One of the biggest factors impacting Millennials is the impact of a college education and financing that education.  Study after study shows that the college graduate is likely to make a million dollars more than the non-college graduate over the course of their lifetime.

Yet this economy has millennial graduates questioning the wisdom of their decision.  Jobs are scarce and student loan payments come due every month.  A COUNTRY Financial survey noted that 31 percent of Americans have borrowed money to finance their educations. Nearly two-thirds have paid off their obligation and only 16 percent said it had a significant impact on their decision making.

Forty percent of Millennials indicate that their student loans have a significant impact on their lives, a full 24 percent difference from the general population.  This differential is either an indication of the impact of the economy on Millennial mindsets, or an indication that pain mellows with time, or both.

Millennials have been described as the coddled, everyone gets a trophy generation and maybe some of that is true.  What certainly is not true, is that this generation is being welcomed into the workforce with open checkbooks.  The economic conditions may, in the end, be more formative on attitudes and work habits of Millennials than most other factors.

They have been forced to be thrifty and conservative with their dollars.  As a result, they may look more than most generations at the true value of the things they buy.  Cheap and good brands like Jimmy John’s and Chipotle Mexican Grill are well positioned to compete for the Millennial fast food dollar.

Cheap and good poses a wholly different challenge for higher education.   The four year university must build value in the four year experience to justify the cost.  It must realize that the college experience is much more than just going to Biology 101.  It is everything involved in helping a young Millennial grow into an adult with potential, dreams and ability.  The result of that experience is the reason students paint their bodies to cheer on their team.

There’s an old axiom among fishermen that goes something like this, “Some lures are meant for catching fishermen and others for catching fish.”  Having grown up fishing, my tackle box is living proof of that truth.  Seems like the flashiest and most colorful lures never caught a thing while the rattiest, most beat up piece of wood with hooks has a history of catching the most and the biggest.

The real truth is all lures will catch fish if fished properly, at the right time in places where there are fish.  Social media seems to be one of those kinds of lures.  It’s the hottest, shiniest new lure out there in the marketing lake. There are a lot of people fishin’  but only a few that are catchin’.

R2integrated just published a study indicating that nearly 50% of companies using social media have no social media strategy.  That probably also explains why 65% of those reporting indicated that they hadn’t increased sales as a result of using social media.  Yet 77% said they were doing social media for lead generation.  Huh?  Fifty-four percent said that social media is integral to their business.  Whaaaaa???????

So, half don’t have a strategy, Most know what they would like it to do. It’s not doing what they would like it to do but it’s integral to their business.  In the word of Bill Cosby, “RIIIIGHT!”

Social media has caught a lot of fishermen but it hasn’t put many fish in the boat.  So as most businesses cast and crank their social media lures into a vast ocean with a few prospects swimming in it, there are a few who’ve used strategy to locate fish concentration and entice those prospects into their pond.

What is a social networking strategy?  If you think about it in purely social terms, it’s why you get invited to a dinner party.  You either supply interesting conversation…which usually means you’re don’t talk about yourself constantly because you’d be a complete bore and you’re really not that interesting.  Or, they really like your significant other.  In any case, your social media strategy should have its own shiny new lure to draw fish into your area of the lake.  Then you need to know what bait to use to get and keep them involved.  And that’s the difference between fishin’ and catchin’.

What company doesn’t have a Facebook page, a Twitter account or even a YouTube Channel? All of these can be great vehicles for conversing with customers and prospects and for building brands. They also offer easy platforms for those who want to sabotage your organization – current or former employees, disgruntled customers or people who simply want to tear down your company’s reputation.

Perhaps the most famous case was the YouTube video that showed employees at a Domino’s Pizza store in North Carolina doing some disgusting, explicit things in the kitchen. The openness of social media offers an easy ticket for social sabotage.

Your identity can be hijacked by a bogus Facebook profile. Comments posted in jest on a blog or in a Tweet could be easily be misunderstood to the detriment of your reputation. Or a disgrunted employee or customer could go on a profanity-laced tirade against you, your company or your product.

So what do you do when it happens to you?

1.   Monitor the social media space. There are online services that aggregate social media mentions of your company, people and products in real time — Technorati and Radian6, for example. Monitor those several times a day. Check your own Facebook pages, fan pages, blogs and YouTube Channels as well.

2. Delete offensive, explicit posts immediately and report them. If offensive material shows up on your Facebook page, delete it immediately and report the offender.  Each site has links to report fraudulent, offensive or abusive behavior. In the case of someone passing himself off as someone else, report it to the social media site immediately. You will likely have to block all posts from that profile until Facebook can remove the profile (and that’s a subject for another time).

3. In the case of false or explicit posts on another organization’s social media sites that are damaging to you or your business, contact the site owner and insist the offensive or false information be removed immediately. If necessary, contact your attorney. Libel laws provide the same protection to people defamed on blogs as they provide to people defamed by the New York Times.

Fixing social sabotage consumed Domino’s for weeks. The offending employees were fired and charged with felonies for adulterating food. Domino’s president posted a new video issuing a public apology for what happened and tried to reassure consumers that similar acts weren’t occurring at other Dominos stores. He also shut the restaurant down for several days and brought in a crew to sanitize it from top to bottom in full view of local TV cameras.

ZLRIGNITION and two clients have been honored by the Central Iowa Chapter of the Public Relations Society of American for work the agency performed in 2009.

The agency and Iowa Public Radio earned a Public Relations Mark of Excellence (PRIME) award of merit for the network’s 2009 Annual Report: Enhancing Connections. The award was the top honor presented in its category.

ZLRIGNITION and the Iowa Department of Human Services won a an Award of Merit for Cover the Kids Day. The program mobilized more than 1,500 churches throughout Iowa to help spread awareness of the hawk-i health insurance program for children. It contributed to nearly 30,000 calls to the DHS and the submission of 69,000 applications for enrollment in hawk-i and Medicaid from October through December 2009.

From cars, to foot warmers, to toys, prescription drugs and any number of food products, hardly a week goes by that we don’t learn about several product recalls. In fact, the agencies that issue product recalls have never been busier. One reason — social media. In the UK, for example, the number of recalls of pharmaeutical products has jumped five-fold since 2005. The British government says the driving force is the Internet.

Thousands of bloggers devote  full attention to scouring the Internet for consumer product complaints. Before long, scathing posts appear on their blogs. Tweets draw millions of followers to them. After a few tweets, the mainstream press catches on and ultimately, a government agency steps in. That’s not necessarily bad. No country could ever maintain a sufficient army of product police to look over every item sold to and used by consumers. The Internet gives those agencies millions of additional eyes and ears.

The unfortunate part is that while many companies have turned to social media to promote their products, too many businesses invest too little time and energy in using social media to discover and resolve problems before they explode into a crisis. 

A sound social media strategy must start with listening and learning.