Chris Davis Presentation

Chris Davis of Fi-Plan Partners spoke to the JMC 492 class on Friday April 13. His experience in numerous fields of work taught him the things that he truly enjoyed in a job. After years of bouncing around in these various professions he finally landed at Fi-Plan partners as their Director of Integrated Communications. Davis’ presentation had one main focus and it was SEO and the intricacies that go in hand with it.

One big thing that he stressed was white hat and black hat SEO. As a company you want to make sure that you are using proper techniques to work with search engines to make sure you are at the top of your respected searches. If you do partake in black hat SEO you will be buried in search results and your company will have almost no exposure.

Another key point he had was that you need to work with Google and other search engines to have your website crawled as often as possible. This will help you climb to the top of the search engine results.

The last thing and probably the one I had the least knowledge of was the use of links and how they can affect your SEO.

“No one is successful without affecting people”- Chris Davis

Meredith Foster Speaks to PR Class

Meredith mentioned that she does the photography for all the important council meetings and that made it clear to me that photography is still a necessary skill in a journalism career. She also said that she writes a lot. The importance of writing has been mentioned by all of the speakers who have visited our class and it is becoming clear that it is a necessary skill for every day jobs in communications.

She also talked about how much she is involved in social media. Social media is clearly a vital part of any PR job and she gave us some blogs to look up for advice on using social media. She also talked about tweeting at certain times during the day so that she reaches more of her target audience. I never realized that tweeting at certain times would be an important part of social media.

SEO Tips From Chris Davis

Chris Davis is the Director of Integrated Communications at Fi-Plan Partners, an investment company in Birmingham, Alabama. He is in charge of photography, creating websites, and graphic design for the company. He made it very clear that search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the main keys to making his job successful and gave us a few helpful hints.

1. Keywords are very important and should be used often and correctly.

2. There are two types of links, outbound and inbound. Outbound links lead people away from your website and inbound links are links that lead to your website. The more inbound links that you have on other websites, the more traffic flow your company’s website will have.

3. The information on your website should always been new and fresh.

4. Video is an important component to a website because it engages the viewer. Videos are easier to make than most people think!

5. When posting pictures, be sure to name the JPEG file in a way that it describes the image. Google will pick this up in a search more easily.

6. The times you post on your website are critical. Research when most people are visiting your website so you can make sure the maximum amount of people are viewing your content.

Chris Davis Take-Aways

Chris Davis spoke to our class about the importance of search engine optimization. I never realized how important this one thing could be before this class. Almost all of the speakers that we have had have mentioned this, if not expanded off of it. Chris Davis gave us his top five words for SEO. They are keywords, links, changing/new content, video, and image tagging. He really helped me see how important this step is in creating a website or promoting myself.

Davis also talked about how important creativity is in his job. He has to constantly come up with new ideas to keep his brand at the forefront of the competition. He has to be able to find a way to communicate finances to people who do not understand the language that a lot of financial people use. He helps the public understand finances by communicating it in a way that is easy to understand. This is an area of communication that I had not given much thought to, but it was interesting to hear what he had to say about what he does on a day to day basis.

Chris Davis breaks down SEO

Chris Davis is the Director of Integrated Communication at Fi-Plan Partners. Fi-Plan Partners is a financial investment company, and Davis is in charge of everything that goes into video, photography, website design, and networking. He has even designed a smart phone app for the company. If a financial planning and investing company has a need for an employee to connect them technically, then every company does.

 Davis highlighted several aspects of his job. In the hour that he visited our class, he gave us several tips on how to effectively promote information online and reach the target market.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial. If you design a website, but no one knows about it, it will never be significant.
• Top five considerations for SEO:

1. Keywords. Adding website keywords will trigger SEO.
2. Links. Google likes it when there are links to other websites.
3. Changing/Adding Content. Search engines recognize when you have updated your website. They are more fond of the websites that contain current information.
4. Video.
5. Image tagging. Tagging and image and connecting it with something else will increase SEO for your website.

• Davis developed a financial blog through Fi-Plan Partners and spends hours weekly updating it. “The more knowledge you are able to give to your customers,” Davis said, “the less anxiety they will have.”

“Hot Coffee” Heats Up Samford University

Hot Coffee, a documentary about Stella Liebeck’s law suit against McDonalds, made it’s way to the campus of Samford University on Tuesday, April 17. With detailed information on the law suit, the final verdict, tort reform, and McDonald’s history of burns, the showing of “Hot Coffee” interested many students and faculty at Samford. Around 90 students showed up to the viewing of the documentary followed by a question and answer session.

Our public relations class was the first to hear about “Hot Coffee” coming to campus. Unfamiliar with the majority  of the details of the case, Stacy Smith, informed the class on the infamous law suit. After seeing a brief 10 minutes of the documentary, we were hooked.

