November 6, 2008
· Filed under Responses
Today in class, Dr.V introduced us to Cheryl Harrison, a senior at Captial University in Columbus, OH. Why did Dr. V lead us to another student? Because this girl has something to say. Not only is her resume and site design very impressive, her posts contain a lot of great ideas.
But, it’s definitely not the conent that kept me at her site, perusing through blog posts. What caught my attention (and kept it) was her writting style. Cheryl Harrison has attitude and gives it to you everytime. To me, she’s an inspiration and I can sum up why in one word: Uninhibited.
Her in-your-face insights to the social media world don’t sound like those of a intimidated college student. She sounds like the most confident person in the world, and I want to sound like that too. I want to write blog posts about public relations, social media tools and current events and not worry about what everyone else will think or if I’m right or wrong (and a $125k salary right out of college wouldn’t be so bad either).
So, from this point on, I vow to start taking myself (and this blog) a lot more seriously.
November 5, 2008
· Filed under Responses · Tagged Engaging bloggers, Pitching
Local Yoga Studio
I would advise the local yoga studio to blog about the benefits of doing yoga. The appropriate place for the essential who, what,where, and when for the yoga studio should be included in the about me page so it is not necessary to include this information in the regular blog posts. The angle they take should be that yoga is extremely beneficial to health. Each of the individual blogs posts could be about different ways in which it is beneficial and supplemented by blog posts about special events or new classes the studio is offering. So, the niche should be that of health, leisure, relaxation, and entertainment.
They should blog about not only the benefits, but explain how those benefits of doing yoga are applicable to their reader’s lives. The blog posts should make their readers understand that the benefits are extremely necessary in their readers lives and that taking a yoga class is a very easy way to reap those benefits. Also, they should blog in such a way that encourages feedback. Asking questions at the end of blog posts such as, “What do you know about yoga” would tell them how much or how little their audience understands about yoga. Or, they could ask, “How do you relax?” and later find a way to tie in the way they relax normally to a yoga class.
Edelman Autheniticities Engagement Exercise
- Justin: I would engage Justin by asking him first how often he goes hiking and camping, to get an idea of how active he is and how strenuous his activities are. I want him to know I’m interested in his hobbies. Then I would ask him if he’s ever considered doing yoga- it is exercise and keeps you fit like hiking and it relaxes you like a good glass of wine. I would be concerned that he would not care about it because it does not have to do with video games, but I could address this issue by bringing up the point that yoga expands and strengthens your mind and could lead to better thinking processes that could get him ahead in his games.
- Victoria: Since Victoria writes about the happenings in her city, I would begin by asking her if she’s ever heard of or seen the local yoga studio. It’s the only one in the city and it has a great location so its easily accessible to many people. I would then ask her if she’s ever tried yoga, and even if she has or has not, should come by and try out a class- it’ll relieve some stress she may have from that Tory mayoral candidate winning the election.
- Cindy: For Cindy, I would definitely highlight the benefits and therapeutic values of yoga. Cindy blogs about domestic violence issues, so her content is very intense. However, I first ask her if she’s ever considered giving advice on her blog about how to cope with domestic violence. If she would like to do that I would tell her that yoga is very relaxing and therapeutic and could do wonders for victims.
October 23, 2008
· Filed under Responses · Tagged Blogging, Conversations
Blogging is certainly not something that you can just pick up and be really good at right off the bat. However, it seems that this has made for, kind of ironically, a very hot blog post topic. Dr.V compiled a list of about eight blog posts that discuss, essentially, the do’s and don’t’s of blogging. They all made really great points so I decided to compile the most frequently noted/ most important tips for blogging.
- Know who you are and have a voice.It is very important (and becoming increasingly harder) to stand out in the blogosphere. If you’re merely parroting what other people are talking about or not posting about anything interesting or relevant it’s very unlikely your blog will gain momentum. Blogging should be done with a purpose. So, decide who you are going to be out there in the social media world and be consistent with that.
- Create conversations.It’s a constant give and take between bloggers, you can’t just expect people to come to you if you’re not putting yourself out there. Comment on other’s blogs, and read. Like a new release, keep up with the bloggers you comment on and want to follow you and find out what interests them. Then, put your own twist on those subjects and write about them. It’s so important to engage people- no one has ever responded well to being talked at.
- Be real. This is especially important for corporations getting into blogging and blogging during a crisis. If you’re fake on the web, people are going to know it and most likely resent you for it. So, be upfront with your audience, it will build trust and as a result a good relationship. People will be much more interested in your products or services if they feel you understand them and don’t have any ulterior motives.
Geoff Livingston of The Buzz Bin sums up perfectly in his post on ways to woo bloggers, “…blogger relations really comes down to individual relationships. As a result, many conversations deal with basic principles of listening and not overselling, oops, over-pitching.”
October 21, 2008
· Filed under Responses · Tagged Add new tag, News releases, Relationships
If someone were to ask me to define public relations in one word I would say: relationships.
Today in our PRinciples class, we had two guest speakers come in a talk to us about media relations. Kim Banks of Simko Communications and John Gouch of Clemson University’s news services spent our 75 minute class giving us special insight on how to create and send out news releases in the most effective way possible. Pretty much every PR person’s goal at some point is to get as much media coverage as possible, right? That’s true to an extent.
