Chris Hale, CEO of Neptune Companies is a Navy Veteran, Veteran advocate, and enterprueneur. He joined #NextGenWarrior from the HQ of Viqtory, Inc and GI Jobs in Pittsburgh, PA to discuss leadership, his passion for building businesses, and how Veterans can position themselves for success after service.
At VIQTORY, we put a high value on company culture, and that starts with our employees. Get to know our team in this month’s Employee Spotlight. 20 Questions With Adam Kaiser, Digital Marketing Assistant.
How long have you worked at VIQTORY?
Coming up on 1 year.
What is your job title?
Digital Marketing Assistant.
Briefly describe your primary responsibilities within that role. (What does a typical day look like?)
My main responsibilities include the creation of content for the company blog, the running of the VIQTORY social media accounts, and the tracking/assigning of Inbound leads as they come in.
What is it you enjoy most about your job?
I really enjoy the people that I work with, specifically our B2B team. I think that we’ve really hit our stride as a team and its just really easy to work together.
What is your favorite memory from working at VIQTORY?
We have a very big Baltimore Ravens fan in the office, so as a Steelers fan it was great to come into work the Monday after the Ravens we’re eliminated from the playoffs.
Where are you from?
Pasadena, California. Just outside of Los Angeles.
Where did you go to school and what was your major?
I went to Westminster College in New Willmington, PA, and majored in Communications Studies.
What was your first job?
My first job was as a Camp Counselor.
How do you spend your time outside of the office?
When I’m not at work I’m typically spending time with my family and close friends. I also spend a good amount of time playing golf and guitar in my free time.
What are your favorite sports teams?
The Los Angeles Lakers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Who are your 3 favorite bands/artists?
Led Zeppelin, John Mayer, and The Beatles.
What is your favorite food?
Pineapple.
If you could have dinner with 3 people from history who would they be?
Kobe Bryant, Al Capone, Jimi Hendrix.
What is the last book you read?
Petty: The Biography.
What is your favorite place to travel?
Charleston, SC.
Do you have any pets?
Not currently.
What’s the best concert you’ve ever been to?
I got to go to a dress rehearsal for the Van Halen reunion tour in 2007. My 13-year-old mind was blown.
If you could only watch one movie for the rest of your life what would it be?
Rocky.
Tea or coffee?
Coffee.
What ranks first on your, “Bucket List?”
Sit court-side at a Laker game.
By Mike Stevens, National Executive Director for the Navy League of the United States
DEAR EMPLOYERS,
To all those who recognize and seek the tremendous talent of our veterans and have made a deliberate effort to bring them into your organization as employees, franchisees and students, on behalf of all veterans, I thank you.
Today I was reflecting on my time as the COO and CEO of VIQTORY, the veteran-owned small business which publishes G.I. Jobs magazine, and felt compelled to pen this letter, unsolicited I might add. VIQTORY provided me an amazing opportunity to serve as their chief operating officer shortly after my retirement from the Navy in September 2016. During my time with them, I learned a great deal about what it takes to run a business in the private sector and will forever be grateful for the professional education and lifelong relationships that were built. The VIQTORY crew includes some of the most honest, committed and hardworking people you will ever meet. It is a company formed by veterans and for veterans. Their employees are smart, talented, technically savvy and possess years of marketing experience in the veteran space. When you couple that with their gritty Pittsburgh “blue collar” mentality, there’s nothing they can’t accomplish. They don’t see what they do as a job — they see it as a mission.
I’m no longer with VIQTORY. For family reasons, my wife and I had to relocate to Northern Virginia in early 2019. I now serve as the national executive director for the Navy League of the United States. Not a day goes by where I don’t think of my time at VIQTORY and use what I learned to assist in my new duties. I’m proud to have served with my VIQTORY shipmates. I’ve asked them to share this letter with all of you. If you ever want the scoop on VIQTORY, or if there is anything I can do to assist in connecting you with them, please feel free to contact me anytime. If you’re a veteran, I encourage you to visit GIJobs.com and register for their job board and emails where you’ll receive helpful and inspiring content along with civilian employment and educational opportunities.
Originally published in the September 2020 issue of G.I. Jobs.
Mike Stevens
Executive Director
Navy League of the United States
13th Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy (Ret.)
U.S. Navy, 33 years
mstevens@navyleague.org
COVID-19 has presented many challenges for schools all over the country when it comes to recruiting students. Ball State’s Director of Marketing and Communications weighs in on how they are handling the challenges of the pandemic, and what they are doing to recruit their desired students.
Roughly two-thirds of job fair attendees indicated that they were interested in furthering their education – some equipped with the GI Bill.
If you’re looking for veteran students to attend your school, the G.I. Jobs Virtual Career Expo is the best place to meet your desired audience.
Don’t wait to reserve your organization’s G.I. Jobs® Virtual Career Expo booth. This event is expected to sell out.
