Social Media Revolution and YOU!

As I reach my twelfth blog post, I couldn't think of a better way to conclude than with this video about social media and how it has literally changed the world.
Over these past eleven blogs, I hope to have not only shown the importance of social media in Public Relations but in your everyday lives.
It's time to hop on board or get left behind... enjoy!!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8&feature=related

(Fun Fact: Some buses in Hawaii are called "Wiki Wikis" - "Quick Quick"!)

Social Media: Friend or Foe for Crisis Communication?

Once again, I'm relying on the insights of ragan.com to give me some inspiration for this post. This time the video touches on another area of PR that I love - issues management. It may seem crazy after all of the intense issues issues this semester but at the end of the day I can't think of another class where you need all of your key PR skills to be working together.

This video talks about how social media is posing a new problem for companies, corporations and business alike that don't have a viable crisis communication plan. What's happening to crisis communications is that social media is capturing the crises and posting them on the web faster than the official media sources can.

A clear, concise and well-communicated crisis plan can help to avoid the issues social media may cause. In the video they suggest using the Three 'P's for a crisis communications plan: Plan, Practice and Perform. Write a plan that will work for your company; have drills so that any problems can be ironed out before the crisis happens; and when the crisis happens, pull your communications strategies from your plan.

The video lists examples of how social media affects crisis communications and an example of crisis communication gone wrong. Click HERE to watch.

Utilizing lazy verbs does not facilitate strong writing - Confused?

In another insightful video post from ragan.com, I've found another topic to blog about - LAZY VERBS. From being in specialized writing for public relations for three semesters now, our class really has developed an obsession with words. It's really incredible how powerful the right words can be - and how disappointing it is when you see words fall flat. In the online world, words are at the core of making a first impression. Use the wrong ones and a potential employer may not even notice you (NYC? Am I using the right words?).

In this short video, Mark explains that these 'lazy verbs" - utilize, facilitate, optimize - could mean 30 different things or mean nothing at all. He explains that powerful words should be doing the work for you. Words create images and you want to put people right in the middle of your messages.

TEACH

LAUNCH

I bet you can visualize what each of these words implies - that's the point of using powerful verbs.

Check out the full video HERE and start packing a powerful punch with your verbs!

Dig your well before you're thirsty

On twitter, I follow Mark Ragan, CEO of ragan.com - one of my new favorite web pages. Ragan.com is a website for communicators of any shape or form. There are videos, articles, links to blogs - everything a PR student could ask for all in one place. I always find his tweets interesting and relevant to the current PR environment.

This time around, I found an interview that Mark Ragan did with Chuck Hester, a communicator and LinkedIn expert.

There are many really helpful hints that Chuck points out on how to maximize your LinkedIn account - here are a few that stood out for me.

- Community and connecting is what social media is all about. LinkedIn starts these connections and conversations. Use your current connections to help others and they may in turn come back and help you (Hello? NYC internship?).

- The old media relations rules still apply for LinkedIn - don't expect coverage from your conversations. It's about being a source not a nuisance.

- Connect with connectors. This couldn't be more true in my case. Through LinkedIn, my connection with the CEO at The Children's Museum has lead me to a conversation with someone who may be able to help me find my coveted internship... You better believe I'm going to keep up this conversation!

- Chuck explains that you should use LinkedIn to work like an information interview. Don't use LinkedIn like a job bank - sure it can help you connect with employers, but remember it's more about starting conversations than seeming needy. "Dig your well before you're thirsty"

Check out the full video HERE and see what useful information you can use from this interview!

Comedic Relief

I thought I would use today's post to provide a little comedic relief. As funny as some of these points are, there are hidden truths in each of the statements. While I'm completely obsessed and don't think I'll ever tire of social media, it's interesting to read why some people haven't jumped on the social media PR bandwagon. It sure is a disconnected connected world out there!

I found this list on ragan.com and I wish I could take credit for their wit.

25 Reasons Why We're Sick of Social Media...

1. We can now only communicate face-to-face with people in 140 character blasts.

2. It’s only a matter of time before those drunken office holiday photos surface online.

3. Keeping up with the Joneses is harder now because we have to keep up with the Joneses’ blogs.

4. Too many passwords to remember for each account.

5. We’ve got only six people following us on Twitter. Our self-esteem is at an all-time low.

6. Everybody seems to be talking about how great LinkedIn is for networking. The only people we know on LinkedIn are our co-workers.

7. When we go to a networking event with human beings, we wear our name tag on our left-hand side and give a limp fish handshake. We’ve forgotten how to interact with real people.

