Chris Brogan's 50 ideas

Reading Chris Brogans "50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business" shed some light on what is still the dark and scary world of social media. Ok, so I was being a bit melodramatic, so it's not dark and/or scary. But I'm still just a young pioneer in the vast plains of social media. But I digress. This article by Brogan pushed me from still being a skeptic of the micro-media giant known as Twitter to openly accepting it. Brogan neatly breaks down his tips into several sections, including "first steps," "what to tweet about" and "negatives."

What I like most about Brogan's article is that it offers a step-by-step "how to" on Twitter. What seems like a relatively simple social media tool can turn out to be pretty useless or even frustrating if you don't know how to use it. In my case, I'd have no idea what to tweet about. Brogan clears that up for me.

Whatever your question or concern about Twitter is, Brogan probably has an answer for you.

Women and Spirtuality Conference

Minnesota State University, Mankato will play host to the Women and Spirituality Conference on Oct. 31 in the MSU Centennial Student Union at 11 a.m. The guest speaker of the conference is Vadana Shiva.

Shiva, a leader in the ecofeminism movement, will open the conference by discussing "The Gendered Politics of Food." Shiva is notable for:

-Described by Time magazine as being an environmental hero

-Founding Navdanya, an organic farming movement

-Receiving the Alternative Nobel Prize and Earth Day International Award.

The conference has brought 1,000 people to campus and will include more than 100 workshops. Registration is required to attend. To register, go to the Gender and Women Studies Web site.

Blogging Relations

As Solis states, blogging is no longer for radical nut jobs or a bored teen telling you about how he "owned" on the last game of Halo 3. As the author states, it is much "than the composition of self-important 'ranters' or those merely publishing an online dairy." In PR 2.0, blogging has become a critical tool. As Deirdre Breakenridge stated in her blog "Web 2.0 technology combined with an audience’s desire to build and share content has transformed our industry. As a result, PR professionals are incorporating Web 2.0 resources into their brand’s PR strategy and planning for more targeted and impactful Web communication."

Blogging is becoming, or rather, has become, a new way for professionals to reach the public (NOT audience). It connects professionals one on one with those they are trying to reach. As Solis said, it humanizes the public, allowing PR people to connect with the greater public or to a niche community.

But we must remember that this is a two way street. We can put out information about our company in our blogs and the public will take notice. But we also must notice what the public says about it. Blogging democratizes information, and it'd be very foolish to ignore that.

proper ways to go about blogging:

-Make it clear what you're talking about
-Be professional
-Write to your public. Use vocabulary directed at them without using jargon

and the not so good:

-It isn't all about you. People don't want to keep on reading "I, me, myself" etc.
-Illegible text.
-Making it too flashy.
-Or on the flip side, making it too boring. It should catch the reader's eye, but not blind them.

PR and search engines

some might find this interesting, especially those who are interested in marketing as well

Public Relations and Search Engine Marketing


It's a little dry, but he offers some good tips, and deals it with this class as he discusses technology as a way to disburse info.

14 Attributes

After reading "14 key attributes for public relations professionals" by Dave Fleet, I've found that while I have some of the basics done, I still have a lot to work on. Number one that I'm somewhat worried about is communication skills. This isn't to say that I'm not able to communicate with others, or else I wouldn't have chosen this major in the first place. My problem is that I can be somewhat timid around those I don't know. This could obviously be a problem in the PR field, so somehow I'll have to deal with that. The second thing, which I've touched on in my previous post, is keeping up with the dizzying amount of technology.

I'd say that my strengths lie in my writing and work ethic.

Putting the PR back in...

After reading the first chapter, I found myself somewhat overwhelmed with tips, hints and do's and do not's. I've come to the conclusion (which you may or may not agree with) that this book was written for people who already have a foot in the industry. Of course, that's not a bad thing, and after I managed to figure out some of the jargon, I did find much of it helpful, if not a little confusing at first.

What I like about the book is that the authors make it clear that this is not a book to point fingers, but to give advice on how to advance the PR industry into the burgeoning era of social media.

some points I found most interesting

-Don't speak in messages

-DON'T spin. The point of PR is not to sell, but inform

-Communicate regularly

-Stay intune with social media. As the authors put it, this is a social industry, so social media is becoming increasingly important.

While I found the book informative, it also gave me some worries. How am I going to be able to keep up with all this? I guess I'd better stock up on red bull.

Bing brings new search feature

According to Mashable.com Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, has launched a new way to search. The aptly named "visual search" will allow a user to go through a grid of images, allowing the user to search even if they don't remember the name of whatever it was they were looking for. The visual search breaks the images up by category, making the search relatively user friendly. According to mashable, the feature is "powered by Silverlight, and the content for Visual Search is provided by several sources, one of them being MSN." What I'm looking forward to is Google's response to this challenge from Microsoft.

above is a screen shot of the main visual search page

Of Ethics

Today in class, we discussed ethics in PR, particularly in terms of research.

The class started off by going over the PRSA Code of Ethics. Then Ellen went over some basic principles of ethical research.

Some main points Ellen discussed:

-participants must be willing
-they can withdraw at any time
-they must understand what they're volunteering for
-info must remain confidential and anonymous (with extreme exceptions)

She also discussed what to do after said research was done. Sensitive information should be destroyed as soon as you're done with it and should remain confidential.

She also brought up an interesting scenario. What if the boss wants that information? Since the info is often the property of the company, you could end up in a sticky situation.

A not so great pitch

Today Ellen showed us some PR related sites. My personal favorite, being the cynic I am, was "The Bad Pitch Blog" which posts "what not to do" scenarios.

Web 2.0 or the more I see, the less I know

For our first assignment, we watched a youtube video entitled "the machine is us/ing us". This creative, and sometimes dizzying, video shows how the internet has exploded in what we can do with it.

We've gone beyond checking our email and looking at funny videos to having an average joe being able to share his ideas with the world and much, much more.

In watching this video, I realized how little I knew about the web, and how connected we've become with it. The video sums it up the best: we are the machine.

First blog post

This will be my first blog post. It's about a movie that we watched in class today. thanks ellen

just read the ny times