PRSpot

What the NEW Press Releases should look like

2009-04-27T12:59:00.003-05:00

A former FT (not sure what this means) journalist writes in this article his opinion and outlook on the ever so present press releases. He begins by telling the readers (just in case they are not familiar with PR lingo) what a press release is. He states that it is any type of formal document announcing a new product, grand opening, new service, partnership, or basically anything new that is happening to a company or corporation. But there is a problem with these press releases.

The main reason why a press release is issued is to get the word out to journalists so that they can then disperse the information out to their area. Basically what Tom says next is that since press releases are being created by committees of the company being discussed, and edited by the lawyers of that company, there is a lot of fluff in the release. A lot of top-spin, and meaningless quotes that as a journalist, he has to sift through and it becomes a pain. For the most part, journalist throw these releases in the digital trash bin.
Tom then offers his suggestions to improve the press release and in turn strengthen the relationship into a partnership between journalist and PR rep.
His suggestions are as follows:
-Provide a brief description of what the announcement is, but leave the spin to the jjournalists
-Provide a page of quotes from the CEO or other C-Level execs.
-Provide a page of quotes from customers, if applicable.
-Provide financial information in many different formats.
-and finally, Provide many links inside the press release copy, and also provide a whole page, of relevant links to other news stories or reference sources.
Tom offers one final suggestion and that is to properly tag your release so that the journalist can find the relevant information he needs for the story and that way can assemble the story they way they want and just be able to put in their own spin.
He says if PR reps did all this then they will become successful in delivering an effective and factual press release!

Social Networking helping possible pandemic Flu

2009-04-27T11:43:00.003-05:00

If you have not heard about the sudden spread of the Swine Flu, then you obviously have not had access to a television.
There have been several hundred cases of this new strand of influenza in Mexico, predominately in Mexico City and has killed several of the citizens who have been infected.
What I found interesting is the use of social networking to spread the word about this disease.
Being informed about this disease, where it is and how it is prevented is the biggest key to staying healthy and with so many citizens using the Internet more than they watch news, using social networking sites such as facebook and myspace to inform your friends.
I have received several bulletins on myspace and read several status updates of my friends on facebook informing people to "learn more about the disease", "wash hands frequently" and "not to take this too lightly". Although there are drugs to help cure this infection, you must get to the hospital immediately for treatment.
If the most important thing we can do right now to prevent this disease from spreading is to inform each other, then I could not think of a better way to reach thousands of people at once, than social networking sites. Think about it, we learned that if one person shares something with at least twelve people, then it will circulate a million times. How many friends do you have on facebook?

Video Project: Alcohol being misportrayed by the media

2009-04-27T03:38:00.007-05:00

The above video is one I made for my PR class. We had an assignment to create a video which would raise awareness about a social issue of our choice. I chose to make my video about the way the media portrays alcohol and how it can lead to deaths. In every alcohol ad, it is either portraying a sexy, skinny, women, a man getting all kinds of women, a woman getting all kinds of men or ads that say you could be a better, stonger, better looking person if you drink THIS alcohol. These ads are encouraging more people to drink and therefore encouraging more people to drive drunk. This was the reason I made my video.

My creative view was to place some alcohol ads which I felt represented the basic forte of these ads, alongside pictures of fatal car accidents so that people could really grasp the idea, that it wont matter if they are sexy while they drink, if they are dead.

Our videos could only be 60 seconds long, otherwise I would have included some more statistics on drunk driving. The bottom line is, alcohol companies need to alter their advertisments a little bit so that they do not make alcohol look so glamorous. Adding, "Drink Responsibly" or "Enjoy Responsibly" at the end of their advertisments is not enough in my opinion to detour people from drinking so much they harm others or themselves on their way home.

Video has gotten more powerful

2009-04-20T00:22:00.003-05:00

This past week in class our lecture centered around our upcoming project of a viral video we are to create about a social issue of our choice. One example our professor showed us was the Dove Campign videos.

