TEDxBU Talk on the Future of Careers

Back in April, I took part in an awesome event called TEDxBU. It was an independently-organized event inspired by the movement of TED.

Here’s my talk on the future of careers:

In short, I see our work shifting toward

- more time spent managing technology

- flexible work environments and

- the continued rise of small businesses.

If you ever get a chance to attend a TEDx event, definitely go. This one was eye-opening, inspiring and a great way to refresh my mind. I learned a lot and will definitely be looking to attend more events like it in the future. Check out more TEDx Talks at their YouTube channel.

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June 13, 2010 0 Comments Short URL , , , , , Career, Future

I like MyLikes

I was asked to do a little research writing sample for a job application. Basically, I was supposed to find a few new developments in social media technology and write up a feature piece on them. In the process, I stumbled across an interesting service called MyLikes.

I decided to give it a shot. If you’ve been seeing me tag some recent tweets with “[sponsored],” that’s why.  So far (after two sponsored tweets) I’ve made $1.12! Not much money, but it’s more than the usual $0 my other tweets make. If you want to join, they gave me a referral link:

Anyway, here’s the feature I wrote:

Media Type

MyLikes is a hybrid of earned and paid media. There’s a small part of it that’s paid media because the advertiser controls where sponsor links lead. It’s earned media because since every member can only promote one paid link per day, the advertisers are competing for relevancy and product or service superiority. That competition is happening in the earned media/social media space.

Description

MyLikes pairs advertisers with influencers and allows those influencers to promote links and get paid by the click. It’s affiliate marketing gone social. I’d argue it’s an improvement on affiliate marketing because it focuses on relevance. There should be no surprise that it was founded by a former Google product manager and a former Google engineer.

MyLikes is an open social network. Members build profiles and establish interests by promoting or “liking” products and services. There is a selection of sponsored links they can choose to promote on various social networks, but they are only allowed to promote one of those per day to prevent users from spamming. MyLikes works with advertisers to match the best influences with their marketing needs, and those advertisers invite the top targeted users to promote their products. The member revenues flow into a PayPal account.

Content Flow

Content surrounding MyLikes is cyclical. The advertisers create landing pages and then buy clicks to those landing pages. The MyLikes members choose which links to promote and create content (which can be positive or negative) to frame the link within a certain context. Users who click on the links from MyLikes members through Twitter or Facebook are then taken to the landing pages.

What’s Valuable

MyLikes connects advertisers with influencers. There are a ton of people who have built up a following online for whatever reason: their video blog (about beer), their personality, or the cool stuff they do with their business. An endorsement from those influencers could be more valuable than paid media or owned media because of the simple fact that people listen to people. They are increasingly skeptical of brands. That’s part of the reason why I believe the future of marketing lies with people; not with brands pretending to be people. MyLikes also just secured some Seed funding this month. Robert Scoble also jumped onboard as an advisor, so it seems the folks at MyLikes are truly living their brand.

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May 11, 2010 2 Comments Short URL , , , , Advertising, Social Media

My Response to the New York Times Article on Unpaid Internships

Internship employers and colleges have a seriously broken relationship. I’ve been interning unpaid for about two years straight now. If an employer gives college credit, they technically don’t need to pay. But BU only lets you take one internship for credit. So if you want more than one internship before you graduate, you end up working for free because many employers say, “The internship is unpaid, but we’ll give you course credit if you want.” I’ve had to turn that offer down because my school won’t allow me to get credit. Free labor has become an expectation for college students. That’s a shame.

I do think there are ways of navigating around the unpaid issue. My internship at TalentCulture doesn’t pay me cash, but I’m getting career training and development services, and I’m being set up for job interviews in addition to getting college credit.
Employers need to do more to reimburse interns, even if it’s not in cash.

Other feedback (These people are not nerds…) :

The Unpaid Intern, Legal or Not by The New York Times‘ Steven Greenhouse

Unpaid Internships by Rachel Sprung

If You Bill, is it Legal? by Nick Lucido

Internships – To Pay or Not to Pay? by Patrick Wentling

What? Unpaid Internships Could Be Illegal? Ya Think? by Jim On Light

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April 6, 2010 4 Comments Short URL , , , Career

YouTubing: The Good, The Bad and the Goofy

Just thought I’d share a few videos I stumbled across this week. Last year, I did a post “TV Advertising: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.” I’ll continue the spirit of that post here.

The Good

I’m a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee), who made his big break hosting Wine Library TV. He’s now a branding and business development thought leader. His Ted talk pretty much sums up what he is all about. His book “Crush it” is all about doing what you love and hustling to make your dreams come true.

