"Les Nessman" with my infant son James and me (1990)
As we start wrapping up our summer semester in Introduction to Public Relations class, it’s time to end the semester in my traditional way: by watching a classic episode of the classic 1970s TV show “WKRP in Cincinnati” :: “Turkeys Away.”
According to the Internet Movie Database: “[Station manager] Mr. Carlson is beginning to feel useless at the new formatted rock station so he decides to create a big Thanksgiving Day promotion. His idea? Get a helicopter, with a banner attached to it saying “Happy Thanksgiving From WKRP…” Then, based on a botched promotion from a radio station in Arkansas, live turkeys are dropped from a helicopter. Chaos ensues.
Take 20 or so minutes to watch the episode below, keeping in mind what you’ve learned in PRCA 2330 during the semester.
So what can public relations students learn about how NOT to do a promotion from Mr. Carlson’s fiasco? I’ll get the list started:
Communicate with your entire team before launching a promotional campaign (or a turkey).
Do your research! It’s best to learn ahead of time that turkeys don’t fly.
Get permission before doing a stunt.
What would you add to this list? Add your thoughts in the comments below.
After reviewing all the first news releases in PRCA 3330, I am generally pleased with what I saw, considering it is the first news release you have written. Many of the news releases were spot-on; they were newsworthy and clearly written. You must have remembered what you learned in your Intro to Journalism class!
Here are some common errors I saw:
Improper use of commas (either too many or not enough)
Puffery (making statements in the news release that don’t seem newsworthy. Some of these would be okay as part of a quotation, however.)
Format (forgetting to put an embargo date or For Immediate Release, end sign, page slugs, letterhead with mailing address, etc.)
Calling women “girls” or “ladies” (even though it’s common in sororities to do this, AP Style calls for the use of the word “women” when you are writing about female adults)
Abbreviating the word Georgia as GA, rather than Ga. as AP Style calls for
Using “we” or “our” when it’s not part of a quotation (a news release needs to sound like a story one would read in an impartial newspaper, not in a company newsletter)
Improper formatting on dates, times, numerals, etc.
Be sure to avoid these errors when writing your Personality Profiles that are due next week.
To learn how to see my specific feedback for you in GeorgiaVIEW, see this short video below.
Let’s face it . . . whether you’re a PR student, practitioner or faculty member, we’re all busy. So how can you get (and stay) up to speed with the ever-changing world of public relations? Here’s a quick guide to how I stay current in public relations.
One: Listen to PR podcasts.
Some of my favorite podcasts are: For Immediate Release, Inside PR, The Creative Career, Trafcom News, Marketing Over Coffee and Coming Up PR. My favorite time to listen to podcasts is during my 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 Palm Pre or iPod.
Two: Subscribe to daily or weekly PR e-mailed newsletters.
My favorite PR newsletter is one that comes into my inbox daily from Ragan Communications: the PR Daily newsfeed. When I want to read the latest on PR, this is the newsletter I turn to first. Another helpful newsletter comes from Chris Brogan; Chris provides different content in the newsletter than he does on his blog, so it’s definitely worth subscribing.
Three: Follow PR practitioners on Twitter.
Are you a public relations student (or recent grad) just getting started using Twitter? 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.
Four: Read PR blogs.
There are hundreds of blogs about public relations. I’ve bookmarked many of them in Delicious 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 recently include The Comms Corner and Karen Russell’s Week’s Best (which I just learned is on hiatus for the summer), as they aggregate current posts of interest to PR practitioners.
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 15 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 on Mondays to see how much my students know about what’s going on in the world.)
So that you are prepared for our next blog checkpoint, which will take place sometime after June 12, please complete this form. (NOTE: You will need to scroll to get to the bottom of the form.)
In my Summer 2010 PRCA 2330 & PRCA 3330 classes, students have created their blogs and have started blogging. The blogs are worth a significant portion of the grades in these classes. Here are some tips for students based on me reading the initial blog posts.
3 Things Done Well
You wrote conversationally.
You spoke your minds.
You backed up your assertions with examples.
5 Things to Watch Out For
Typos: Avoid at all costs. WordPress has a spell checker that can catch many of your errors, but not all. (And if you see a typo on a classmate’s blog, why not contact the classmate to let him or her know?)
Use proper English sentence case. (That means don’t write in all lower case. If you write “i” instead of “I,” it gives your blog a MySpace feel — not what you are looking for when starting a professional presence online.)
Avoid LOL and other acronyms. (That’s fine for text messages and Twitter, but not for blog posts.)
Long paragraphs: Especially when writing for the web, it’s important to keep your paragraphs short. Long paragraphs are hard on the eye and make things much more challenging to read.
Create new Posts, not new Pages, for your assignments. (And if you already have your assignments on Pages, simply copy the text from the page, and add a new Post. Then delete the pages you do not need.)
3 Things to Try Next Time
Though this may come across as sarcastic, read the blogging guidelines for your class. I offer very specific directions for due dates, length of posts (for TOWs and comments), format of the Blog Comments post, required widgets, etc. You’ll also want to watch the video I created for your class in my Wimba Office Hours room, if you haven’t already done so.
When you mention a website, provide a hyperlink to the site. And be sure to use words, not the URL, as the link that your readers see.
Consider adding a complementary image to your posts. I tend to find the images I use at Flickr, using the CompFight service to find ones that are licensed for use through Creative Commons.
