Sara Kerr

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Lover of Snow, Winter Vacations, Good Beer & Great Music, Minnesota Weather, French Wine & Sidewalks. Yogi for life.

Category: Teaching

  • Student Writing: Social Media: Like or Unlike

    I’m not sure I like Facebook, but I use it. Trust it? Not at all. I believe that each medium has its purpose. A business or an individual has to know their goals and choose the media that will most effectively get them there quicker. Remember that “entertainment” and “fun” are legitimate goals, too. Click…

  • Student Writing: What’s your Cover Charge: Ready. Aim. Shop.

    If you love (or hate) Target, read this post from one of my super-smart students. I jokingly tell people that they charge a cover charge, just to enter the store. via Post #5: Ready. Aim. Shop..

  • Read THIS! Bullet Points and Headlines (Thoughts on #Writing in #highered)

    I got your attention, didn’t I? Of course I did. My title is compelling. You, too, can writing attention-grabbing headlines. Read on. The next three excerpts come from Copyblogger.com. If you’re not a subscriber to their blog, sign up here. I can almost guarantee that if you follow the advice below, your writing will sharpen.…

  • Learning and Advertising: Cathy Davidson Assesses Cymbalta

    I was poking around Cathy Davidson’s HASTAC blog this afternoon seeking a something pithy, when I stumbled upon her post about the science of attention in Cymbalta’s television advertising. She researched direct-to-consumer prescription drug ads for her book, Now You See It, and now attributes our astronomical anti-depressant use to this phenomenon. For marketing students,…

  • Great Stories of Random Subjects: MC Nelson, Primp, Vocation, and Crashed Ice St. Paul

    In follow-up to Friday’s lecture on storytelling, my guest speaker, Erik Hare, wrote about one of MLK’s less mentioned talents:  his gift of oratory. In Cadence, Erik writes: The craft of Dr. King’s life came equally from the homilies of sermons and the bubbling reaction of the crowds who came to listen.  There was much…

  • Tell Me a Story

    Storytelling is paramount to successful marketing. It humanizes the product or service being promoted. In Integrated Marketing Communications (MKTG 2350) students blog their thoughts on marketing in an effort to learn social media theory, master blogging technology (WordPress.com and Twitter), and tell an evocative story. Storytelling is the most difficult. Even though I blog frequently,…

  • Château Pétrus, Professional Selling, and Social Media

    Do you drink Château Pétrus? I don’t either, but I wish I did. At $300 a bottle for a poor vintage (and $3200 for the 1948), it’s out of my price range. But I can say that I sold it. After a semester studying wine and food in France, my first professional job was selling…

  • Inbound Marketing – Communications, Research, and Fancy Math

    Like many of you, I’m on the HubSpot mailing list. Most of the time I actually read it. Sometimes I learn something. Often I find something I can share with my students. This week’s white paper covers inbound marketing terminology. It applies to both my marketing-communications and my research-buyer behavior students. Students — and anyone…

  • Teaching Social Media: Twitter

    At St. Catherine University I teach social media in many classes. Invariably, the first time I project a Twitter screen my students tell me they don’t use it. Of course, it’s my job to tell them why, teach them how, and assist them in developing strategies for their clients. (We partner with small, local businesses,…

  • Personal Branding and Business Cards

    This is a re-post of a lesson from Integrated Marketing Communications at St. Catherine University. It was originally posted in the private class blog. As much as we live in an online world, paper still has a place. Everywhere I go, I bring a couple of business cards. To the conference I presented at recently,…