The Weekend

I'm pretty excited about this next upcoming weekend because there is a lot going on! I'm the maid of honor in my cousin's wedding in January and we are having her bridal shower in Sylvania this weekend! I'm excited to see all of my family and catch up with people I haven't seen in awhile.  My best friend is also going to be there and I haven't seen her in quite some time!! There will be delicious food and fun games to play and I think it is just going to be a really exciting day for my cousin! Then on Sunday we are going to have my families Thanksgiving.  It's a little early this year even for us but my cousin has recently relocated to Alabama for a job and he and his new fiancé will be home this weekend! I haven't seen them since June for our family vacation and I'm beyond excited! This weekend is just what I need.  Things have been getting rather stressful here in the magical land of Ada and being surrounded by so much family for two whole days is just the cure to get me refreshed and thinking straight come Monday morning.  I hope that everyone else has something exciting planned for their weekend and has a great time doing whatever it is that they enjoy!

Don't be Creepy

In an article I read on Technorati.com they talked about marketers using social media to their advantage without being a social media stalker. I really think there is a fine line between the two these days and it gets more blurry everyday.  The article offers some good advice for marketers in the present time.  It says to be helpful but not pushy.  This is great advice.  When I walk in to a store and the sales clerk instantly runs up to me and wants to follow me through the store and basically shop with me I get super annoyed and want to leave as quickly as possible.  But on the other hand, when no one acknowledges my existence I get almost as annoyed as if they were stalking me through the store.  I feel the same way with my social media.  I understand that you have a job to do and that job is to get your product out there in to the market for me to see. But if you proceed to shove the product down my throat I can guarantee that I will become uninterested just as quickly as I became interested.  The list of advice is very helpful for marketers but this one was the one that struck me the most.  It is just a very thin line for me on whether I am impressed by the way you are presenting your product. And this is a good thing for marketers to know. If you anger your customers who will buy your product?

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!

PRSSA Video

For social media I made a video about the Ohio Northern's PRSSA group.  I made the PRSSA Video using imovie on my computer.  I just wanted to showcase different pictures that would be a good representation of the PRSSA group.  I hope that everyone enjoys the video!

Crisis Communication

In chapter 7 of Real-Time Marketing the author talks about Twitter as a crisis communication tool.  This specific part of the chapter explains how using Twitter can help the media, bloggers and news reporters find out more information on a crisis.  The book says that if you find yourself in surprise situation such as a crisis you Tweet the information as well as pictures, video and any information that you can provide.  As I mentioned in another blog hashtags are also important.  If you hashtag a certain saying the media can access your information to learn more about the crisis that has taken place from a firsthand source.  Another way to get your information out is to tag a certain media in your tweet so that your information goes right to the source that will be covering the event.  I think that Twitter is really an up and coming social media.  It is very convenient and straight to the point with all of its information.  It will be a great resource for crisis communication in the future.

New Facebook

Facebook is going through a lot of changes recently, but the biggest change will be arriving late this week. Facebook is changing to a timeline like format.  People that I have talked to that have tried it out are comparing it to Tumblr.  Your Facebook profile will go back to the day you were born and include everyday from birth to the present day.  Users will be able to go back to any day in the history of their life and update a status or an activity that they were doing on that day.  I think that the new changes to Facebook will be interesting for people to get used to.  I know that most people are not going to like it at first and there will be a lot of complaining for at least the first couple weeks.  But I think that if people just give it a chance and learn how to use the new changes to their advantage it might be a positive change.  Don't get me wrong, I hate change just as much as the next social media user.  I just get used to the format of something and suddenly its different again.  But I think this is what makes social media great.  It is always evolving and changing for the better to give it's users things they may have never even known they wanted! Good luck with the new Facebook!

Week 6 of Semesters

With this being the first time that I have ever been on semesters everything that happens is still new to me.  Week 6 is quickly approaching.  It will be here in roughly 45 minutes.  This upcoming week is going to be a very busy one for me and from what I'm hearing from my friends they are experiencing the same kind of work load.  It's hard to imagine that this is only week 6 out of 16 weeks.  I'm starting to miss the quarter system more and more with each passing week.  I loved the quickness of the quarter system.  I'm really enjoying my classes this semester but I get bored very quickly and I'm already ready to move on to some new things.  This is going to be one long semester.  Hopefully I can find a way to get through the semester and learn to appreciate all the time I have to really get to know the subject and work with my teachers.  If that can happen I think that next semester will go a lot smoother.

The Real Hashtag usage

I have had a Twitter account for about a year now and I love it.  I never thought that I would grow to like it as much as I have.  I originally got an account because of my friends nagging me all the time to do it.  I'm so glad they did.  But when I tweet I use hashtags to display emotions or even just funny sayings that I know my friends will appreciate.  Now I know their real use.  In Real-Time Marketing in chapter 6 it explains that hashtags are actually supposed to be used as a way for the media to look up a breaking news topic.  For instance a there is a fire in your local town.  If you begin tweeting about it you could put #Adafire as your tag at the end of your tweet and people researching the story could see what others were tweeting by looking up the hashtag! This is really cool to me.  I knew that hashtags were a way to see what was trending on twitter but I had no idea that you could search tweets by these labels.  I feel so informed and a whole new part of Twitter has been opened up to me.  This makes me love Twitter even more. Procrastination here I come!

