Author: Katie Wagner

Why Business Leaders Need PR

Posted on by Katie Wagner

I recently had a call with a Founder/CEO of a multi-million a month company who complained of the need to constantly prove himself in first introductions with major industry players.

This surprising admission came after we had discussed his background – from serving his country to founding a business that quickly grew to #4 on the Inc 5,000 list a couple years after launch – this CEO not only had a great American success story but was also frequently invited to Washington D.C. to weigh in on the benefits and pitfalls of ecommerce before Congress.

Yet. When meeting with future partners in the supply chain, he found himself explaining who he was and why he was important enough to warrant the meeting. One hundred percent of the time his self-sales pitch never failed to impress, and the decision-makers would proceed with the deal eagerly. Great, right?

Not so much. He asked me “Why are these other companies who are marketing-over-profits (and maybe never will turn a profit) getting all the attention? Their CEOs are prominently featured in every WSJ article and invited on Squawk or Mad Money and they aren’t proven viable!”

The answer to his question is as simple as it is intangible. In the ecommerce world of data and customer conversions it’s often easy to roll your eyes at PR. If your stuff is selling and you can track what’s working, why invest in PR? Afterall, everyone knows you can’t really measure it.

I won’t get into all the benefits of PR in terms of the sales-marketing funnel. Way more people have written better pieces on the topic, but I will breakdown why even a small local business owner should invest in PR.

  • Reputation, like branding, is all about perception and, as with branding, you can and should build your reputation strategically. It may feel awkward to hire a PR firm to literally build your local/national/international reputation through calculated communications strategies and thought leadership PR but your competitors are doing it and they are taking your place at the table.
  • Life gets easier when people know you by reputation. They are asking for meetings and interviews, not the other way around. There is no more need to explain who you are and why you’re important (one less thing, right 🙂
  • You have an automatic platform for your company news. Guess what? When no one’s heard of you or your company it’s hard to get media or consumers to care about your news. When you’re well known, it doesn’t matter how small your news, it will be shared and celebrated.
  • You attract employees. If you live in a rural area, you can actually boost the local economy by attracting and hiring fresh transplants.
  • You get awards. You get on business 500 and 5,000 lists; you get named Entrepreneur of the Year and make your employees proud (‘I work for the Entrepreneur of the Year!’)
  • This one is most important in my humble opinion. You inspire people. You accept the award because you’ve earned it but be sure to let people know it’s possible for them to be in your shoes one day. Explain your failures and hardships. To me, that ability to propel people forward filled with hope and admiration, is the true power of PR.

To wrap up, I want to share a quick success story about one of our longest client partnerships (indeed since 2011).

When we started working with the founder of an organic baby food brand she had just pulled off the feat of parlaying her baby food offering from her local farmer’s market to a huge national retail chain with absolutely no retail experience (or experience running a business with employees and partners).

She had to learn fast and at the same time she recognized the value of being the face of the company. She was a real mom who wants to feed her babies real food that she would eat herself and took action. Within a year she was featured in every parenting and business magazine, in all the national daily news sites, in the popular blogs and on morning shows. She guest judged on Dragon’s Den, mentored startup founders at a competitive accelerator, got paid to speak internationally to tell her story and her company made many millions because of the trust from one mom to another.

Today she is CEO of three brands – from baby to teenager – and has helped inspire many would-be entrepreneurs by not sugarcoating the bumps in the road, speaking honestly about the hustle needed, and the power of humbling herself to all our PR advice 🙂

Social Enterprises Should Be Prioritizing PR & Marketing During the Pandemic

Posted on by Katie Wagner

“Chaos is a ladder” – Littlefinger, Game of Thrones

It may seem counterintuitive but now is the time for social enterprises and nonprofits to put some muscle behind their Earned, Owned and Paid Marketing efforts.

While many for-profits and small business are (understandably) minimizing their marketing runway and ad spending in an effort to stay afloat during Covid19, social enterprises are generally used to operating on an often shoestring budget when it comes to…. well, everything. It’s time to take advantage of the ad vacuum lack of competition to raise brand awareness, make money through digital channels and capitalize on a captive audience.

In this article I’ll breakdown quick tips and strategies for marketing your goods and services digitally to a national audience, and locally to your dynamic community.

National Campaigns

Even in 2020 many of our social enterprise clients still consider online selling a distant second to bricks-and-mortar or fundraising/donor dollars. That said, if there is any silver lining to the pandemic for nonprofits, it could be the forced catalyst needed to prioritize a shift to digital.

