Week 7

Departmental Meeting

I met with Anthony and Jack on Monday and we gave updates on everyone's job. Jack talked about his social media plan, Anthony showed me his archives so far and how he planned to handle them. Then we all brainstormed 10 keywords we felt made up Visions.

Director's Meeting 

The director's meeting went well. We went over my marketing action plan and everyone pitched in ideas. It was helpful to have all of the director's alone go over the plan because they could add things as they saw fit and I felt it kept everyone on the same page. We also sat in a circle which I enjoyed more, because I could see everyone's faces as they spoke. 

Research

This week I've been researching a lot of press release formats. The ones I felt were most helpful were: 

http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/pr/writing-a-press-release/a-complete-guide-to-writing-an-effective-press-release

First off, you need to ask yourself - is this worth writing a press release about? You are writing it to journalists. Journalists are quick and on a schedule, they need the most important information first - which is called an inverted pyramid way of writing. You also need to write "***" at the end of what you want to be published and "###" at the end of your entire correspondence. 

When you send the email you need to attach it and put it in the body of the email. 

http://b2bprblog.marxcommunications.com/b2bpr/knockout-press-release

This link has a nice check list at the bottom:

http://www.lunareclipse.net/pressrelease.htm

Format:

Your press release needs to be in this format: Headline, Content, Quote, Boilerplate

Week 6

College Tour Weekend

We left for the college tour on Thursday at 3:45 and split up the drive by staying at Simone's house. We left for GMU in the morning and got there by around noon. We then got settled in our air B&B and went to GMU for the presentation. We presented to about 40 students in the entry level film class.   Michelle took footage of the presentation, I did sound, Simone took pictures, and Grace and Kevin made the presentation. Afterwards, everyone asked a lot of questions, especially once we started giving out swag. Many of us brought business cards and we got to exchange them at the end. 

After our presentation, we were able to talk with the DKA Film Fraternity on campus. They showed us what they do and we showed them what we do. It was a very mutually beneficial meeting. We met the people that were coming down and they seemed very excited! 

On Saturday, we went to the PA Training that GMU offered. We paid $75, and got a binder that explained what a production assistant would encounter and terms that were needed to know. 

Work Done

This week I've been working on updating all of the press releases from last year, as well as putting the absolute finalized budget to Shannon. I've also been working a lot on the brand voice exercise and social media assignment that Beth assigned Jack and I. 

Week 5

Departmental Meeting

Art and Marketing met together this Saturday at 11:00. Everyone was in attendance besides Tyler who went home for a family emergency. We talked about what needed to be done first with the website, and how Anthony's budget was coming along. I also talked with Jack about our assignment for social media from Beth, and made sure that the March social media plan is being put into place. Anthony seems to be fitting into his archivist job nicely and likes to work at his own pace and check in weekly with me to make sure he's on the right path. Overall I think his plan is coming together nicely.

Meeting with Beth

Jack and I met with Beth before the director's meeting on Friday. She went over the strategic plans that she had and we compared them to our own Marketing Action plan. They were very similar, accept for that she had them all in one document, so we are working on meshing all of our documents into one form so that we can see our overall marketing strategy better. She also talked with us about Brand Voice. Jack and I both agree that it would be really helpful for Visions to have an overall brand voice that will be able to be carried over into future Visions which will keep our tone consistent throughout the future of Visions. I think what we both struggle with is how to keep our tone consistent over the many platforms we have to write content for and the Branding Voice breakdown will really help us mold that voice. 

We were also given an assignment to  research other social media pages and see what works best for them and what we like. I think this will be super helpful not only for Jack but for me to make sure that Jack is going on the right path and be of help when I can be. 

Reflection

I'm always struggling with how to make my press releases better, so that's what this weeks research has been geared towards. 

The first article talks about how you should NOT write a press release for everything!! ONLY write press releases for things that should be newsworthy! It also has a really helpful, basic outline of how a press release should be broken down. 

http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/pr/writing-a-press-release/a-complete-guide-to-writing-an-effective-press-release

The next article focuses on how to make a basic press release a little more flashy and gives a few examples. It also points out an important point: You are working for the journalist and not your company when writing a press release. MAKE IT EASY TO FIND THE GOOD STUFF

http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/7-ways-to-write-a-killer-press-release.html

Send out press releases Tuesday - Thursday from 10AM - 2 PM. Headlines are the most important! 

http://prinyourpajamas.com/5-tips-for-a-killer-press-release/

Focus on the Headline!! Here's some tips for that: 

http://www.cision.com/us/2015/04/10-knock-their-socks-off-press-release-headline-writing-tips/

Examples of awesome headlines: 

http://service.prweb.com/resources/article/25-popular-online-press-release-headlines/

Examples of what NOT to write in your headlines: 

http://www.howtocreateapressrelease.com/10-tips-for-writing-a-great-headline-for-your-press-release/

Week 4

Department Meeting

Anthony and I met Wednesday afternoon to meet with the chair of the CFCC Humanities and Arts Center. Before the meeting, Anthony and talked about his budget and he feels comfortable with it and we also talked about how at the festival we could show small segments of the films to help with voting for the audience choice award. 

Jack and I met on Wednesday as well and talked about how our social media pages are doing. We also talked again about how we marketed the party last time and what worked. We found that it was mainly the word of mouth and Facebook that helped spread awareness. We talked about photoshop and illustrator and how we might use Jack's new skills to design more things to make the Facebook page nicer. We also talked about how he will need to do research about Facebook boosts and how others use them and recommended budgets to boost posts. 

Reflection

I've been doing a lot of research about marketing budgets and I SO wish I had done this sooner! There are so many helpful words and dialogue to use for the advertising world. So many things that I didn't know about how businesses converse about marketing. There are different types of marketing that fall under different categories, and although I knew the different types I didn't know they fell under different categories. This research was truly enlightening. 

Research
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/develop-marketing-plan-budget-39809.html
http://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/social-media/content-marketing
http://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/budgeting/create-marketing-budget
http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/advertisingbudget.html - good terms for dealing with advertising