For my COMM 4633 Social Media for PR & Journalism Class
Below you will find several additional resources to augment your course materials for COMM 4633. Each student will be assigned to read/complete one of the resources. During Week 12, we will have an in-class Speed Learning activity where you will share what you learned with your classmates. (This activity will be discussed in more detail after Spring Break.)
Additionally, after you watch or complete any of these, you may wish to write a blog post about what you learned; these posts could become some of your PR Connections for the semester.
Learn why local content is essential to your survival, and how you can continue being the chief information source to your community, no matter what the platform.
In this course, you’ll hear editors and publishers from across the industry share their stories and their strategies for success. Talk to a virtual colleague to think through some of the questions and concerns you’ll want to address. And test your knowledge of online audiences and the tools you can use to drive them to your site. Along the way, you’ll collect the info you’ll need to create an action plan for your newsroom.
Want to spread your wings beyond print reporting, but don’t know where to start? In this course, you’ll learn the basic steps of telling your story with multimedia. You’ll discover ways to map out your story before you head out to do your reporting. And you’ll learn when to use such tools as audio, video and graphics.
In the days that followed Hurricane Katrina, online news organizations took stock of their skills and resources and turned out some of the best work to date. They sent video reporters out on boats to float through the streets of New Orleans. They fashioned multimedia blogs out of the simplest of technologies. They set up forums for citizen participation. And a few of them saved lives in the process.
For years, newspapers have worked with user-generated content (UGC) in the form of letters to the editor and similar contributions. Now, news organizations of all shapes and sizes are grappling with a dizzying array of community-written content. Non-staffers are publishing things such as full-length stories, blog posts and multimedia content.
This trend provides new opportunities for your publication to engage with audiences, spotlight new voices and address under-covered topics and communities.
Students in my Social Media for PR and Advertising class got to go on #themostawesomefieldtripever — we headed over to the campus restaurant for the annual Chocolate Decadence Luncheon. While there, we took photos and tweeted about our experiences . . . and ate a wee bit of chocolate, too.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, my Social Media for PR & Journalism class will spend some time looking through conversation hearts and discussing how social media reminds them of some of the messages on the hearts. After our class today, I’ll share a few of things they came up with:
As the Social Fresh East conference proceeds on February 6 & 7, I will be curating the best content below using Storify.
There will be a lag from the time of the sessions that I attend to the time the information shows up here on Public Relations Matters. I want to use my time there to connect face-to-face with many of the participants and speakers that I have “known” via social media over the years, rather than being tied to a computer/tablet screen.
Image Credit: "Why Aren't You Blogging?" by Mike Licht
Students in mySocial Media for PR & Journalism class at Southeastern University have started adding content to their blogs for the semester. Please take a look and see what they’re up to. And drop a comment or two! They’d love to hear from you.
Image Credit: "21:365 :: Stack of Social Media Trade Books" by Barbara B. Nixon
One of our assignments in our Social Media for PR & Journalism class this semester is for you to read and review a trade book on social media. In class, you will choose a Social Media Trade Book; it’s first come, first served, so if you know which book you want now, “claim” your book by providing a comment below. If there’s a trade book not on the list that you want to review, just let me know.
Due Week 10 (the week after Spring Break), your book review will take the form of a five-minute presentation in class. For your presentation, create a professional-looking PowerPoint presentation of no more than ten slides. Rely more on images to tell your story than bullet points. (We’ll discuss more in class about how not to create a “Death by PowerPoint” slidedeck.)
If you’re using Twitter, search for the authors of your book there and connect with them. You may be surprised how willing most of them are to reply to you when you @ them.
Leave a comment about your thoughts on the book on the author’s blog.
Post a review of the book on the book’s page at Amazon.com.
(PS: If you prefer to listen to your book, rather than read it, you may be able to choose your title as a free option at the Audible website, thanks to Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty.)
PERSONAL LEARNING PROJECT (350 POINTS OF YOUR FINAL GRADE)
This project is designed to provide you with an opportunity to tailor an assignment to your own learning needs and course-related interests. For this assignment, you will identify an area of social media/PR you want to learn more about, outline a plan of study, and decide on appropriate learning deliverables to demonstrate your mastery of the material. You will then submit this plan to me for approval. Once your study plan has been approved, you will create a personal learning network to guide you in your learning. You may utilize any content you wish including books, web pages, video tutorials, library resources, open educational material, etc. to help you complete your deliverables by the deadline specified in your learning plan. In other words, you will be able to learn the material in the manner, and with the resources of your own choice.
