Where: Las Cruces Sun News

For more information:  Reporter job

News Director opening at WTXL-TV in Tallahassee, FL

Where: WTXL-TV

For more information contact Gary Wordlaw, General Manager : Gwordlaw@wtxi.tv

FYI—the news director just resigned and as of this posting, the job had not been posted yet on the company website.  This was a tip sent to Rebecca Aguilar

ESPN has openings for Production Operations, Media Operator & Production Asst.

Where: ESPN in different cities

For more information visit ESPN.

“Meet and Greets” are great place to re-connect with friends from HCDFW.  If you’re new to the city,  come and meet  the Latino professionals in journalism, public relations, and communications who are making a difference in Dallas/Fort Worth.

It’s important for HCDFW to have networking events, because it gives all of us a chance to relax, spend time with each other and in some cases people  have even made connections for new jobs.

Hope to see you on Thursday, January 19^th.  There will be free food and  drink specials.  Get away from the office, and the deadlines—and come spend a few hours with a bunch of great people.

If you’re not a member, we welcome you to come and check us out.   Don’t forget to let us know you’re coming.  Click here to RSVP.

See you there!

Here’s more…

Hispanic Communicators DFW Elect New Leadership

We are proud to celebrate 30 years, and honored to have Pulitzer Prize winner, Ruben Vives as our keynote speaker.
Join our celebration. Here’s more…

It has been an eventful summer for us so far!  We had two special events in June.  Hispanic Communicators DFW had its fifth annual Media Mixer at the House of Blues and we also did our very first community service/outreach program.

Last year during our annual Media Mixer I learned about our sponsor’s, Time Warner Cable’s Connect A Million Minds initiative (also known as CAMM).  It teaches young girls about the science behind every day things and thought.  It’s a great program.

Who doesn’t know a girl who could benefit from a program like CAMM?  It helps open a girl’s mind and unlock her potential so she doesn’t  become a depressing statistic.

This year, we had an opportunity to work with TWC and their partner, Girls Inc. on a summer camp called “The Science Behind The News.”  It was held at Channel 8, WFAA-TV.

Our member and veteran anchor, Gloria Campos was actively involved entire workshop.  She really made the day a memorable experience for the girls. The girls also got to have lunch with Gloria.

That had to beone of my favorite moments of the day.  I watched as Gloria was sat in the center of all the girls, passing around cookies as the girls traded flavors. Gloria also went through every single curriculum station with the girls including a game that resembled Twister! 

Gloria with the girls.

The girls got autographs on their T-shirts.  They were also given a tour of the station and even got to sit behind Gloria’s anchor desk chair for a taping!  There is no doubt that Gloria Campos inspired all these girls.

Who knows, maybe the camp will inspire one of them to become a professional communicator!

Byrdie Franco is currently the Public Relations Manager for the Hispanic Communicators DFW.

AUGUST 9, 2011

Marketers demonstrate what metrics to use and how listening affects business

–>

Social media and digital marketing have allowed marketers to listen to more of what customers are saying about their brands and those of their competitors. As a result, listening and engaging online with consumers are now parts of many marketers’ online strategies, and there are many ways to measure these initiatives to track success.

A June 2011 study commissioned by Dell from Forrester Consulting found that marketers from different industries look at various key performance indicators (KPIs) when measuring the success of their listening and engagement initiatives.

One of the more popular KPIs was number of impressions/reach, which was cited by 42% of respondents from the high-tech industry. Additionally, 57% of those in media, entertainment or leisure industries used the number of social network fan “likes,” and 46% of those at utility and banking services companies analyzed customer satisfaction scores.

Additionally, many areas within a corporation can benefit from listening to and engaging customers. Respondents said that market strategy (74%), web-interactive marketing (74%), brand management (72%), public relations (64%), product marketing (63%) and market research (53%) were all corporate functions that had created strategies based on information from listening and engagement initiatives.

No matter what metrics and KPIs marketers used to track listening and engagement initiatives, many were seeing success. Sixty-three percent of respondents told Dell and Forrester Consulting they had seen a positive effect from such initiatives on brand awareness, while 57% said the same about brand sentiment, and 50% about overall business success.

Listening to customers is not a new strategy, but consumers and brands are connecting more intimately via online channels. Companies must take the right steps to track and measure these initiatives, which will lead to continued improvements in this area—and in the business overall.

Permalink

| Leave a comment  »

While pondering what to write about this month, I noticed my wife searching the Web for back-to-school items the kids needed – new backpacks, pencil sharpeners, new shoes, erasers in the shape of pandas, and so forth.

If you search Google for “kids backpacks”, you’ll see a “Nearby Stores” link displayed just below the image/shopping results, the most prominent section of the SERP.

If you sell kids backpacks, you’ll probably want to rank well for queries for it year-round, but back-to-school time is probably when it really pays to rank well for the term. In this case, you’d want to make sure that your inventory is available in Google Shopping so that you can show up in the Nearby Stores SERP.