I think in the beginning with the hype of YouTube everyone felt that video communication was nothing more than a fad. In PR 2.0 Deirdre Breakenridge quotes, "A fad refers to a fashion that becomes popular in a culture relatively quickly, but loses popularity dramatically," (161). But in today's media, video communication is just as powerful to professionals as it is to anyone with a video camera. How many people can you think of who have either become famous, made a dramatic difference within a company (like the two brothers who made a viral video against Apple) or have become Internet wonders because of YouTube? Quite a few.

In PR 2.0, Breakenridge talks with Jason Miletsky, the CEO and creative director of PFS Makrywyse and he gives his top ten reasons for the recent surge in video as well as podcasting on the Internet:

1. Improvements in Technology - With the accessibility of lightning speed ways to connect to the Internet, downloading and uploading video clips take less time than ever.
2. More Accessible Production Capabilities - easier and fun ways to create videos.
3. Improved Compression and Playback - Improved players, such as Adobe's Flash player, plays FLV files and the Flash CS3 video encoder significantly reduces the size of videos without compromising their viewing quality.
4. The YouTube Factor - Four words: Web Video is here.
5. The iPod Revolution - iPods make viewing video "on-the-go" easy
6. Increased Competition for the User
7. Less Time Allotted by Visitors to Understand Content - Reading long copy on web pages can be boring and tiring. Cutting out all of this copy will give the user more accessibility to the website's features by allowing them to test it.
8. Higher Degree of Internet Marketing Sophistication and Integration - Video on the Web as a bit of an untapped resource. Marketers are beginning to embrace this concept.
9. Expanded Use - Businesses have begun to return their attention to productive uses of video web posting.
10. Age-Ins Have Entered the Landscape - The hotshot twentysomethings "are pushing the envelope of video, podcasting, and the Web further than ever. The Recent Ashton Kutcher victory on Twitter is a good example.

Ashton Kutcher beats CNN

2009-04-19T23:50:00.007-05:00

I found this story to be interesting because I am one( of the very few I am sure) who does not see the appeal of Twitter. Early Friday morning, roughly around 2:13 a.m. Ashton Kutcher reached the platinum level of 1 million followers. Apparently Ashton had challenged the popular news station CNN who handle on Twitter is CNNBrk, to a contest: whoever was to reach 1 million followers first would donate 10,000 mosquito nets to prevent Malaria.

Kutcher then held up the $100,000 check to be given to the charity.

But donating to Malaria does not seem to be the central point of victory from this contest. Kutcher was quoted in a MTV News article saying, "We have shown the world that the new wave is here, it is present and it is ready to explode. You guys are all of it. ... We can and will create our media. We can and will edit our media. We can and will broadcast our media. We will censor our own media ourselves."

When I first heard of this story, I was kind of annoyed because I am sick of hearing about Twitter. But the more I though about it and especially after reading Kutchers quote, I realized that maybe Twitter is providing something to users that is earth-shattering. Putting the power of the media and news directly into our hands. It is just up to us how we use it.

All it takes is ONE(plus a few of their friends) to make a difference

2009-04-13T22:45:00.005-05:00

This week in PR we read chapter six from Citizen Marketers entitled "The Power of One". Although the information in the chapter was not surprising to me I still found it interesting. The chapter discussed how it is simple for just one person to make a huge impact on companies and/or brands.

The example at the beginning of the chapter was interesting to me. It was about two brothers by the name of Neistat who became upset with Apple after they found out what it would cost to replace the battery in their ipod. Long story short, they hacked into Apple's posters for the ipod and made a stencil which they then used to spray paint over posters stating the battery life on an ipod is only 18 months. Then they called the Apple customer service and recorded the call where the representative explained it would cost almost as much as a new ipod to replace the battery and they they would be better off buying a new one. They made the call into a video and sent it to 30 of their friends. The friends then sent it to their friends and shortly the video was downloaded over a million times and was picked up by over 130 news outlets.