Being Military Friendly®: How Verizon Wins the Battle for Military Veteran Talent
Verizon’s commitment to hiring veterans has earned them the title of #1 Military Friendly® Company 3 times in a row for their overall commitment in Hiring Veterans and Military Spouses, Supplier Diversity and Verizon’s Brand recognition in the Military community.
Tommy Jones, Retired Army First Sergeant and Verizon’s Senior Manager, Talent Acquisition, Military & Diversity Recruiting joins us to discuss the landscape of veteran recruiting and how Verizon has achieved such great success.
At VIQTORY, we put a high value on company culture, and that starts with our employees. Get to know our team in this month’s Employee Spotlight. 20 Questions With Tim Malloy, Inbound Marketing Specialist.
How long have you worked at VIQTORY?
5 Years.
What is your job title?
Inbound Marketing Specialist.
Briefly describe your primary responsibilities within that role. (What does a typical day look like?)
My primary responsibility is marketing VIQTORY’s products and services to reach potential partners that have an interest in the military community. Those potential partners include schools, companies, brands and franchises.
What is it you enjoy most about your job?
I enjoy being able to use my creativity and writing skills in a marketing capacity that has an end result of military veterans and military spouses being provided with educational and career opportunities. Also, we have an awesome team here, so being able to work with them every day is great.
What is your favorite memory from working at VIQTORY?
I don’t know that there is one singular moment that stands out to me, but to see how VIQTORY has evolved to become the premier military marketing company has been awesome to witness and be a part of. The ways that we have advanced in our capabilities for our clients in the last five years is really amazing.
Where are you from?
Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, which is a suburb about 20 minutes south of Pittsburgh.
Where did you go to school and what was your major?
I went to the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, the largest branch campus in the University of Pittsburgh system, and majored in Communication with a minor in Applied Writing. Hail to Pitt!
What was your first job?
I was a paperboy in my neighborhood when I was about 10.
How do you spend your time outside of the office?
These days I spend most of my time at home, like most people, playing with my dog Otis and relaxing with my fiance. I also play guitar and workout almost every day. When I’m not at home I’m usually with my friends grilling out, listening to music and drinking beer. When we are not in quarantine I am typically attending concerts as well.
What are your favorite sports teams?
Pittsburgh Penguins, Pittsburgh Steelers and……Pittsburgh Pirates, unfortunately.
Who are your 3 favorite bands/artists?
Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers Band and The Beatles.
What is your favorite food?
Salmon.
If you could have dinner with 3 people from history who would they be?
Jerry Garcia, Tony Soprano and John Belushi. That would be a wild dinner.
What is the last book you read?
A Game of Thrones.
What is your favorite place to travel?
Anna Maria Island, Florida.
Do you have any pets?
Yes, a 1 year old Australian Shepherd/Collie/Golden Retriever named Otis.
What’s the best concert you’ve ever been to?
This is tough, so I’ll narrow it down to three. The Allman Brothers Band at LOCK’N Festival in 2014, Iron Maiden at PPG Paints Arena in 2019 and The Derek Trucks Band at Mr. Smalls in 2008.
If you could only watch one movie for the rest of your life what would it be?
Goodfellas.
Tea or coffee?
Coffee.
What ranks first on your, “Bucket List?”
To see any one of my favorite bands at Red Rocks.
On July 25th, National Hire A Veteran Day, we honor veterans by encouraging employers to consider hiring veterans for their open positions. We also honor those organizations, both in private industry and the government, that make it their priority to help prepare veterans and market veterans to civilian employers.
Needless to say, this is a day that means a lot to us. Our veterans here at VIQTORY wanted to share a message about why #HireAVeteranDay is such an important, meaningful day.
By Kayla Lopez, Director of Military Partnerships at VIQTORY
If you are designing your own display and social media ads, I’m sure you’ve spent your fair share of time creating and working in separate Photoshop documents for each individual ad size. For example, if you are working with our G.I. Jobs and Military Spouse Ad Ops team, you’ve most likely submitted at least 2 different image sizes for your social media ads, and an additional 6 ad sizes if you are running native and display advertising for your business or franchise.
If you’re designing ads for GDN, there’s an additional 6 ad sizes you can use, bringing the total to a possible 14 different display ad sizes. And that only covers the basic ad sizes.
So today, I am going to walk you through how to use the VIQTORY Display Ad Photoshop Template instead of building and swapping between 14 different PSD files.
But first, make sure you download the VIQTORY Display Ad Photoshop Template.
Step 1: Open the Photoshop Template
It looks a little intimidating at first, but once you get in there, it’s not so bad. Each of the VIQTORY programmatic image sizes has it’s own artboard which includes social ad sizes. We’ve also included an additional 6 artboards for your Google Display Network ads.
