Written by: Erica Jackson As I sat down and thought about what to write a blog post on for the UAB PRCA/PRSSA site, I, of course, started with a google search. Many great options came up and I’ve drafted a few of them but then this one appeared and it felt like a great way to start the semester. Welcome back to school, everyone. I hope you had as restful a summer as you could and you are rested and ready to take on another semester. Some of you, reading this post, are just beginning your pr studies at UAB and you have such a fun journey to embark one. Others, like myself, have done their PR course studies and are finishing up and hoping to graduate soon. So, when this post idea popped up, it seemed like the natural way to get this blog series going. What caused me to choose pr as my focus of study at UAB? This is not a quick answer but instead one that actually came from years of doing different things that interested me and finding out that they all tie back into this field. Here is a brief taste of the journey that led me to where I am right now. I participated in journalism during my high school career with hopes to work as one someday but as I grew older and the papers all closed down or lessened their publishing amounts, I grew wary of the possibility of a career. This was a huge hit to my potential career path but I continued on as an undeclared college student when my parents though I might have what it takes for Nursing School. We don’t need to get into the details regarding this attempt but the short version is that Nursing was not a field for me. As I wandered down this path and tried to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up, I realized that my biggest interests involved movies, TV, music, celebrities and the overall entertainment industry. The rise of social media in my years after high school graduation only increased my interest in this world. I did not aspire to be on the screens or inside the radio but the person who helps those people do what they do and maybe someday write the scripts they read. I began to look into the careers of publicists and others like that when fate stepped in to take the reins on my future. I mentioned above that the movie/TV world is close to my heart and among that industry lies my real passion, terrible shark movies. Jaws will always be the only shark movie that matters but sometimes one just done terribly enough to be amazing comes along. In 2013, that magic happened in the form of a well known SyFy film titled Sharknado. This movie was the epitome of terrible done well and it is soon to be a cult classic if it isn’t already. My story really starts here in the moments of live tweeting my first viewing of this film. As I watched, I chose my favorite character (something I always do) and that person was Baz, played by Jaason Simmons. During the film, I sent a tweet to the actor regarding how much I loved his character and he responded. That one tweet launched a relationship I have with this actor. We now have each other’s phone numbers and communicate regularly but it all began because he noticed that my tweets involved petitioning for his character to come back for the second film and he reached out to me to help him run some fan sites along with a campaign to ‘Bring Back Baz’. This is where my true passion for PR began and I loved running the Facebook posts and Tweets for this mission and in the end, he was offered the role but scheduling conflicts caused him to decline. What matters most in this story is that Jaason Simmons and Sharknado led me to my future as silly as that may sound. After running that campaign in conjunction with my earlier research, pr was my obvious choice for my future. The classes at UAB have only increased my excitement regarding my future along with broadening my scope of jobs that are available to those in our field. A pr degree can take you anywhere and as Dr. Shaia taught me, take your classes as a chance to learn but also as an opportunity to make connections and soak up everything you can like a sponge. Public relations is a field that can take you almost anywhere in the world or job force and it’s exciting to think about. So fellow members or future members of UAB PRCA/PRSSA, what was your moment that made you decide pr was the job for you?
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Written by: Chelsey Jordan Whether you realize it or not, your social media communicates a message to your audience. It’s your brand, and it can be the deciding factor on whether or not employers hire you. We started our blog series with the advantages and disadvantages of social media for business but it also affects us on a personal level so we our continuing with that line of thought. Branding is no longer about recognizing a logo: a classic swoosh, a half-bitten apple, the golden arches, but more about how you present yourself and whether people want to engage. Last night during our first UAB PRSSA/PRCA meeting, we held a panel of four professionals in the Birmingham area: Marie Sutton with UAB Student Affairs, Nick Goudreau creator of Birmingham Box, Catie Bell with Lewis Communications and Chasiti Shepherd with BGrace Media. Here are a few tips they shared on how to use social media as a branding tool. Start now “Don’t be afraid to work for free,” encouraged Marie. The best way to get ahead is to start creating your brand now and offer to help businesses build theirs. By volunteering to manage organizations’ social media, you are gaining experience on crafting messages in a way that engages an audience and produces results. Tip: Find opportunities in what you’re already involved in—sororities, academic clubs, churches etc. Know your audience Don’t waste your time talking to the wrong person. Know who your audience is and what they care about. These key factors help decide which social media outlet you need to channel your energy. Nick shared how his tweets weren’t gaining nearly as much audience engagement as Facebook. Instead of sending tweets of Instagram pictures, he chose to focus on increasing his Facebook and Instagram presence and saw more success. Tip: Research where you get the most interactions (likes, follows, reposts) and optimize on that platform. Keep your opinion to yourself, or don’t Some times being unapologetically opinionated works for your brand while other times it can put you at risk. Marie, Catie and Chasiti all agreed that they monitor what they post on their personal page for the sake of their business brand. “Because of my position…I am very careful on what I say even on my personal page because it can affect me down the road,” cautioned Marie, “I have a very diverse audience that are watching what I say, even on a personal level.” Nick, however, says combining both his business and personal brand is how he connects with clients. They