Banks using Social Media

In an article I read it said that banks are now using customer's social media to learn how to better advertise to certain clients as well as learning whether or not the customer is responsible with their spending and saving.  This is a smart but scary concept.  Writing anything about losing a job or a house can alert the bank to any financial problems you may be experiencing.  Some people view social media as an outlet where you can share, celebrate, gripe and complain to your friends, coworkers and family but more and more it is becoming something to be very careful with.  Companies are catching on faster and faster that they can use these tools to provide them with very vital information.  So I know you have heard it time and time again but be careful what you put on social media. I know I get sick of hearing it also  but it is so true, especially now that it could even influence my chances of having a bank work with me as well as my future employment.

Measure What Matters

In Katie Paine's book Measure What Matters it talks about measuring your business or companies effectiveness.  I though it was interesting that she made a point of differentiating between measuring and counting.  All companies have an accountant and know how to count all the things they need.  But measuring means something different altogether.  She also mentions that your customers talk and trust each other more than they do the company.  They look to each other through social media platforms to find out what the best deal or best product is.  Therefore as a company it is best to be open and honest about everything that you are doing in order for your customer to feel like they can really trust what you are doing.  If the customer can trust you a minor glitch isn't going to be as big of a deal if you were honest before and after whatever it is that happened.  These are some recurring themes that we have read about in the past books but I think they are important enough for all of these writers to cover and every author shows the concept in a new light. I'm looking forward to reading more of Paine's book.

Halloween

While I have been at ONU for 4 years now I have never had the priveldge of handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters.  Living in a dorm or on campus apartment doesn't really allow much opportunity for this.  Freshman year the trick-or-treaters walked through our dorm but I wasn't there that night and somehow I just don't think it would have had the same feel.  So you can imagine my excitement this year when I realized that living in a house on Main Street is actually the perfect set up for handing out candy.  My roommates and I got so busy this week that we kind of let it slip our minds as to what day the trick-or-treaters would be arriving. But I was sitting up in my room tonight and I saw children walking down the street through my window! I ran and told one of my roommates and we had to quickly run to the store because we didn't have any candy to pass out. (A college house without candy? That's just wrong) We missed maybe the first half hour of trick-or-treat but caught the last hour.  It was so fun to sit out on the porch with my roommates and see all of the kids dressed up.  At times I felt old because kids would come up to the porch dressed as something I had never even heard of and act like it was crazy not to know! I need to brush up on my cartoons apparently.  Overall it was a great night and I'm glad we didn't miss it!

Universities Using Social Media

A blog on mashable.com says that universities are trying harder than ever to have an online and social media presence for their students and alumni, as well as their prospective students who are still in high school.  The blog said that 100% of universities have some sort of social media presence and it is growing with each day.  I think this is a great idea and will always benefit the school.  The more you can find out about a school the better.  When I was in high school looking for colleges I was interested in the first thing that turned me away was not being able to navigate their website or not finding any information that I found useful.  I think the universities should have students blog about the school and their time there. The students could say what kind of clubs or sports they are involved with, what their major is and even just what they like to do on the weekends around the area.  If this had been a bigger option when I was in high school I think my friends and I definitely would have taken the time to read the blogs because it is always nice to get an honest feel from a student's prospective about the place you may be deciding to spend the next 4 years at.

Webinar

This webinar was the first one that I had ever experienced.  I'm not sure that I really liked it.  I feel like it would have kept my attention better if I could have actively seen the speakers talking.  The concepts that they were talking about were interesting to me but I'm not great at listening for a long amount of time when I have nothing to pay attention to.

The most interesting part to me was when they were talking about the company being their own publisher. I think that is a great way to explain the company explaining themselves to their clients.  The speakers made very good points on this subject.  They explained that this concept allows the company to reveal the people that they have working for them.  It also allows the company to click with their clients in a way that other companies may not take advantage of.  And the most important part is that the company being a publisher allows the company to listen better to the market.  Overall the webinar made some great points and was very fast paced and kept the questions coming.

Excitement!

Everyone is very excited about Halloween quickly approaching and I'm excited about it as well but what I really can't wait for is Thanksgiving! This Thanksgiving my roommates and I have decided to host a Thanksgiving dinner for all of our families.  It will be the first time that any of us have ever cooked a whole Thanksgiving dinner on our own.  We have all taken little responsibilites with the meal here and there with our own families but this year we are on our own.  We are combining everyone's traditions as well.  Some people have noodles at their dinner and different types of deserts than the rest of us so we are planning to combine it all.  It is going to be a very large dinner. With 6 of us currently living in the house that includes a lot of family members/boyfriends.  Our rough estimate as of right now is that there will be 24 people attending.  I have no idea where they are all going to sit and absolutely no idea how we are going to prepare enough food for that many people but I know at the end of the night we will be happy that we did it and gave back to our families and it will definitely be something that we will bond over.  I'm also looking forward to our families getting to know each other better.  Over the past 4 years they have met mostly on move in day passing in the halls and whatever they here about one another from the roommates.  But after 4 years of living with these amazing people we feel like family and want to show our parents just how strong of a family we are especially since this will be our last year all together.    So as much as I'm excited for Halloween you can see why Thanksgiving is going to be one to remember this year :)