People are increasingly looking to support worthy nonprofits with their wallets, going out of their way to buy gift cards and products online. And now more than ever, they are responding to ads that show a real need. Acknowledging this, an Adtaxi survey found that 68% of people find it helpful when ads show regard of the current scenario and 62% know that brands mean well.

While many brands are pulling advertising across all mediums, we’re advising clients on a shoestring to create and share simple yet targeted social ads as an inexpensive way to let people know they would be supporting a great cause by buying your products or gift cards at this time.

Social ads are also a great way to increase your social followers and build the foundation for future selling. Adtaxi found that “more significantly, 53% plan to do more of their shopping online after the crisis is over.” Now is the time to start flexing your online muscle while targeting new consumers.

You have a captive audience. According to ClickZ, people are spending anything between 3 to 7 hours on social media in a day. This is your opportunity to pivot your owned social media content and increase PR outreach to further grow your audiences and position for present and future selling.

One of our CPG clients began sharing tips for entertaining kids at home and started hosting #LivingRoomDanceParties on their social channels every Friday, encouraging fans to tag them in fun videos of their own for a chance to win product. If possible consider offering a contest to your fans every once in awhile. People love receiving a prize and contests are huge engagement spikers. We recommend using the contest to share your mission and ask your audience which charities they support or what is important to them during this time.

Don’t forget to add trending hashtags to each post such as #inthistogether #keepingitreal #yougotthis #stayhome #Covid19

As the top of the sales funnel, PR is more important than ever. Media are interested in hearing from businesses on how they changed their protocols to protect their teams. They want to write about companies with a purpose who are finding creative ways to raise funds or are willing to speak to their unique struggles during this time. Simply, many are writing on how consumers can support nonprofits, especially on a local level.

Local Campaigns

Many of Remark’s social enterprise clients are already leading authorities in raising awareness in their local communities, so we’ll keep this part brief. All we’ll say here is be sure to save some social ad budget to target your local demographics and make sure to emphasize how your nonprofit is helping the local community. Reach out to local press and ask them to share how consumers can support your organization.

The need to celebrate local businesses and nonprofits during this tumultuous time has never been more strongly felt on a global level.

In Summary: BRAND

Build brand awareness and social audiences through increased Earned, Paid and Owned Media

Reap the benefits of an engaged online audience and the increase in online sales it brings in the present and future

Advertise your mission and need

Nonprofits are uniquely primed to break through the clutter on shoestring budgets

Digital selling is the future

In Between PR Campaigns? Here are 3 Simple Tips to Maintain the Buzz

Posted on by Katie Wagner

Many companies can’t afford consistent Public Relations, or simply won’t spend marketing dollars on a neverending monthly retainer for their PR firm. This is especially true for social enterprises and nonprofits. Instead they may hire an agency for special projects, launches and announcements ranging from a few months to a year enjoying the buzz created by the campaign. Then the agency wraps up and poof! The steady stream of media attention dwindles and dries up.

I have good news! This doesn’t have to be the case. We tell our social enterprise clients all the time how they can keep the momentum going until we meet again. It only benefits us when we pick back up again.

  1. Invest 5 hours per week in PR outreach. Spread it across Mon-Fri or reserve one day to wear your PR hat, but this should be the minimum you dedicate to keep interest up in your company. Even if you don’t have any new products up for review or announcements, you should still be reaching out with your company’s core story and offer up different topics your C-level can speak to. Trust us, we get some of our best profiles out of evergreen pitching!
  2. Keep a Rolling Update. Anyone who has ever worked with Remark knows we love our RUs. If we’ve worked together, continue to use our template. If we haven’t, simply log into Google Drive and open an excel sheet. We usually reserve the first tab for coverage which has posted and list out the columns: Outlet, Writer Name, Date, UMVs, notes and link. Then we also have a tab dedicated to coverage still pending. If we have a brand ambassador program, we have a tab dedicated to recording their content as well. We update this document in real time and then pull our weekly reports from it. Which brings me to
  3. Weekly reports. Send these to your team strictly for external communication programs. If you already do a larger Marketing report, be sure to include a section to recap PR efforts and wins. Our weekly updates apprise our clients of pitch angles we’ve taken, angles we’re thinking about, PR coverage/interviews that hit this week and PR coverage/interviews we have coming up and overall feedback from our contacts.