Bloggers are people too.

I recently read an article that talked about PR companies being afraid of reaching out to the help of bloggers.  But the article had an interesting take on the situation that I agree on.  They said that most companies think that it is scary to reach out to bloggers because you don't know how they are going to react and they could shed a negative light on your company.  But really the blogger is just going on with their life and would love to help the company out but the company needs to ask.  The blogger also wants to know that the company likes their writing and style.  They are impressed when you follow and are interested in their blog.  The truth is the blogger probably receives many invitations to write for companies all the time but when approaching them do a little research before just diving in.  Read and follow their blog so when you do finally decide to ask for their help you will both be on the same page and rooting for each other.  It could be a win win situation for the blogger and the company.  And since blogging is the next best thing, get on it and find your company a blogger!

Harvest and Herb

The thing I like about small towns is all the different events that take place.  This weekend in Ada there was the annual Harvest and Herb festival.  It's the only time of the year that I see so many people in Ada.  The streets are full of booths, venders and people.  When this festival comes to town it reminds me of Gilmore Girls.  The town that the Gilmore girls live in has all these weird festivals and events all the time.  I have always wanted to live in a town like that.  Ada may not be quite that entertaining but every now and then it brings some entertaining things to town.

My roommates and I live on Mains Street so we just walked down the street to the festivities.  It was nice to see all the people out and there were so many cool things going on.  We just wandered and looked at the different crafts.  They had sand art there and I haven't done that since I was little.  I wanted to do it but ran out of time.  We did have time to get some fried pickles though. They were so delicious! If Ada is as close to living in Stars Hollow (town from Gilmore Girls) as I can get then I think I would be ok with that!

Social Media in the Workplace

An article from PRSA's website explains that a lot of companies are working social media into their budgets because it is becoming more and more important in the way we reach our customers. The article stated  "249 chief marketing officers of U.S. companies who participated in the survey said they intend to increase spending on social media — from a current 7.1 percent of their overall marketing budgets to 10.1 percent over the next year."


I think that companies are smart to see the change in the way their customers and clients interact with the company.  Social media helps communication as well as keeping your customers up to date with what your recent venture is.  Social media can also help make the company feel like a human being runs it compared to years ago when it felt like you were dealing with a machine.  And speaking from the client side of things  I know that I like to be involved with the companies that I like.  I hope in the future all companies can dedicate a budget to social media. 

United Breaks Guitars

In class we watched the "United Breaks Guitars" video and I was surprised to find that I had never seen it or heard of it before.  If you don't already know the video went viral in 2009 (and I posted it at the bottom of the page) and the "Real-Time" book uses it as a great example for how companies big or small need to be ready to respond to media while it is happening.  No matter what company you are you won't always have a week to decide how you are going to respond to allegations about your company...sometimes you don't even have a day.  Thinking on your feet has become such a critical part of public relations.

The most interesting part of this whole situation for me is that United never thought it would be a good idea to respond publicly to these videos.  I realize that some of these concepts and ideas are new to dealing with the public and no company never wants to admit that they have done something wrong but there comes a point when not saying anything is much worse.  I think that when the views for the YouTube video began to skyrocket someone at United should have decided it was better to do something about it.

The second thing I found fascinating was how fast the video received so many hits.  I guess even now in the world of technology it is still so amazing to me how quickly word can spread about a video.  But it never fails to happen.  One friend tells me about something and before I know it everyone is watching the same thing.  So this concept is exciting to me if there is something I want to get out there in the world because the little people have a chance but frightens me big time when I think about this happening to my future company I work for! At least I'll know what to do when the situation comes up!

Cable and Internet Finally!

So for those of you that don't know about the installation of your internet at cable it is maybe one of the most stressful experiences of my life, after accounting class of course.  My roommates and I have been trying to get Time Warner Cable to our house to install our internet for 3 weeks now.  We missed our first appointment and getting a second appointment for our installation was like trying to get the president on the phone.  Once you miss your appointment you are automatically set back at least a week! So we finally get the guy out to our house to install our stuff and after asking me lots of questions that I have no idea how to answer he says that we should be good to go.  Well that is great in theory but of course as soon as he leaves the house and pulls out of the driveway the internet no longer works.  I spend the next several hours trying to figure out what went wrong.  My roommate is on the phone with Time Warner looking for some sort of solution.  They have already transferred our call 3 times and put us on hold for a half an hour.  We find out that they are charging us more than they quoted us for and saying that we didn't request wifi (even though the installation guy told me we had it).  Their only solution is that they can come out to the house a week from that day and charge us an extra $50! Um...I don't think so! After complete frustration and some choice words Time Warner agrees to listen to our recorded talk with the original quote and call us back with more information.  Thank god for my roommate Megan.  Her brother-in-law works for Time Warner and he was able to fix the wifi problem.  The solution: unplugging the router and plugging it back in. BAM! It works.  Over an hour spent on the phone with Time Warner and not once did they come up with this solution! As well as lying about not having wifi and trying to charge us even more money to fix their mistakes.  Moral of the story is that living on our own continues to be an adventure and living in the small village of Ada does not allow a lot of variety for services like this! (How I wish we could have AT&T!)  But we are smarter and less gullible with ever encounter we have that our parents would usually be in charge of!

