual client. Our PR and Social media shop, Spark, did its best but that work doesn’t compare to real life experience. Honestly, it’s pretty cool to be able to dive in and learn more about real world public relations from Al, Sara and Kristin.

2. Moving to a rad new space – As you probably know, we recently moved offices. We use to be located on the corner of 5th and Walker. On the first of February, we loaded up the Budget truck and moved to the Mercantile Building on the corner of Water and Buffalo, with a stop at IKEA in-between. The new space is awesome! For some reason, whenever I start a new job we pack up and move to a new space within the first month. It happened while I was working at ThirdCoast Digest too. Jon Anne Willow from TCDigest jokes I have the super power of transience.

3. Makin’ Movies – In order to inform the public that we were moving to a new office space, Al had the idea of making a stop motion movie of the iconic Comet Branding recliner finding its new home. To implement this plan, Kristin and I took pictures of the recliner “walking” up the sidewalks of Water Street to the new space. Besides the snow and bitter cold, it was awesome to be a part of this process. We got a few honks from cars passing by. Apparently lugging a chair down the sidewalk means that you know your way around Milwaukee, because two people stopped me to get directions. One of my favorite moments was documenting the story through Twitter and having my friend Ryan respond, “I really don’t understand what u do.”

This past month has been full of adventure already and I can’t wait to see what is in store next.

My buddy Ryan doesn't understand my job.