TOW Week 15: Guest Blogger
The following is a description of our blogging topic of the week for my PR and Social Media class:
This week’s topic was inspired by Adam Vincenzini’s Be My Guest month: post something by a guest blogger. Connect with another blogger (it can, but doesn’t have to, be someone in your class) and exchange blog posts for the week. (You don’t have to write something new . . . share your favorite post you’ve written this semester.) In your own blog, make it really clear that the post is written by another person, and link to your guest’s blog.
My guest blogger this week is Allie Schlumper. Below is a blog found directly from Allie’s personal blog. I chose this blog post because will be interesting to all students at Georgia Southern including those who are not but might be experiencing the same sort of thing at their own college or university.
PR Connections- University Proposed Budget Cuts March 3, 2010
For the past couple of days, the proposed budget cuts for Universities in Georgia has been the topic of conversation. Georgia Southern alone has been asked (in the PROPOSED budget cuts) to cut 14.7 million dollars from their budget. This, plus the original 11 million dollars they were asked to cut, comes to about 30% cuts in the money that is provided from the state.
GSU’s President Keel posted a web cast on the GSU website about the budget cuts.
This post is more about rumors and word of mouth, which can be forms of PR. I encourage everyone at GSU and other Universities that are going through the same thing, to really fully understand what is going on before they spread rumors. The cuts have NOT been made yet and there is still something that every single person can do. A website at GSU has been made to inform students, faculty, staff, and the community about the proposed cuts and what they can do to help.
It is important that people are well informed about the situation before they talk about it to others. President Keel and the GSU staff did a great job (from a PR perspective) by posting his video on the site. This shows that they are all concerned about what is going on and it is a very informative video on the situation at hand.
Survival Guide Ch. 11-12
Chapter 11: More Social Tools
- Posting your events in social calendars is a great way to get extra exposure. They offer a convenient way for you to post your events in one place & highlight them in may ways on many different platforms. Upcoming is a good example.
- Social pages are sites where, instead of creating a page about yourself, your book, or your business, you create pages about a particular topic. Visitors can search for pages on particular topics or ones authored by specific people. Squidoo is a good example.
- Squidoo is about finding people when you care what they know instead of who they know.
- Wikis (wiki is Hawaiian for fast) is a collaborative Website that allows anyone to update its content. Once established, a Wiki essentially becomes an ever-changing online database of information.
- Social search portals offer your visitors a unique search experience right from your Website or blog. You can quickly build a search engine focused on any topic, and over time, this search portal will generate increasingly relevant search results as users vote results up & down for every search query.
- Virtual worlds are virtual 3-D worlds created by participants. You are able to build a virtual book club or opening a virtual presentation area for your business.
Chapter 12: Pulling it all Together
- Remember that social media & Web 2.0 optimization mean optimizing for interactivity, sharing, & collaboration. Determine if your existing Website is optimized by asking yourself a few questions about it:
1. Can users interact with the content?
2. Can visitors share the content easily with others?
3. Does the site encourage collaboration?
- With a bit of planning you can streamline the process to keep all of your Social Web accounts fresh & engaging without breaking your back or breaking the bank. The trick is to make your social accounts work together.
Note: The reading notes above came from the textbook A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web. 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, tactics, and tooks for succeeding in the social web. This is a book written by Deltina Hay.
Survival Guide Ch. 10
Chapter 10: Social Media Newsrooms
- A social media newsroom (SMNR) is similar to a traditional online newsroom, it lists media coverage, news releases, events, media contact information, but also includes social media and Web 2.0 elements that allow visitors to share and interact with its content.
- A SMNR is for individuals or businesses that tend to get or want to get a lot of media coverage, or who put out news releases on a regular basis.
- A newsroom tells members of the media & prospective clients that you are making a serious effort to make their jobs easier.
- A social media newsroom should not replace your existing Website. You still want a place for blogging and to have a more traditional place to present other information. You will also do all of your “selling” on your website. Your SMNR is NOT A SALES TOOL.
- Your newsroom is meant to be a neutral place to present all of your media materials, just like a mega-news release.
- A SMNR means that each entry in your newsroom, from a news release to a simple image, can be automatically indexed in search engines, RSS feed indexes, and social bookmarking services, since each entry is added as a separate entry that can be given its own key terms.
- Your SMNR is NOT a sales tool.
- It is best to build your newsroom using a blogging or CMS platform such as WordPress.
- A social media news release is essentially a traditional news release that is social media & Web 2.0 optimized. In short, the release encourages interactivity, is easily shared in the Social Web, and contains other Web 2.0 elements.
- You can use PRWeb to create your own social media releases.
Note: The reading notes above came from the textbook A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web. 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, tactics, and tooks for succeeding in the social web. This is a book written by Deltina Hay.
