By now, almost everyone has heard of Facebook. For most of us, it is a regular part of our daily lives. Yesterday, Facebook celebrated its sixth birthday.
According to founder, Mark Zuckerberg, “Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better.”
With a total population of 400 million users (an increase of 200 million over the past year alone), Facebook has managed to stay true to their original vision while managing and building to accommodate that level of growth.
While it has not been without its controversies, one thing is for certain, Facebook has made its impact on society.
Check out this new article by Haley Marketing Group’s President, David Searns, published on StaffingU Resource Center, especially if you’re evaluating practical strategies for growing your business.
Being that January has now passed, I look back at some of the goals I’ve established for myself during 2010. “Measurement” seems to be the key word for myself during this upcoming year. In our office building there are a number of fans of the “Biggest Loser” show on TV. Thus, our own in-house version of said show has begun. I’m sure we are not alone with this traditional new year endeavor of trying to shed the previous year-end indulgences. God knows one cannot help but being bombarded with the relentless dieting/meal plan commercials on television as it is. But alas, it’s one of the first “measurements” I have thrown my hat into this upcoming new year. I will keep you posted on the progress…fingers crossed there.
Another area where “measuring” is coming into play is another personal sacrifice/crusade. Toward the end of last year I lost one of my best friends to cancer. We shared some great times through our college days and saw them grow for both of us into being somewhat respectable parents of our own families. During some of our latter discussions, my friend shared some of his encounters with some ill kids where he received treatment. Being an individual focused more on the positive side of things, I’ve decided to try to donate in a different way besides the traditional financial way for the kids. I have begun to grow my hair out to be able to make a donation to “Locks of Love“.
Thus begins my journey of trying to achieve the proper “measurements” needed. Believe me, coming from a military/sports family, this is probably the biggest personal challenge I’ve ever tried to undertake. So, if you happen to run into me during an upcoming convention, try not to “stare” too much.
Another area of “measurement” which I’m focused on is the performance of our website. Obviously, making sure your dollars spent were put to good use is smart and sound business. Google Analytics is an excellent tool to have installed on your website to assist you in being able to measure traffic. Things that I try to look for, from a designer’s perspective, is how much time is being spent on a page, are certain pages being used as “exits” for the website, and are there things I can do to adjust/increase traffic flow to certain areas of a website. Another way to help “measure” performance of your website is through your search engine reports. SEO and Social Media efforts are instrumental in boosting your website ranking here. I have become entrenched in helping build out Twitter and Facebook pages for our clients. But let me digress here, I’m not the “expert” in this area of our services. Brad Smith is our guru on-staff and could easily assist you if you’re looking to begin this key performance “measurement”.
So, there you have it. A little business and a bit of personal therapy session for myself. I promise to keep you informed of all of the key “measurements” throughout the upcoming months. Do you have any personal or professional “measurement” goals yourself this year? If not, should you? I’m more than willing to share the ride with any takers.
Manufacturers have been pumping up production to feed their customers’ depleted stockpiles. The ISM said manufacturers’ inventories contracted at a slower rate in January, but their customers’ stockpiles fell to an all-time low. As their customers try to restock their shelves, manufacturers need to ramp up production to match their demands. That could mean hiring more workers.
At Haley Marketing, we’ve been digging deeper and deeper into social media marketing. While we’ve seen the benefits of blogging, LinkedIn, and even Facebook and Twitter for staffing firms, you may be wondering what the payoff is to these activities.
I recently stumbled across a terrific video that helps put social media marketing into perspective. Enjoy!
In my days working in marketing I’ve seen some pretty bad emails come through my inbox but this one might be the worst. It comes from a local restaurant/wine bar. Now before I rip apart their marketing, let me say that the food and wine selection is very good!
Clearly they have used a low cost, DIY email marketing service. And clearly they forgot to do any QC to the email before hitting the send button…
Oops! They forgot to change the stock photo on the right hand side and also forgot to delete the phrase “Body Content” from the text area. As a restaurant, why not have some direct links to their menus, or new wines in stock? Also, you can’t see it here but the subject line was simply “Artists”. Not really a strong statement to get me to open the email. Luckily they did use the name of the restaurant as the sender which got me to open it.
We often hear from prospects, “well I can do this myself for much cheaper”. What they don’t realize is that at Haley Marketing it’s our job to develop compelling content, vibrant email designs, and of course all of our emails go through a full QC process.
Obviously, this restaurant got what they paid for!
One of our writers had a not so fun experience the other day, and she shared some great words of wisdom. I’m sure we can all relate to her experience!
My Advice for the day:
Never believe the guy in the Apple store who tells you that your work is auto-stored every few minutes. He is either ignorant or lying.
