"Social-media wall" makes debut at US Open

Picture via Ubergizmo

It's undeniable that social media and technology are constantly evolving. The newest invention to take the stage is occurring in the sports world and made its debut at this year's US Open. It is called a "social-media wall" and is literally a 50 foot screen that will display fans' and players'  social commentary in real time. The wall will feature both negative and positive feedback and will be accessible by all.

The screen will basically be a massive TweetDeck on display for entertainment. In addition to tweets, the screen will also broadcast Facebook posts and Instagram updates. People who cannot attend the US Open will be able to feel as if they are a part of the event because they will be connected with the attendees through this social-media wall. 

In order to show up on the "social-media wall" people will be required to use the hashtag #usopen. All posts will be monitored by IBM and IDS so it will not be a complete free for all. Ultimately, it will be interesting to see if this takes off and whether or not people will be receptive to it. If it does, I honestly could see this being the next big thing and an essential feature at all major sporting events.  

To read the full article, click here. 

The importance of public relations

Picture via TheMarketingBit.com 

This summer, I had the pleasure of interning at a public relations agency in New York City. I am enthralled to say that I absolutely enjoyed every second of it and gained valuable experience and insight into the field. There are many different things I learned about the fundamentals of PR that I would love to share with you, but right now I want to focus on the importance of public relations. 

At any given agency, responsibilities consist of sending product samples to bloggers, pitching stories to editors, and monitoring media clippings. Additionally, PR professionals constantly give out advice to various clients as to why certain campaigns will be successful or why certain ones will fail. Clients are coached on how to handle interview questions and what to wear to certain television appearances. 

At this given moment, I can confidently say that I have finally realized the importance of public relations and I am not the only one! According to Kenny Goodman, "public relations can be used to ensure business owners broadcast the right message to their audience". This comment stems from a "Find the Edge" article which investigates the importance of public relations. According to the article, business leaders should see a successful PR campaign as an essential aspect to their business plan. 

So what exactly makes PR so essential to businesses? According to Goodman, it's all about reputation. In my PR Case Studies class this year, we learned a lot about crisis communications. This is something that is at the forefront of PR and something that can literally make or break a company or establishment. 

Whether internal or through an agency, keeping track of your public relations ensures that you hear your customers' messages and adapt accordingly. In the article, Goodman discusses what he considers to be the most important and profitable aspects of public relations- "having a strong and clearly defined strategy with established outcomes, making contacts with the media, and being able to generate creative news angles".

All of this makes sense to me and I feel that these findings are definitely worth checking out. I really feel that, although public relations is still relatively unknown to those outside the field, it is starting to make its name because it truly does make a huge difference. I am extremely excited to see the future of public relations and to one day call it my career.

Drafting the most ideal press release & e-mail pitch

Picture via MarketingLand.com

This summer at my internship, I have been assigned to draft my fair share of press releases and e-mail pitches. The first time my supervisor told me to write one, I was completely terrified. However, she took the time to explain to me exactly what she was looking for and what outlets they would be sent to. Although my initial draft received its fair share of criticism, I am pleased to say that the pitches were sent out and we were both extremely confident in them.

Interning at a PR agency this summer has lead me to understand the importance of both press releases and e-mail pitches.  I will undoubtedly be drafting many of them in the future and need to be on the look out for the best advice on how to execute them. 

This past weekend, I found an article on PR News Online specifically giving ways to draft pitches without annoying or turning off reporters. Here are a few ideas from the article, as well as a few that my supervisors have shared with me this summer:

• Do not include business cliches or overused phrases. Reporters can literally see right through this type of language and it appears that you do not value their time because of the fluffiness, rather than substance, present in the pitch.

• Catch their attention right away. With outlets like Twitter and Facebook, reporters' attention spans are shorter than ever. You should send them something both newsworthy and interesting so that they want to read it.

• Use visuals. This goes along with the previous tip. Instead of explaining a backpack in a long paragraph, why not send a detailed picture of the backpack instead? Visuals are both descriptive and captivating, encouraging your reporters to actually pay attention to the content. 

