Photo Credit: Martin Fisch via Compfight

At the Public Relations Council of Alabama’s PR:Recharge Conference this month, I was asked to share Fully Charged Social Media Strategies with a great group of public relations practitioners, professors and students. One thing we discussed was how to keep current in our ever-changing world of PR.  Here’s a quick guide to five of my painless tactics.

One: Read PR blogs.

There are hundreds of blogs about public relations. I’ve bookmarked many of them in Diigo for you. You can subscribe to them using your favorite RSS reader (such as Google Reader), or just read them on the web. Some of the most helpful blogs I’ve discovered include Gini Dietrich’s Spin Sucks and Shonali Burke’s Waxing Unlyrical.

Two: Subscribe to daily or weekly PR e-mailed newsletters.

My favorite PR newsletter is from Ragan Communications: the PR Daily newsfeed. When I want to read the latest on PR, this is the newsletter I turn to first. And since it comes directly to my inbox each morning, it’s easy to quickly skim the day’s hot topics.

Three: Listen to PR podcasts.

Some of my favorite podcasts are: For Immediate Release, Inside PR, PRStudCast, Trafcom News, Marketing Over Coffee and Coming Up PR. My favorite time to listen to podcasts is during my (almost) daily two-mile walks in this sweltering Florida heat. I also listen to them when I drive, work out and clean the house. Some people prefer to listen to podcasts on their computers; my preference is listening to them on my Motorola Photon or iPod.

Here’s a short video on how to subscribe to and download podcasts using iTunes. If you’re not an iTunes person, you may want to visit Podcast Alley, where you can find thousands more podcasts. You can listen to the podcasts directly from the website.

Four: Follow PR practitioners on Twitter.

Are you a public relations student (or recent grad) just getting started using Twitter?  Or are you a seasoned PR practitioner looking for some fine folks to learn from? Try following some (or all) of these people or organizations in my Twitter Starter Pack for PR Students. They all have something in common: they tweet useful or interesting information for people involved in public relations.

Five: Watch the news on TV.

Yes, I said “watch the news on TV.” I mean on a real TV, with a complete newscast, not just bits and bobs that you catch online. I start off every day a steaming mug or three of chicory coffee and at least an hour of broadcast news, usually with 30 or so minutes of local news followed by the  Today Show. By knowing what’s going on in the world, it helps frame the snippets of stories I read or hear online throughout the day. To be sure that I’m keeping up on the news, I also listen to the podcast version of  NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me weekly news quiz. (I sometimes even play the Lightning Round of Wait Wait in class to see how much my students know about what’s going on in the world.)

Your suggestions?

What additional resources would you recommend?

(NOTE: This post is an updated version of one I wrote in last summer.)

Stay tuned!

Photo Credit: John Fraissinet via Compfight

For your final assignment in Writing for Public Relations, you have a choice between two projects. You can either prepare a Social Media News Release OR write a detailed blog post about Social Media News Releases.

This assignment is due in BlackBoard on April 29, 2012.

Option #1: Prepare a Social Media News Release

• Using either PitchEngine, PRXbuilder or your WordPress blog create a Social Media News Release for your client.
• Feel free to adapt a news release or personality profile that you have already written this semester to this new format.
• See pages 136-139  in Public Relations Writing and Media Techniques on creating your SMNR (NOTE: Your book calls them Smart Media Releases or Multimedia Releases.)
• Include one news release of at least 250 words, along with
  • at least one photo that you took to accompany the story
  • at least two relevant quotations
  • at least two relevant hyperlinks
  • boilerplate information about your client
  • tags that help describe your release & client
• If any of the information you are using in the release is not factual, you’ll need to make this very clear with a disclaimer.
• In BlackBoard, submit the URL to your SMNR.

Option #2: Write a Blog Post about Social Media News Releases

• Blog post should be 500-1000 words. (NOTE: This will be in much more depth than other blog posts you’ve written.)
• Include the following in the blog post
  • What is a Social Media News Release?
  • What are the advantages & disadvantages of a SMNR?
  • When should a PR practitioner consider using a SMNR?
  • Offer links to at least two websites that will help one create a SMNR
  • Provide links to SMNRs that at least five different organizations have created
  • Provide 5-10 tips for SMNR creation
• There should be at least ten hyperlinks in your blog post. ALWAYS link to sites where you get your information; not doing so is plagiarism.
• In BlackBoard, submit the URL to your blog post about the SMNR.