FYI: We are still waiting for Time Warner to call back.  That was 3 days ago.

Too much social media?

I read a blog earlier today about people believing there is too much social media and too much is being shared with it.  The author said that 4 billion things are posted on Facebook every day.  That seems like a big number but when you stop and think about how many people in the world have Facebook and even if everyone just posted one thing per day that would be quite a large number. That isn't even taking into account people that are on Facebook throughout the day posting more than one thing.  I might be a little bias seeing as how I am a 21 year old college student. But I have Facebook and Twitter and I check them multiple times a day.  My generation is one that has been raised with computers.  We feel comfortable with social media and texting.  My roommates and I just moved in to our house a week ago and we haven't gotten our internet set up yet.  Anytime that any of us set foot in to an academic building with wifi we practically jump for joy!  We like to feel connected whether that is checking on our friends back home or just seeing what our classmates are up to when we aren't with them.  We have grown accustomed to the feeling of connection and information and the thought of life without it can seem downright lonely. Call it what you will. Pathetic or unnecessary but never before has there been this much information available to us at the click of a button.  I don't see how too much information could ever be seen as a bad thing.  Be smart about what you post and use the information to your advantage. We could all use a little more information from time to time.


Here is the link to the blog ----->   http://soshable.com/are-we-sharing-too-much-on-social-media/

New Rules of Marketing and PR

I really thought that chapter 5 "The New Rules of News Releases" was an interesting chapter. Press releases are such a big part of public relations.  With press releases having such a big role in the profession it only makes sense that they would evolve from releases from a pr practitioner to a media source to being posted online for all of the public to see.  As I'm sure everyone knows just recently Steve Jobs resigned from Apple.  Had this happened say 20 years ago the general public like you and I would not have been able to simply go to apple's website and view it. The release would've gone from Apple to a media source and we would have eventually found out via the media.

With a direct line from the company to the public I think that public relations can be more effective in their goal of two way communication.  The press release is now referred to as the news release according to the author David Scott.  This name better implies that that the release is sent out as it's basic form, news.  The news release is sent out all the time instead of just when big things are happening. I think this is a great idea because if the public is investing in your company they want to know what is going on all the time. The public doesn't want to just hear from you when something great has happened or even worse, when something terrible has happened.  With these new ideas developing everyday I think pr is becoming one of the most progressive careers of my generation. We are taking the old ideas of brilliant people and making them even better.

Living at the 429

Alright guys, so this year four of my friends and I are renting a house in Ada. It is our first time living off campus and we also have a new addition to our living situation. Last year four of us were living together in a apartment on campus and we have added our friend Ben as our fifth roommate. If you are asking yourself how this relates to life at ONU I'll explain. College is all about growing up and becoming responsible and experiencing things you never have before. SO....living in a huge house without your parents helping you out is exciting and scary all at the same time! It's only been a week of living there and so much has happened! The most recent was a bat. Our Saturday night unfortunately was spent mostly trying to get the bat out of the upstairs of the house! It sounds easy but it is a ridiculous process. It took seven of us and there were plastic bags, broomsticks, foil balls and extremely large comforters involved. Needless to say we finally got him out and are hoping for no more surprises!! Our house is very large and very pretty but we have maybe the creepiest basement I've ever seen in my entire life. It goes for miles! So we have a had a few frightening nights dealing with that as well. Stories too embarrassing to go into on my first blog.

The other challenging thing different this year compared to last is being responsible for bills and rent. When you live on campus everything is included in your tuition so although you are paying a ton to be living in that nice apartment with the air turned down all the way to 65 you never see it actually come out of your wallet.  This year we have divided the bills up evenly so that every person has a bill in their name in order to keep things organized and help all of us earn credit.  This concept takes a lot of money management skills that I don't always have. So this is for sure something new to get used to.

Any other issues I can foresee is just keeping the house clean and everyone doing their part.  I think we have had a pretty good handle on the cleaning so far but then again it has only been a week. So we will see what will happen when it's week 9 and everyone is crazy busy!

Besides all the responsibility I'm having a blast so far and really what doesn't kill us makes us stronger! I think it's going to be an interesting and exciting year! I can't wait!