Apple shortly released a new battery replacement plan of $99 which was later reduced to $59 and did not deny nor confirm that the change was due to this firecracker video. The reason the video was such a success was because of memes.

According to Richard Dawkins who coined the term meme in his book "The Selfish Gene", a meme is " a cultural transmitter that distinguishes an idea from the billions of others that float in the primordial soup of daily human existence." A meme can be anything from tuns, catchphrases, clothes, fashions, etc.

Citizen Marketers explains that one reasons memes are so successful is they follow the four stages of meme replication:

1. Assimilation. The meme is noticed, understood, and accepted by someone, who becomes a hos of the meme.

2. Retention. It is embedded in memory. The longer it is stored there, the better.

3. Expression. The idea can take some form, such as language, text, pictures, or even in unconscious behavior, such as the way someone walks.

4. Transmission. The host passes the meme on to one or more people.

I will say it was amazing to me after I read all this, how many Internet wonders I could think of that fit this format perfectly, which explained why they became so popular.

Second Life? No Thanx

2009-04-13T13:46:00.005-05:00

This past week in my PR class, we had a guest come and speak with us about the importance of Second Life. Since this was my second time to hear this, I decided to look for something more than I had already heard about this virtual world. I figured that since this was a PR class, the gentlemen would have emphasized how second life could benefit this particular career field. We got nothing.

I heard the same speech I heard last year. "Second life is a virtual world that allows you to interact with other people, explore different islands....."

I apologize if I am coming off a bit harsh but if you can not already tell, I am not a fan of second life. I find the user interface too difficult to master in a short amount of time and these days people want instant gratification. We do not have hours and hours to devote to this program which in all honesty is not really providing any revolutionary aspects to business's at all.

In a recent news article by CNET, they reported another executive has decided to leave the company. "The marketing hype--it's the next Internet!--bottomed out long ago. There was a wave of unflattering press, from virtual terrorism to technical problems to banking scandals"

If the executives of the company are even leaving then...HELLO second life is not as great as it is advertised to be. I personally find it kind of creepy. To be honest the only news I have heard of that deals with second life was when a women killed her husband because he divorced her on second life.

So to wrap this up, I do not see any way second life could help PR strategies at all. One of the few options a business would have would be to build a virtual representation of their company and encourage users to sign up and visit their interactive business. The only problem with this is that it is extremely expensive to buy an island, construct the building and interface and maintain the property. Doesn't sound like a smart business move to me.

I apologize to anyone reading this blog who is a fan of second life, this is my opinion.

Social Networkig cont.

2009-04-06T00:21:00.004-05:00

And the conversation on social networking continues. This week's reading in class was about...you guessed it! SOCIAL NETWORKING! If I did not grasp the concept about how vital social networking is for PR before, I definetly get the picture now.

Deirdre Breakenridge writes in her book, "PR 2.0-New Media, New Tools, New Adventures" that social networking is a revolution. And further pushes the idea that "socially networked consumers decide what is newsworthy and relevant to them." I could not agree more, I just do not know how else to expand on this without saying something that I have either not blogged about already or commented on in one of my classmates blogs.

This blog is my response to the weeks reading and the reading we read was simply about social networking and how companies should utilize it. Like I mentioned before, I completely agree and have learned quite a bit about the importance of social networking. I just have nothing new to say about it at this time.

I will however say that the podcasting project we completed this past week was very interesting and eye opening. Before this porject the only podcast I listened to was the Bobby Bones Show, a local morning radio show here in Austin. We learned how to create and edit a podcast and I feel that these are skills anyone who is going into the PR field should aquire because this is a very efficent PR tool, if you have the skills to make it happen.