Step 2: Build Your First Ad
I prefer to build the ads in phases – based on size and shape. I typically start with 300×250 and move on to similarly shaped and sized artboards from there. I’ve found this to be one of the easier sizes to start with.
Something to keep in mind – when sizing images and graphics larger than their original size (that are not vector graphics), they will distort, look fuzzy, grainy, bitmapped. Take your pic. It’s important to remember that any image/graphic you bring in will need to be bigger than the artboards themselves, to preserve quality. Fine for sizing down, but not up.
Once you have all of your ad elements in place, you’ll have something that looks like this.
Step 3: Select the Ad Elements
To move all of your elements to the next artboard, first select your Move tool by pressing V, or selecting it on your tools panel.
Select all of the elements within the artboard by dragging the bounding box around the artboard, or by selecting all of the layers in the layers window.
Step 4: Copy the Ad Elements
Then hold the Alt key if you are working in Windows, or the Option key for Mac, and just drag your ad elements to the next artboard.
I’ve actually found you’ll run into fewer issues if you drag your layers using the layers window. There’s less of a chance of the elements winding up on the wrong artboard.
Step 5: Resize the Ad Elements
Next, you will need to resize and possibly reposition your ad elements to fit the artboard properly. For artboards that are similar in shape and size, this can be quick and easy. You might just need to resize your entire selection to fit the artboard. You can use ctrl + t on windows, or cmd t on a mac to resize and move all of the elements as a group. If you need to move or resize an individual layer, select it and move or resize it from there.
As you move on to the skyscraper and banner ads, you’ll find this process to be a little trickier. You will have to be a little more creative with your positioning – which is why I suggest staying with similarly shaped ads. Having layered elements is also important when building out all of the ad sizes and shapes. Individual layers can be easily repositioned or turned off altogether.
Step 6: Repeat Steps 3 & 4
Continue building your artboards by copying and repositioning the elements as needed. Skip the artboard sizes that you won’t need or aren’t required for your campaign.
Step 7: Export the Artboards
Finally, you’ll need to select all your artboards to export as flat image files. You will want to collapse all of your artboard layers back into their artboard folders and select them all there.
Then, right click on the selected artboards within the layers tab and select “Export As…”
It will bring you to a screen like this, where you can adjust the image quality and file type for each size before saving them out. Remember, Google Ads only accepts files that are 150kb (kilobytes) or smaller!
When you click the “Export All” button on this menu, it will let you select a place to save your new files. I would recommend making a new folder to save out your images. Once you click the final “Export,” it will save all your artboards, named according to their dimensions and ready to be uploaded to your campaigns!
By David Dobson, Senior B2B Marketing Manager
For many companies, employee-generated content, or EGC, is an afterthought – if it’s even considered at all. Marketing departments worldwide are so busy crafting their messaging for inbound and outbound marketing campaigns that they forget that they’re sitting on a potential goldmine when it comes to developing content.
From staff-authored blog posts to shared selfies on bring-your-dog-to-work day, employee-generated content is being leveraged by savvy brands who understand it’s value. If you’ve been in the dark on this burgeoning marketing trend, don’t worry, you’re not the first to have glossed over it.
This guide will quickly bring you up to speed on what Employee-Generated Content is, what the benefits are, and how to implement an Employee-Generated Content campaign for your brand.
Employee-Generated Content is precisely as it sounds – content used for marketing purposes generated by the employees of your company. You probably encounter it all the time. Articles authored by your CEO counts as EGC, as does the Facebook Live stream of your head brewer pouring the first pint from a new batch at your craft brewing company.
No matter your industry, Employee-Generated Content shouldn’t be hard to find or foster if it’s something you’ve not yet tried. Blog posts, social media posts, YouTube videos, and even podcasts can all be produced and disseminated by your fellow employees.
Better yet, there are a myriad of benefits associated with doing so.
There are several big benefits gained from implementing a solid EGC marketing strategy. First of all, by enlisting your employees’ help you can amplify your reach in a way you’ve not yet experienced by your brand.
Your coworkers and employees are the trusted insiders. They have fresh perspectives and they can help boost your company’s credibility as a thought leader. Scott Stratton, author of The Book of Business Awesome, says that “every employee is your brand ambassador, your marketer, and the face of your company”.
Tap into their knowledge as subject matter experts and invite them to share their expertise. That expertise will help beef up your blog and social media platforms while simultaneously building their personal brand and showcasing them as thought leaders.
When it comes to Employee-Generated Content and reach, the stats speak for themselves.
As opposed to your official marketing channels, brand messages are re-shared up to 24 times more when distributed by your employees. Furthermore, employee-shared content receives eight times the engagement of official brand content. Lastly, employees may have up to ten times the amount of followers than a company’s corporate account and are likely to have significantly higher levels of organic social engagement.
Reach aside; other undeniable benefits need to be mentioned, the first of which is cost.
