I had the opportunity to speak at the UNT PRSSA’s meeting last night in Denton (they’re a very fun and bright group of students who are about to hit the job market *wink wink employers*), and thought I’d share a few of the talking points with other prospective graduates.

1. Do your research

This goes for anyone in the industry, not just jobseekers. The key to success as an ad pro or employee is knowing people. Do whatever it takes to understand who you’re selling your product, service, or self to.

2. Don’t be that guy (or girl)

Nobody likes the embarrassing co-worker who tells weekend stories too loudly. Similarly, nobody wants to hire a “frat bro” with the ol’ shirtless beer chugging Facebook profile picture.

3. Don’t stop learning

You’ll soon find that your formal education leaves you unequipped to manage the day-to-day changes of the marketing world. Keep up with blogs like Mashable, TechCrunch, Buzzfeed, follow the news (both global and local), and you just may want to keep up with those Kardashians so you actually hold conversations with the highly intellectual people around you.

4. Hustle

Do what you have to in order to get the job done for a client, employer, teammate, etc. If that means making copies, cleaning the fridge, or videotaping a someone else’s child’s ballet recital... do it. Don’t forget to smile the entire way through, because guess what - everyone’s watching.

5. Everyone loves a good story (and to tell their own)

Not only is this extremely relevant in the advertising world (Facebook’s transition to the Timeline layout is an excellent example), but in our personal lives. Asking other people about themselves is the most successful way to make them like you. Fact. Make sure you have an interesting story to tell too, which leads me to our final point...

6. Be memorable

Whether it’s in a campaign you’re designing, an interview you’ve landed, or a conference you’re attending, make them remember you (in a positive way). Being different isn’t always bad, and being loud isn’t always good. Find a part of you that is important and unique, then build your brand around it.

Have questions about post-grad life or career goals and expectations? We’ve got plenty of Bs who’d love to help you out! Give us a shout in the comments below, or shoot me an email personally at ali@balcomagency.com. Good luck!

Whenever I speak, I almost always get asked, "What's the next social network?" I have always said, and will continue to say: Facebook. It's not Pinterest, it's not Twitter and it's not Tumblr. Why? Because Facebook is totally ingrained into our lives.

• The average Facebook users visits the site four times a day.
• Facebook accounts for about 9% of all internet traffic.
• But here's the biggest deal: Millions of users use Facebook by not going to Facebook.com. They login to their favorite site (ESPN.com, for example) or like a page or listen to a song on Spotify.

If you were to erase Facebook today, people would freak out - thousands of websites wouldn't work and the number one website destination in the world would be gone. What if you deleted Twitter? People would probably shrug their shoulders and turn back to Facebook. 

If the Twitter immigrants didn't like the way Facebook showed their information, they could create an app that displays it the way they want. With the new Twitter rules, this is a big no-no.

Facebook wants to be the glue for the web, Twitter wants to be the book. You can't make a book without a whole lot of glue.

Photo Credit

Is your website easy come, easy go? You may have optimized your site to get great organic search engine results – and lots of visitors – but if people don’t like what they see when they get there, they’ll bail. The bounce rate indicates how often that happens by giving you the percentage of visitors who view only a single page of your site before leaving. Deflate your bounce rate by making sure you have valuable, relevant content that encourages visitors to stick around – and keeps them coming back for more.

AdWords is Google’s paid search advertising program. Through AdWords, you identify keywords that describe what you’re selling, then write short text ads that include those keywords. When people search using those keywords, your ads show up in the paid ad section on the search engine results page. With AdWords, you bid on keywords to determine the placement of your ad (versus your competitors’ ads) and how much you’ll have to pay when people click on it.

Think of local search like you would the yellow pages – only without those annoying tissue-thin pages. While you want to make sure you include geographic information so that your site shows up in organic searches, you also need to pay attention to local search engines like Google Places. Local search engines automatically create listings, but it’s up to you to “own” your business and add as much detail as possible. Things like photos, hours of operation, even videos will all help you show up higher in the directory results.

Instagram is a photo-sharing application that was recently purchased by Facebook for a whopping $1 billion. With Instagram, you use an app to take a photo with your mobile phone, apply a filter to that photo, then upload it and share it on various social media sites. Instagram photos have a retro, quirky vibe, but the real advantage is the ease with which you can share photos across social platforms. And while it’s fun for individuals to use, some of the world’s biggest brands are using Instagram as a marketing tool to engage customers and create a sense of community through visual storytelling.

RSS, which stands for “really simple syndication” or “rich site summary,” is a tool that delivers frequently updated web content, like blogs or e-newsletters, to subscribers. You just choose an RSS reader, like Google Reader and Feedly, and then choose what content you want delivered to you. It’s a great way to stay current with your favorite sites, but it’s also an ideal tool for Internet marketers to keep people engaged. But just having an RSS feed on your site isn’t enough – the content it delivers needs to be valuable and relevant (see content marketing).  

If crowdsourcing has a rallying cry, it’s probably “power to the people!” Crowdsourcing is all about taking a task that would generally be assigned to one person or group (usually employees) and farming it out to the public at large. Like Ben & Jerry’s “Do the World a Flavor” project, in which the company’s newest ice cream flavor was determined by an online contest (the winner has yet to be announced). And Foldit, which asks people to “solve puzzles for science” in an effort to help cure diseases. But crowdsourcing is not without its critics: Some worry that it results in substandard work, while others question the ethics of soliciting free or low-paying work.

If you boiled the web down to one simple imperative, it would be, “Help people find what they’re looking for.” That’s certainly what search engines are intended to do. But once you land on a website, the same rule applies. And that’s where Information Architecture comes in. It’s the art and science of organizing a website’s information in ways that make sense to most people, always keeping in mind a site’s goals and its users’ needs.  Good information architecture can mean better site engagement, improved search engine optimization and higher conversion rates.

Google Analytics is a service that gives you a host of information about your website visitors – how many, how long they stay, where they come from, where they go after visiting your site and more. The basic version is free; you can upgrade to premium for a fee. You just include a bit of code on each page of your site and then view the data using Google’s dashboard feature. And it can be integrated with pay-per-click and display advertising campaigns so you can see how well your online advertising is performing.