Never let another guy in the Apple store take command of your laptop while your back is turned. He will close all your documents without saving them, and you will lose all 1197 words of the magazine article you were putting the final touches on.
Reconstructing 6 hours of your life is never as much fun as the original 6 hours!
I happened across this very fun site called Wordle that creates a graphical tag cloud based on the words you enter. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. I entered the http://askhaley.haleymarketing.com blog and this is the result:
Looks like we like Haley Marketing and Staffing — no surprises there!
Haley Marketing Group is excited to announce the promotion of Brad Smith to Director of SEO and Social Media Marketing.
Brad will be directing the search engine optimization efforts for over 100 staffing and recruiting firm websites and will actively counsel Haley Marketing clients on their social media marketing strategies.
Over the past five years, Brad has served as a Marketing Advisor and Senior Project Manager for Haley Marketing. In this role, he has worked directly with hundreds of staffing and recruiting executives on projects ranging from marketing strategy to website design, email marketing, direct mail, sales and marketing integration, search engine optimization and social media strategy.
Over the last several years, Brad has established himself as one of the staffing industry’s leading experts on search engine optimization, social media marketing, and online branding. Brad is a Certified Inbound Marketing Professional and holds a Master’s in Education, a Bachelor’s in Communication and a Bachelor’s in Psychology from the University of New York at Buffalo.
Brad has also hosted several webinars on Social Media and SEO for Haley Marketing. If you would be interested in Brad’s expertise for your speaking engagements, webinars and training seminars please contact Haley Marketing Group at 1-888-696-2900.
We recently completed a new corporate identity project for AllMedical Healthcare Staffing. They approached Haley Marketing Group looking to rebrand their company with a newer, fresher and more professional logo. The new artwork needed to convey professionalism, reliability and strength while also appearing modern and energetic.
A pretty tall order, and seemingly one with divergent and competing concepts. Initially they were looking for a logotype — that is a new identity without a logo mark or icon associated with it. The previous incarnations of their logo existed without a mark, but Haley Marketing was given the freedom to include one. We felt the brand could benefit from a strong mark, due to the length and complexity of the company name. Plus the mark can be used on its own as a website favicon and as a strong design element in other materials.
In the concepts above, we experimented with a number of styles, layouts and marks. The company name was shortened to just “allMedical” with “Healthcare Staffing” and the other divisions, such as “Locum Tenens,” highlighted as the secondary type element to the right of the logotype. The globe icon was agreed upon as it reinforces the “all” message — while not a globally-reaching company, AllMedical does cover all areas of staffing in the healthcare industry. Plus, this differentiates them from many of their competitors who either don’t use logo marks or use healthcare-themed icons.
Haley Marketing is now in the process of the next step of AllMedical’s rebranding effort — a redesign of their website. Stay tuned for updates later this month as we roll out AllMedical Healthcare Staffing’s bold, new web presence.
Being that January has now passed, I look back at some of the goals I’ve established for myself during 2010. “Measurement” seems to be the key word for myself during this upcoming year. In our office building there are a number of fans of the “Biggest Loser” show on TV. Thus, our own in-house version of said show has begun. I’m sure we are not alone with this traditional new year endeavor of trying to shed the previous year-end indulgences. God knows one cannot help but being bombarded with the relentless dieting/meal plan commercials on television as it is. But alas, it’s one of the first “measurements” I have thrown my hat into this upcoming new year. I will keep you posted on the progress…fingers crossed there.
Another area where “measuring” is coming into play is another personal sacrifice/crusade. Toward the end of last year I lost one of my best friends to cancer. We shared some great times through our college days and saw them grow for both of us into being somewhat respectable parents of our own families. During some of our latter discussions, my friend shared some of his encounters with some ill kids where he received treatment. Being an individual focused more on the positive side of things, I’ve decided to try to donate in a different way besides the traditional financial way for the kids. I have begun to grow my hair out to be able to make a donation to “
Another area of “measurement” which I’m focused on is the performance of our website. Obviously, making sure your dollars spent were put to good use is smart and sound business. Google Analytics is an excellent tool to have installed on your website to assist you in being able to measure traffic. Things that I try to look for, from a designer’s perspective, is how much time is being spent on a page, are certain pages being used as “exits” for the website, and are there things I can do to adjust/increase traffic flow to certain areas of a website. Another way to help “measure” performance of your website is through your search engine reports. SEO and Social Media efforts are instrumental in boosting your website ranking here. I have become entrenched in helping build out Twitter and Facebook pages for our clients. But let me digress here, I’m not the “expert” in this area of our services. 
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