TOW 14: Guest Blogger
The following is a description of our blogging topic of the week for my PR and Social Media class:
This week’s topic was inspired by Adam Vincenzini’s Be My Guest month: post something by a guest blogger. Connect with another blogger (it can, but doesn’t have to, be someone in your class) and exchange blog posts for the week. (You don’t have to write something new . . . share your favorite post you’ve written this semester.) In your own blog, make it really clear that the post is written by another person, and link to your guest’s blog.
I chose my guest blogger to be Kacie Whigham. The following post came from her personal blog. I chose this particular post because it is one of the most interesting PR connection Kacie has written about. It grabbed my attention right away.
UnTouched
Celebrities are going untouched on magazine covers. Is this a PR stunt or just true honesty?
Recently, Jessica Simpson made headlines by going Untouched on the cover of Marie Claire. Apparently, Jessica didn’t even wear any makeup. Just last year, she was in the news for being overweight. In response, she has a new TV show out, called “Price of Beauty” in which her and couple of her friends travel all around the world, learning what beauty means in different cultures.
Is it just coincidence that all of this happens one after another? I think not. Jessica must have an awesome PR team behind her… fighting what media has made “beauty” to be. She is fighting back and people and listening.
Also in the news for going “untouched” in Harper’s Bazaar magazine. Kim’s comment on the message of the nude picture is “embrace your curves and who you are.”
The difference with Kim is that she is also an endorser for Quicktrim, a diet plan she claims to have used herself. Well, if she’s telling girls everywhere to embrace their curves, why is she drinking tasteless formula drinks daily instead of eating healthy full meals?
That doesn’t sound like embracing your curves to me. Maybe her PR team needs to take a look at Jessica’s and go for the natural workout approach.
Career Services Workshop: Resumes & Cover Letters
This past week was Student Employment week at Georgia Southern University so there were many workshops and seminars put on my career services. My choice was to attend the workshop on resumes and cover letters. I feel as if this one is especially important seeing as graduation is less than a month away! (I can’t believe it!)
I found this workshop extremely helpful. Although the speaker repeated a lot of the same tips and advice I have heard previously, there was also a lot of good information that I feel the need to share with you all out there.
- Just like our professor, Barbara Nixon stresses, be sure your resume is free of ANY mistakes and is brief and concise.
- The first step in beginning your resume writing is to make a list of all the experience, education, volunteer work, etc., that you feel is relevant to the job or internship you are applying for. Then when it is time to sit down and put the resume together, pick out the most relevant and most important things according to the job position or company.
- Do not limit yourself! Now what I am about to say is going against everything all your teachers have ever said about writing a resume: The speaker said DO NOT leave out important experience, EVEN if you have to go to a second page. I thought this was surprising and interesting because my entire five years spent at Georgia Southern and I have always heard the exact opposite.
- Your objective and cover letter need to be tailored to each position and company you are applying for.
- Your cover letter is your chance to sell yourself to the company; to really make them want to look to look at your resume for more information about you.
- NEVER answer the phone, even if it is for a job call-back you have been waiting for IF you are not in an appropriate place. (i.e. Watching a football game with friends, at a noisy restaurant or concert). This can instantly turn the future employer off. Wait until you are in the quietness of your car or home to return the phone call. It is okay to allow this person to go to voice mail.
PRSSA Ice Cream & Fundraisers
For my Social Media in PR class, we were asked to create a viral video. For this project I worked with fellow classmate Allie Schlumper to create a viral video for our PRSSA chapter at Georgia Southern University.
For the video, I chose to capture some footage from our Bruster’s Scoop Night held Tuesday April 13. This fundraiser was held to help raise money for the PRSSA and SOCS Relay for Life team. Our primary client we focused on was PRSSA, although SOCS also helped out with the fundraiser.
Below is our video. Let me know what you think and help it become viral!
TOW Week 13: Viral Videos
For the topic of the week this week, we were asked to talk about viral videos.
According to yourdictionary.com, a viral video is a video that spread quickly via the Internet. It is often a short clip on a video sharing site such as YouTube that people reference in blogs, e-mails, and instant messages.
One of the trends I see in the majority of viral videos is the humor aspect. Is a video being funny what makes it become viral and spread like wildfire over the Internet?
One of my favorite videos that become viral is called “Scarlet takes a tumble.” It starts off slow with a girl singing on top of a coffee table when all of a sudden she takes a step and the video turns bad…or hilarious, whichever way you want to look at it. Watch the video below to form your own opinion. This video has over 12 million visits! That is a ton of people watching!
My other favorite video is called “Beyonce Clown.” In this video two girls are reenacting the dance to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.” One of the girls is wearing a clown mask and they look like they are doing a good job at the dance when the one with mask misjudges exactly how far away the television is. HILARIOUS! Watch for yourself! This video has over three million visits.