This simple maintenance will work for you even without a fancy (read: expensive) media database and you’ll be astonished at the relationships you’ll build and the stories you’ll inspire and influence.

Got a huge project coming up or simply don’t have 5 hours a week? Drop us a line!

Remark Team Builds Out Social Good Program for Baby Gourmet

Posted on by Katie Wagner

What an incredible opportunity! It’s not everyday a PR and Marketing firm gets the chance to build an important and impactful program from scratch for a client (in another country nonetheless.) Perhaps we owe this huge vote of confidence to the long history behind Remark and Baby Gourmet’s partnership which began near the end of 2011 (almost eight years and counting!) We’ve launched countless product lines, researched and executed Brand Ambassador programs, attended expos, supported the founders and C-level, been stopped in customs in the Calgary airport, had a few beers and a lot of laughs.

For almost as long as they’ve been in business Baby Gourmet had been giving back through food donations, big and small – from sick babies and toddlers to displaced flood victims – which eventually came to be known internally as Heart of Baby Gourmet (#HOBG). The problem here wasn’t about making giving back a priority, it was a lack of defined mission and consistency.

As a firm who has worked with dozens of nonprofits, social enterprises and B Corps over the years, we couldn’t think of a better compliment than when asked to develop HOBG. It turns out this program is timely too. According to Food Banks Canada, 13% of Canadians live in a state of food insecurity, which means they do not have reliable access to adequate amounts of safe, good-quality, nutritious food. Each month, over 850,000 people turn to food banks for help; more than one-third are children and youth.

After creating our mission – stating our company-wide conviction that Canada’s most vulnerable population: babies, toddlers and children, should have access to the highest quality organic food, snacks and nutritional beverages available on supermarket shelves – we have ourselves a goal to strive for: One Million HOBG Meals donated by 2025. 

Then we began the search for partners we could work with to both provide much needed monthly baby food and snack donations but also to leverage Baby Gourmet’s robust social channels and Ambassador networks in order to spread the word about each organization’s good work. We wanted to reach smaller community organizations in Calgary, AB (where Baby Gourmet is HQ’d) and around the Toronto/Hamilton area which is home to many amazing food aid programs.

As we head into ‘Back-to-School’ season we are preparing to donate over 160,000 Slammers Snacks to school-aged kids through food banks across Canada which will put us well over 400,000 meals donated to date by September! Almost halfway to the Million Milestone in less than one year of consistently giving back!

Stay tuned for more updates on #HOBG and check out our PR tips for social enterprises.

Gifts That Give Back: Remark Social Clients’ Holiday Gift Guide

Posted on by Katie Wagner

Every year many of us face the same obstacles around the holidays. What do you get the person who can afford to buy herself everything she wants? Or the person who doesn’t really like…well, stuff? I don’t know about you but I find it stressful to waste my hard earned money on something that at best may be re-gifted.

We’re here to let you in on a little fail-safe secret: go for a gift that gives back and you will never have to worry about it’s reception. A generic candle is no longer a cop-out when it’s creation owes to the employment and shelter of homeless, adolescent moms (as is the case with the hand poured candles from Bright Endeavors).

Below are 10 gifts that give back (and we are lucky to call these amazing enterprises clients!)

1. Packed with Purpose: PwP is a gifting company that is embedding Purpose into their gifts that give back. Each Packed with  Purpose gift box contains handcrafted products & goodies curated from non-profits and social enterprises that employ people with disabilities & other barriers to the traditional workforce. Purchase directly at: https://shop.packedwithpurpose.gifts/collections/all-gifts

2. Lindy’s & Co: Lindy & Co Gourmet Dog Treats may arguably make the most important dog treats you can purchase! The social enterprise employs homeless youth to produce their line of healthy homemade dog treats – with 100% of the proceeds going towards sheltering street youth. Created by Daybreak – a nonprofit organization that provides emergency shelter, outreach programs, transitional housing, and other vital services to the Dayton, OH homeless and transient youth population.

