And the top blog award goes to…

Photo Credit: Ghengis Vaughn

This semester I have read several different blogs and commented on a majority of them. They are about a variety of different topic ranging from public relations all the way to missions and adoption. This combines a lot of my passions and what i have felt called to do, and it has been a joy to read and learn from my fellow class mates as well as professionals from all over the nation. This class encouraged me to reach out of my comfort zone and to read blogs and educate myself on these topics that interest me. There is so much to learn!

One of my favorite PR professional’s blog to read has been Deirdre Breakenridge’s blog. She is a PR professional that has written a few books and has a lot of great things to say. I have learned through reading her blog and her tweets the importance of customer service and reaching out to the public. Her most recent book she authored with Brian Solis is called “Putting the Public Back into Public Relations.” She also a well-known public relations speaker and has spoken all over the US. Her blog has been inspiring to me as I am passionate about public speaking, and I have been able to watch the success of her career.

Another blog that I have enjoyed reading is Katie Davis’ blog On Earth as it is in Heaven. I have read her book and am very interested in her journey as she is a missionary in Uganda. My heart is for missions and adoption and it is a joy to read about how she is benefiting the kingdom. It is definitely encouraging and inspiring for me to read about her life.

My favorite PR blog to read from our class has been Jordyn Roe’s. She is so gifted at piecing her words together in a beautiful way to create a masterpiece. Her heart for missions and adoption is reflected in her writing and it has been a joy to read her blog and follow her on this journey. She has been an inspiration to me in a very powerful way.

I have loved blogging for Barbara for the past 3 years of my college education and I have learned how to powerfully communicate important issues and campaigns through blogging. I appreciate her dedication to social media and the inspiration that she has been to me. It has been my pleasure to work with her. She has inspired, strengthened and encouraged me along the way as I have completed my degree in public relations and journalism. Thank you, Barbara, I have learned so much from you!

Be sure to follow me on my own personal blog after May @ Lessons Learned, my own personal blog that I will be blogging from about my journey after graduation!!!

Thank you for reading! It has been my pleasure to offer you… Reflections Along the Way!

Pointers from Elyse Trager on Facebook and LinkedIn within Businesses

 

This week I listened to the Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing University Webinar on Successful business uses for Facebook and LinkedIn. It was a very informative webinar and below are some great tips I received from it!

• When using social media:

*Make sure you have an objective

*Know your audience

*Play with your platform and see what you can do

*Start with some sort of method

• Social media can be used positively for internal communication in organizations
• Social media is great for branding and career management
• Social media is a great way to create content and contacts which will help people decipher whether to support your organization or not
• Be of value- that will be why someone wants to connect and engage with you.
• Engage- The more you engage, the more people will want to come back to you
• Social media is all about dialogue- so make sure you talk back to those that are commenting and posting
• Make sure on your profile that you are clear about the purpose of your organization and the location in which you are based

Important things to include on your business profile:

– Summary- who you are, what you do

-Education- use for connections

-Interests- may be too personal for businesses (you decide)

-Security settings- decide how open and visible you want to be

-Add apps for credibility and depth

 

Videos gone Viral!

Many have seen it done. Many have contributed to the fact that a video has gone viral by sharing it on Facebook and Twitter and by other means of social media. And many want to know how they can do it. How can I get a viral video? Just like getting your dream job, or becoming a millionaire, it takes work and a good product. After you have perfected that, all that is necessary is good marketing. The most important thing is that you know the audience that you are targeting and study what it is that they will like. Another important thing is that you upload your video at a good time and start getting views immediately. If your movie is a couple of days old, or even just a day old and you don’t have any views yet, then chances are, it’s not going to go viral. You need those views right away to get your video recognized.

A great way to get views is by emailing and Facebooking everyone that you know. This could help your video to get mentioned or shared on someones blog which will help you get a lot of views. It is important that you hit a tipping point so that then your video will have a track record of having views.

Once your video hits about 45,000-60,000 views it will start to receive honors, which will also help it to get more views. It is also beneficial to get as many comments and likes as possible to help move your video to ‘most popular status’. The most successful viral videos on YouTube don’t just hit the video page, but hit the home page of YouTube. This will guarantee that the video will get many views without even having a direct connection to the video.

Below are 3 of my favorite viral videos from YouTube:

Talking Twin Babies

You Sneaky MOM!!!

Charlie bit my finger- again!

I picked these particular videos simply because they make me laugh! Everyone loves to laugh and everyone needs a good laugh every now and then, so I hope that you got at least a smile out of watching these movies.

So are you up for the challenge? Sometimes you don’t even know that it will go viral… so give it try! You’d be surprised how many people could be entertained by your life!

Source

Adoption and Social Media… what CONNECTION can be made?

Photo Credit: Bishop Daniel Robertson, Jr.

