There are 10.4 million open positions in the U.S. right now.1 Chances are good you’re an employer working to fill one of them or a job candidate vying for one. And chances are you’re more than aware of LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.  A few stats on why LinkedIn is worth your time: LinkedIn is the most established social media platform. It’s also the most trusted.2 More than 60 million senior-level people use LinkedIn regularly, making it an excellent way for companies to cultivate their reputation and collaborate with peers. Four of five people on LinkedIn are in a position …

We are trained to ask questions. Good journalists and marketers know to ask a variety of questions – both open-ended and specific questions, gather multiple relevant sources, conduct research ahead of time to inform the interview or focus group, and make subjects feel comfortable by being approachable, honest and vulnerable.  We are good listeners. Good journalists and marketers enter conversations with prepared questions, but are open and comfortable, allowing the interview to meander organically. If people want to talk, we know to listen. We don’t try to fill in the pauses in conversations with idle chatter, because we know that’s …

Chances are there are a few unread marketing emails and companywide blasts in your inbox right now. Some you’ll click on immediately, maybe even read all the way through. And some will be an immediate Shift + Delete.  What makes the difference when it comes to good email and bad?  An election season, the COVID-19 pandemic and now the holidays give us a lot of examples of both types. Here are a few ways to stand out from the crowd — in a good way.  Would You Open This?The subject line is arguably the most important part of an email, …

As an editor at The Tennessean several years before joining MP&F, I knew the folks at the firm before I became one of them. Whenever an MP&F executive entered our newsroom – especially a partner wearing a suit, which was the only thing partners wore to the newsroom in those days – we knew the story they were bringing with them would be important, exclusive, top-secret – or all of those things. Now that I am lucky enough to work at MP&F myself, I understand that beneath my colleagues’ polished presentations are people whose pandemic work-from-home lives are just as …

An effective communications strategy requires insight and analysis as much as it does empathy and creativity. If your public relations teams are heavy on wordsmiths and light on analysts, here are five free tools (and one paid subscription you likely already have) that can help. Still need support? For each tool, we’ve provided our recommendation for upgrading.

Need SEO help? If resources and budget are minimal right now, we’ve outlined a way to use the Google Keyword Planner as a workaround to professional tools and agency support. The Keyword Planner is a tool designed to assist media buyers with advertising decisions; SEO is not its intended use. That makes using it as such a little clunky, but it works. And it’s free.

Most of us who have worked on a website project have experienced a conversation like this: CEO: Can you make the new logo bigger and add the tagline? We paid a lot of money for it, and it does a good job explaining who we are. Marketing: We need artwork that encapsulates our organization. Stock images don’t do it. Accounting: We don’t have money for a photo shoot. Department Head: That first stock image doesn’t reflect our department. Can you make it smaller and add a second image about our team? Another Department Head: What about our department? We need …

If your duties include tracking your company’s key marketing metrics, you know Google Analytics is a critical tool in measuring success. You also know how easy it can be to lose yourself in the volume of data available. To simplify things, our team has listed and explained in this post six of the top marketing metrics for businesses to track in Google Analytics on a regular basis. But first, here’s a quick an overview of Google Analytics for those who don’t use the platform on a daily basis. Google Analytics can’t tell you exactly who visits your website (you need …

We’re in the middle of the 2020 Census, which is mandated by the U.S. Constitution to count every person in the United States and five U.S. territories. The census provides data that lawmakers at all levels of government use to help allocate funding for important services and infrastructure like public health, schools, roads, police and fire protection. The census is also used by businesses, entrepreneurs, economic development leaders, marketers, communicators and journalists to understand communities, impending changes and opportunities for growth. At MP&F, we use myriad census data sets to help our clients spot opportunities and tackle business challenges. We …