Blogger Awards

Being apart of this course has exposed me to a number of different PR, social media and journalism-related blogs. I’m pretty sure I could spend all day blog surfing. I love learning, especially from professionals themselves. But, since I’m a full-time college student, my dream about spending my days reading what other people have to say  is simply that: a dream. I’ve found a few blogs that I rely upon to get the information I need from and that feature posts on a variety of topics.

That being said, my favorite professional blog that I read this semester is PR Daily. Semester after semester, PR Daily always remains my favorite. Why? First of all, PR Daily features articles on a number of topics. It gives me a good overview of industry trends and happenings. PR Daily makes it easy for readers to subscribe to their daily posts, so the information comes to me instead of having to go to it. Also, as I reach my senior year, I find PR Daily’s job postings helpful. I think the thing I love most about PR Daily is that not a day goes by when a guest blogger isn’t featured.  I’ve discovered so many bloggers, so when I do actually have time to dedicate to reading blogs, I never run out of posts to browse. Keep it comin’, PR Daily.

Not only is my favorite student blogger from this semester a lovely PR lady, but she’s also a good friend of mine. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading Elizabeth Telg‘s blog Eliza Says. Her voice shines so brilliantly through her writing. I love that her readers truly get an inside look into her life. She does a great job of showing that she’s a human just like everyone else, which is great for establishing relationships between herself and her readers, as well as other bloggers. She posts about things other than PR, which makes her blog that much more enjoyable to read. Plus, she’s just as obsessed with Pinterest as I am. What’s better than that?

If you’re looking for some quality blogs to read, I highly recommend those I reviewed in today’s post, as well as the numerous others featured on my blogroll and a post I published a while back.

Who are some of your favorite bloggers? I’d love to hear about them.

Content Rules :: Chapters 2 & 3

In the first part of my series on Content Rules, I shared with you a few points from chapter one of the book from Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman. In this post, I’m moving on to chapters two and three:

Image Credit: "2" by Leo Reynolds

• The Content Rules:

1. Embrace being a publisher.
2. Insight inspires originality.
3. Build momentum.
4. Speak human.
5. Reimage; dont’ recycle.
6. Share or solve; don’t shill.
7. Show; don’t just tell.
8. Do something unexpected.
9. Stoke the campfire.
10. Create wings and roots.
11. Play to your strengths.

• Just like good journalism, good content strategy focuses on the story you have to tell and the audience you are trying to attract. These fundamental five W’s will help you focus on your customers, their needs, their preferences, and so on. Unlike journalism, though, your content strategy should begin with the why:

Image Credit: "3" by Leo Reynolds

1. Why are you creating the content you’re creating? (What are your goals?)
2. Who is your audience? And who are you?
3. What do you want the content to achieve?
4. When and how are you going to develop the content?
5. Where are you going to publish?

• Without a strategic plan…you are doomed to fail.
• This exercise will help you determine why you are creating content…and what content will best suit your audience’s needs:

1. Whom are you trying to reach?
   
2. Where do they spend their time online?
3. How do they access the Web?
4. What are they craving?
5. What do you want them to do?
6. What content do you already have?

• At the start of any campaign or initiative, you should ask one simple question: How will we measure success?
• In addition to having a sense of your objectives and your audience, it’s equally important to have a sense of your own company’s unique voice.

Next week we’ll be taking a look at Chapter 4: Who are you?

What have you learned so far? How do you plan to use this information to better your methods of creating content?

Content Rules :: Chapter 1

In one of my last posts I shared with you a presentation I gave on Content Rules. I loved the book so much that over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing what stood out to me in each chapter. I hope you learn as much as I did and that you’ll decide to purchase the book to have a copy of your own.

I’m kicking off the series with a few take-aways from chapter 1:

Image Credit: "1" by Leo Reynolds.

• Why are companies like Kodak and Sears…bothering to invest so much in online content? Because it’s both efficient and increasingly imperative that companies create online content as a cornerstone of their marketing.
• Your key to igniting sales is to create online content and optimize it so that it appears on the first page of search results when your customers search for you or the products or services you sell.
• Content is a broad term that refers to anything created and uploaded to a web site: the words, images, tools, or other things that reside there.
• Done right, the content you create will position your company not as just a seller of stuff, but as a reliable source of information.
• Unlike other kinds of marketing, content marketing “doesn’t have an expiration date,” Jay Baer says.
• Regard your content as something  more: as something other than just words and images on a page– as an extension of your brand.
• Engaging with people is how your company will survive and thrive in this newly social world.
• Those who produce content like keyword-rich YouTube videos, blog posts, articles, and so on, consistently show up on the first page of search results for their targeted keywords.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Check back next week to read about chapter two.

Viral Videos: Videos You Just Can’t Help But Watch

Viral videos have become an important part of social media and businesses’ marketing plans. There are some products, messages and ideas that are just better expressed visually and that’s where viral videos come in.

Viral videos are great for gaining businesses publicity, but what exactly makes a video go viral?

According to an interview Michael Stelzner, of Social Media Examiner, conducted with Scott Stratten, author of Un-Marketing, people spread emotion.

“Why companies’ videos don’t go viral is because they make it about them,” said Stratten.