• Write an intelligent phrase in the subject line that shows not only what your e-mail is about, but also how it will be of use to the reporters' readers. It is not enough to simply explain something, you need to indicate what others will get out of it.

• Keep it short and to the point. This goes without saying. However, sometimes PR pros get so caught up in how awesome their clients are that they forget that reporters receive hundreds of e-mail every day.

To read the full PR News Online article, click here.

Wishing everyone the best of luck as their internships wind down. Remember, there is still enough time to utilize this advice and write the best press release/e-mail pitch of the summer!

Tips for managing social media

Picture via Ragan PR Daily

Social media is a huge part of public relations. All of us will undoubtedly be given the responsibility to maintain a social media account other than our own at some point. Whether it be for an internship, a first job, or a project for school, it will need to be done and it will need to be done well. With the never ending list of technologies and social media tools, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain social media accounts.

PR Daily has listed a few strategies that they hope will aid the average person in excelling at this aspect of PR. As a person who manages many social media accounts, I found these tips to be extremely helpful and wanted to put my own input into it by discussing it in the blog!

• Make a social media cheat sheet.
• According to PR Daily, this cheat sheet should be made to help you determine how many times a day you wish to post and what types of content you are looking to share. This should be done according to trial and error and will take time because you will have to be in tuned with how the audience responds to your posts.
• My advice would be to set up TweetDeck. With TweetDeck, you can determine everything that you want to post that day and then set what time you want the tweet to go out. This is useful if you do not have all day to keep getting back to it. (Facebook now has a built in scheduling tool, as well!)

• Stay up to date on social media.
• This means that time should be taken every day to scroll through sites like LinkedIn, PR Daily, and HubSpot and see what the latest news is. Find what interests you!
• I follow all of my favorite sites on my personal Twitter account so that I can scroll through the tweets and see interesting news while entertaining myself.

• Make it easy to respond to your followers.
• PR Daily suggests creating an e-mail account to be used solely for your social media accounts. This way, you will always be alert and know that someone has tweeted at you and that it is not just an e-mail telling you about your favorite store's sale.
• The article also suggests using Social Mention to see what people are saying about your brand. I have never heard of this tool but will be sure to look into it!

• Be sure to measure your social media.
• Whether this needs to be done for a boss or solely for your own benefit, it is a smart thing to get into the habit of doing. If you can prove that social media is having a positive impact on your client or business, it makes you feel worthwhile and gives meaning to your efforts. 
• Google Analytics is a great place to start. Create an excel document and keep tabs on all of your progress, which you will be sure to see after using these tools!

To read the full PR Daily article, click here.

Social media bringing people together during tragedy

This past year has been filled with natural disasters, tragedies, and horrific events. From the tornados in Oklahoma and destruction of Hurricane Sandy, to the shootings in Newtown and the bombing at the Boston Marathon, the United States has faced a plethora of hardships and heartaches.

Although all of these occurrences have been unique and different in their own ways, Melissa Monahan, Senior VP at Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications, has noticed a new similarity among all of them. Each catastrophe was rapidly discussed on social media and demonstrated people's dependence on one another through their desire to be a part of the conversation. 

When disaster strikes, people immediately post their firsthand accounts of the event or repost what others have said. These types of accounts occur in real time and allow people to have an updated feed as to what is going on. People can then post their own condolences and concern for the victims. Monahan agrees that this represents "something good springing from something awful" because people feel the need to support one another.

Monahan then goes on to say that she feels that the onset of things like Twitter has filled a void once experienced by humankind. Previous to social media, a person could watch the news and receive live updates on what was happening. Now, however, it is possible to actually read through people's thoughts and see firsthand that others are feeling the same distress or feelings that you are feeling. It can put a person at ease during something so horrific and that is an amazing thing. Monahan concludes that social media breaks down barriers because people can be connected whether or not they are from the same ethnic background or country.

