Time Flies

Well it is that time of the school year to say goodbye.  The classes are coming to an end and time to clean out and pack up the dorm room.  Time to cram for the finals, and to pull all-nighters for the term papers, projects, and presentations. 

Mullen’s Introduction to Public Relations has defiantly kept me on my toes.   At first it was a lot, but after a while I was able to manage the chaos.  With the professional twitter, the LinkedIn, and this blog I was able to better understand the Public Relations World. 

With this blog I was able to have a voice in the world; I was able to give my opinion freely.  The topics were very interesting, and made me think more about what was happening in everyday life.  Also, it shows me how Public Relations is so important in today’s modern world.   The Public Relations of any business is important because they are the face of the company.  They need to make a great first impression and always keep it up.   That is what LinkedIn and Twitter taught me.  LinkedIn is like your first impression to the business world, so you need to have a great one.  Also, you need to make sure it is one-of-a-kind and unique.  A professional Twitter is the part that keeps you active in the Public Relations world.  It helps you stay up on events, news, and jobs. 

Word Press makes sure that you stay true to yourself.  It is your own thoughts and feelings.  I do like it because of that’s, but I have never been that good at expressing myself through words.  I do though enjoy writing what I want to say.  That is why I would like to try YouTube next.  So goodbye Word Press, you have taught me a lot.   

Public Relations to the Rescue

When  something ever goes wrong in a campaign, it is always up to the Public Relations Chairman to make it all right.  They are the face of the problem, and they are the ones that have to make sure the problem goes away.  Some people might say it is a easy job, but in actuality it is not.  To put your own self out of the line, is like being lined up for a firing squad.  Also, you are representing something bigger than yourself, and everyone is counting like you.  So in a sense being a Public Relations chairman, is being like a superhero. 

With that being said putting yourself out there especially for a campaign takes guts.  Also, the Public Relation plays a big factor for the effectiveness of a campaign.  So here are some helpful tips for Public Relations chairman during a campaign.

1st.  Take the Time to Prepare.

 Do your research and know the facts.  Also, know opinions of people too, so you have a response for them.  You need to make sure that you know the whole story, and both sides.  So when the questions come (both positive and negative) you have an answer no matter what.

2.    Use short sentences and short words.

When giving a report keep it short and sweet.  Make sure people can understand it and receive the message you are sending.  Get straight to the point, and be clear in your answer.  If you use big words, and are shaky on your facts, your message could not be received in the right way. 

3.  Manage your Reputation. 

You are out there representing something other than yourself, and you can not forget that.  If you make a mistake, fix it right then and there, if not your campaign will get caught later and that could change the outcome.  Stay true to the campaign values, do not lie, and make sure to end on a positive note.

Photo Credit:  a href

 

Campus Crisis

This week in my Public Relation class we are talking about Public Relation crisis’.  While in class we talked about the Northern Illinois University gunman shooting crisis and I just wanted to elaborate on it a bit more. 

Valentine’s Day 2008 a former NIU student named Steven Kazmierczak step onto the lecture stage of an ocean science lecture and began to open fire on the students.  His seige of fire ended after killing himself and five other students and injuring 14 others.

I have a personal experience with this tragedy because my sister and two of my brother-in-laws were attending NIU when this tragedy struck.    Luckily, none of them were on campus at the time but it was still scary because my family and I could not reach them for a bit.

Afterwards, I found out from my brother-in-laws that they lived on the same floor as the gunman their freshmen year.  They said he requested to live my himself, never talked to anyone, and wore black all the time. 

Northern Illinois University was prepared for a crisis like this, but only after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings.  After that horrible event, Northern Illinois University redid their emergency plan, and within just a couple of minutes of the start of the incident, an emergency email, call, and text was sent out to warn students to stay in their dorms for safety. 

The University made sure to attend the students funeral, have memorials, and even presented the deceased students families with their graduating diplomas.

 

 

Photo Credit: www.hillel.org

Do You Know How To Blog?