And here’s a link to the social bookmarks for the sites and tools I will discuss in the presentation.

Questions about social media?

1. Pinterest is what you make of it. If you like sewing, then focus on the beautiful pictures of people’s sewing projects. If it’s food you love, look at those. If it’s places around the world for an unplugged getaway or even how to survive a zombie apocalypse, there are even boards for that. Really.
2. Thinking back to taking my SAT, here’s a modern-day analogy: ___ is to bookmark as board is to folder. If you guessed “pin,” you’re right. Give yourself a star.
3. Use descriptive words to describe the images you pin (or re-pin) to your boards. Saying “Yum!” as a descriptor for every recipe you find or “Simply stunning” for every beach sunset isn’t good enough. This will help you and others when using Pinterest’s search feature. (For my geeky friends, this is all about SEO.)
4. If you’re not already using the Pin It button, get it now. And I mean immediately. It will save you an enormous amount of time in pinning sites. (From your Pinterest page, click on About, then choose Pin It Button. Follow the directions on that page to install the button on the toolbar of your browser.) NOTE: For now, this button is not yet available for tablets.
5. Save yourself some time typing. Highlight text on a web page, perhaps the title of the post, then click the Pin It button. Your highlighted text will appear as the description of your pin.
6. Do you ever find great ideas/images you’d like to add to Pinterest, but you’re using your tablet so there’s no Pin It button? Just bookmark the pages in your usual way (like using Chrome’s bookmarks), and then pin them to Pinterest when you’re back on your desktop or notebook computer.
7. Another tip for using Pinterest from your tablet or mobile phone: If you want to re-pin something that’s already on Pinterest, it’s tricky to choose the right Board to pin it to (at least when using an Android, it’s tricky). It seems impossible to scroll through to the bottom of your list of boards. What I’ve done is create a board called “+Pinned from My Android Tablet.” Using the plus sign ensures it’s always near the top of my scrolling list of boards. I’ll temporarily pin to that board, then pin it properly when I’m back on my computer.
8. Sometimes, sites that are linked from the images on Pinterest are in a foreign language. If you use Google Chrome, you’ll get a pop-up menu bar that will ask if you want the site translated for you. The translation isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely better than any translations I could do on my own.
9. Every now and then, when I click on an image, the link takes me to the home page of a blog, not the specific post where the image came from. That’s frustrating. When I finally find the image, I’ll create a “fresh” pin myself rather than re-pin, so that the link works properly.
10. I have one board that I called For Friends. If I find something that I think a specific Pinterest member might like, but it doesn’t neatly fit into one of my existing boards, I put it there. Now here’s the fun part. I mention the person’s name in the description using the @ sign followed by the username. (Pinterest will pop up a menu to select the name after you start typing the first few letters.) Now the person will get a notification.
11. This brings me to privacy. On Pinterest, there is NO privacy. Anything you pin can be seen by anyone on the internet. So if you’re pinning birthday gift ideas for your best friend, remember that he or she might run across them. (For things you want to bookmark privately, just use your usual method of bookmarking, not Pinterest.)
12. If you want to pin a page that has no images that Pinterest can find, there’s a solution for you. Use Pin a Quote, a bookmarklet that was just released in early March. It will let you highlight text on the page and create an image from that text. It’s quick and easy.
13. And finally, don’t believe everything you hear or read about Pinterest being a major time suck. Of course, it can be if you let it. But for me, Pinterest has sparked my creativity again. I’ve dragged my dusty sewing machine and paintbrushes out and created dozens of projects for myself and as gifts for friends and family. I probably spend LESS time on my computer now than I did before.

A small sampling of the craft projects I've created since joining Pinterest

What Pinterest tips would YOU add?

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.

Poynter Institute News University Courses

Build and Engage Local Audiences Online

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.

Five Steps to Multimedia Storytelling

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.

Multimedia Reporting: Covering Breaking News

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.

The Community Journalism Series: Strategies for Managing Local Contributors

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.

Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing University Webinars

How to Blog Effectively for Business by Ann Handley and Mac Collier

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Crash Course to Get Found by Lee Odden

Social Media and Building Community by Chris Brogan

Successful Business Uses for Facebook and LinkedIn by Elyse Trager

PR for Inbound Marketing by Todd Defren

Twitter for Business by Laura Fitton

Social Media for Big Businesses by Paula Berg

The Science of Social Media by Dan Zarella

Enchanting Your Prospects by Guy Kawasaki

Social and Mobile Marketing by Jamie Turner