Both Banks and Gouch continually stressed the importance of building relationships with media. Journalists, reporters, editors and everyone else in a gatekeeper position is extremely valuable to a PR practitioner, and it is important to let them know that. Reporters don’t care about the PR practitioners client, they care about their beat, what they’re interested in writing about, and what their audience wants to hear about. So, that’s what the PR practitioner has to be interested in too.
It is absolutely imperative that PR people listen to reporters, journalists, editors. Go out to lunch/coffee/dinner/tea with them without an agenda and learn about who they are as people. The better you know these people, the more likely it is that your news release will get published.
So make friends! The more you know about your media gatekeepers the better you are able to cater to them. Seek out the people you know will be interested in the story you are trying to get published. As Banks said very poignantly, “It’s a give and take.”
October 8, 2008
· Filed under Responses · Tagged Sharing, Social Media Tools
One thing that all of the different social media tools have in common is sharing. In each of the tools I looked at, sharing was emphasized, usually above all of the other features the tool provided. Since social media is about connections and forming new relationships it is essential that people are able to let others know what is important and interesting to them.
Delicious is one such tool that encourages sharing. People compile all the interesting things they have found on the web as bookmarks on this site. It offers a glimpse into the minds of other people surfing the web and allows you to easily locate people you are compatible with through their bookmarks. On some other social bookmarking sites (i.e. Sphinn) you can even vote to for certain sites to be featured on the homepage. Just another way to really let others know what you think.
Another thing I noticed while going through the social media tools is that they are very interconnected. For example, you can use Picnik to edit photos that you can later upload on Flickr or Facebook. Social media tools on the web work together to essentially make the world smaller.
September 24, 2008
· Filed under Responses · Tagged Charity Water, Google, Katie D. Paine, Newspapers, Paull Young, Social Media, Technology
PR Measurement Blog
Before I could get any further in scanning Katie D. Panie’s blog, I was struck by the second newest post, Maybe Google will finally replace the clipping services.This caught my attention because just the other day in my Intro to Journalism class, the professor was discussing how the emergence of new technology and therefore new media has forced newspapers to change the way they present information and are published. My professor made a great point: people thought radio, then T.V., then Internet was going to render newspapers obsolete- but they were wrong.
Sure, the newspaper publishing industry is not the money-making business it used to be, but it is certainly still prominent in society. And now, it seems, that for once it’s not the newspapers that have to do the changing. According to Paine’s post, Google is expanding its news archive to include every newspaper story ever written. And not just that, people will be able to search for a story and be able to view it as it actually looked in the paper when it was published. Neat! But also pretty ambitious. Hey, if Google has the motivation, it’s a great thing to work for. The idea of preserving history is taking on entirely new meanings.
Charity Water case study
As a follower of Paull Young on twitter, I was able to witness first hand his birthday social media experiment. While reading the reflection he wrote on the experiment though, one this really hit me: this is great PR for Charity Water. Not only was he campaigning for donations and therefore getting their name out to many people who would otherwise never have heard of the charity (myself included), he was also linking to it repeatedly and therefore getting their mission out as well.
With social media on the rise, I predict that instances such as this will be occurring more and more. Simple acts such as someone blogging about an organization or tweeting about a great new product can have huge PR ramifications if done or viewed by the right people. Get opinion leaders, or Super Influencers to endorse something and their good graces can snowball into creating better awareness and therefore relationships between the online public and organizations.
September 5, 2008
· Filed under Responses · Tagged Blogging, Internship, Kipp Bodnar, PR field, Reading
“Young PR professional.” I absolutely adore this quote because I feel like, with this blog, I really am putting myself out there in field. Kipp Bodnar, a PR practitioner for a firm in Raleigh, NC said this today in the closing moments he was on the phone with us. Dr. V telephoned Bodnar to give us another look at what exactly is waiting for us out in the real PR world, and according to Bodnar, quite a bit.
It seem as though there are opportunities abound in the PR field, that it grows every day, if one knows how to present his or herself. Being active online (once again) is very important and something Bodnar stressed in the conversation we had with him. By blogging and tweeting and commenting (and lions and tigers and bears oh my!ing) we are exposing ourselves to PR agencies while simultaneously learning by observation.
“What do you read?” is the first question that popped into his mind when Dr.V asked what he would say in an interview for an internship or job. Although this seems like an innocent question, it’s actually quite the window into a person’s PR soul, if you will. By answering this question, one can learn what people are interested in, what they pay attention to, how they prioritize their information and much more. By simply reading a person can learn so much about anything. I’m certainly going to keep my eyes wide open.
August 31, 2008
· Filed under Responses · Tagged Marketing
What PR is not
This blog post is saying more of what chapter 13 harped on in our class textbook: PR and marketing are different but they work together. PR focuses on many publics while marketing focuses only on the consumer.
I think the idea of trying to define PR by describing what is is not is a good idea, in theory. It started out working fine but then became confusing to me. In some definitions the author, Bill Sledzik, would acknowledge how PR helps this aspect or how the other aspect is a subset of public relations. For example, the author admits “Sales people often benefit from the good works of public relations people… And because sales people are the organizations front-line storytellers, it behooves PR to understand their needs and to support them in the efforts.” It seems to me that PR is much too integrated into many of the communication aspects of an organization to try and pull it out of contexts and define it. Sure, PR is not simply marketing, but it’s unfair to deny the fact that the two are very much related (and are even more successful when they are).
