Stage Two's blog

Stage Two is proud to help promote the 2010 recruiting season of EnCorps.

EnCorps is a San Francisco based non-profit that  recruits retiring engineers, scientists and technology experts to become math and science teachers in California’s under-resourced public schools state wide. Today they begin recruiting great minds to begin teaching as soon as the fall of 2010.

With math science test scores faltering in a state that is known for technological innovation,  EnCorps taps  the knowledge of experienced math and science professionals to teach a new generation. In 2009, EnCorps attracted over 1,100 applicants and recruited over 100 math and science professionals. The organization plans to recruit 200 new teachers for fall of 2010.

Doing outreach for EnCorps we got to know the stories of some of the amazing EnCorps recruits. One such recruit is Sharon White. Sharon grew up in Compton California, a notoriously rough Los Angeles neighborhood. After graduating college, she went on to work for Boeing for thirty years in a variety of fields including finance and engineering. As she headed towards retirement, Sharon realized she wanted to leave a positive legacy in her neighborhood.  She knew her success was because of those who had supported and encouraged her when she was young and she wanted to “pay forward” her gratitude. Sharon enrolled in EnCorps and is now a full time Math teacher at Locke High School in LA.

EnCorps recruits have many stories like this to tell. Some are teachers. Some on the path to become teachers all have encouraged by EnCorps to give back to their communities.
If you or someone you know has been thinking about teaching, check out the EnCorps site.

Full disclosure: EnCorps is a not-for-profit organization and a pro bono client of Stage Two.

Stage Two Consulting, a self-proclaimed top-notch marketing agency in San Francisco, is in need of a diamond in the rough to join our team as a combination office manager/admin and double-junior-level marketing associate.  The job will be roughly a 60/40 split between office-related tasks and some hands-on entry level marketing work.  This is a great position for someone new to the job market who is organized and detail-oriented and capable of helping make a small office run better, and at the same time is interested in learning about marketing.

Qualifications:

• Fast learner: you need to be able to take direction on something once, then repeat it again ever after
• Self starter: some projects will be “high level” – we’re counting on you to figure out some of the details
• Organized: you must be able to juggle many simultaneous projects, without letting a ball drop at any time
• Communicator: you should be able to talk to us, our clients, our guests, our friends, our family, strangers walking down the street, people on the bus, etc
• Detail-oriented: seriously, the little things are the ones that do matter & we care a lot about them.

Brownie points to gamers, bloggers, pop culture geeks (extra credit given for the subtle use of Arrested Development quotes)

Responsibilities:

• Organizing lots of things – we have tons of documents (digital, not the paper stuff) that need to be better organized
• Research – whether it’s poring through research reports or lots of Googling, we’ll need you to be able to find things out on the Internets
• Basic typical office stuff – filing, copying, answering the phone, operating the coffee grinder, playing lead vocals on Rock Band, etc
• Attend events – whether its our own clients or just industry events, you will be expected to attend some industry/networking activities (these typically occur in the evening, no travel will be required)

Details:

• Full-time job based in our office
• Compensation is $22-$28K plus benefits (possibly higher if you can make the case for it!)

Our office is in the amazing Jackson Square district of San Francisco.  We are close to several MUNI stops, great restaurants/bars, and fine entertainment establishments. If you’re interested, email us (yes, you’ll want to edit that email address):

1. a link to an online resume (or Word doc if needed)
2. a short bio
3. why you think this is a perfect fit for you (we recommend you do not send us the same cover letter you use everywhere else)
4. which of our clients excites you the most, and why

Any emails without all of the above will be ignored, and probably marked as spam.  Feel free to let us know if you have any questions. Otherwise, we look forward to hearing from you. If you read nothing else (you won’t get the job, but…) be sure to at least read this and this.

PLEASE NOTE: We are now in the process of screening applicants, and will no longer be accepting new resumes (though we may have some internships open in the late Fall if you’d like to get in touch for that). Thank you for your interest!

