For my Social Media for PR classes (COMM 4633 and SPC 4350)
In addition to our in-class meetings, we will learn from professionals in the social media space each week this semester. Be sure to view or listen to the webinar by Saturday at midnight each week; we’ll discuss the webinars during the following week in class. For many of the weeks, the webinars dovetail nicely with our theme for the week. A vast majority of the webinars will come from Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing University.
Image Credit: "Everyone Welcome COME IN" by Lars Hammar
For my Southeastern University COMM 4633 students
Welcome to our COMM 4633 Social Media for PR & Journalism class. For our first day of class, I’ve created this blog post to make it easier to follow along with all the links I will be sharing.
Create a free account at Inbound Marketing University. You’ll take several courses via this site this semester. (At this point, you don’t need to do anything more than create the account and remember the login information for later.)
Create a free account at WordPress.com (if you don’t already have one); this is the site we will be using for our blogs this semester. Choose a blog address wisely, as it’s not possible to change the address after you register. Consider using your first and last name (or some variation) as your address.
Welcome to our SPC 4350 Social Media for PR & Advertising class. For our first day of class, you’ll be meeting briefly with Dr. Fenner, as I am at the three-day workshop A New Curriculum for a New Journalism at the Poynter Institute until Wednesday. We WILL meet on Wednesday at 3:15 p.m.
Before we meet in person on Wednesday, please do the following:
Create a free account at Inbound Marketing University. You’ll take several courses via this site this semester. (At this point, you don’t need to do anything more than create the account and remember the login information for later.)
Create a free account at WordPress.com (if you don’t already have one); this is the site we will be using for our blogs this semester. Choose a blog address wisely, as it’s not possible to change the address after you register. Consider using your first and last name (or some variation) as your address.
Image Credit: "Logo Top 5 de las 5" by Alberto Carlos Diéguez
The traffic at my blog Public Relations Matters ebbs and flows, much like with most blogs. When my classes are in session, I know for sure that certain posts will gain hundreds of hits, because I post all my assignments on my blog. For the purpose of today’s Top 5 post, I am not counting class assignment posts. Below you will find my five posts that had the most traffic in 2010.
The ONE job interview question: I asked Phil Gomes from Edelman what the ONE job interview question was that he tended to ask in almost every interview for a public relations position. He gave me his choice, in video form, and proceeded to interview several colleagues at Edelman for their choices as well. I show this short video in my classes each semester when I discuss job interviewing.
Five Ways to Keep Current in Public Relations News & Trends: Occasionally, my students ask me how I know so much about what is going on in the world of public relations. It’s simple: I actively try to stay up on news and trends. This blog post explains how I do it, and how PR students should do it, too.
How NOT to Hashtag in Twitter: In early December, the person running the CNN’s Breaking News Twitter account chose to use some tasteless hashtags in a tweet about the murder of a child. I contacted a CNN producer about it. Then I blogged.
AP Style Bootcamp :: Flagging Your 2010 AP Stylebook: Whether you are a journalist, PR pro or student, sometimes it’s hard to find what you are looking for in the AP Stylebook. In this post, I shared my strategy for using Post-It Notes to flag the book for easy use.
10 Tips for Polishing Up Your Blogs, Fall 2010 Edition: Students in all my PR classes blog as part of the course requirements. I’ve read hundreds of student blogs over the past few years. Students typically make the same mistakes from semester to semester. I thought writing a post with the 10 most common mistakes would help my Fall 2010 students. Sigh. If only all of my students had taken the tips I shared to heart.
Are there other posts that you read at my blog in 2010 that resonated with you, but aren’t listed in the “most popular”?
NOTE: This interactive chart was not designed by me. I am sorry, friends in Alaska, Hawaii and a few other places, that you cannot be seen easily here. You can click on the Zoom Out icon (the minus sign) to see yourself that way.
Though I am a fan of incorporating social media in the news when it makes sense to do so, Dallas TV station FOX4 may have gone just a wee bit too far*.
*Yes, I do know it’s a send up. And it’s a good one!
As a long-time listener of the Inside PR podcast, I look forward to each episode (seriously!), and I miss listening to new episodes during the summer hiatus. I always find something useful to share with my public relations students from listening to the podcast each Wednesday. But this week . . . what a great show! It’s a must-listen for public relations students.
Martin Waxman, Gini Dietrich and Joe Thornley spent this entire 20-ish minute podcast sharing their thoughts on why and how students who are planning careers in public relations should become involved in social media, along with what to avoid doing.
[Updated from my original post written in December 2008 :: Additions are in italics]
When I first started using Twitterabout a year agoin 2007, I would follow anyone who first followed me. As Twitter has grown, I have realized that I need to be more discerning so that I don’t get overwhelmed. Here’s a brief description of my thought process.
I tend to automatically follow:
people I’ve met in real life (if I liked them when I met them)
people who live in the Savannah or Statesboro (GA) Lakeland/Tampa/Orlando areas
people who engage me in positive ways with @barbaranixon tweets
Occasionally, I’ll revisit the people I’m currently following and make a determination if I still want to invest time in following them. Today I looked back at the last two days of tweets in my time line. And then I made a purge of about 250 people that I was following. I honestly have no idea why I was following some in the first place. Some were laced with foul language, while others just plain brought me down with their negative tone. Others tweeted about things that I’m no longer interested in.
If your tweets don’t make me learn or laugh, then quite often I don’t keep following. It’s as simple as that. However, I may add you to a Twitter list and look at the list on occasion. Or I may engage with you when I follow a hashtag like #TopChef (as we live-tweet the Bravo TV show) or #NASCAR (during races).
About once a month, I’ll visit my Followers page and hover my mouse over a name. If there’s no real name or any bio at all, I usually don’t look further. I’ll read a bio if it’s there. If in your bio you’re promising me things that I’d hear in a late-night infomercial, it’s unlikely I’ll follow you. Things in a bio that may intrigue me include:
public relations or social media
student affairs / higher education
photography
Auburn University
Presbyterian
NASCAR
autism or Asperger’s syndrome
food/cooking
Though it’s not hypercritical, I prefer engaging in conversations on Twitter with people who use their real photos. It’s nice to have a name and a face together.
If I make it as far as looking at your most recent tweets:
Is there a mix of original comments, @replies, retweets and links? (If all the tweets are of one type, I usually don’t follow.)
Do I see @replies to people I know?
Do I think I’ll learn something from you?
Are many of your tweets of a positive nature (not whiny)?
Do you avoid foul language (most of the time)?
Do you make me laugh?
If I haven’t followed you, and you would like me to, it’s generally a good idea to send me an @barbaranixon so that I know you’re interested in engaging in conversation with me. And if it seems like I’ve been talking in a foreign language here, take a look at A Twitter Lexicon.
So, what’s your strategy? How do you decide whom to follow?
For my Social Media for PR classes (COMM 4633 and SPC 4350)