8. We can't remember the last time we wrote a letter. It’s hard to remember how to hold a pen correctly.

9. Our grammatical muscles spasm when we use the words “Tweeted” and “Facebooked” in casual conversation.

10. Even though our co-worker is less than three feet away, we haven’t spoken to each other in seven months. Thanks, G-chat.

11. Since we’ve been doing so much typing, our fingers have mutated to the size of a Kielbasa.

12. We can’t tell north from south after we downloaded the Google Maps application on our iPhone.

13. We have nightmares about losing our BlackBerry.

14. People always want to know where we are, but last week we Tweeted during a colonoscopy.

15. We invited 651 people to a party. We got 21 replies. Only four showed up.

16. Like our relationship status on Facebook, we find ourselves saying “It’s Complicated” to every business situation that presents itself.

15. Life would be better if we could add five hours to our day. Not for time with our family or friends, but for spending more time on all the social media sites we’re addicted to.

16. We call all the time we spend on social media sites “networking” or “business.” Well, at least that’s how we justify it when we check and see who our high school sweetheart is dating.

17. We change our profile pictures, interests, and activities on Facebook at least twice per week. Perhaps we should change our religion status to solipsism.

18. We need to be instantly validated—we ate a tuna salad sandwich for lunch! Now, it’s time to blog about it.

19. We don’t bother asking our co-workers what they did this weekend. There’s no point—we read about it on Twitter.

20. Our social workload is rapidly becoming another 40-hour-per-week occupation. But this one isn’t paid.

21. Forget sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. Now it’s all about Twittering like crazy, downing nine Red Bulls and stuffing our face with Power Bars.

22. We’re more excited that we learned how to re-Tweet and reply on Twitter than we were at the compliment we got this morning from our boss.

23. Work now reminds us of the movie Wall-E: people moving around on hover chairs and communicating through computer screens in front of their face.

24. The only way we can start a conversation is by asking, “What Are You Doing?”

25. One of our Facebook “friends” asks us to write 25 Random Things About Yourself. We’re tired of typing after two.

Have what it takes?

As I continue to search for my dream internship in New York City (Hello? Are you out there?), I'm always looking for ways to help me stand out and keep my skills relevant and unique. I stumbled on this article from Edelman, an international public relations agency, (and definitely a company I could see myself working for one day) that conveniently talks about how to get hired at Edelman. The article provides tips on everything from resumes to education to portfolio perfection.

It's exciting to hear from an Edelman senior recruitment manager that what I have been preparing for my personal PR is all highlighted in her expectations. Once again what jumps out at me from the interview is the importance of having a strong online and social media presence.

Enjoy the article, study the tips and good luck on your own job searches!

Click HERE to read the full article.

Call the PR Machine

What caught my eye about this article is that it addresses the growing trend of big businesses and companies moving away from traditional advertising and moving towards new media marketing. In this article they refer to what I have called new media marketing as "earned media". What this means is companies that perfected the "paid media"(ads, billboards and print advertising) such as Disney and Paramount are now relying on free coverage in magazines, newspapers and blogs through PR expertise. Coming from a PR department, the same messages seem more credible than when they come from advertisements - the messages seem less loaded.

Once again this article talks about the all too familiar Facebook and Twitter phenomenon of "earned media". These sites have changed the game for big media outlets. Everyone is online and now business are signing on to where their biggest audience is.

Sometimes I think it's interesting to read about and follow how business are treating this new wave of marketing and advertising. When I first started using Facebook, I couldn't have imagined it would have turned into such a critical business tool - as I'm sure the creators couldn't have imagined either. While everyone is trying to perfect their "earned media" skills, I believe that we all still have to be wary of how far to take it. PR is still misunderstood with words such as flack, spin doctor and cover-ups, being used to describe our strategic skills and applications. Even with the proven success of earned media, we should be wary of where the line should be drawn for pseudo-events and staging silly stunts that will only encourage the stereotypes.

Universal's executive vice-president of publicity, Michael Moses, said it best,"You've got to remain responsible with your resources while continually finding new ways for your campaigns to stand out."

Check out the full article HERE

Transforming the traditional

This article was forwarded to me by the CEO of The Children's Museum (where I work doing various PR projects). It's an article talking about how the Chicago Field Museum used text messaging as a marketing tool for their Real Pirates Exhibit.

This unique campaign generated over 7,000 interactions and built anticipation for the exhibit before, during and after the run of the exhibit. The article explains in detail the success and newness of this dynamic PR tool.