He explained that companies need to get rid of the commercial aspect and push their brand more than anything. Stratten also pointed out that companies should ensure that their videos are sharable and can be viewed on mobile phones.

In a TED Talk, YouTube Trends manager Kevin Allocca claimed that there are three characteristics that viral videos have in common:

1. Tastemakers- tastemakers introduce us to new and interesting things, and bring them to a bigger audience.

2. Communities of Participation- formed when tastemakers take a point of view and share it with a larger audience, accelerating the process.

3. Unexpectedness- only that which is truly unique and unexpected can stand out.

This is just one of the viral videos that have stolen my heart.

The creator of this video wasn’t selling a product or pitching a service. He was simply sharing a moment he had with his daughter. This dad who was currently unemployed received a rejection letter for a job he applied for. As he started to rip it up, his daughter giggled and the rest is history. He truly captured emotion and touched the hearts of millions of viewers. Bravo.

This video doesn’t have nearly as many views, but I think it touches one of the three characteristics Allocca discussed.

The granddaughter of this older couple who was trying to figure out their new webcam knew what she was doing when she uploaded the recording to YouTube. They certainly didn’t expect to be recorded or featured on the news for their hilarious banter. I’d have to say that the best part of this video is that they were completely themselves.

What viral videos are your favorite? What makes them memorable?

Going Solo Using your PR Skills

The guest speaker for our February 2012 SEU FPRA Meeting was one of my good friends Tiffany Ellis.  Besides serving as a communications specialist for Polk County Public Schools, she also owns a photography, video, graphic design and event planning company. I look up to Tiffany for what she has accomplished so far in her professional life so I was excited to see what she had to say about PR students using their skills to go solo. Below are a few take-aways from the presentation Tiffany gave:

Tiffany and her her husband, Clint.

• Look at the skills you have to offer.
• Take advantage of every opportunity even if it seems ridiculous and you feel like you don’t have time.
• Find others who are considered professionals in your local area and study their work. Model yourself after them.
• Determine what’s your objective of going solo– make some extra money, build your business, build your portfolio?
• Make it legal. Get your business license.
• Brand yourself. Create a logo and have samples of your work to show off.
• Use professionalism at all times. This includes having your business card handy.
• You need to get updates on how you’re doing, so prepare for an evaluation and provide your customers with tools they can use to give you feedback.
• Service is a “safe place” to build your experience. Put your skills to work in ministry. You’re always needed.

To see samples of Tiffany’s work and learn more about her services, visit her blog.

Trade Book Presentation :: Content Rules

I’ve had to face my fear of giving presentations (what kind of PR major am I?) lately and one of those instances included using the three-pronged approach to present my experience reading Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman. Below is the Powerpoint I used to facilitate what I wanted to convey to fellow students and what I elaborated on for each point.

1. What did you learn?

*Content is king.

Original, interesting and relevant content is what drives people to blogs and websites maintained by businesses. Businesses have to offer information not found anywhere else. The monopoly they have on content will send people to their sites and blogs, which will ultimately increase sales and recommendations.

2. What surprised you?

*Know your audience.

In order to create relevant content, businesses need to know their audience(s). Before I read this book, the task of getting to know one’s audience(s) seemed daunting, so one thing that surprised me is the simplicity of the six questions Handley and Chapman say businesses should ask themselves when trying to determine who they should target.

3. What do you want to learn more about?

*This means war.

This is all well and good, but if you don’t work for a company that sees the importance of creating good content, then none of it matters. What I want to learn more about is how to convince one’s supervisors to jump on the content rules bandwagon.

All of this being said, I’d highly recommend this book.

What social media books have you read lately? Which of them would you recommend to others? What did you learn from them? I’d love to hear from you.

Widgets, Badges, and Gadgets, Oh My!

With the creation of social media came a whole new set of vocabulary words to describe what we see happening on Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools on a daily basis. Talk about social media optimization (SEO), klout scores and algorithms can get confusing. For that reason, in this post, I am going to shed some light on two concepts: widgets and badges.

Image Credit: "Snow Accumulation on the Dashboard Weather Widget" by Teo

According to Hubspot Blog, “a widget is an element of a graphical user interface that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or text box.” Widgets are often times confused with gadgets. Webopedia reports that there are three types of widgets: web, desktop and mobile. Web widgets are designed for websites and blogs. They include clocks, calendars, headlines, etc. Desktop widgets are self-explanatory– they are designed to run on your desktop. Mobile widgets are smaller versions of desktop widgets that are designed to run on your mobile phone instead of your computer.

According to The Social Media Guide, a badge is “an image, usually squared and displayed on a blog, which signifies the blogger’s participation in an event, contest, or social movement.” First Page Sage adds that “individuals can…use the badge to place a link back to their site for other users and followers. Badges can also be seen as tiny, thin bars that advertise a particular social bookmarking service.”

One organization I am involved in, the Florida Public Relations Association (FPRA), can use widgets on their site to make it easy for users to look at dates, search the site and keep up with the organization’s tweets. The Dick Pope/Polk County FPRA Chapter can use badges to advertise their upcoming Carillon Classic 5K Run & Walk, as well as link to their social media sites and the state chapter’s website.

What are some of your favorite widgets and badges? How are you using them on your site or blog? What new widgets would you like to see created? I would love to hear what you have to say.