Viral videos seem to becoming more and more popular as the world of social media gets larger. And all of the videos seem to be humerous in some way or another. People are sharing these videos through social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. They are also being shared through e-mails, chat rooms, and blogging sites, along with the video hosting sites they are being found on. Celebrities are being born through these viral videos and appearing on such television shows as TMZ and The Soup.
What are your favorite viral videos? Let me know by leaving a comment on this blog post.
Survival Guide Ch. 8-9
Chapter 8: Media Communities
- Media communities are social sites where you can save, share, and comment on multimedia items.
- Image sharing sites are a way for you to get some serious mileage out of your photos and other images.
- Flickr is probably the most popular site on the internet for sharing images. Flickr offers a place for you to share your images with others, as well as a platform for organizing and linking to your images.
- There are three steps to the process of uploading & optimizing images:
1. Choosing your images
2. Uploading your images
3. Giving your uploaded images good titles, descriptions, & tags.
- Many claim that video is the future of the Internet.
- You can search images in Flickr and videos in YouTube using search terms just as you do in a search engine like Google. You search results return images or videos that have your search terms in their title or description.
- Don’t forget that the purpose of media sharing communities is for people to connect with each other through a shared medium like images and video.
Chapter 9: Widgets & Badges
- Widgets are snippets of code, usually displayed graphically, that can be used to syndicate content, for example RSS feeds, or to add interactive features that users can drop onto their own blogs or Websites.
- Widgets are often customizable by the user & typically offer ways for users to pull information from the widget’s originating site.
- Widgets come in different styles and levels of complexity. Some are simple links back to their source, others are as complex as mini-search engines you can implement on your own site.
- Some widgets help you show off all the places you are in the Social Web.
- Only add widgets to your site that you believe will benefit your visitors or are essential to your presence; don’t place them just for the sake of placing them
Note: The reading notes above came from the textbook A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web. 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, tactics, and tooks for succeeding in the social web. This is a book written by Deltina Hay.
Survival Guide Ch. 7
Chapter 7: Social Bookmarking & Crowd-Sourcing
- Social bookmarking is a way for you to save your favorite blogs and Websites in a public space the same way you might save them using your own Web browser.
- Imagine that you have saved (or bookmarked) all of your favorite Websites and blogs to a central place online & tagged them with specific terms so you could easily search them & find them later.
- Instead of search engines providing you with the “supposed” best matches for your search terms, you can go to a social bookmarking site, search using those same terms, and find the top sites tagged (and commented on) by users just like you.
- Delicious.com is one of the most popular social bookmarking sites.
- Many of the social bookmarking sites have developed social networking characteristics as well.
- Other popular social bookmarking sites are: Technorati, StumpleUpon, & Searchles.
- A crowd-sourced news site allows its users to determine the popularity of a news story, blog entry, or Website through various types of voting or rating systems. Many of these sites also have some certain social aspects, allowing users to connect to others with similar interests.
- This system gives news-searchers an alternative to what is served up to them by the regular news sites.
- Once you have an account with a crowd-sourced news site, you can add your content and/or rate existing content.
- Digg.com is an example of a crowd-sourcing site.
- Some of the other popular crowd sourcing sites are: reddit, Mixx, & Gabbr.
- Crowd-sourced news sites are different from social bookmarking sites in that they focus on sharing news and information about stories, Websites, and blogs, as opposed to sharing bookmarks to Websites or blogs.
Note: The reading notes above came from the textbook A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web. 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, tactics, and tooks for succeeding in the social web. This is a book written by Deltina Hay.
TOW Week 12: Widgets & Badges
For this weeks topic of the week, we were asked to describe widgets and badges and the differences between them.
According to the book A Survival Guide to Social Media & Web 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, Tactics, & Tools for Succeeding in the Social Web written by Deltina Hay, a widget is a snippet of code, usually displayed graphically, that can be used to syndicate content, for example RSS feeds, or to add interactive features that users can drop on their own blogs or Websites. They are often customizable by the user & typically offer ways for users to pull information from the widget’s originating site.
According to the same book, a badge is typically just an icon or logo that has a link back to its source, which serves as a way of displaying one’s membership or presence in a community on the Social Web.
Sometimes the two terms are used interchangeably even though they are different items. Badges & widgets are a new tool in the Social Web, but I feel as if they are catching on somewhat quickly. The more popular the two tools become, the easier they will be to create.
A widget gives more of a wider range of customizable applications for your desktop that allow access to some of your favorite content available on the web.
A badge can be thought of as a small form of advertising. Badges are little icons you can click on that will take you directly to the side that is being “advertised.” Have you visited a specific company’s website, and at the bottom or the side seen the little Twitter or Facebook icon? That is a badge. If you were to click on the icon, you would be directed to the company’s Twitter or Facebook page.
Planet Jess 