Apparently not all Tweets are so sweet

2009-04-06T00:03:00.006-05:00

This week I wanted to touch on a subject that caught my attention earlier this week. The Los Angeles Times wrote a story earlier this week about celebrities who have been getting in trouble over their Tweets!!

Mark Cuban the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Rock star Courtney Love both receieved legal reprocussions over their Tweets recently.

Cuban recieved a $25,000 fine after writing a 100 character Tweet regarding a ref made a bad call against his beloved Mavs. Mark was quoted "can't say no one makes money from twitter now. the nba does." on his Twitter page.

Courtney Love is actually being sued over defamation of designer Dawn Simorangkir. Check out Dawn Simorangkir's Linkedin page here.

Now in professional journalism defamation is a serious thing to avoid. But what I can not understand is that Twitter is a site for personal comments, status updates ect. So even when celebrities tweet about something, that does not make them a professional journalist and I do not believe should suffer consequences in regards to these posts. I would like to know what others opinions are on this subject.

PR Class Podcast: Cynthia Baker, Accolades Public Relations

2009-03-30T13:59:00.006-05:00

For this project, my group and I decided to interview the President of Accolades Public Relations Cynthia Baker. The original interview was quite extensive and we got a great interview from Cynthia. For the purpose of this project we edited the entire interview and condensed it into a 10 minute podcast, leaving the questions we felt were the most relevant to the material we have covered thus far in class.

In a brief overview, Cynthia discusses the main goal of Accolades PR, in relation to social media-what strategies should companies use to enhance their bussiness, and how she feels social media has changed the public relations field.

SHOW NOTES

PODCAST: How Social Media Can Benefit Corporations in Their PR Strategies

Produced, Directed, Edited and Recorded: Alejandra Gonzalez, Monica Hampton, Jaime Masterson, and Ailynn Skinner

00:07 INTRO: Jaime Masterson & Alejandra Gonzalez
00:30: WELCOME: Ailynn Skinner & Monica Hampton, introducing Cynthia Baker
00:46: Overview of Accolade Public Relations
01:25: 1st QUESTION: What are the first steps you advise a client in entering the social media realm?
03:40: 2nd QUESTION: What is the most important social media component for companies to use
04:56: 3rd QUESTION: Who should be blogging within the company?
05:45: 4th QUESTION: Business Strategies, not just PR Strategies are incorporating social media
06:49: 5th QUESTION: How do social media plans differ between sizes of companies?
07:48: 6th QUESTION: How has social media has changed the PR industry?
10:04: OUTRO:

Music by: Ariyasamade
Song: Just Relax
Found on http://www.podsafemusic.com

Ektron:The professional myspace

2009-03-30T09:55:00.003-05:00

Over spring break I decided to skip all the fancy vacation trips to stay in our beautiful city of Austin, Texas and attend the SXSW Interactive, Film and Music festival. I also volunteered for the festival and I had the joy of shiftleading the interactive trade show.

I decided to browse through the ballroom where the trade show was being held to see which companies came back from last year, which ones were absent and which new faces I would meet . I came across one booth in particular there to sponsor the website ektron. At first site it looked like any other website; name, interests, pictures, ect. As I got to talking to the area manager for Texas, I realized that this website is in a way the rebirth of myspace. Myspace started out as a way to network with people, advertise your brand, company, ect. but then swiftly morphed into a chanel for high school drama and pedophiles.

Ektron is a website that boosts content management for your company. It goes beyond a simple page to be viewed and takes it one step further to make your page more interactive. Founder Bill Roger's says on the company's website,"The goal of Ektron CMS400.NET is to provide you with one single application that gives you all of those individual functions. Not just managing your content, but functionality like the latest news, site navigation, bread crumbs, multi-lingual support, PDF generation, and document management should be supported too.
How about the ability to support membership users? Boost communication through things like subscriptions, web alerts and RSS feeds."