want to know who he is and what he thinks. Tip: Understand your position and know what’s appropriate for your listeners. Takeaway Be it a tweet about your latest musical discovery or an Instagram picture of your travel adventures, how you communicate on social media is important. Major media outlets are no longer just places for reposts and likes. They are the foundation of creating an image that people and employers want to connect with. As you transition into the role of leader and young professional, stop and think about the brand you are building for yourself and what you communicate to your audience. Written by: Erica Jackson The public relations standard on social media is an ever developing challenge that faces professionals across this career. Social media changed the game over the last ten years as it has become more and more present as a way to gain more visibility to the world. However, this is not an area of expertise that has been widely studied because it has come into the field and changed so rapidly since its entrance. No one knows exactly how to use it but with a few years of experience, PR professionals have some good ideas on what makes social media effective or not. When social media first hit the scene, everyone was focused on how many views they got and that number was used as a measurement to determine if their posts were successful or not. What we know now, after a few years of study, is that the amount of clicks doesn’t necessarily mean your message is getting shared but it is certainly a place to start in order to measure the success of the posts you publish. Clicks matter but they don’t mean what you’re selling is being bought. The next step is to implement a way to see how many people click the post and follow through to make a purchase or whatever goal the company may have. This is no easy task and it is still being developed by PR professionals each day. Social media didn’t only change the way we sell products but it also changed the way consumers interact with the world they were used to prior to its birth. Social media changed the way we watch TV and sports. Once upon a time, you watched a show and moved on with your day but now, you live Tweet it with all of your online friends and discuss each event as it happens and then continue to use the hashtag over the next days to continue the fun. This phenomenon can prove helpful to those trying to determine the success of their product whether it’s something to physically buy or something to view. The use of hashtags, which is a tool in which you type all the words of interest together with no spaces and a pound sign, allows companies to see how much interaction the world is having with their particular brand. While social media brought about positives for people to measure the success of their work, it has also added difficulties for the professions and not just those in PR. The instantaneous world of social media means that someone has to be ready at any time, day or night, to share their company’s message on any given event in the world and that means that work can now consume your daily existence. That isn’t a negative or something to steer you away from this career path but an honest look at how controlling social media has made our lives. Not only has it added more work to PR professionals but journalists also have to be vigilant and ready to grab an online trend while writing up their piece quickly. In the day and age of social media, news is literally 24/7. There is a negative side to the journalism world of social media as well and that is the perspective that anyone can grab a trend and share the news without the experience necessary to do it right. What does all of this mean for those of us working to graduate into the field of communications? We are still a ways away from knowing the full impact social media makes on our career path but from what we’ve studied, we know it isn’t a singular way to measure success and we still need to do a lot more research in order to know the full effects of our work. Social media is nice and it is great to share what we want to with the world but it isn’t a replacement for what we do or what journalists do. Not yet, anyway. For those of us in the PR field, this is a great chance for us to see how adaptable to change we will need to be because social media is an ever evolving creation. UAB PRCA/PRSSA will have its first meeting on September 12 at 6pm with the location TBA. If you want to join and post one of these blogs during the year, come by and check us out! References: http://www.cision.com/us/2014/09/6-ways-social-media-changed-public-relations/ Written By: Marika Gray
Two-way communication is one of the most effective and beneficial ways to communicate in public relations. Social media is often used for this purpose. By allowing the public to engage directly with a company gains trust. This is important because it makes a person feel as if they are a “person” to a company rather than just a number. This takes a turn from what customers are used to, which are advertisements that talk at consumers. Through social media you can have actual conversations and the voice of the customer becomes more tangible to a business. This active engagement with customers makes crowdsourcing ideal. This is defined as “the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.” This is an awesome way to take your brand to the next level by trying new things. The Social Media Examiner website provides four ways to execute crowdsourcing. One way is to simply ask customers what they want. This will ensure that your company is actually meeting the needs of their public. A great example of this is when the LEGO Company made an online contest for customers. People were instructed to vote on which product they liked the most to be entered into a drawing. What motivated people to participate in the surrey was the opportunity to win a giveaway, while LEGO received insight from real customers. Next is to conduct research on consumer preferences. This can be done simply through sites such as Facebook and twitter. The Social Media Examiner suggests asking customers to vote on the following components “favorite product, preferred product color, best use of your product favorite shopping method (online/ offline/ boutique/ mall) and so on.” The final two options are Hosting a “Name a New Product Contest” or have consumers create a new product variation. Either method will ensure to make the public feel as if they matter and adds to the relationship of customer to management. Either methods listed above are a great starting point for a business to launch a new marketing campaign and can be done solely through social media. References http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/4-ways-crowdsource-product-ideas-using-social-media-contests/ |