We’re about halfway through our One Week of Twitter. Many of you have provided your Twitter ID. I have made lists of the names (using a service called TweepML). Be sure to follow everyone in your class, along with the additional people I recommended in the One Week of Twitter assignment blog post. And follow others, too! If you’re not following people who are interesting to you, then you will get nothing out of this assignment.
You can easily add your classmates to your following list in Twitter by visiting the appropriate link below and following the directions on the page:
I see that some of you are tweeting, but not really tweeting anything of substance. It may be okay to write “Sooooo bored!” as a Facebook status for your friends, but in Twitter, try to be more engaging and professional — at least for this one week assignment.
Remember to reply to people in addition to writing your own original tweets. Broadcast-only tweets may be okay for some news organizations, but not for real people.
Check your @UserName (username = your Twitter ID) to see who is writing directly to you. I am hearing from some of my Twitter friends that they’re writing to my students, but my students aren’t writing back at all. Maybe it’s because you didn’t know how to check for replies?
Share links to information you find interesting or useful, along with a little commentary on why others should read it.
Use Twitter’s search feature to find tweets marked with the hashtag for your class (#PRCA2330, #PRCA3330 or #FYE1220).
Hope you found this note helpful.
Barbara
(PS — You’ll write about your Twitter experience next week.)
In the two years that I’ve been using Twitter, I’ve tried my best to get my PR students using Twitter, too. Most of them dutifully complete their One Week of Twitter assignment, then fade away when it’s no longer a requirement. One week definitely isn’t enough time to “get Twitter,” but the classes I teach aren’t Twitter 101 classes . . . Twitter is simply a small component of the classes. And the more I make it an assignment, the less they seem to like it.
So this week, I decided to compile a list of reasons and ways PR students can get the most out of Twitter. Maybe if they (you?) see the benefits, it will encourage you to stick with it even when it’s not an assignment.
Write a good 160-character bio. Mention in your bio that you are a PR student and which university you attend. If there’s room left, include some additional information to personalize your bio. I know a lot of PR pros who always follow students back, if they know they are students.
Upload a profile picture. Make yourself look like a human and not a generic bot. I recommend you pick a nice square picture of yourself. When you use a rectangle, it will be cropped, and you have no control over where the crop is. Try to have a picture that looks relatively professional. And by all means, have only YOU in the photo, no significant others or pets.
Help your followers (or potential followers) learn more about you. In your profile, share a link to your blog (if, and only if, you update it regularly) or LinkedIn profile. Newbie mistake: Adding a link to your Twitter profile. Um, the person is already AT your profile page, so it’s kinda superfluous.
Follow PR people. I created a Twitter Starter Pack for PR Students with about 60 engaging people and organizations to follow. Read what they write. Get a feel for how tweets look.
Reply to people. If someone says something thought provoking, send him or her a note back with an @ reply. Even if the person isn’t following you, he or she will see your message. (I tend to follow back more quickly when someone sends me an @barbaranixon to start a conversation with me.)
Introduce yourself. Twitter isn’t like a midddle school dance. You can’t just stand around, leaning on the wall, hoping someone will “ask you to dance.” It’s okay to send tweets to PR pros. And most of them really like it when you do! Let them know you’re a PR student. You may be surprised how helpful many of them are.
Share links to interesting information. I recommend using Bit.ly for shortening links. Bit.ly can change a URL from “http://barbaranixon.posterous.com/a-fordmustang-sandwich-bump-drafting-stopped” to “http://bit.ly/cLCgNG” — this is a huge help when you’re trying to share a long link but don’t want to use up most of your 140 characters with the URL. A bonus? When you sign up for a free Bit.ly account, you get some analytics for free, which means you can tell how many people clicked on your link.
Ask questions. In “real life,” how do conversations work? Lots of times one person asks a question and the other person answers it. On Twitter, if you ask a question, you may be pleasantly surprised at the responses you get, both from PR pros and other followers. Tip: PR pros tend to like to offer advice to PR students.
Connect Twitter to your cell phone. If you can access Twitter from anywhere, it’s more likely that you will use it more often. I have DMs (direct messages) come right to my Palm Pre. And I can send a SMS tweet to 40404, and it will update my Twitter profile automatically.
Twitter isn’t Facebook. And it’s not supposed to be. Twitter is more than a series of Facebook-type status updates. If that’s what you want to do, use Facebook instead. Very few people on Twitter really care that you’re “really really tired today” or that you “just left the gym.”
And now for tip 10.5: Interested in getting more followers? Take a look at your last page of tweets on Twitter.com. Read them carefully. If you didn’t know you, would you want to follow you?
So those are my 10.5 tips. What else would you suggest?
If you participate in the social networking site Twitter, it’s likely that you have come across an account called BPGlobalPR, which has more than 135,000 followers. And if you’re like me, you probably have been thinking, “This account can’t be for real.” I mean, why on earth would BP’s public relations team tweet things like this? Here’s a sample tweet from the account from last week:
This morning, I learned of a video on how to annoy a TV reporter from Jeremy Pepper’s blog POP PR Jots. Though I have known Jeremy (online) for two years now, I thought there was something fishy about this video. I mean, why on earth would Marc Slavin, communications director at Laguna Honda Hospital, be touching reporter Dan Noyes so much and getting up into Noyes’ face like he did? This had to be something staged, right? I mean, Holy Man-Handling, Batman!
So I did a little looking. And yes, this video IS real. And as they say on The People’s Court, the participants “are not actors.” This situation really happened, and it was caught on tape — and uploaded to YouTube and other sites pretty quickly.
For more stories about the altercation from this video, see:
[Originally posted February 24, 2010.]