The Bad

Oy! This video made me cringe…and laugh a little. The video parody itself is great, but the concept highlights some major flaws in modern day public relations. PR pros need to learn the differences between new media outlets and traditional ones. Plus the whole “social media expert” thing has become a running joke on Twitter due to overuse, so let’s only use it in a joking context from now on.

The Goofy

…is also sometimes “The brilliant!” If you’re a “New Dork” like me, you’ll enjoy it.

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March 27, 2010 1 Comment Short URL , , media, Social Media

Oh! THERE’s the value!

I see a lot of college students taking the initial plunge into social media. Many of them struggle to find value online. They claim they “tried Twitter, but just don’t get it.” They have LinkedIn profiles, but only update them semi-annually. Facebook is their drug of choice, but that’s reserved for more important business like becoming a fan of “Sleeping in on Sunday” and other worthy causes.

I’m happy to say, I have definitely found value on many social networking sites. I look around campus and I think I’m one of the few. Like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, finding value online takes perseverance. (It’s March, after all. So I needed an Irish/Leprechaun reference.)

After tweeting back and forth a bit with @Jason_J_Davis, he asked me to guest blog on his HR Think Tank. I was thrilled. What a great way to extend my personal brand! I’m definitely looking to do more guest blogging. I’ll just keep plugging away at the social media world and see what happens next.

Here’s a brief snipet from my article “Harnessing the Gen-Y Beast”:

Like it or not, my generation is charging into the workforce. Yep, all 70 million of us. We’re a talented herd, too. HR directors will play Ringling Brothers trying to tame us, hire us, and retain us. Most will fail.

The Gen-Y stampede of talent cannot be stopped and refined. It must be harnessed.

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March 23, 2010 0 Comments Short URL , , , Social Media

Diving down the 3D Rabbit Hole

This week, I saw my first 3D movie. For a while, I’ve been curious about how the whole 3D media experience is going mainstream. At the consumer electronics show in January, 3D TV was all the rage. In the past two years, 3D has been coming to movie theaters.

Up until this week when I saw “Alice in Wonderland,” my 3D experience was limited to 10-minute theme park shows like the “Muppets 3D” in Disney’s MGM/Disney Studios park and “Honey I Shrunk the Audience” in Epcot Center.

Needless to say, the 3D in theaters today is far superior to the 90s technology in the Florida theme parks. The question has been burning in my mind: Will 3D become the norm for visual media?

When color television first arrived on the market, many people didn’t want to pay for the new color TVs and rationalized that they didn’t need to be shown what colors a baseball field was. Eventually, however, the price for color technology declined, and color television became the norm. Movies like the “Wizard of Oz” hinged on the color aspect. Think about how much more powerful and enjoyable that movie is in color versus what it would have been in only black and white.

I think we’ll see the same predictors for the future of 3D:

  • Affordability – Right now it is much more expensive to watch a movie in 3D. Like all technology, however, those prices will decline.
  • Dependability – By this term, I mean how much media content depends on the 3D feature. What will be the “Wizard of Oz” of 3D? Will directors and producers figure out how to make movies and television shows use 3D in a way that transcends the “cheap 3D tricks” we see today? Movies and TV need to depends on the 3D features
  • Development of a norm - There’s a catch-22 here. The first two points depend on 3D becoming widely accepted not just as a fad, but as a norm. Consequently, the norming of 3D depends on affordability and dependability.

Where will we see 3D develop into a necessary feature? Horror movies and thrillers? Sports? Fantasy?
Perhaps we’ll just have to take the plunge down the 3D rabbit hole to see what happens next.

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March 14, 2010 0 Comments Short URL , , , , Future, media

#FollowFriday for March 5th

Okay, full disclosure: I got this idea from Jeff Mello (@JeffMello) who was doing his Follow Fridays in blog post form a few months ago. Now he’s off doing crazy cool things with Force Marketing, going to #SXSW, and rocking the social media sphere. So since he’s been busy, I’m stealing borrowing this Follow Friday blog post practice in his honor.

My #FollowFriday list for March 5th, 2010: These are the people I’ve had some great interactions with over the last week on Twitter and in real life (in many cases both).

Ellen Rossano – @EllenRossano
Ellen was an amazing speaker at last night’s PRSSA meeting. I met her back in January at MassInnovation Night 10 (#MIN10), and she was more than happy to offer advice to our group. She owns and runs Crisis Media Consultants, and crisis communication was a perfect topic for the BU students who are having a midterm exam storm this week. It was refreshing to hear her speak to us; not at us. Last night’s conversation was one of the best PRSSA meetings this year.