As graduation is weighing hard on my shoulder, I am spending more time than ever researching and reading about how social media can positively impact the adoption industry. What can contribution can I, as a communicator, make in the adoption arena? I have followed many blogs and organizations on twitter, and I am learning how important repetition is to marketing. Repetition is huge because no matter how powerful your campaign is, your audience will most likely not take action the first time that it is mentioned. This means you MUST repeat if you want a response.

This means that when organizations are trying to market a campaign or an event for adoption, it needs to be organized so that it can be marketed far enough in advance that it gets repeated over and over and over again. This doesn’t mean that you have to hammer it into the ground with saying the exact same thing over and over again. But it needs to be brought forth to an audience enough times that people can’t ignore it. This also means being creative in the ways in which you are broadcasting the event to the public. Stand out and repeat. And see what results you generate!

Surviving in business with widgets and badges

According to The Social Media Survival Guide, widgets are snippets of code, which are usually displayed with a graphic in order to syndicate content. Examples of widgets can be RSS feeds, or interactive features added to blogs or websites. Widgets can be customized by the user and offer ways for users to pull information from the widgets original site (p. 248).

Widgets can come in different styles as well as levels of complexity. They can be used to direct readers to other sources on a different site, or they can be used as a mini search engine on your site. These are typically easy to set up.

Widgets are a great way to highlight your personal social web presence. Listed below are some social media sights that you can use widgets within:

Twitter

Linkedin

Shelfari

Facebook ‘like’ box

A badge is typically just an icon or logo that has a link back to its source. It serves as a way of displaying one’s membership or presence in a community on the Social Web.

Widgets as well as badges are a great way for companies to grow and expand the social media aspect of their website. Right now, I am researching a lot of different adoption agencies and organizations that raise awareness about adoption. Widgets in particular have been a great resource for me during this process of trying to gain more knowledge about specific information, because I am able to see their information in the form of Twitter, and Facebook.

It is so simple to click the widget for twitter and then, boom; you are following that particular organization. This has been a phenomenal advancement for companies and it demonstrates that they are active in other areas of the web and not just on their own website.

One organization that I have been following is All God’s Children International (AGCI). Though they have widgets at the bottom of the screen, I think that it could be easily overlooked because of its location. Also, they have a link to their Twitter feed, but they are not very consistent in their tweeting, so this keeps that particular widget from being as effective.

I think that widgets can be a great thing and can direct readers to other important aspects and information regarding your company. It is just important that they places you are linking readers to, are active sites.

My Personal Learning Network Presentation

The Red Bus Project

THE RED BUS PROJECT– are they coming to your school?

Who is it?

Caleb Chapman, Steven Curtis Chapman’s son and Chris Wheeler, Show Hope’s director of student initiatives began asking the question what can students do to care for orphans while still in school? They wanted to create something unique that they could do on campuses and they didn’t just want to ask for a one time or on going donation. This is where the mobile thrift store idea came to mind. They were able to buy a double-decker bus and have it shipped all the way from England and remodeled into a thrift store on wheels. This spring, the bus has launched a tour of 25 college campuses and then the band CALEB performs each night to drive more support to the bus.

What is it?

They are driving a double-decker bus-turned-mobile thrift store from college to college, spreading awareness about the needs of orphans and raising money for orphan care. Donate your best clothes, buy clothes on the bus and invite all your friends to join the Red Bus Project. The funds raised by the thrift store will go toward providing forever families to orphans.

Why?

Because millions of orphans around the world need a family. Together we can give them a voice.

Give. Buy. Show Hope.

Social Bookmarking: What it can do for YOU!

Image Credit: Marketing lifeline

What is it?

Have you ever found a website that you want to share with friends or family. Your first thought is to email them the link, simple as that. You have participated in social bookmarking, only there is a lot more you can do with it when you use a host site. Simply put, social bookmarking is a tagging website so that you can save information and pictures for later. The great thing about social bookmarking is that they are already online, so you can easily share them with friends and family AND you can access them, whenever you want, wherever you want. The great thing about social bookmarking is that you can look at what other people have found interesting or beneficial and add it to your social bookmarking network. It’s a great and easy way to learn more quickly.

How Can College Students Use

it?

Social bookmarking is a great way to find specific information without using a search engine. As opposed to a large search engine, social bookmarking allow you to type something in and narrow it down rather quickly. It is great for college students to use for projects because you are able to get a good amount of information quickly. It is great especially for group projects because you are able to find information and keep it on a site that your other group members are able to access it, see what information you have found and contribute to the research.

How Can Businesses Use it?

Social bookmarking is a great resource for businesses as well. It can be used for curating information, sharing of testimonials, tracking for individual projects, and as an add-on for your public relations campaigns. Social bookmarking within organizations is a great way to be a resource to your community for information!

So Have you Tried it?

Social Bookmarking could be a great resource for you or your organization?

