Six Volunteer Events Your Company Should Consider

1. Animal Shelters. This is always a fun thing to do! Helping out some furry friends is always a great way to give back and have fun with your co-workers. You can also collect supplies like, paper towels, puppy pads, dog/cat food, leashes, and much more! Think about it and partner with your local animal shelter today!

2. Food Pantries! Feed My Starving Children is a non-profit committed to feeding hungry children. Volunteers hand-pack meals that are specially formulated and sent to more than 70 countries world wide. Start your finger exercises now!

3. Habitat for Humanity is a non-profit that believes every person should have a decent place to live. Habitat for Humanity builds, renovates and repairs houses over the world using volunteer labor and donations. Stretch out your limbs and pack up your toolkit.

4. YMCA focuses on youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility. Y volunteers give men, women and children of all ages and walks of life the resources and support they need to be healthy, confident, connected, and secure.

5. United Way believes every country should have a good education, every citizen should feel financially stable, and every community should be healthy and strong.

6. National Night Out promotes police-community partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie to make neighborhoods safer, better places to live. Neighborhoods across the nation host block parties, festivals, parades, cookouts and other various community events with safety demonstrations, seminars, youth events and visits from emergency personal and exhibits.

The list of volunteer events goes on and on. Why not get away from work and have some fun while giving back to the community!

5 Ways to Keep Your LinkedIn Up-to-date

Alyssa Bereznak, a writer for, Yahoo Tech, came up with five simple ways to keep your LinkedIn up to date. Bereznak has 10 plus years of professional internet use and has also worked for Vanity Fair.

As professionals, we all know how important LinkedIn is. Please tell me you have a LinkedIn. If not, pause your reading and sign up right MEOW! So many employers take advantage of your online resume. LinkedIn is a place to put all the extra things that you can't necessarily cram onto your paper resume. There are many great features to LinkedIn that a traditional resume does not contain. You can add projects, coursework, volunteer work, your resume, have people write you recommendations, and so on.

ONE

Have a good profile picture that shows who you are.

• But don't use a selfie
• No pixalated photographs
• Don't crop yourself from your friends
• Keep your assets to yourself
• Look happy :]

Look at this classy guy. He knows what's up.

TWO

Write a killer summary

• Use keywords, it makes you pop-up in search results
• Include:  experience, ambitions, what you want to accomplish
• Google Search. Your LinkdIn should be within the first three search results
• Include 40 words that seem substantial
• Discuss your life passions, interests and goals

EVERYTHING is awesome!

THREE

LinkedIn is your portfolio, add videos and graphics to show off your skills

• There's a cool button that allows you to add things, like videos, keynote presentations, PDFs of research projects and papers.
• It's a great opportunity to show-off things you've worked on
• Doing this is helpful if you're in creative industries where your artistic or design skills are valued
• Show everyone what your capable of.

FOUR

Are you a good person? Show it!

• A LinkedIn survey showed 42% of hiring managers said they feel that volunteer work is just as good as your work experience.
• Talk about the brochure you've designed for your friend's new business, or how many hours you put in at your local dog shelter, or how many kids you've helped by participating in Feed my Starving Children.

FIVE

To get endorsed, you must also endorse.

• When you have endorsements for certain skills your profile looks more impressive.
• Show people what you can do. What you're good at.
• Endorsements are easy, just visit the profile of the lucky human you chose to endorse, and normally there is a handy, dandy button that allows you to endorse that person for multiple things! (Now, hopefully, the favor will be returned!!)

Now that you have the basic skills to beef up your LinkedIn, go out into the world and endorse! Need more tips to keep your LinkedIn up-to-date, these websites are pretty awesome as well. 

1. LinkedIn Makeover
2. Improve Your LinkedIn Presence
3. 12 Resources to Improve

So, What Are Millennials and How Do You Market to Them?

What Are Millennials?

So, what are millennials? Millennials are considered a sub-group of Generation Y. Pew Research Center says, " Adult Millennials are those aged 18-33 years and are born between 1981 and 1996.This could be considered a sub-group in Generation Y". Want to figure out what generation you are, visit Pew Research Center's, How Millennial Are You, test. My score was a 94!

How Do You Market to Millennials?

Millennials are the texting generation. I see no one my age who doesn't have their phone out or near them 90% of the day, myself included. This generation is so tapped into everything that goes on and it's right at the tip of our fingers. So, how do you market to them? Well, us?

MarketingProfs.com blogger, Dave Hawley, shares that millennials are sharing in real-time. They long to be in constant communication and the brands they are interacting with need to create positive customer experiences that they can share. Companies also need to create viral content that can be shared all over the internet. Ikea came out with a commercial titled, BookBook a few days before Apple released the information about their iPhone 6. Today it has been seen on YouTube over 11 million times, and it was released just on September 3rd of this year. Ikea released this in Singapore and Malaysia, but clearly because of the catchy video and hidden humor, the Millennials took hold of the video and it spread like wildfire.

Hawley also mentions that companies need to encourage user-generated content that will result in consumers reviewing products and services. A survey conducted by, SocialChorus showed that 91% of millennials trust their friends for their product recommendations. Companies need to encourage consumers to share their purchases and reviews on social media. Do you dream of working for Doritos? Well, for Superbowl last year and this year, Doritos takes submissions for your best commercial. Are you bold enough to try?

Bloggers Jeff Frommand and Andrea Franz, also from MarketingProfs.com, say Millenials are digital natives. We're 2.5% more likely to be early adopters because it is easy for us to adapt to new technology. An example of this would be when a new version of the iPhone comes out. Even if our old generation phones are in perfect working condition, we are more likely to purchase the new phone anyway to keep up with the technological advances. Millenials are also creating blogs and their own online personas. Here they can voice their opinion and give reviews of products and services. 

So, what now?

While marketing to Millenials, we have to remember that they're looking at everything they can. They want the best information about a product before purchase and they will read all the positive and negative reviews. Millenials want to feel connected and that their voice is being heard by the company. Good or bad. Until next time :)