My goal for this assignment is to prepare you for today’s highly competitive and rapidly changing workplace by allowing you to develop experience in directing your own learning. Today, knowledge has a very short shelf life, which means that one of the most important skills you can learn while in college is to become an independent learner. It is my hope that you take this project as an opportunity to help you enhance those skills. It should therefore go without saying that you shouldn’t pick a topic/area you already master for this assignment. Although it would be a way to an easy project and grade, you would simply be cheating yourself and your education.
Though you are welcome (even encouraged) to post any portion of your Personal Learning Project on your own blog, to earn credit for each Part, please use BlackBoard to submit your work.
PART 1 – THE LEARNING PLAN (50 POINTS OF FINAL GRADE)
DUE: February 12, in BlackBoard
For this part of the assignment, you will identify an area of social media/PR you want to learn more about, outline a plan of study, and decide on appropriate learning deliverables to demonstrate your mastery of the material. Please use this template when designing your learning plan. You’ll be evaluated based on the thoroughness of your plan. To help you get started, I’ve listed a few examples of possible project ideas below.
Researching social media applications for nonprofits and designing a social media training session (the deliverable) for a local nonprofit interested in learning how to engage its stakeholders via social media. This would more than likely be a group project.
Researching how journalism has changed with the advent of social media, and offering suggestions / a workshop to the campus newspaper for how to benefit from social media.
Researching QR (quick response) applications for small businesses, offering your services to a local business and designing a concept for QR campaign tailored to their needs.
PART 2 – THE PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK (100 POINTS OF FINAL GRADE)
DUE: March 18, in BlackBoard
Your personal learning network (PLN) needs to include a Twitter, blog and social bookmarking component. We will discuss how to create a PLN in much more detail in class. You also need to identify blogs, web sites, and social bookmarks that are relevant to your project and subscribe to them. You may even want to subscribe to a Google Alert on your topic (optional). At the end of the semester, you will need to hand in a UPDATED description of your personal learning network along with your deliverables. You’ll be evaluated based on the depth and breadth of the personal learning network you built. In order to hand this in, create a list of people you follow on:
Twitter: list the people in your Twitter PLN with their Twitter UserId. Only list people that pertain to your project (i.e. don’t list your buddies here)
Blogs: list the bloggers you followed for this project. Identify them by a) name, b) blog URL, and c) blog name.
Social bookmarking sites: list the people you follow on Delicious, Diigo or any other social bookmarking site. Again, only list people you followed for this particular project. List them with their social bookmarking URL.
Any other social media sites/platforms
PART 3 – THE PLN PRESENTATION (50 POINTS OF FINAL GRADE)
DUE: March 22, in class
You will give a 5-minute presentation in which you will present the learning network you’ve created thus far. You should start off with a brief description of the project you’ve picked for your personal learning project before presenting your network. Please create a separate slide for your Twitter, social bookmarking, and blogging network and include the following information. You’ll be evaluated based on the progress made on your PLN and on your presentation overall.
Twitter network slide
How many experts on your project’s topic area are you following?
List at least five of those experts by their Twitter handle
During your presentation, give an example of useful info (related to your project’s topic area) each ONE of them has tweeted about.
Social Bookmarking network slide
How many experts on your project’s topic area are you following on Delicious, Diigo or another social bookmarking service?
List at least five of those experts by their Social Bookmarking UserID.
During your presentation, give an example of useful info (related to your project’s topic area) each ONE of them has bookmarked.
Blogging network slide
How many bloggers who are experts on your project’s topic area are you subscribing to with your feedreader?
List at least five of those bloggers (name the title of their blog)
During your presentation, give an example of useful info (related to your project’s topic area) each ONE of them has blogged about.
As you listen to your classmates’ PLN presentations, take special note of members of their PLNs who might be useful for you to learn more about. Additionally, offer suggestions to your peers regarding members of your own PLN who might benefit them in their projects.
PART 4 –PROJECT DELIVERABLES (100 POINTS OF FINAL GRADE)
DUE: April 15, in BlackBoard
Your project deliverables are identified in your personal learning plan and approved in consultation with me. Remember to include an UPDATED version of your PLN that you submitted in Part 2; identify which people you have added to your network. If all of your deliverables are in digital form, simply submit (in BlackBoard) the URL(s) to those deliverables. Be sure to indicate what each URL refers to. You’ll be evaluated based on the quality of your final product.
PART 5 –PROJECT PRESENTATIONS (50 POINTS OF FINAL GRADE)
DUE: April 17 & 19, in class
At the end of the semester you will present your personal learning project deliverables to the class. For this assignment, you will need to create a professional 10-minute presentation in which you will introduce the project you worked on, explain the process involved in creating your deliverable, discuss how your PLN helped you accomplish that process, and showcase your final project. You’ll be evaluated based on the extend to which you address those four areas and on the level of professionalism displayed in your presentation.