Stage Two’s productivity is in serious jeopardy here, as one of our favorite office addictions – Redux – announced today that they have enabled Facebook and Twitter feed importing, weeding through the boring status updates and bit.ly links and bringing those feeds to life right in Redux. Redux has always been a great resource for finding the best stuff on the web, whether it is great Arrested Development clips (“Her?”), One Hit Wonder music videos, funny cat pics, or links to great new sites.

Now, with Twitter and Facebook importing, Redux has become a real-time, one-stop-shop for all the entertainment shared by our friends from all over the web. These feeds are a big leap forward for Redux and a huge leap backwards for the working world.

Check out some of the coverage from the announcement (updated as it comes in):

• Read Write Web
• Mashable
• NewTeeVee
• Lifehacker

It’s no secret that over the last fifteen years or so, marketing has become increasingly complicated as more and more channels and levels of interaction have been introduced by the Internet. In fact, though the basic backbone of principles for reaching customers has remained, marketing itself has evolved into an entirely different, more intelligent, more demanding beast than it was a mere 20 years ago.

Marketing professionals now have more to do than they ever did before, more frequently, and with less preparation time. The upside is that marketers can now engage with customers much more directly and on a wider scale, but this new power comes at the expense of time, energy and requires a supreme understanding of each new nuanced tool the Internet provides.

20 years ago if you wanted to keep your brand current and in the minds of your customers you:

• Had a billboard
• Updated your brochure only when your product changed (which wasn’t very often)
• Had print, radio and TV spots that could last for months or even years.
• If you were really adventurous you sent out a newsletter every few months.

10 years ago you:

• Had a website that functioned statically, much like an online billboard with a bit more information about your company.
• Had to consider how much online vs print exposure you should have
• Sent out email as well as paper newsletters
• Faxed stuff (maybe – we’re still not sure about this whole “fax” thing)

5 years ago you:

• Started (or considered) a blog to go along with your website and started updating once every few days.
• Listed yourself on Yelp/Craigslist/LinkedIN/etc
• Began looking into SEO and wondered if social networking sites could help you get the word out about your product.
• Oh, and you didn’t get to stop sending out newsletters or advertising in the paper or having a billboard, you still had to worry about all those things too. But definitely no more faxing.

Today you must:

• Manage a Facebook page along with perhaps several other profiles, all the while wondering if there is a better way to leverage these sites
• Update your blog regularly with compelling content as well as immediately respond to news in your industry that affects your consumers
• Post on Twitter about that latest blog entry and all the news about your product, and gain a Twitter following and monitor Twitter for mentions of your brand
• Keep up on SEO, optimize SEM
• Send that newsletter and analyze the engagement it yields
• Get that iPhone app up
• Monitor your Google alerts
• Make that widget…
• and you can’t forget about you Yelp reputation and all your traditional advertising.

But beyond the sheer amount of work required to keep up with all these new channels and platforms, there are marketing challenges that occur in the dynamic of the information age. For instance, how do you stand out from all the noise? How do you compete with so much other information, some of it from your competitors, for user attention? Consumers today see more advertisements, receive more messages, juggle so much more information than they ever have before. This kind of environment demands that your product the memorable, sticky and relevant or it will be lost to the ever flowing current of noise.

Also, not all engagement with your target is equal. How do you determine the value of engagement in the interactive space? For some companies, having aFacebook page with a hundred fans measures a high level of engagement with the brand. For others this a formality at best. The same questions arise from all other social media environments. What is the value of a follower on Twitter? Or the power of a positive tweet by satisfied customer? How much interaction with an app is enough to make a lasting impression?

All the free tools the Internet offers do not create a strategy, an experienced marketing professional does.  All the different types of engagement does not bring you a string of customers, but learning from that engagement can. Blogging does not create an audience, but positioning and messaging can. Now more than ever, companies need a team of professionals that can guide them through the crowded media landscape and make sure they stand out.