As a class, we worked together along side of Stacy Smith to come up with ways as to how we could get the word out on our campus. Splitting up into different teams, every student in our class played a role in the PR of the documentary showing. From The Crimson to table tents on every cafeteria and food court table, the word was spread.

As students, we knew how to advertise best to our demographic. Posting a lot of information on social media was predicted to be our most effective PR tactic and our hypothesis proved to be right. Putting signs around campus and making announcements at greek life organization meetings also proved to be extremely effective.

With some minor mistakes, lessons on PR were learned by all. Being able to actually implement what we learn in class into the real world of PR was very exciting. It was honor to work along side of Stacy Smith and the rest of the “Hot Coffee” group to spread the word about a documentary that represents a great cause!

Tips from Chris Davis

Chris Davis, director of integrated communication at Fi-Plan Partners, spoke to Principles of PR on Friday, April 13th. Davis is a Samford alum and has had many life experiences to make him a well-rounded professional. Davis’s presentation was both interesting and relevant and provided the class with plenty of advice.

Besides his useful, general career advice, Davis spoke a lot about internet marketing and SEO:

-”Videos bump SEO.” Davis explained that videos are crucial in SEO and keep the audience interested and checking back more frequently.

-Keywords are key to optimizing SEO. Davis taught the class how to use keywords and how to choose them to keep our websites on the top of Google search results.

-Top 5 in using SEO:

Keywords:
Links
Changing/new content
Videos
Image tagging
Davis’s presentation was very engaging, and I feel more prepared as both an intern and future PR/marketing professional.

Hot Coffee documentary heats up conversation

It’s not unusual to see coffee on a college campus. But on Tuesday, April 17, a different kind of hot coffee came on campus. Award-winning documentary Hot Coffee was screened on Samford University’s campus.

The documentary uses the story of Stella Liebeck, the woman who was burned by a scalding cup of coffee from McDonald’s, to raise the issue of tort reform.

The film was shown at Cumberland School of Law on Tuesday, April 17. Director Susan Saladoff and former Alabama Supreme Court Associate Justice, Ralph Cook were on a panel for anyone to ask them questions after the film.

The Principles of PR class had the opportunity to promote the event to Samford’s undergraduate population. Through posters, coffee sleeves, caf table signs and in-class announcements, the class did a wonderful job spreading the word.

One learning experience in the campaign was an accidental misprint of the date of the event on the posters and caf signs. However, we learned the importance of quickly addressing a problem before it turns into a crisis. By changing the date on the posters and replacing some posters with updated copies, we avoided any problems.

Takeaways from Chris Davis

Chris Davis never would have pictured himself wearing a tie each day when he was travelling through Munich for a year of college. He never though he would have an office, let alone an office next door to a financial consultant. But Davis’s diverse career path led him to a unique position which he loves, the Director of Integrated Communications at Fi-Plan Partners in Birmingham, Ala.

Chris Davis, Director of Integrated Communications, Fi-Plan Partners

Davis, who is affectionately referred to as “arts and crafts” by his “calculator kid” co-workers spent time as a musician, recording studio owner, coffee shop owner and a bicyclist before he took a job with Fi-Plan Partners. Davis shared his experience with the Principle of PR Class on Friday, April 21 and left students with several important takeaways.

As the manager of Fi-Plan Partners’ website, Davis is always looking into ways to enhance the SEO of the website. Through keywords, metadata, links and changing content, he works to bring his company to the top of the page in Google searches.
In order to brand Fi-Plan beyond the office, Davis, a former coffee shop owner, developed a specific blend for the office. Clients are often sent home with a bag of the roast. I thought this was an excellent example of out-of-the-ordinary branding that can make a lasting impact.

As the Director of Integrated Communications, Davis seeks to help clients further understand the financial process.

“Nobody is successful or fulfilled,” he said, “unless they help people with their lives

Hot Coffee at Samford

On Tuesday April 17,2012, the Documentary Hot Coffee was screened on Samford’s campus. The film focuses on the famous Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants lawsuit. The plaintiff filed suit against McDonald’s after being badly burned by their coffee. The screening drew close to 100 people who also participated in a question and answer session after the film.

The job of our Samford PR class was to do advertising to promote the films screening. The plan we came up with was to promote via posters, flyers, coffee cup sleeves and through Social media. We worked together with Stacy Smith to come up with a plan to achieve our goal.

We assigned students to each section of advertising we were doing. The posters and coffee cup sleeves were printed without trouble. Although not all PR plans go accordingly. The dates were misprinted, showing the wrong date with the wrong day. We worked hard to put some make-up on them to correct the problem.

Reaching our key demographic was the key to this exercise. I believe we did that will, minus the few hiccups along the way. The lessons learned from this campaign we long lasting. I believe we achieved a great amount of success relative to our goals.