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WordPress and Facebook and Twitter . . . Oh My! #NCA09

On Saturday morning, I am presenting at the National Communication Association convention in Chicago. The panel that I am a part of is Discourses of Stability and Change: Public Relations Educators Prepare Students to Learn Traditional Foundations While Grasping Social Media Trends. Other panel participants include:

Though I will not have the opportunity or ability to use technology as part of my session on social media, I am sharing here the basis for my short talk.

WordPress And Facebook And Twitter Oh My

Links & assignments referred to in my presentation at #NCA09:

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First, Do No Tweeting (at #NCA09)

notweetingThis week, I am attending the National Communication Association convention in Chicago. In its own words, “NCA is a scholarly society that works to enhance the research, teaching, and service produced by its members on topics of both intellectual and social significance.”

While preparing to attend this convention, I told my students at Georgia Southern University that I would be sharing what I learn, along with random observations about the convention, using Twitter and identifying the NCA-related tweets with the hashtag #NCA09 to make it easy for them to find what I was writing.  NCA itself is also using a Twitter account to share information & answer questions about the convention, as well as maintaining a Twitter list of NCA members attending the convention.

But then something took me aback.

At the first session I attended yesterday, I had my Palm Pre out and was prepared to take my notes on the session on the device and share them via Twitter.  The session chair stood and made his opening remarks about the panel discussion that was about to take place. And then he asked everyone to turn off and put away all electronic devices.

I was taken aback, but I complied (mostly because I was sitting in the front row.) Then I took my notes old-school, with a notebook and paper. (I did notice later that I was taking my notes in 140 characters or fewer. Hmmm.) This must have been an aberration, just the preference of one panel? Over lunch, I did a barrage of tweets with everything I would have tweeted live if I had been permitted to.

Apparently at the Newcomers Welcome Session, NCA participants were specifically asked not to tweet during sessions. (I arrived in Chicago after the welcome session, so I was not there to hear the request myself. This bit of information was shared with me at the #NCAtweetup held at Buddy Guy’s Legends last night, where ~30 or so NCA members who are connected via Twitter gathered to meet in person.)

UPDATE as of 7:27am on 11/13/2009: According to the NCA Twitter account, “Tweet restrictions during sessions are decided by presenters, not NCA. We do not have any policies against tweeting during sessions.”

At a later session, on the use of social media in public relations classes, I asked permission to tweet, and that request was warmly welcomed by all members of that panel. So several of us DID use Twitter during that session, and we even received feedback and questions from others not attending the convention while the session was going on. We shared those tweets with the panel during the Q&A session. And to me, THAT is the power of Twitter.

solis

So here are my questions…

As a speaker, what are your thoughts on people tweeting while you speak?

As a listener, does Twitter enhance or detract from your listening?

As an association, does asking/telling members not to tweet equal a type of censorship?

I welcome your thoughts.

barbara_is_listening

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Social Media Monitoring Report :: PRCA 4330

For Prof. Nixon’s PRCA 4330 Public Relations Research Class:

This assignment gives you an opportunity to learn how to monitor blog and other social media content in a way that provides similar insight offered by more traditional environmental scanning methods.

Many people will discuss your client or organization and its products/services on their own Web sites or on social media sites, outside of realm traditional media. Just as it is important for you to know what the media and your community are saying about your organization and its products/services, it is important to know what is being said in social media sites like blogs, social networks, and message boards. For this assignment, you will

  1. monitor the online conversation that has occurred about an organization or brand of your choosing since November 1, 2009
  2. create a table for your data
  3. write an analysis of the conversation with suggestions for action.

You might find bloggers who are blogging about your client organization or brand, people who are creating Web sites about it, message board members who are discussing it in forums, Twitter users who are twittering about it, social networking users who are commenting about it, or online video producers who are posting YouTube videos about it.

Let me know by November 15 how you choose to complete the project (individual or in pairs) and which organization you are choosing using this Google spreadsheet. NOTE: The first person (or pair) to “claim” a Fortune 500 company “gets” the company. No duplicates, please.

For details on the report, see below.

Social Media Monitoring Report

Many thanks to Kelli Burns, from University of South Florida, for allowing me to slightly modify a project posted at her Social Researcher blog.

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The WII-FM Factor for Twitter

The PRSSA (Public Relations Student Society of America) at Georgia Southern University asked me to join them for tonight’s meeting and share with them one of my favorite subjects: Twitter! How could I say no? 

