June 2006

SEO is one of those mythical terms whispered in quiet conference hall corners and business meetings, it’s meaning too obtuse and mysterious to be said in a loud voice. Not at PlattForm. It’s our job as a full-service advertising and marketing agency to have mastered the meaning and use of such terms.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a service PlattForm has offered for over 8 years. At its inception, it was known as Full-Service Web Marketing, and was rebranded as SEO just over two years ago. With such a long history of offering SEO, it’s no surprise that PlattForm is comfortable with using the term out loud in meetings. Or in blogs.

The concept of SEO is simple: it helps people find your web site. The greatest part about visitors using organic, or free, search engine results to find your site is that there is no real cost involved. So if that visitor turns into a lead, that’s a free lead.

The monthly service fee for SEO covers the work the SEO team devotes to your site to keep it as optimized and up-to-date as possible. As a team, SEO checks leads, web site traffic and keyterms on an almost daily basis. We check our clients’ web sites regularly and keep up on industry news and innovations to provide our clients with the best possible service.

So at its most basic form, SEO is an indispensable aspect of an Internet marketing campaign. After all, who’s going to turn down free Internet leads?

I have won an Emmy. Yes, riveting … I know. My one claim to fame. So I put out a call to my fellow co-workers to see what they claim as their, uh, claim to fame. Here now is a very random, somewhat obscure representation of the people I work with. At one point or another, my co-workers admit to:

• seeing The Wizard of Oz over 300 times.
• winning $500 in a NY rap contest.
• climbing eight of Colorado’s 14,000-ft. peaks
• performing for Mick Jagger
• streaking through his/her high school
• owning two human skulls
• being a male model
• visiting 47 different countries
• paragliding over the Swiss Alps
• meeting Maitreya Buddha
• knowing EVERY move to EVERY Janet Jackson video
• having an extra rib
• answering Chris Farley’s fan mail
• peeing next to Joe Montana
• Equinophobia
• kissing the Blarney Stone
• jumping off a moving train
• drinking ‘til 5am with Hootie and/or The Blowfish
• dating Bruce Springsteen (okay, one date)
• ambidexterity
• being valedictorian of his college class
• owning a pet buffalo
• spending time on the ’80s hair band Cinderella’s tour bus
• having Karen Black sing “Happy Birthday” to him/her
• being hit in the face with a 2X4

Now – keep in mind – that’s just a small sampling of my co-workers. I put out a simple e-mail to the masses – and those were some of the highlights … or lowlights. You pick. And to think I thought my Emmy win was impressive. Not when you compare it to having a sixth toe or singing a duet with Wynonna Judd. All in all – this company is filled with wildy talented, creative advertising professionals. FREAKS – every last one of them!

What involves a reader in a story, be it fiction or non-fiction, are interesting characters or people to whom they can relate. And, the same is true for the public relations message of your school.

I have a friend who is a news bureau chief for a major metropolitan daily newspaper. I asked for his input to help me identify the best way to pitch stories to reporters. His response was immediate:

“You have to make your story about people.”

Apparently, one of the essential elements many PR professionals forget in relaying the “big story” to the media is the people angle. For example, your school might wish to promote the first graduation ceremony for a new campus, so you have someone on your staff or the PR firm with which you are working make a media pitch. The event is meaningful to you, after all. If you can see its intrinsic value, then everyone else certainly can, right?

Unfortunately, graduations and new school openings for proprietary schools are a dime a dozen to the news media. Why? It’s the same story and the same photo opportunity. What’s missing here is the human element.

Refocusing this event to include interview opportunities with students in the community in which the new school opened will make this event look a lot more appealing. Identify a student whose life will be changed by your school opening its doors in this new location. What was their path to this school? What hardships had they faced before your school opened? In this sense, your students are the characters in your gradation story and it’s their success stories that appeal to readers in the local community through the news media.

No one who picks up a newspaper cares about an event. Their interests lie below the surface, with the very people whose lives you help change. A good, old-fashioned human interest story is the key to the media’s heart and an easy way for your school to tell its story to the community.

A career college student bonded with her admissions representative. The admissions representative had been counseling the student about curriculum choices, class schedules and school life in general. They became friends. The student trusted the rep.

But then, one day the rep left . . . the student felt abandoned . . . and a few weeks later, the student, frustrated about having to ’start all over again’, quit.

Scenarios like this happen virtually every week in every school in every state. Think about your situation. Is student retention a problem? If so, employee retention could be one of the culprits.

The High Cost of Turnover

According to the Career College Association, 40% of students drop out before they finish their training. Four out of ten! If you accept the premise there is a connection between employee retention and student retention, then you accept that at least some of those dropouts are preventable. The key is hanging on to your valuable employees.

What is the cost in dollars and cents? Assume the average monthly tuition is $1200; the average time to graduate is 14 months; and most dropouts occur during the first half of the term. With these assumptions the school loses at least seven months of revenue—$8400—per dropout.

Let us take it a step further. According to the CCA, a typical school of 500 will lose 200 students (40%). Conservatively, if the school could save only 10% (20) of those dropouts by better employee retention, the school would retain $168,000 in revenue. ($8400 times 20 “saved students” equals $168,000).

In addition to this incredible savings, consider the cost of replacing the lost employee. The Saratoga Institute estimates the average cost of losing an employee (in terms of lost productivity) to be one times annual salary.

No matter how you measure it, employee turnover is expensive. So what do you do about it? I have some thoughts. . . . but you’ll have to read my next blog to get them. Stay tuned!

By Becca Breithaupt

Picking out my clothes Sunday night to dress appropriately business casual for Monday, I found myself stumped on what shoes to wear. Being true to my hipster style I really wanted to wear my Chuck Taylors. However, realizing that my Chucks with the ripped-out sides and skull ‘n crossbone laces probably weren’t professional enough to be considered business casual, I opted for my usual dress shoes…boring. And I don’t know about anyone else, but I have tiny feet and don’t like heels so my choices are limited.

With this said, today I ask myself what if I had Chuck Taylors that were business casual appropriate for PlattForm? PlattForm Chucks, if you will. Doesn’t that have a nice ring to it? I know this sounds impossible, but it’s not! After researching this idea on the Converse web site, I believe that my dream and yours can come true.

The web site has an option to design your own shoes. So I took the liberty of doing this myself. Click here to see. Notice the pimped out sides and stitching. Also the wicked sweet PlattForm stitched on the side. Now not only can we at PlattForm think as a team, but we can dress as a team as well. Also the fact that the shoes are Chucks will make all here cool with the kids … or people my age. So consider this my informal plan of action, and I will have a formal concept on [insert important person]’s desk by Friday.