3. BeeLoveBuzz: Beelove employs formerly incarcerated people work with urban hives to produce its organic honey skincare line. Buy this amazing skincare line directly at: https://beelovebuzz.com/collections/all

4. Bright Endeavors: 100% of their hand crafted, sustainable soy candles sales benefit their mission to empower young moms, their kids, and Chicago communities. Check out their gift sets! https://brightendeavors.org/product-category/gift-sets/

5. Women’s Bean Project: Women’s Bean puts women with backgrounds ranging from organized crime to histories of incarceration and addiction to work learning gourmet food production. Shop their premium gift baskets for that very special someone on your list! https://www.womensbeanproject.com/product-category/premium-gift-baskets/

6. The Mile High WorkShop: MHW is a Denver-based manufacturer and job-training non-profit skilled in wood working, sewing, laser etching, packaging & distribution. Check out their workshop goodies here: https://www.milehighworkshop.org/everything/

7. Central City Coffee: Look no further than this must-have stocking stuffer! Portland’s Central City Coffee is a social enterprise employing Portland’s most vulnerable – at-risk single mothers – and putting them to work roasting and distributing delicious craft coffees. Order all if it online: https://centralcitycoffee.org/

8. dfrntpigeon: an artsy apparel brand run by Portland’s marginalized youth, order these street art inspired Tees for everyone on your list! http://www.dfrntpigeon.com/

9. Net Effects: Net Effects is a socially responsible accessories brand which is focused on providing trade not aid to disenfranchised women in Cambodia and training them as artisans to produce beautiful, zero-waste bags & totes. All Net Effects bags and totes are constructed from recycled materials including repurposed remnants and end pieces of agricultural and industrial netting! https://neteffectstraders.com/

10. More Than Words: for the book lover on your list, look no further than this social enterprise that hires homeless, at-risk youth and youth in the foster care system aged 16-24 yrs old and trains them to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business selling gently pre-used books both in-store (Boston) and online.

The New PR 101: Don’t Confuse Influencers With Journalists

Posted on by Katie Wagner

The New PR 101: Don’t Confuse Influencers With Journalists

How scammers are taking advantage of the changing media landscape to blur the lines of journalistic integrity

One of my favorite things about human nature is our ability to adapt and evolve. In the PR industry, our evolution has been predicated mostly by the changing media landscape starting with the switch from print to digital that began almost two decades ago (and a little bit by Google Analytics). The latter topic I’ll save for another article because what I really want to focus on in this piece is how we, as Media Relations professionals, have adapted to the era of the Influencer.

While often owned by social media and/or PR teams, the influencer isn’t necessarily a blogger or a writer or even a professional photographer. Often this person has developed and grown a successful brand for themselves on a social platform. As a crazy pug person, I’ll offer up Doug the Pug as an example of this.

Sometimes, it seems like the era of the social media influencer, similarly to the era of the blogger circa 2007, has become a Wild West free-for-all while lawmakers and key players in the space struggle to catch up. What standards and responsibilities fall to Joe Smith with a large Instagram following when he shares a picture of his favorite beer brand? He may have been paid by the brand or he may just be sharing his happy hour beverage of choice.

Is it common practice for PR and social media representatives to pay an influencer to post about a brand? Yes. Many of our clients have budgets for these folks. Does the lady responsible for Doug the Pug get paid by Netflix to produce videos promoting its original series Stranger Things? Probably. And that’s fine. What’s not fine is when the lines become blurred between Influencers and Traditional Journalists.

One of the inspirations for this post came this past holiday season when my team responded to a HARO query from a Buzzfeed Contributor. The Contributor was looking for best-in-show products for his 2017 Holiday Gift Guide roundup. One of my PR Coordinators responded to his query and was excited when she received the news that yes, Buzzfeed would feature our client in the gift guide pending a product sample. Done and done. When the article went live, it was indeed on Buzzfeed and was the longest Gift Guide I had ever seen. The Contributor listed about 250 products grouped by category; to find our client I had to scroll continuously for five minutes. I didn’t even want to share this piece of junk coverage with our client and wasn’t surprised two days later when the Gift Guide was wiped from the Buzzfeed site altogether.

Something felt fishy so I decided to investigate this Contributor a little. That’s when I came across a Cracked.com article written by the would-be Buzzfeed Contributor titled “How I Used Fake Reviews For Tons Of Free Crap”. In it, he described in detail how he successfully scammed companies – from those on the Fortune 500 list to entrepreneurs crowdfunding their first product. And the even crazier thing is that he didn’t just scam the PR people representing these companies, he scammed legitimate media outlets into giving him a platform. Explains Brian Penny:

“I was given the latest phones, laptops, speakers, IoT tech, headphones, the finest whiskies, wines, and rums, music instruments, baby gear, jewelry, vape pens, cameras, appliances, collectibles, home furnishings, camping gear, drones, clothes, even food. Overall, I was able to sell over $3,000 worth of merchandise on eBay, and made another $2,000 on Craigslist.”