I think this was the original goal of myspace but like I said was lost in all the drama. Ektron's site provides users with the ability to create a virtual world really of their brand or company. It is professional looking and if used properly could greatly benefit a company. If anyone out there is looking for a good social media site with lots of ways to make the site interactive and do not want to resort to myspace or facebook...Ektron is a great alternative!

Podcasting for PR

2009-03-15T20:30:00.006-05:00

This week in PR 2.0 we read about how the pros use social media to reach powerful communities. Bussiness who are heavily into social networking really have two jobs because contributing and monitoring your sites as much as one would need to do, is a second full time job. In chapter 12 Deidre talked about Mark Skrobola the founder of a New Jersey based art bussiness. His bussiness is called Art eXposed and it is just what it sounds like. A website that showcases his artisits artwork on the internet.

Because his site's main focus is artwork which is visual, Skrobola had to experiement with new ways to showcase the most important aspect of his bussiness. I think it is amazing how Skrobola spends 50% of his time updating blogs and classifieds on myspace, and just recently he is working on his artists getting video demonstrations on YouTube. YouTube in of itself would be a fantastic way to not only showcase his artists work but get PR out of the deal as well. With YouTube having the capability for anyone to embed a link into their facebook, blog, myspace ect. there is free publicity right there.

More to see at SXSW than just Bands

2009-03-15T19:08:00.004-05:00

Yes, it is that time again, South by Southwest in gorgeous Austin, Texas. I decided this week I wanted to blog about SXSW. This is my second year to volunteer for the festival and I'll tell ya, as much work as it is, It is all worth it.
I volunteer at the tradeshow which I am sure most of you know is a ridiculous collection of the newest social media out there, well the interactive trade show is anyway. There are two tradeshows held. The first one is the interactive tradeshow which takes place during the film and interactive portion of SXSW. I will unfortunately be working the music tradeshow so I will not get to experience all of the interesting companies out there which promote socialmedia.
Last year I ran into a few booths that I found interesting. The first one was called Utterz. It is a site much like Twitter in the sense that you can post real-time updates. I signed up for my account in their booth and posted an update with a picture from my phone of Billy Bob Thorton, it was pretty sweet.
The other booth I came across was Bitstrips. This site lets you create your own comic about whatever you would like. Kind of like a status update with pictures. One of the more famous comics from this site which we actually looked at in class, was the fiasco last year with the facebook panel. I think this is an interesting way to connect through the web with picture, its funnier and more entertaining.
But the best booth I came across was the booth for vidoop. This site prevents phishing and keylogging. Its a site that allows you to create a visual password that you can use to secure anything on the web. Bank accounts, blogs, social networking sites ect. What you do is create an account and then pick 3-5 secret visual pictures that you can remember. Everytime you use this method of signing in, it will ask you to find the pictures you chose and type in the letters that are associated with the picture. The letters change everytime so there is not risk in hackers!
This is one of the reasons I love sxsw. Yes the bands are amazing but there are so many other thigns to explore that are super intesting! If you are lucky enough to be able to come into the tradeshow, definetly do not skip out! There are tons of new social media outlets to learn and lots of swag to pick up as well!

Pandora is out of the box!

2009-03-09T04:04:00.003-05:00

Maybe some of you have heard about this website, maybe some of you have been living under a rock like myself and this is the first time. I was introduced to Pandora this week and I felt compelled to blog about it.

Pandora.com is an internet radio site what allows the listener to listen to only music they like. For those of you who have not heard of the site, I will give you the quick 411. First you go to the site and sign up for an account(it takes literally a minute). Then you start adding your favorite artists. After that, whichever artist you pick, the site will then make it a station and play not only the artist you choose but also similar music based on the type of music, the lyrical design and melodies of the songs. Its amazing! You start to hear songs that you forgot about or songs that are new to you. If you do not like a song they chose then you can click a thumbs down icon and the site will no longer play that song.