I've worked at The Children's Museum for just over a year now and over the summer I had the opportunity to sit in on planning meetings for upcoming exhibits and re-branding strategies. The Museum is an exciting place to work because it is in a transitional period - in their sixth year, they are looking at ways to continually bring in ground-breaking exhibits for the Region while exploring different PR opportunities.

Once again, the success of a 21st century tool serves as an example of the power of social media. The simplicity of a text message made all the difference in the success of the Real Pirates exhibit in Chicago.

Check out the full article HERE

From paper to posting... Whyhire.me?

Seems as though the news isn't the only medium making the virtual switch... Resumés are now more interactive than ever.

In my fall edition of the Carleton Alumni Magazine, alumni Patti Church talks about the five best ways you can pull together your online brand:

- Flickr
- Linkedin
- Twitter
- Video
- Blogging

Surely all of us have heard these names before and why they are so important for personal PR - but have you harnessed all of their power?

Patti Church is the co-founder of WhyHire.Me - an website where you can pull together your online brand and give your resumé a digital makeover. Patti's website melds academic and professional experience with social media. She knows that "a piece of paper is not going to do the job in this economy".

Navigating WhyHire.Me is extremely easy and they practice what they preach - the website features videos, blogs and photos to really drive their message home.

If you've never visited this website, check it out and get your resumé online!

Click here to go to WhyHire.Me

How to get to Sesame Street

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of this iconic children's television show, I was reminded of a paper I wrote at Carleton University for my Television course. If I remember correctly, the assignment was to talk about a television show/series and why its production method (public or private) was used. Not only is this a fitting paper for today, but also during a time when the private vs. public television wages on. Enjoy (it's a tad long)!

Sunny day
Sweepin’ the clouds away,
On my way
To where the air is sweet.
Can you tell me how to get,
How to get to Sesame Street?

-Theme from “Sesame Street”

In the late 1960’s television for preschoolers had become “a vast wasteland”, with the content of programs hardly displaying educational value, if any at all. Joan Ganz Clooney, producer for a local television station in New York City, began to question if it was possible to create a new way to produce a children’s television series. “How to get to Sesame Street?” – More importantly how to get to a children’s program that can not only be educational but entertaining for all preschool children. With support from the Carnegie Corporation, and a few others, Sesame Street was born. Yet it is not only the Muppets, or cheerful actors that Sesame Street is celebrated, “Sesame Street, virtually single-handedly, put public television on the map for millions of Americans. Before, public television was a service used by a small segment of the population, usually the better educated and more affluent members. Sesame Street changed this drastically; the show appealed to children and adults from every part of society.” (Lesser, 1974) Throughout this paper, it will become evident that due to the specific conditions of production, Sesame Street became, according to former Vice President Al Gore, “the crowning jewel of [the public broadcasting system]” (Allen & Hill, 2004).

“To promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the U.S.” This was Andrew Carnegie’s ambition for his Carnegie Corporation that he described in 1911. Therefore it is not surprising that in June 1966, when Carnegie Corp. had a burgeoning interest in the education and intellectual development of young children as a way to eliminate inequality of opportunity (Lesser, 1974), they made a grant for a study of educational television programs for preschool children, to be administered by Joan Ganz Clooney from WNDT, a local educational television station (Lesser, 1974). With this grant Clooney was able to conduct a 14-18 week study searching for a way to blend education and entertainment for preschoolers. Clooney held that: “The planners of the project insisted that the show be designed not merely as a broadcast series but as an experimental research project that would bring together educational advisors, researchers and television producers as equal partners” (Polsky, 1974).

The search for an executive producer for such a program proposed by Clooney, ended in April 1968 when David Connell from Captain Kangaroo, signed on with the research project. Connell was drawn away from directing back to children’s programming because of a lurking hope that this project might be able to achieve something useful to young children (Lesser, 1974).

In the fall of 1969, Carnegie Corp., along with the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Office of Education, the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) was created. The CTW was an innovation for children’s programming because it “demonstrated that millions of children, disadvantaged as well as middle-class, can be taught cognitive skills through the medium of television” (Lesser, 1974). Their goal was to create a show that was “primarily intellectual in content but used entertainment as a vehicle and have special concern for the problems of the disadvantaged child” (Lesser, 1974); this goal being the resonating theme of Clooney’s research.