Todd Defren – @TDefren
Todd is the genius behind SHIFT Communications and PR-Squared.com. He spoke to Professor Steve Quigley’s New Media and PR class this morning. During our Q&A I asked Todd about how the transition from tactical skills to management skills in the PR industry works. I thought he pointed out an interesting fact about the PR industry: If you stick with the grunt work, you can reach management positions fairly quickly. Some industries take 15 years of grinding away before a promotion, but in PR, you can be a VP by age 26! That’s what Todd says, and it’s pretty upbeat response, so I’m going to go with it.

Lisa Braithwaite – @LisaBraithwaite
I’ve been doing research and development for my speech consulting side job, and I stumbled across Lisa. She’s got an amazingly transparent and honest presence online. From the looks of her website, she’s been really innovative in developing the services she offers. I’m learning a lot reading her blog!

Jason Davis – @Jason_J_Davis
Jason has been a Twitter friend of the TalentCulture interns for a while now. Jason is going on vacation in a couple of weeks and asked me to guest blog in his absence. Watch for my post on HRThinkTank March 17th. He’s also looking into getting together an unconference, which I can’t wait to be a part of.

Mary Ann Halford – @MaryAnnHalford
I finally tweeted through an entire #pr20chat on Tuesday night. I’m glad I did because I got to meet Mary Ann! Mary Ann works for a very cool company called Bizworks360 that specializes in social media content strategy. Too bad the company’s in New York because I’d really like to apply to a place like that!

Meg Blauvet – @MegBlauvet
I was surprised to learn that Meg is changing her intended major from journalism to PR. Whatever she ends up doing, she’s coming from a really good place: Inside Boston, the student-run news magazine show I’ve been involved with for the past three years. The show’s in good hands regardless of whether or not Meg sticks around, but I hope she does. She’s new to Twitter so give her a warm welcome!

The TalentCulture Crowd

Marguerite Granat – @MGRecruiter
I must be making an impression on at least some of these HR folks I’ve been meeting through TalentCulture because Marguerite made me her #1 #followfriday this week! Marguerite is a strategic level-contract recruiter based out of Colorado. She writes PeakHistory.com and more of her articles will be rolling onto the TalentCulture blog very soon.

Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter – @ValueIntoWords
Jacqui is one of our contributors on the new TalentCulture blog. She’s the top resume writer in the country, and I can’t thank her enough for taking time out of her day to help me. She’ll be sharing some brilliant insight on the TC blog coming up, and I encourage everyone to read her articles.

Meghan M. Biro – @MeghanMBiro
I don’t want it to look like I’m sucking up to my boss here, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. Meghan and I have been collaborating behind the scenes as the puppet masters of the TalentCulture blog. It launched this week, and we are thrilled with the response so far. Congratulations to Meghan, my fellow interns @KLTaggart and @CaraKenefick and the TC contributors! More exciting things are on the way from TalentCulture.

The PRSSA Stars

Rachel Sprung – @RSprung
Rachel did an incredible job co-coordinating the #PRAdvanced: Brand Yourself conference with @ChelseaAlexan. The event was amazing! Read my recap of it. Rachel is a guinea pig for my speech consulting business; I’m looking forward to her feedback and hopefully a testimonial!

Ginny Soskey – @GSosk
Ginny is a PRSSA freshman who caught the personal branding bug at #PRAdvanced last weekend. She’s helping me plan the BU Social Media Competition and BU PRSSA Tweet-Up, and she’s been so patient and so helpful. Read her new blog. Keep her on your radar.

Maurice Rahmey – @MRahmey
Last week, Mo was a Twitter non-believer. Then he went to #PRAdvanced and started tearing through Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It. Now, he is tweeting up a storm about everything from viral videos to buying the NY Yankees. He’s scheming up a blog, and I have a feeling he’ll be “crushing it” very soon.

Laura Flanagan – @lauramflanagan
Laura is the ballsiest BU freshman I’ve ever encountered. She shook up the MS&L reps at #PRAdvanced last weekend by calling them out on their juniors-and-seniors-only internship policy. I wouldn’t be surprised if they considered changing it. She’s blogging now, tossing up some pretty creative posts about branding. I enjoyed reading her instructions on “How to Look Good Naked.”

The Missing Tower Media Team

Amanda Grinavich – @AGrinavich
On top of the fact that she was pretty much offered a job at SHIFT yesterday and the fact that she’s my leading source of hockey news, Amanda is part of a newly-formed kick-butt new media education team with me. We think we’re calling it Missing Tower Media. More details to come on that later.

Lauren Brown – @laurlita
You have to give Lauren credit for working full-time and blogging and taking Media Relations with me. She’s on the Missing Tower team too, and I think all of our members are looking forward to her insights from her internship at HubSpot. She’s going to be on the PR trip to NYC next week with me as well.