Are you growing increasingly frustrated with the amount you have to pay to receive your fans’ engagement on social media? We all are! Not to mention the increasingly costly world of Pay-Per-Click (PPC). That’s why so many brands are shifting to influencer marketing which currently makes companies $6.50 for every dollar spent.
Who better to become influencers than your employees? Sometimes employees only require the smallest of incentives to begin producing content worthy of your brand. Better still, when they see you feature their content they’re likely to tell their friends in-person and online, allowing you to benefit from the reach advantages mentioned above.
Two of the most important marketing metrics today are authenticity and authority. No less than 86% of people say that authenticity matters when choosing which brands to support. EGC, along with other user-generated content (UGC), is one of the best methods for boosting your perceived authenticity and authority.
The 2018 Google algorithm update (aka “the medic update”), was their way of protecting searchers from low-quality content that had the potential to be detrimental to users. Google wants to be as certain as possible that they are recommending sites that display a high level of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T).
No one can give better behind the scenes access to your company than an employee. By lifting the hood of your company, employees can confirm that you don’t just speak the values communicated in marketing messages, but instead, you can prove that you live and die by them.
Sure, there may be some inkling that an employee will show some favor to your company, but overall, consumers tend to give employees the benefit of the doubt. Employee Generated Content (EGC) is said to help an organization be perceived as more influential and authentic, and a staggering 93% of customers believe user-generated content is very helpful when making a purchasing decision. In fact, 70% of audiences trust their peers’ thoughts and insights more than the C-Suite, ads, or other generic forms of marketing.
But how should you go about implementing an EGC campaign if you’ve never tried one before?
While there’s no doubt that EGC can be a powerful marketing tool, it can go horribly wrong if not supervised correctly. That’s why it’s essential to implement a series of guidelines and policies to help shape your strategy.
Even today, not everyone understands social media. Many employees won’t realize the potential ramifications that one poorly-worded tweet could have for a company. Therefore, it’s wise to create clear and easy-to-understand training materials to ensure everyone is on the same page. Make them interactive and frequent to keep the rules of your social media policies front of mind.
As is the case with many new initiatives, there are always some employees who just ‘get it’ right off the bat. When that happens, roll with it and let them lead by example. Limit EGC participation to these individuals initially, until colleagues and peers have had ample time to follow and understand the standards they have set.
If your employees are not up for writing blog content but have topic ideas for new posts, infographics, or videos, invite them to share their ideas.
While SEO might be the most misunderstood topic online, you can reassure your employees that SEO content isn’t complicated once you understand that people come first, even before search algorithms.
“Don’t think about keywords. Don’t think about outbound links. Don’t think about anything regarding SEO. Just write”, says Sean Si, CEO of SEO Hacker. “Think about the people who’s gonna read it. In the end, it’s them who will matter”.
If you find that your employees are hesitant about contributing because they don’t know how to create compelling content that ranks well in search engines, remind them that it ultimately comes down to this – “for search engines to be happy…they need happy searchers, and content that creates happy searchers will be content that makes Google look smart for finding it”.
While writing for SEO shouldn’t be their main goal, it’s certainly worth following SEO best practices as much as possible. You’ll most likely need to tweak some of your employee-generated content before it hits the blog, but that’s another discussion. At first, simply focus on increasing the voices and diversity of relevant content you’re publishing on a regular basis.
Sometimes there’s nothing better than good old-fashioned positive reinforcement to get your Employee-Generated Content campaign off the ground. By rewarding employees for nailing their content game, you’ll quickly have others lining up to follow suit. When our sales team sends out the company-wide “Closed/Won” emails, our marketing team likes to jump on board and give proper credit to the Employee-Generated Content that contributed to the sale.
Once the ball is rolling, you’ll have a lot of engagement to sift through as you act as the gatekeeper for content that makes it onto your official accounts. That’s why it makes sense to use social media management and scheduling tools to automate some of the posting schedules and replies to your highest-performing Employee-Generated Content posts.
Employee-generated content can be a content marketer’s secret weapon if used correctly. Within a few short months, a well-executed campaign can explode your brand’s reach, authenticity, and therefore sales, for a fraction of the cost of hiring another content writer.
VIQTORY specializes in full-funnel recruitment and consumer marketing solutions. Whether you represent a company looking to hire military veterans, reach military consumers, or a school interested in increasing military veteran applications, VIQTORY’s solutions deliver the ROI you’ve been after.
Learn how utilize G.I. Jobs® and Military Spouse® to build brand awareness within the military community and show your message to the right audience at the right time.
Over 23 years ago, VIQTORY’s co-founders celebrated the first day working at a new company with an exciting, new mission: to create vital, civilian-produced resources for the approximately 250,000 people leaving the military each year. In doing so, they introduced military veterans to previously unknown civilian employment, entrepreneurship and education opportunities.