You can check out mine if you want! You can find my

library on Diigo here

                                                                  Image Credit: Mo Moumenine

 

Foursquare: A home for Stalkers? or not?

Foursquare is a way to keep up with friends, discover what is nearby and save money while ‘unlocking’ rewards. I chose to write about Foursquare this week because I am not a huge fan of this particular form of social networking. Perhaps that’s not fair for me to say because I have actually never used Foursquare, but to me it seems like the perfect place for stalkers to camp out and watch their prey. Perhaps I am taking this thing a little to far, and if so, I hope that you comment on this and let me know, but honestly, it is a little creepy to me.

Before I go into more reasons of why Foursquare scares me, let me first say that I know the application has its benefits. I have learned that it is a good way to meet people who are out and about that you otherwise wouldn’t have noticed and wouldn’t have known that you have common interests or a reason to connect. I also realize that by becoming the “mayor” at certain places or even by just checking in to certain companies you can get discounts and rewards. That’s an awesome thing, but not worth it to me.

Call me paranoid if you want, but I get nervous enough with just having twitter and Facebook. Though I have private accounts on both twitter and Facebook, I still get weirded out when people know certain things about me. This is why I will probably never use Foursquare. Quite frankly, I don’t want people knowing where I am. Not because I am trying to be secretive at all, but simply because I don’t like feeling like I could be followed. Now I know that Foursquare probably has very few people using it with the intent of following someone or ‘stalking’ them. But I don’t want to be the one that finds out the hard way that stalkers do indeed ‘check in’ on foursquare.

Now, aside from my thoughts on foursquare for my personal life, I do think that foursquare can be really beneficial for companies. For one, it gets your companies name out into social media, which is always a great thing. Secondly, through foursquare you can become the ‘mayor’ of certain businesses and then you get special deals and promotions through it. That is a great way to get your customers to come back in, and motivation for people to visit your store often. This can be a great thing for companies to use to market their organization! And it can be a lot of fun for the customers as well! Just be careful, and use wisdom with your privacy options!

Positioning: The Battle for your Mind

For my social media class I read the book Positioning By Al Ries and Jack Trout and I did a short presentation for my class today. So I have compiled my information and wanted to share it with you! I highly recommend reading Positioning if you are interested in any area of marketing or public relations as I feel that it will greatly benefit you and stimulate new ideas.

About the Authors:

Al Ries and his daughter Laura Ries have been working together at Ries & Ries for 18 years. This Positioning Series that he wrote with Jack Trout was his first rise to fame in 1972. More recently he and his daughter have written 6 books together and have continued to use different ideas to be seen and heard by the marketplace.

Jack Trout is the author of many marketing classics that are published in many languages. He is the president of Trout and Partners Ltd. Which is a marketing consultancy based in Connecticut. He has done consulting for Southwest Airlines, Procter and Gamble, Papa John’s Pizza and many more. He has over 40 years of experience in advertising and marketing and is known as one of the world’s foremost marketing strategists.  

Overview of Book:

This book talked a lot about how our messages are getting lost in the number of media that we have invented to serve our communication needs. I mean, think about it:

There is television. Commercial, cable and pay

There’s radio. AM and FM

There are newspapers. Morning, evening, daily, weekly, and Sunday

There are magazines. Mass magazines, class magazines, enthusiast magazines, business magazines, trade magazines.

And of course buses, trucks, streetcars, subways, and taxicabs.

Generally speaking, anything that moves today is carrying a “message from out sponsor.”

Even the human body has become a walking billboard for

Adidas

Gucci

And Gloria Vanderbilt

Just after World War 2, the per capita consumption of advertising in the US was about $25 a year. Today it is 15 times as much. However, do you know 15 times as much about the products you buy? You may be exposed to much more advertising, but your mind can’t absorb any more than it used to. That is where Positioning comes into effect. You can use the principles found in this book to help you cope with our over communicated society

In today’s marketplace the competitor’s position is just as important as your own. Sometimes more important. The Avis Campaign will go down in marketing history as a classic example or establishing the “against” position. In Avis’ case, this was a position against the leader.

 

For 13 years in a row, Avis lost money. But when they admitted to being #2 in rental cars, they started to make money.

Many people think that Avis is successful because it tried harder. Not at all.

Avis was successful because it related itself to Hertz. Establishing the “against” position is a classic positioning maneuver. If a company isn’t the first, then it has to be the first to occupy the No. 2 position. Which is not an easy task.

If you want to be successful today, you can’t ignore the competitor’s position.

In order to be successful in the Positioning game is to

Know how words affect people

Be careful of change

Have vision

Have courage

Have objectivity

Have simplicity

Be willing to sacrifice

Have patience

In our overcommunicated society, the name of the game today is positioning.

And only the better players are going to survive.

 

 Image Caption: Amazon