For PR professionals, Monahan mentions a few tips to keep in mind for social media etiquette when a disaster occurs:

• Turn off any auto/scheduled tweets meant to promote a product.
• Do not use humor in your tweets because it can be misinterpreted.
• Do not make it political.
• If you are going to do something for the victims, do it selflessly and not to get PR. 

Ultimately, social media is a representation of collective humanity. It brings us together in times of tragedy and can even tell us if our loved ones are safe and secure. In a world that is so complex, it is amazing that something as new as social media can have such a big impact on our lives by bringing us together and causing us to depend wholeheartedly on complete strangers.

To read the full Bulldog Reporter article by Melissa Monahan, click here. 

Digital advertising campaigns and millennials

Millennials are a huge target audience for many companies. Being that they have such a huge dependence on social media and digital marketing, it comes as no surprise that companies are looking to utilize these new, interactive outlets to gain their support. 

One campaign that recently emerged was a result of a collaboration between Google and Burberry. The name of the partnership is "Burberry Kisses" and encourages consumers to perfect their best kissy-face selfie by "making out with their phone". Sounds a little bizarre if you ask me, but apparently it is a hit with the millennials who, according to the Bloomberg Businessweek article, are "into that sort of thing".

The campaign was executed through Google's Art, Copy & Code project, a series of partnerships designed to show how brands express themselves in a diversified, yet connected world. Consumers are prompted to literally kiss their phone and watch as their lips are digitally transformed in one of five Burberry lip shades. Next, the kisser can then send their lips to whomever they want along with a personalized message. 

If kissing your phone grosses you out due to sanitary reasons, you can also use a webcam to get the same results. This all seems a little weird, but the reality of it is that the millennial generation are in fact fans of digital advertising campaigns and companies are competing to come up with the most creative approaches. 

Another interesting campaign I came across today stems from the genius of Kate Spade and Ebay. The new Kate Spade line is called Kate Spade Saturday and is accompanied by four digitally enhanced "window shops" in lower Manhattan. The window shops are completely digital and have touch screen technology set up so that customers can see the products in different colors and sizes. To me, this makes a lot of sense and I definitely see it as the future of window-shopping. My prediction is that it will immediately be a hit with the younger generation and eventually, the older generation as well due to its many capabilities. To read the full article, click here.

Love is all you need

It is evident that quite often, in order to see success, a company must make a consumer fall in love with their brand. Consumers cannot just be in love with a certain product for this to work, but rather they must love the brand as a whole. For example, it is not enough for a consumer to love the iPhone 5. Instead, they need to have passion for Apple as a whole and be an advocate for any product or service that the company creates. 

Researchers from the Global Branding Center at USC's Mashall School of Business decided to get to the bottom of why some brands are able to create this bond, while others fail miserably. First, the researchers took a look at brands that they felt a strong connection with. Park, the director of the Global Branding Center, admitted that he felt a strong connection to the Pittsburg Steelers despite the fact that they did not even know he existed. 

Next, a series of surveys were conducted by Park and his team of people's feelings surrounding Apple, England's Manchester United, and Austrians' supermarket-buying behaviors. In the end, the findings were published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology and concluded that consumers fall in love due to the "narrowing of the psychological distance" between the consumer and the brand. In essence, people must identify with the brand and see it as a vital expansion of themselves. Finally, the researchers came up with a list of steps to help companies achieve this love connection:

• Enticing Self Benefits: Attract consumers by using one or more of the five senses to reel them in. For example, does the product smell good or taste good? Do consumers get pleasure from simply looking at it?
• Enabling Self Benefits: Does the brand positively influence a consumers' life? Does it make their lives easier or more enjoyable? The brand must do something that consumers will appreciate for their own well-being.
• Enriching Self Benefits: The consumer must relate to the brand in some way. They must have similar values or principles. The example cited in the article is Nike's "Just Do It'. Many people relate to this saying because they know that it takes hard work and determination to achieve their fitness goals. Therefore, they see a strong connection between consumers and their products.

To read the full article, click here.