As you are considering your SEO efforts, you should be thinking about the seasonality of your business as well as how it effects how your local customers use search.

For seasonal and locally focused SEO campaigns consider the following tips.

1.  Plan Ahead

If you want to rank for a seasonal keyword like “back to school sale” in your city, you’ll probably want to try to rank for the query ahead of time. While putting up a great piece of content and getting links at the time of the event can work, as people are more likely to link to something that’s current, I have found it’s more reliable to get your content indexed and linked way ahead of time.

During the actual time you want to have the best rankings, you can also add additional content that targets variations of the keyword and links back to the original page you are trying to rank. This can both bolster the original page as well provide an additional URL that can rank.

2.  Understand The Time Window

Planning for your New Years Eve party usually starts around December 1st. So if you’re a restaurant, you’ll want to rank for “New Years Eve menu” well before New Years Eve comes around.

3.  Understand The SERPs For Your Keyword

While Google and Bing update their various SERP displays regularly, having a handle on the different SERP inventory available for your target keyword is a good idea.

If Google is showing a lot of images, then you know you need to work on image optimization. If there are Shopping results as in the backpack example, you know you need to get your inventory in Google Shopping.

For event-based keywords like “Black Friday Shopping”, Google often shows relevant News links above the organic results around the time of the event. For the News results, consider writing an article on “Black Friday Shopping” for your local newspaper.

Often times, SERPs with News results also show blog results, so this would be an indication that you might want to add some content about the event to your blog. If it’s a hot term, update your blog regularly throughout the day, as Google will often update these links with the latest content.

4.  Create An Editorial Calendar

One of the challenges (and opportunities) with the Web is that it forces businesses to start thinking like publishers. But businesses should already know when their hot seasons are.

They also should know the types of products people will be looking for and the types of questions they will be asking search engines. Map out the seasons that effect you in a editorial calendar spreadsheet and start figuring out where your areas of SEO opportunity are going to be over the next year.

To help you get started, I have created a Local SEO Seasonal Calendar that shows some of the major events for the year, complete with relevant local business categories/keywords for those events and the window of time for each.

And remember, with local SEO, ’tis always the season.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Entries

• SEO For Seasonal Promotions
• Tracking Seasonal Search Behavior
• Last Minute Holiday SEO Tactics
• 10 Last-Minute SEO Tips For Holiday Shopping Season
• Using Predictive Modeling In Seasonal Search Campaigns

Permalink

| Leave a comment  »

By Andrew Redfern @ 9th August 2011 8:30 am

There are innumerable ways to improve a page’s Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO. Whether improving the quality and keyword density of your page’s text content, developing a strong network of useful links from other popular sites or any number of other tried and tested techniques, the name of the game is forcing search engines to take notice of your site and rank it highly within search results for the searches that you want to be a part of.

It can be pretty daunting to try and addressing each of these rules and recommendations from the outset, which is why this article is designed to help you lay a solid foundation from which to develop your SEO strategies throughout the life of the page. The pointers referenced in this passage are the fundamentals of SEO and the starting point for anybody who wants their site to ascend the rankings.

The bottom line in SEO is this: Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

Text is an absolute necessity because search engines operate using functions nicknamed spiders or crawlers which trawl the worldwide web instantaneously to find information that is relevant to the terms of a user’s search, but spiders/crawlers are only capable of reading text.

For this reason, a website with the most stunning imagery and design is likely to feature less prominently in a natural search list than one with quality, keyword rich text.

In many ways, links, popularity and reputation go hand in hand. The more popular your site, the higher it will appear in the rankings as search engines will perceive it to be a valuable resource on the given subject matter.

The popularity of another site can have a positive effect on your ranking too, if you are able to secure a link within that site to your own. The strength and quality of links to and from your site, all contribute to your position within search listings.

But just as exterior forces can have a positive influence on your ranking, the opposite can also occur. If you share a server with a blacklisted IP address or known spammer, you will suffer a much lower ranking as a result. This could diminish the effect of any hard work you carry out producing strong, keyword rich text and to the same degree a site with less text content but very strong authoritative links may fare better.

Observe the four cornerstones of SEO and you are likely to reap the benefits. There is no magic wand for SEO, just a set of principles. But if you are faithful to them, you are likely to benefit from a much higher ranking and, in turn, a great deal more clicks.

---

---

Other Related Stories That May Be Of Interest:

1. Using Keyword Links is Vital for On-Page SEO
2. SEO Proof Your Internal Links
3. SEO Content that Pleases Both Humans and Spiders
4. Quality Over Quantity: Link Building for SEO
5. How to Get Your New Site Spidered for SEO
6. Avoid Stuffing Keywords Into Content for Great SEO
7. Your URL File Extension Won’t Affect Your SEO
8. Increase Your Site’s SEO Success with Inbound Links
9. Google Makes Changes to Search Engine Algorithm, How Will This Affect Your Business?
10. Create a Blog to Improve SEO on Your Site

Permalink

| Leave a comment  »