So how does this tie into social media? Because of course, with any free website you can have a profile on Pandora.com. You can upload pictures, fill out "about me" sections and communicate with other memebers. You can comment on their musical choices and styles and develop relationships with others.

I just find it interesting that sites devoted to delivering "only music you like" has an outlet for social media as well.

Social Media: taking the bad with the good

2009-03-09T02:51:00.006-05:00

In chapter one of Citizen Marketers this week, one of the first stories which was discussed was the Fiona Apple fiasco that happened around four years ago. Long story short, Fiona Apple had recorded her new album Extraordinary Machine and was unhappy with some of the tracks. Sony (her record label at the time) was also unhappy but refused to let her re-record her tracks. Fiona tried to get other record labels to buy out her contract so that she could re-record her album the way she wanted to but it was a no go. Fiona feared her career was over. Thankfully a fan by the name of Dave Muscato, created a website called freefiona.com. The website creation was a result of a Seattle DJ playing a leaked track from Fiona's album....that had not been released yet! The website was a way for all of Fiona's fans to protest what Sony was doing, which was not letting Fiona re-record her album and release it for her fans. The site was a success and Sony eventually gave in.
But with the good, comes the bad. Social media provides an outlet for anyone to post any type of information they want to. If the information is false there is no way to monitor it because most social media websites do not have monitors. I am sure everyone has heard about the "Beer pong transmits herpes" story. This story created panic among a number of college students since this is the chosen past time for so many of them. However, this whole story was false but still spurred several news stories.
Obviously we can't control what people post online, so how do we stop the information from creating a frenzy sometimes? Some would argue that the only people who believe nonsense deserve to because they cannot tell the difference between obviously false information and the truth. However, this is not a reasonable conclusion, nor does it help in any way. Unfortunately it looks like if we want the advantages of social media we will have to deal with the disadvantages as well. I mean look at our current President. If Barack Obama had not used the social media outlets he had, he may not have reached as many different demographics as he did and therefore may not be our President. So if social media helped us elect the first black President, I think we can deal with stories about herpes and beer pong.

PR 2.0: How to reach wired media

2009-03-02T00:16:00.005-06:00

In chapter 4 of PR 2.0 Deirdre Breakenridge writes tips on how public relations professionals can get better media coverage. The tips included:

Give timely information-meaning if there is something relevant to your brand, you must get the information out quickly through any medium you can. Sometimes there is no time to meet in person for an interview, so you must communicate through e-mails or instant messaging sometimes.
Give novel information-in order to be considered a desireable candidate for information by journalists you must provide them with information they can not get ahold of themselves. If you can not dig up insights, information or juicy details that are only available to you or your brand then you will be considered pretty must disposable as far as journalists are concerned.
Give information that can help meet deadlines-this works in tangent with the above tip. As Deirdre explains in the chapter, " it is so important that you as the PR pro, help the editor to get everything he/she needs to complete a story."

I think that it is easy to forget the basics of Public Relations when one gets wrapped up in PR 2.0. Understanding the importance of new tecnologies and the advantages they provide for the PR field are important but if you lose the basics, it all becomes pretty irrelevant. I think the book makes a good point when it talks about what makes a good PR professional. Providing accurate, credible and timely communication will always get you farther than just knowing how to work social networking sites in your favor.

Corporate Blogging: How to improve the not so smart company blogs

2009-03-01T23:59:00.004-06:00

This week when we discussed corporate blogging, we were given examples of some great companies that did a good job with their company blogs. Some of those companies include, Whole Foods and Coca-Cola.

When a certain company's name came up in conversation, it hit home more than I am sure it did for anyone else. The company I am referring to is Wal-Mart and the reason it grabbed my attention more so than the others is because my boyfriend works for this company in relation to their warehouses. So when the class began to comment on how Wal-Marts corporate blog seemed to be used as another outlet for advertisments I began to think, How could they change this.

