My First Webinar

For my professional social media presentation, I decided to attend a webinar. Unfortunately, many PR webinars require advanced registration, membership, or a really high fee ($329?? Don't these people know I'm a college student?). Luckily, PRSA has a bunch of free webinars posted on their sites and the beauty of it is that you don't even have to wait for a particular time for it to start, you can watch past ones too. So I watched "Accelerate Your Career In Public Relations: Steps You Can Take Now to Prepare for Your Future" which was originally held on Thursday, April 28 at 3PM EDT. 


The webinar was moderated by Jenny Schade, a former therapist that specializes in guiding employees and organizations through changes (such as this awful economy). The Panel of speakers included Robert Hastings, a senior vice president of communications at Bell Helicopter, and Mary Henige, the director of social media & digital communications for GM. It was really interesting and surprising that the moderator for this webinar was not actually a PR professional but a therapist. 


I really learned a lot from the webinar, some really surprising things in fact. Apparently, Schade found that through her sessions with different organizations' employees, people are actually thriving in this economy. I guess all it took was a scary downward spiral toward economic depression to light a fire under people's asses. Schade gave a few tips based on what she observed on how to protect your career in a chaotic economy which I will definitely follow....if I can get a job. 


This webinar also reinforced the fact that after graduating college and maybe gaining some real world PR experience, I should get accredited in Public Relations. Both panelists discussed how important getting accreditation and how it helped advance both of their careers. Overall, I'm really glad that I attended this webinar and I can hopefully use the advice they've given in real practice. 

The Biggest PR Trends of 2012

I get a lot of PR newsletters sent to my email and generally, while they all seem pretty interesting, I find myself not having the time to read all of them. However, today one headline caught my eye: "The Biggest PR, Marketing, and Communication Trends of 2012" 


As I plan on starting my post-grad (please, PLEASE don't make me graduate) job search in December, I find myself frantically reading anything and everything that can tell me how to make myself more attractive to employers and actually succeed in the crazy and competitive world of Public Relations. That means constantly being up-to-date on the newest and best practices in PR, so obviously I read this article. 


Trend #2: Decentralize Social Media, really popped out to me because we recently turned in our social media integration project and my paper focused on Best Buy. Best Buy is one of those companies that have completely absorbed the concepts of social media and internalized & integrated it into every aspect of their company. Unfortunately, they're one of the only ones. Too many companies have just a social media department, or worse, a social media intern. I'm really looking forward to seeing how 2012 brings complete structural overhauls in social media policies in companies. 


link: http://socialmediatoday.com/mynewsdesk/397789/pr-communication-and-marketing-trends-2012-part-1

Do Mobile Apps & Social Media Go Together?

My partner and I presented on mobile apps and how it relates to social media recently. The fact of the matter is that mobile apps are taking over the world....or at least the internet. Soon, our phones will overtake our PCs (& Macs) as the most popular way of accessing the internet. That's kind of cool, yet a little scary at the same time. 


With mobile phones, we use the internet for a purpose. Personally, I don't really browse sites when I'm feeling bored on my phone because I'm always doing something. If I use the internet on my phone, I'm always looking to find or do something specific. This can create a problem for a lot of companies. Just when they thought they'd started attracting consumers with enticing websites and other media, now there's the added obstacle of trying to do it on a 2x4 inch screen. 


It's also going to be really difficult for companies to attract consumers with their own mobile apps. People download apps for a certain purpose, whether it's a timewasting game such as Angry Birds or a cool feature to edit photos such as Instagram, people use mobile apps for themselves. Many companies have developed apps for their brand so consumers can keep up with their latest news and maybe play some silly game with their brand logo all over it. But despite all the money, time, and effort they put into developing these apps, they're coming to the realization that people aren't downloading it. The memory space on people's phones are important and they're just not going to throw it away on something stupid.