(NOTE: Many thanks to Dr. Corinne Weisgerber for permitting me to use, with very slight adaptation, the Personal Learning Project from her Spring 2011 Social Media for PR class at another SEU: St. Edwards University.)
Public relations practitioners are increasingly called upon to be well-versed in social media. This semester, you will blog as about one-third of your grade in our class. You will add content to your blog weekly throughout the semester. Feel free to continue to use an existing blog of yours, unless you feel compelled to start fresh with a new blog for this course.
My WordPress 101 post will help you get started with your blog.
To make it easier for your readers to find what they are seeking at your blog, it’s important to use Categories. Please add a category for each type (listed below), and make sure each post is categorized appropriately. Each post for this class must have the category of “COMM 4333” along with at least one additional category.
1. TOW: Topic of the Week – Each week this semester, we will have a specific topic that all students will blog about. You should have at least 13 of these before the end of the semester. At times, you will watch a video, listen to a podcast, or read a specific blog post, and provide your thoughtful reactions. These posts must be a minimum of 300 words. We’ll keep our running list of TOWs for your class here at my blog.
2. PR Connections – Provide commentary, reflections and opinions about PR issues/examples that were not addressed in class. These can be responses to other PR blogs you read, links to interesting posts or articles, embedded YouTube videos, etc. Some students like to choose a theme (such as entertainment or sports PR) and have each PR Connection be related to the theme. Though these don’t have a minimum word length, you will need to adequately discuss your subject in the post, rather than simply embedding a video with no commentary of your own. You should write at least 10 of these during the semester.
3. Blog comments – whenever you comment on someone’s PR blog (whether it’s a PR professional or a PR student), add the comment to a blog post (that you have created for this purpose) that you update throughout the semester so I can assess your online participation. Do this only for PR-related blogs. You should have a minimum of 12 comments by your Blog Checkpoint #2 and at least 20 (total) before the end of the semester. See Tracking Your Blog Comments for Nixon’s Classes for more information.
You may add other categories and sub-categories of your choice. Please keep in mind that when I evaluate your blog I will pay special attention to the categories listed above, but I will not ignore other posts. I will perform a holistic evaluation of your blog, looking for:
frequency: Sufficient posts in categories 1-3, posted throughout the semester. There will be at least two graded blog checkpoints during the semester. (See your syllabus for the specific Blog Checkpoint dates.)
linking: Identify other PR blogs (use PR Open Mic or my blogroll in my Diigo bookmarks as starting points) and link to them. Respond to others’ posts. Become a part of the blogosphere. Blogging should not be lonely.
readability: brief & concise writing style, use of white space, bold characters, images, bullet points
proper credit and use of images in all Topics of the Week and PR Connections. (Use Compfight to find your images; be sure they are licensed for Creative Commons use. I’ll show you how to do this in class.)
SUPER-IMPORTANT: In order for you to get credit for your blog, I need to know where it is. Tell me your blog address by completing this Google Form; I will provide time in class during Week 3 for you to do this.
Questions? Just let me know.
NOTE: Many thanks to Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu at Purdue University, who allowed me to use her blogging guidelines from her PRinciples class; Dr. V knows that Blogs Matter.
Image Credit: "Historic Route 101" by Leo Reynolds
Students in most of my classes have blogging as a component of their grades. Many of them have rarely even read blogs, no less written one of their own. In this post, I am combining many posts I’ve previously written to help them get started in WordPress.
1
Review the slides in my “Getting Started in WordPress” presentation below. In this presentation, you’ll learn
Blogging Do’s & No-No’s
Signing Up for Your WordPress Account
Setting Up Your Account
Writing Posts & Pages
How to Display Your Blog Comments (that you write on others’ blogs)
Watch some of the many FAQ screencasts provided by WordPress to help you with the step-by-step instructions. (Though some of the videos are for previous versions of WordPress, most of the functionality remains the same.) Here are a few of the best ones to help you get started on the right foot:
3-5-3 :: Blog Feedback for #PRCA2330 and #PRCA3330 (written for my students this past summer; the links in the post may take you to pages I wrote for other classes, but the content of the post is valuable)
4
And though you may have a good handle on the technical aspects of blogging, remember that the technical side is only part of the blogging equation. Corinne Weisgerber, a professor at St. Edward’s University and fellow PROpenMic member, created this presentation for her Social Media for PR class. The emphasis? How blogging can help you create your personal brand online. Take a look. It’s worth the time.
Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing University Webinars