DJ Capobianco – @DJCap
“Hi my name is DJ, and I have an opinion on everything.” I don’t really need to say much more except I’m really looking forward to having DJ on the Missing Tower team.

Mark Nolan – @mahhkk
Mark is the analytics specialist on the Missing Tower team. We were tweeting each other at the #PRAdvanced conference last weekend, and I was glad to finally meet him in person today.

Mariam Shahab – @MShahab
I’ve been in on a few group projects in my Media Relations class with Mariam. She’s one of the most down-to-earth people I’ve ever met–very in touch with what’s going on in the PR world too. I can’t wait to work with her on the Missing Tower team.

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March 5, 2010 4 Comments Short URL Uncategorized

#PRAdvanced was a hit!

Over the weekend, our PRSSA chapter hosted its PRAdvanced: Brand Yourself Conference. The event was a huge success, it was our largest Regional Activity ever with over 175 participants. Guest speakers from JetBlue, Dunkin’ Donuts, Brazen Careerist, Come Recommended, the Boston Red Sox, and more spoke on personal and corporate branding. There was also a career fair and an HR panel.

As you can see, we were very excited last week in the days leading up to what some called “the best regional activity ever:”



My favorite part of the conference was the HR panel. Our president Rachel Sprung monitored the panel and taking question from the audience via Tweetdeck. Talk about new media enhancing in-person experiences!

My phone died this week. May it rest in peace. I seriously think all of the tweeting via text finally did it in.  But there were some great conversations happening on the hashtag. I couldn’t just sit and watch.

I’ve noticed a lot of blog posts recapping the event were thrown up this week. Here are some of the ones I found:

Thanks to all who attended. The responses have been overwhelmingly positive, and our hashtag #PRAdvanced was a trending topic in Boston!

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March 2, 2010 4 Comments Short URL , , , PR

The TalentCulture blog is live!

For the last three-four months, I have been working hard behind the scenes at my internship consulting on our blog design and creating some of our web pages. Meghan M. Biro and Lisa Simons were the other brains behind the operation.

We’ve assembled a talented community of contributors from all over the country. We’ve got start-up experts, hiring pros, resume writers, HR marketers, college students, fresh graduates and everyone in between. We’ll be blogging, podcasting, posting videos and making multimedia content centered around a variety of topics: Careers, Culture, Digital Media, Green and Sustainability, Innovation.

Now, all of our hard work is public. Check us out. Subscribe to our RSS feed. Read my first post “Treat Your Job Search like a PR Campaign.” I’m so excited for this opportunity to contribute to the community and enhance my personal brand!

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March 1, 2010 0 Comments Short URL , , Social Media

PR Students respond to E!’s new show “SPINdustry”

Last night, E! debuted a new show about a celebrity PR agency called Command PR.

While I can find plenty of reasons never to watch this show again, I realize that the agency of air headed, high strung, high maintenance, super diva PR practitioners pulled off a successful event in the first episode. They landed photos and feature stories in a handful of major magazines. I’ll give them props for that.
Is the show itself interesting? I don’t know. I’m in PR and it bored and annoyed me. I think it makes PR look bad, but a lot of PR practitioners aren’t even calling what they do “PR” anymore anyway. So I don’t think people will be protesting about it the way Italian Americans were about Jersey Shore.
Someday when I’m a celebrity, I won’t hire this firm. There’s just too much drama. The whole company seems like it could fall apart at the next snappy retort or half-baked question or (dare I say) exposed breast. This show isn’t a lesson on bad PR; it’s a lesson on how not to manage employees.

Here’s what some other rising PR stars thought:

“I thought SPINdustry or ‘Command PR’ basically made a mockery out of PR. Like Kell on Earth, it depicts the profession to be run by unassured incompetent people. PR is all about image, it irks me to think that these people don’t see what they are depicting about themselves, and about PR. The ownersor VP’s didn’t lift a finger during that episode. They had the “connections” but that was it.” – Yanique Shaw (@YaniquePR) is the president of Salem State University’s PRSSA Chapter and a good friend of mine from #PRSSANC in San Diego. Read her fashion and PR blog “YaniquePR – Everything.”

“SPINdustry shows PR professionals as materialistic and ditsy. I know I could never trust that staff. They do not seem competent. You would think as PR professionals, they could create an image for themselves that doesn’t promote stereotypes.” – Dan Chizzoniti (@DanChiz) a driven future PR star currently doing a lot of cool social media work at his internship for Schneider Associates. He blogs about all things pop culture, PR and entertainment on DanChiz.com.

Care to share your opinion? Comment below or email your reaction to me at EricLeist@gmail.com and I’ll post it here.

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February 22, 2010 2 Comments Short URL , , , , PR

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