“I continued pushing the boundaries and skipped the “review” process entirely, simply collecting products into “gift guides” and other listicles. HuffPost loves listicles, and the PR people couldn’t have cared less how they were featured, as long as they got that anchor link.”

It wasn’t just products for posts either, Brian Penny also found that eager brand representatives would pay him to simply post pre-written articles on his HuffPost contributor platform without lifting a finger or changing a word.

“I responded to a handful of offers explaining that I would happily post an article on HuffPost, but it had to be written for me, and I wouldn’t do it for less than $150.”

To my surprise, one very eager SEO consultant responded with several articles written and ready to post. I ran with it and put out feelers for more, gradually increasing my asking price each time to $200, $250, $300. By the end of one month, I was making $500 a pop to post articles I had nothing to do with. I did about a dozen of these articles in total, and made about $4,000 in 90 days. The articles were well-written, so the interns on the {HuffPost) blog team had no reason to question why a guy who’d previously blogged about whistleblowing was writing articles about Blake Shelton’s Pepsi concert series, artificial grass, or VOIP phone services.”

It turns out that Brian Penny isn’t the only imposter, he’s just loud and proud. The Outline published a full investigation describing how brands secretly buy their way into Forbes, Fast Company and HuffPost. Author Jon Christian writes:

“People involved with the payoffs are extremely reluctant to discuss them, but four contributing writers to prominent publications including Mashable, Inc, Business Insider, and Entrepreneur told me they have personally accepted payments in exchange for weaving promotional references to brands into their work on those sites.”

This practice is not only misleading and illegal but it discredits distinguished publications that employ award-winning journalists. It also further threatens the entire media landscape in the era of ‘fake news’. These top tier publications don’t hesitate to take swift action against people on their staff who are caught accepting payment for coverage. Jason Feifer, editor in chief of Entrepreneur, was quoted in an email to The Outline stating:

“We have a zero-tolerance policy for this kind of thing, our writer’s guidelines strictly prohibit it, and we take swift action. In the past, when alerted to people selling access on our site, I’ve even gone the extra step of alerting editors at other publications where that person writes, so that these bad actors have nowhere else to go. We value our readers’ trust above all, and will always work to ensure that they’re getting unbiased information from people who have their best interests in mind.”

As PR professionals we too, should hold ourselves to the same standards as our editorial contacts are held. If someone at a reputable publication requests payment for posts, we should report that person. It’s also our job to know the difference between a self-employed influencer who can accept payment and a writer who is bound by his or her journalistic integrity to report objectively to the public.

Lastly, we’re human and we’re extremely busy. We tend to trust queries distributed through HARO ( the e-newsletter service owned by leading PR software platform Cison) and we also trust that a writer for Buzzfeed or Fast Company has been vetted by the editor at said publication. My goal in writing this is to bring some awareness to an opaque practice that is bad for business and encourage readers to put in some due diligence (at the very least a quick Google search never hurts). After all, our clients’ are trusting us to be the stewards of their brands. At the end of the day, I’m a huge proponent of the PR industry adapting and embracing new mediums for targeted, effective brand exposure but hopefully not at the expense of the credibility of traditional journalism.

 

Anyone can successfully pitch a guest for a broadcast segment! Learn how…

Posted on by Katie Wagner

One of the highlights of our job is working with experts from all walks of life. Experts in retail, experts on the art of building an app without knowing how to code, experts on predicting the future, the list marches on.

One of our experts is a life coach who deals in the art of personal transformation. Dr.Karin Luise helps her clients dig themselves out of those ruts we tend to find ourselves in once in awhile over the course of life’s adventures. And she is goooood. As someone with her own regional talk show, our team knew we had to showcase her strengths and get her on-air as much as possible. We decided to build her PR campaign around a regional morning show broadcast tour in a variety of networks in cities spanning the country.

So far we’ve built guest segments for our expert on over 10 shows including: Great Day Washington, NBC Roanoake, Talk of Alabama, Hallmark’s Home and Family, Houston Life, Let’s Talk Live in DC, Fox 4 Dallas, AZ Family and more in Georgia, Ohio, New York, Myrtle Beach.