“It was apparent that a commercial station or network would never invest in the production and air time, at the right times of day, that such a program would cost…” (Lesser, 1974). Commercial television spends enormous sums to produce its slick, fast-paced programs, and a series with educational goals would need the same well-produced, expensive appearance to compete for the children’s attention therefore, Clooney and her team decided that instead of following the public-television tradition of timidly pleading for funds for educational projects, they decided that they would either obtain enough funding to go all out or would drop the project completely (Polsky, 1974). Harold Howell, the Education Minister, wrote in a memo stating: “It strikes me that this project represents a fine opportunity for government foundation cooperation to solve a major human problem” (Lesser, 1974). Carnegie was cautious in recognizing that if they accepted more than 50% of the funding from the federal government, they would want a greater hand in the nature of the project” (Lesser, 1974). CTW was going to show television producers that commercial means can be adapted successfully to educational ends.

The lessons learned from Sesame Street demonstrate that it is possible consciously to use television directly to educate children. Public television could therefore be more than something to be endured; it could be attractive, understandable and hip (Lesser, 1974). One of the most notable and innovative successes of public television through the example of Sesame Street was how “the project proved, conclusively, that middle-class and disadvantaged preschool children can learn specific cognitive sills from television and from the same television show” (Lesser, 1974). Due to the roots in the societal goal of equality of opportunity in which children’s programmes were established, they were compelled to reach a large, multiethnic, cross-class audience (Allen & Hill, 2004). For young, disadvantaged children, their impoverished environment may have already affected learning, even before entering school. Television perhaps can help to prepare poor children to take advantage of the education that exists (Polsky, 1974). For example, in a deliberate attempt to stress the importance of providing characters with which inner-city children would identify, the decision was made to cast a black couple (Polsky, 1974).

“For those involved in public television, Sesame Street demonstrated that public TV could attract and hold a mass audience because of the ascension of Sesame Street into American Culture” (Lesser, 1974). The undeniable connection between the success of Sesame Street and public broadcasting demonstrates one of the first examples of how commercial ideas and educational goals can produce an iconic design, specifically in this case for children’s programming. This was the first case where public television became elevated in the public’s eye, whether the audience was a middle-class family or a disadvantaged one. Educators and producers set the curriculum goals together and tailored them towards television; “Our Sesame Street experience suggests that we …can teach children to take another person’s point of view; to cooperate by combining resources, taking turns or dividing labour; to understand certain rules that ensure justice and fair play, such as sharing and reciprocity” (Polsky, 1974) – and now you know how to get to Sesame Street.

Students Teaching Executives? Social Media Demands It!

We've all heard it before - social media is the new frontier for businesses. This is music to the ears of any recent (or soon to be) graduate of communications or PR. We know that Twitter and Facebook aren't just for keeping every single person we've ever known up to speed on our activites. We know that these social media tools can help build our networks and lead us to jobs.
In the article "PR Students Need to Learn Social Media Business Strategies", Sally Falkow, a social media strategist, discusses just how valuable our knowledge of social media can be to our future employers. While some senior managers may find being taught by someone half their age a tough pill to swallow, the practice is becoming more and more common - which means proving our value is more important than ever.
"Communication schools need to prepare their students so that not only can they deliver their personal knowledge of the digital world, but actually integrate that knowledge into a communication strategy." This blog, for example, is a result of an assignment for my personal PR class. At The Children's Museum in Kitchener where I work, I'm responsible for managing Facebook ads for some of our events and managing our Facebook page - we also have a Twitter account.
The honeymoon phase is over for our current varieties of social media - it's time to start putting them to work!

Here's the link to the article: www.proactivereport.com/c/pr/pr-students-need-to-learn-social-media-business-strategies/

Where we're headed...

Searching for content for my first blog post I came across an article on the future of PR. It's a study done by PRSA talking about the future of PR in light of the ever-changing face of communications and social media. What this article suggests is that the future of PR will be marked by three topics: (i) justifying return on investment (ii) fighting to stay current with the latest technologies and methodologies and (iii) managing the ever-expanding channels of communications.

“Social media tools will continue to change and evolve – we should not get stuck on a particular tool but be flexible and put our strategy to work on the appropriate platform.” - PRSA member and survey respondent

This article stood out to me - not only because I agree with what it suggests - but because it seems to present a challenge to PR practioners. In our media-saturated world, these findings challenge us to develop innovative strategies and execute creative tactics. I believe that we are in the middle of the most exciting time of communication - everyday PR practioners are learning new ways to harnass the power of media. We practice in an industry that demands flexibility and the growing popularity of social media has forced PR practitioners to bend over backwards trying to tap into its potential.
I think these findings (i-iii) outline an accurate guideline on how to proceed in our media-saturated world. We can't tell where technology will take us next but we have the power now to change our approach to what comes our way.


Here's the link to the article: http://steveradick.com/2009/11/07/prsa-members-shed-light-on-future-of-public-relations/