Making Press Releases Twitter Friendly

Last week, I posted about how a new study by PR Newswire & Crowd Factory found that press releases generate more views and attention when shared on Twitter. As a follow up to that, this week I found an interesting article on PRNewser on "Six Tips For Making Your Press Release Twitter Friendly." As upcoming public relations professionals, I think it's important for us to realize how the press release is changing and internalize these rules for success in the (ugh) real world. 


Here's a cliffnotes version of the tips:
1. "It starts with the headline" - headlines are incredibly important just for getting people interested in what you have to say. Even if you have the most exciting news ever, nobody's going to read about it if your headline doesn't attract their attention. With Twitter, the headline is something that should be somewhere around 120 characters.
2. Numbers, numbers, numbers - people like numbers, draw attention to them.
3. Make sub-stores tweetable - allow important points to be easily found and short & sweet to make it easier for people to share. 
4. "Hashtag properly" - make sure keywords & search terms are in the release. this is really important for SEO & for letting people know what you're talking about!
5. Make quotes tweetable - if you have quotes in your press release, make it more interesting by including the brand or person's twitter account!
6. Include multimedia - we discussed this in our post last week and it's pretty self explanatory. PR professionals need to be constantly up to date with new trends and methods to get people's attention. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many do you think a video is worth?


link: http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/six-tips-for-making-your-press-release-twitter-friendly_b30368

Search Engine Optimization - Blurring the Lines of PR Ethics?

Search Engine Optimization is one of those increasingly popular skills that many companies demand their PR agencies have. In fact, many agencies market this aspect of their offerings. With the onset of the Internet Revolution, search engines became increasingly popular. People needed a way to sift through all of the sites and webpages and easily find what they're looking for. Search engines primarily rank sites based on relevancy of what was searched. 


Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that PR agencies find their clients demanding, yet may not be the most ethical way of practicing public relations. Basically, Search Engine Optimization is a way for companies to pay to have their website show up higher up or more prominently on search engine results. What ends up happening is that the companies that have more money outranks the sites that may actually be useful to the searcher, which hurts the general public in the long run. Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about SEO ethically, but it's definitely one of those skills that a PR professional needs to have to get ahead in the industry.

Facebook vs. Twitter - The Battle of the Social Media Press Release

A new study by PR Newswire and Crowd Factory looks at the effectiveness of press releases shared on social media and what type of press releases are most effective. Personally, I feel that the study's findings were pretty much common sense if you understand the basics of these social media giants, but I felt that maybe I should share it with you all for future practices. 


Something that I thought was really important that I think all PR professionals should recognize is the finding that multimedia press releases generate more engagement than text-only press releases. It's no longer good enough to write a few paragraphs and expect people to read it and take notice, PR practitioners need to engage their audiences with text, photos, video, and audio messages. 

Wikipedia and what it means for corporate image

When you think about social media, Wikipedia is probably not the first thing that comes into mind. Many of us have used Wikipedia for school papers or just plain curiousity, but one thing is for sure, Wikipedia is taking over. With over 20 million articles in 10 different languages, Wikipedia has become social media's answer to the stuffy encyclopedias of old. Wikipedia is different in the sense that it allows anyone to contribute to the articles. While some articles are thoroughly researched with numerous references, others can be short, inaccurate, and most importantly, biased. 


This week's reading analyzed corporate image on Wikipedia. Due to the social aspect of Wikipedia, corporations are finding that it's becoming increasingly harder to control what is being said on this popular information resource. While Wikipedia as an organization takes strides to ensure that the information posted on the site is as accurate as possible, it doesn't necessarily mean that companies will be pleased with the results. Many companies are finding that certain information that they don't necessarily want getting out to the general public (such as scandals and past PR disasters) are being posted on this site, and there is nothing that they can do about it. With Wikipedia, a disgruntled employee has just as much say as a top level executive. If a PR professional is not careful and does not monitor these messages carefully and effectively, a simple Google search can lead to a company's biggest fans...or their biggest enemies.