Blogs are supposed to be unique and different. It is our words and opinions. It is special and all your own.
This blog has been different for me, because I have never done it before. Even as a little girl when diaries and journal were all the rage, I still was not into it. I would run out of things to talk about.
But with blogs you can have themes and ideas that you can share with the world. You can really help people in everyday life.
How do you make the perfect blog though?
What will help your blog stand out and be different like you?
After searching for helpful hints, I have come up with these three tips…
1. Have Nice Blogging Manners…
Make sure when you start a blog you check out and start to follow other blogs. Just like having good twitter manners you want to make sure to follow people who follow you. Also, after following someone make sure your active on their blogs leave comments and more than one so they will remember your face and then start to follow you. Then when you start to gain followers, make sure you thank them and keep them interested with your blogs.
2. Give Love To Your Blog…
To get followers you need to make sure your blog is attractive. Make sure your blog goes along with your topic you are blogging about. If you’re blogging about baking cupcakes, you’re not going to have a dark and scary background. At the same time make sure your blog is easy to use and avoid tackyness and gaudiness.
3. Stay True To Yourself…
It is easy to get side tracked but make sure you stay on topic. Do not be too wordy, make your blogs short and sweet. Also, make sure you understand what you are saying, so your readers will too.
Photo Credit: Scott Beale

#gonewrong

 

In this day of age companies either have to stay up with new trends or get left behind.  If they are promoting their product (of any sorts) or themselves, they need to have a Twitter.  And if they have any sense, they need to be tweeting A LOT!!!

 What companies do not understand with Twitter is that it is always going.  People tweet all the time, so that means that their twitter pages just keep getting renewed.  So what a company might have tweeted a hour ago is just old news, and will probably be skimmed over. 

What companies need to do is stop focusing on promoting and start focusing on tweeting.  To actually follow people and companies that follow them, and show some twitter manners.  Start tweeting stuff that regular Joes would retweet.  Have contest, ask questions, take surveys.  Be interactive with followers and get results. 

 Everyone’s favorite coffee house Starbucks had a bad hashtag back in December.  Their hashtag #SpreadTheCheer was supposed to have their twitter followers tweet about their special times at Starbucks.  Instead their followers criticized Starbucks’ low tax rates and labor policies in the United Kingdom.  Starbucks apologized and tweaked their rates and policies, which is exactly what I would do.  *Make sure you check out my link to some of the actual post, they are brutal.

Twitter can help a company but I do not think it can break a company by any means.  In history, companies have come back from even worse then a hashtag that went wrong.  They would just take it done and apologize and start again.  So yes it can throw them back again but major or minor companies can jump back but now with just a few dings. 

Photo Credit: mike cogh

The Press Release

Photo Credit:  helen sotiriadis

      If we want to be taken seriously in our fields of work today as young adults, then we all need to learn how to write the perfect press release.  The press release is a little intimidating because it will be sent out for judging, but if you do it right you have nothing to worry about.

       Why are press releases important in the PR world?

      The public relations job is to get the relations out to the public.  They can do that by using a press release.  It is information about an upcoming event by the corporation that needs to get out to the public.  The public relations of a company sends these  press releases out to all sorts of media;  television stations, newspapers, magazines, radios, and through the Internet.  They will send them out by mail, fax, or email, and in today’s day email is the way to go.  The only problem with that is that the media is getting a whole lot more press releases.  That is what the public relations is for, to make the corporations press release better.

When trying to make a press release stand out public relations try to use these tips…

1.  Think like a jouralist.  Remember to keep the release news worthy.  For the public to be interested in the news, the news needs to be interested first.

2.   Do not advertise.  This memo is important to your company and should be spread to the public, it should not be for sales.

3.  Before starting a press release ask these 4 questions…

     1. What is your key message?

     2.  Who is your target audience?

     3.  What does the target audience gain from your product or service?

     4.  What is your objective?

     

I’m loving it… NOT

      I came across this case study about how McDonald’s has been unethical for years, pretty much since they got started three decades ago.  In the 1950s brothers Dick and Mac Donald opened their small burger shack.  It was not until Ray Knoc; a milk shake machine salesman bought McDonald’s from the brothers and made it into the corporation it is today.  It was him that believed in the ethic of mass production for a cheap price.  So he is kinda like a lot of businessmen.