Twitter: WII-FM

To see my notes on the slides, you can download the presentation or view it at SlideShare.

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A Twitter Starter Pack for PR Students

confused twitter birdAre you a public relations student (or recent grad) just getting started using Twitter? It’s usually best to test the waters a bit before you dive in. 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. Read their tweets for a few days before you start tweeting yourself.

You may also want to read these two blog posts I’ve written about Twitter: Choosing Whom to Follow on Twitter: My Strategy and A Twitter Lexicon. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend Prof. Sam Bradley’s College Student’s Guide: Twitter 101.

Questions?

barbara_is_listening

(PS: Suggestions for other good people for PR students to follow? Please let me know with a comment to this post.)

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Help Create a Pixelated Conference :: Social Media 101

Dr. Natalie Tindall, Georgia State University, takes it all in.

In the spring, I’ll be teaching an online course for Georgia Southern called Social Media for PR. One of the things I plan to incorporate into the course is video/audio from respected leaders in PR on the topic of social media — like what the students might experience if they went to a conference. There are many, many videos (and audio recordings) of conference speakers online now, but where to start?

Mitch Joel created something at his blog Six Pixels of Separation called a Pixelated Conference, where he embedded video clips from many different conferences. And that got me thinking . . .

If you were going to create a Pixelated Conference on Social Media for PR students, what would you include? Please offer your suggestions here, and I’ll share a link to what I create for my students when I get it ready.

Some suggestions I’ve heard so far:

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

[Photo Credit: http://ugaconnect2009.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/pr-is-not-social-media-and-more-words-to-tweet-by-from-lauren-fernandez/]

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Podcasts for PR Students and Recent Grads

In my public relations classes at Georgia Southern University, I am often asked which podcasts I listen to. I was planning on creating a simple list of the podcasts this morning, and then I listened to Marketing Over Coffee on my walk. I learned about a service called Gigadial, where I can create my own podcast station, filled with my favorite podcasts all in one place.

In my Gigadial station Public Relations Matters, you’ll find current episodes of For Immediate Release, plus selected episodes of Inside PR, The Creative Career, Media Bullseye Radio Roundtable, Trafcom News and Marketing Over Coffee.

Clicking the Gigadial icon below will take you directly to my recommended podcasts:
Check out my GigaDial staton!!

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Guidelines for Student Blogging

Toward the end of 2008, Jeffrey Keefer and I used Google Docs to collaborate on guidelines for students to follow when writing in their blogs. What follows is the result of our collaboration, along with some of my personal spin added in. Though I wanted to create these guidelines as a guide for my students at Georgia Southern University, they may apply elsewhere as well. 

Guidelines for Creating Blog Posts

Keep these general guidelines in mind when you post blog entries for our class:

  • Blogs are public, so write in a way that you will be comfortable with anybody reading your work (co-workers, friends, potential employers, parents, etc.).
    • Public blog posts may be indexed by Google and other search engines, so be mindful of your online identity you are creating.
    • Remember that Google may cache previous versions of your blog posts, even if you delete them. Google never sleeps.
  • Use an engaging title that captures your blog post and promotes reader interest.
  • Write about anything that interests you as it relates to our class content, even if there is no specific class assignment. Writers get better writing by writing. 
  • Give credit where credit is due
    • If you use the direct words or lists of another blogger/writer, you MUST put the words in quotation marks.*
      • Cite the source by including the name and URL of the source; hyperlink to the source. OR use APA style.
    • If you paraphrase another blogger/writer, you MUST indicate where you found the information.*
      • Cite the source by including the name and URL of the source; hyperlink to the source. OR use APA style.
    • When using images in your blog posts, indicate where the images come from, either by linking back to the image source or providing a photo credit on the page. A great source for images is Flickr, especially when searched using CompFight.
*Note:  Failure to cite sources in blog posts will result in the same penalty as failure to cite sources in traditional research papers or other writing projects. Consult with your professor if you are in doubt about how to attribute the sources.

Guidelines for Commenting on Blogs

  • Reading your classmate and colleagues’ blogs to will give you ideas for your own writing.
  • When you comment on another person’s blog, you can potentially start a dialogue and gain new social contacts.
  • Like blog posts themselves, you never know who will read your comments.
  • It is good practice reply to comments on your own blog.

Questions about blogging guidelines?

barbara_is_listening