Real-Time Job Description

In the Real-Time Marketing and PR book the author talks about a Real-Time Communication Job Description.  We searched online for communication job descriptions to see how similar they were to the one in the book.  A lot of the job descriptions online are not very specific to what the job should entail.  I think the reason for this is because companies often see their PR department as something of a side note or a part of the company that they might not exactly need. Because the job is often under appreciated the company doesn't always know what they should be looking for in a communications department employee.  I think that one of the most important aspects of the job description that most companies leave out is to watch for rogue sites that pop up.  It is very important to know what is going on in your market.  If you want to be the top company in your area you have no exactly what your competition is and what they are doing at all times.  The second  most important I think is to respond to customers in the channel that they contact you.  This can really keep your company on top of things.  Your customers want results and they want them fast.  They will be impressed if you are up on your social media and can contact them through their favorite media.  All in all companies need to realize how important their PR team is and how beneficial a good PR practitioner can be to their business.

Fall Break

This weekend was a great escape from school.  I was starting to feel super overwhelmed with all of the things that were going on in my classes and then the blessed fall break arrived.  I went away with my mom, aunt and cousin this weekend to Ashtabula county.  The weather was perfect for this fall weekend.  My family and I stayed in a cabin at a national park and we visited some of the covered bridges and went to a working farm.  Everything that we ate this weekend was grown fresh on the farm.  I had never had milk straight from a cow before and I will admit I was a little skeptical about it but I tried it and by the end of the weekend I loved it.  It tasted so fresh and creamy.  I wish I could drink it all the time.  The farm had so many cats and other animals.  It was so nice to go around and see all of the fresh vegetables and people really living off the land.  At the end of the weekend we drove across the Pennsylvania state line and went to a spill way which is a small section off of a lake where giant carp gather.  I had never seen anything like it.  There were so many fish and they were swimming basically on top of each other.  Overall it was a great weekend. Below is a video of the spillway! Enjoy!

Retweeting

In class we have learned the benefit of retweeting posts on Twitter.  In fact we spent a whole class period just going through Twitter looking for social media type information that we can retweet to share with our own Twitter followers.  We searched for social media type topics.  Twitter makes it really easy to do this because you can search topics by their hashtags.  I was able to put social media in the search bar and every tweet that a user wrote about social media would pop up.  The whole purpose of retweeting is to spread the word on the information that other users are putting out.  People that follow me on Twitter may have never read the tweets that I retweet if I had never reposted them.  Like for instance my roommates are pharmacy majors and even though they are interested in some of the articles that I would post especially articles involving social media because you don't have to be a PR major to enjoy learning new things about your social media.  So retweeting benefits the user that wrote the article as well as the other followers who may have never had a chance to read the article before.

Textbooks vs. PR Books

In Social Media class we are reading books that are very much unlike textbooks.  I find that in all of my other classes I read a highly overpriced textbook filled with lots of words whose meanings sometimes get lost in my head and the concepts are hardly ever explained well.  With the books we are reading in Social Media I am interested in the topics.  I hardly ever find myself drifting off of the subject and becoming bored while I read.  The concepts are very easy to apply to real life as well because they give concrete examples that anyone can understand.  I think that I learn more in this class because of how interesting the content and reading are to me.  (Maybe I'm bias because I love social media) But I really wish that other classes could find a way to make the information more exciting and keep the students interested in what was going on in the class.  I realize not all subject are easy to make exciting.  Like for instance my accounting class.  But if we were reading more books like this than our horrid textbook maybe I wouldn't find myself daydreaming as much as I do these days!

Homecoming Weekend

Homecoming weekend is always my favorite time of year! This year was no exception.  Our house was full of friends that graduated last year coming in and out and staying the night.  It was so nice to see everyone! I also love sleeping in a house full of friends that I haven't seen in awhile! The balloon glow was great! It is always one of my favorite things to go to.  And Saturday night the Beagle was really packed and exciting! I'm sad that the weekend is over.  I don't want to go back to reality after having such a great weekend and I it was hard to say goodbye to everyone that had come to stay.  Especially with this being senior year.  We are all going to be spread out everywhere pretty soon so it was nice to take the weekend to spend it with everyone.  Hope everyone else had as great a homecoming weekend as I did!