      So going along with his life motto, Kroc started making a few changes.  One major change was he decided on already frozen beef patties instead of fresh ground beef.  Also, instead of using locally grown potatoes, he developed a genetically-modified potato so all McDonald’s french fries would have the same taste.  Their secret ingredient; they would coat left over burger grease over the french fries.

      The McDonald’s Corporation is one of the largest fast food corporations in the world.  Now that the company is on 5 different continents, it needs to appeal to 5 different taste buds (well probably more than that).  One of their main selling points is comfort and familiarity.  That is why in different parts of the world McDonald’s has come up with different food options that we would not see here.  An example; “The McArabia” chicken patties on unleavened bread with garlic sauce and onion.

      McDonald’s has also become a hypocrite.  Their non-profit “The Ronald McDonald house” helps children with life threating illnesses and their families who are on welfare.  But look at what they are serving to those and all children and families.  Not healthy foods that is for sure.  Also, McDonalds is in 59 of the nation’s 250 children’s hospitals.  

      Two stories that I found interesting that involved law suits, one being about the United States Hindus, many vegetarians, and some Japanese.  Like I said before McDonald’s secret ingredient in their french fries, left over burger grease.  Well that was made public when those outrage citizens spoke out.  McDonalds apologized and paid the groups ten million dollars in settlement.  Which was a good part on them, but did they do anything to change their fries?  No they did not because again McDonald’s is familiarity.

      The other lawsuit involved a woman finding a rat in her salad at McDonalds.  She sued McDonald’s $1.7 million dollors, but McDonald’s has done nothing so far, not even to reach out to see if she is okay.  Which I believe is wrong.  They can at least apologize and ask if she is okay.  It is not like McDonald will ever be shut down for a complanit but it could limit them and make them think. 

Image Credit:  Ben Heine

Chicago Tweetups

Brandon Zeman is my soon to be brother-in-law and my interviewee for this week assignment.  He was gracious to help me, and excited too.

Right from the start I notice a lot of similarities.  I asked him if he had a LinkendIn and he did.  Then I asked him if he had two twitters (a professional and social one) and he did.  He even knows what wordpress is.  But of course he knows all this because he was hired at his job for his knowledge of knowing social media and how it helps companies.

Brandon graduated from Northern Illinois with a degree in Marketing.  He held many offices including President of his fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon.  He had many careers coming out if college and now he works at Loud Interactive in Chicago, Illinois.

His title is a ‘Search Engine Optimization’, often just shortened to SEO. Social media and PR play into SEO as well.

 

Brandon Zeman “I have the responsibility for leading the direction, work flow, implementation and scheduling of client marketing programs to help increase organic search listings and rankings and to meet individualized marketing plan goals and company objectives as defined for each project.”

 

Now him and I both really didn’t know what that meant so he gave me a simpler description.

 

Brandon Zeman “I just copied that from the internet, but basically I help companies gain more traffic to their websites from the internet, particularly from Google. We also help businesses convert better on that traffic, making sure they sell more products or whatever their business goal is.”

So I asked him, how does PR go along with your job…

“Public relations and SEO play hand in hand in that both help get messages out to certain audiences, just in different ways. PR aims to inform via press releases, media campaigns, or other attention-grabbing events, whereas SEO builds awareness online.
SEO and PR work well when combined as well. PR professionals are skilled storytellers and writers, and have much to offer in the way of quality content, which is what Google and other search engines are putting a major emphasis on these days. PR professionals are also often very connected within the media space and can help spread the reach of various online efforts through these contacts.
SEO helps PR professionals have a more holistic approach to their efforts, including educating them on how to write and structure content and press releases that will rank well in Google and drive more attention and traffic to those mentions.”

 Image credit: by Brandon Zeman

 

Oh Daddy!

I have to say that the Super Bowl commercials this year were weak.  There were not enough to begin with, and the ones that they did have were lacking in originality.  They stuck to what they thought the American people would want to see.  They did not think outside the box, and they kept it safe.  The one commercial that was very different was the Go Daddy commercial.  There has never been a commercial like that before.  Some would even call it pornographic.  I agree it is not family style, but no matter what you can not forget it.  That is the factor that a lot of business go for, and no one will forget they saw it.  Bad publicity is still publicity.