We did discuss that Wal-Mart's lawn and garden section gives tips on how to grow the best roses, and which big killer is safer to use but as a whole the blog did not provide anything more than a consumer could not get out of the sunday's paper advertisments.

I think a big reason why Wal-Mart is not smart with their blog is because they are not aware that their consumers feel this way. The first step in revamping blogs like Wal-Mart's is to let them know. The next step would be to provide examples on exactly HOW to improve the blog. Here are some of my own:

Create a new section where readers can ask questions that they want to know about the company or the products.

Have the readers be able to express concerns or bad experiences they had with the company and have someone actually address some of the concerns so that it creates a more personal relationship between company and consumer. Even if there are bad comments about a company, if they are addressed by corporate figures it still helps. Look at the Southwest example.

Debate over Kate Winslet and her movie "The Reader"

2009-02-22T19:39:00.004-06:00

In the past couple of weeks leading up to tonights Oscar awards, there has been debate on whether Kate Winslet should have been nominated for her role in The Reader.

The Reader is about a former German concentration camp guard who stood by and watched 300 jewish people die in a burning church and instead of revealing to the court in her trial that she was illierate, took a longer sentence than her co-accuser.

Some argued that Winslet should not have been nominated let alone recieve the Oscar for Best Actress becasue of her role in the movie. Some critics of the movie( and by critics I mean anyone who had the ability to voice their opinion in a blog, tweet, ect.) felt that the movie was an awful representation of the Holocaust.

In an article by Tim Shipman he writes, "Some detractors of the film have said that it is a piece of Holocaust revisionism; however Holocaust survivors, children of Holocaust survivors and a Nobel Peace Prize winner feel differently."

In a different blog , written 3 days prior to Shipman's they mention that e-mails have been sent out to Jewish members of the Academy trying to sway them into not giving Winslet the award. (read full blog here)

I find this to be very silly and quite ridiculous. Why is there a personal attack on Winslet and her performance. Kate Winslet was not the actual person who sat by and watched 300 innocent people die. Kate Winslet is not the one who has a romantic relationship with a young boy while learning to read. So why is there so much publicity and effort going in to keeping an award away from this women who deserves it. Why are there not any bad blogs, reviews, tweets, whatever against the director, or the other actors in the movie? I feel like this is bad publicity( and by bad I mean really stupid.) I hope that Kate Winslet does win Best Actress and show everyone how ridiculous everyong is being about this whole situation. TEAM KATE!

Social Media Tools

2009-02-08T22:47:00.003-06:00

There is no doubt in my mind that I finally found the right major, Public Relations. It took me 4 years and two different Universities to figure it out, and I think that I will succeed greatly. However it was not until I took this PR class that I realized that there may be alot of tools that I need to learn about to have a competing edge when I graduate in August.

I was totally unaware of media tools such as social bookmarking, and RSS feeds. I feel that this class will be the most beneficial to me as far as my career after I leave St. Edwards goes. Learning about and how to use PR 2.0 efficiently is something that I am excited about and look forward to in this class.

Cluetrain Manifesto: 95 Theses

2009-02-08T22:32:00.003-06:00

In my opinion the smartest tool and resource that any organization could use in order to sell something is the publics opinion. Whether they are trying to sell a product, a name, a client ect. It is difficult to advertise whe youn do not know the direction you should go. I enjoyed reading the 95 theses because it spelled out what we all think but sometimes can not put into words when you look at the publics voice and the companies voice.

"the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked."--The Cluetrain Manifesto

It is easier and somewhat more comfortable for us to believe in the opinions we can attach to an actual human being versus an entire company where we are not sure where the ideas and opinons come from.

It makes me wonder why people spend so much time in school, learning how to sell things. What tone to use, the right vocabulary, the right approach. When the natural human voice/opinon is so much more convincing. Maybe if companies tried this approach a little more, instead of spending ridiculous amounts of money for advertisments that most people do not believe or are persuaded by anyway, they would be much better off.