Great, but how did we do it? Here’s five quick, easy and effective tips when building a campaign around guest segments:

  • When reaching out with your pitch, after explaining why your guest would be a great fit for their audience, offer to work with the producer or host to build out the segment. This allows you to have creative control on behalf of your client and helps out a busy producer by taking the work off their plate.
  • Broadcast pitching is often timely. We recently took the angle of ‘spring cleaning your self-care routine’ when pitching our potential guest. Right away it helps us build a theme from the idea of spring cleaning that is timely and relevant.
  • Include clips of your client doing previous on-air interviews or speaking at a conference; send broll if you have it. If you or your client have never done a morning show before, provide clips of a Facebook Live talk or a highly engaging Instagram video. Producers want to get a feel of how potential guests will appear on the screen.
  • Beware network rivalries. Don’t pitch the Today Show by sending a clip of your client on Good Morning America. In the same token, if you are pitching ABC’s regional morning show in Dallas, don’t send a clip of your client on Fox Dallas because they are directly competing for audience share. You can however send ABC Dallas a clip of your client as a guest on Fox in another region.
  • One trick of the trade when pitching a national guest segment, the whale of all broadcast opps: do send clips of regional affiliates when pitching national morning shows. For example when pitching Today, do send your clips of your client or yourself on regional NBC morning shows. This strategy works wonders!

Shift Happens: Remark Client Speaks to Celebrity Divorce & Her Transformation

Posted on by Katie Wagner
Leading up to her divorce Karin Luise felt like she was in a Lifetime Movie. She was married to Atlanta Braves superstar Chipper Jones and despite public appearances had never felt more isolated and alone in her life. Because behind closed doors, masking the fame, glitz and glamour, Chipper revealed his extra martial affairs had resulted in not only betrayal but pregnancies (yes, plural).
But this isn’t a story about the death of a marriage, it’s a story about Karin’s rebirth. By sharing her pivotal transformation with others, she hopes to inspire women who are experiencing the same feelings of despair and hopelessness, to use their divorce to make a pivotal life change; a rebirth. Today Dr. Karin Luise is a transformational life coach, host of the Dr. Karin Show and co-author of the book The Fatherless Daughter Project. 

She starts with her story: “I was truly on my knees at rock bottom TWICE when the Universe said, “BAM – do you want to be this miserable forever or do you want to transform?” Then I raised my hand and the shift happened.” And then goes through how her divorce was the best thing to have happened in her life.

Read more in Karin’s hometown paper, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: http://www.myajc.com/lifestyles/life-after-chipper-jones-and-divorce/i7z9POmnoiuYMJQaGEVaHK/

A Love Affair With Forbes

Posted on by Katie Wagner

Valentine’s Day is looming on the horizon and as such we started thinking about love. Our team has enjoyed so much incredible media love for clients this past year but one particular outlet went the extra  mile and showered us with much deserved attention. From January 2017 to January 2018 Remark clients had a love affair with Forbes.

Below, we reminisce:

2018 28 Retail Marketing Predictions To Watch in 2018: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rganatra/2018/01/18/e-commerce-marketing-predictions-for-2018/#3747de8849b6

2018 How A Social Enterprise Rebranded to Sell More Products And Help More Women: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robindschatz/2018/01/08/how-a-social-enterprise-rebranded-to-sell-more-products-and-help-more-women/#63d19f6f7763

2017 How One Venture Has Impact Coming And Going: ow.ly/MXz830b4gJ1

2017 Cinemizer OLED: A Personal Video Player For Your Eyes Only: https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottkramer/2017/03/02/cinemizer-oled-a-personal-video-player-for-your-eyes-only/#39dc5a4b1a85

2017 Helping Young Moms Work Their Way Out Of Poverty: https://www.forbes.com/sites/meimeifox/2017/01/31/helping-young-moms-work-their-way-out-of-poverty/#729badae5998

2017 Loves Wins In 2017: Here Are 25+ Valentine’s Day Gifts That Give Back: https://www.forbes.com/sites/vanessamcgrady/2017/02/04/valentines2017/#391c1c486321

2017 Hiring Women Other Businesses Won’t Has Made All The Difference: https://www.forbes.com/sites/devinthorpe/2017/01/04/this-business-only-hires-women-you-wouldnt-and-that-has-made-all-the-difference/#6e94c0134316