The Road Less Traveled

The name of my blog is more or less a homage to the cliché Robert Frost poem that we’ve all heard a hundred times—“The Road Not Taken.”

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

This stanza of the poem, however overused it may be, has come into play a lot in my life, most recently in my choice to attend an out-of-state school at which I knew nobody. That decision was one of the best choices I’ve ever made. Not only have I solidified my love of PR and gained experience that I wouldn’t have gotten elsewhere, but I’ve made a lot of amazing connections and friends along the way, and I wouldn’t be the person I am today without those people.

But what I’ve realized as I’ve been away at school is that sometimes, the road less traveled leads you right back to where you started, and not in an “I’ve failed” sort of way, but in the sense that life has a funny way of coming full circle.

When I left for school as a naïve 18 year old, I was completely convinced that I would move to a big city like Chicago or New York City after I graduated to work for some big-time PR firm working on million dollar accounts.

Things could not be more different than what I initially imagined, but not only am I ok with that, I’m extremely happy about where I am in my life.

I’ve had two internships in Charleston, W.Va., my hometown, and have really come to appreciate where I grew up. I’ve also realized that to get outstanding experience, you don’t need to go to L.A. or Washington, D.C.—sometimes the best experience comes from smaller places where you are immersed in every aspect of the job. (You can read about my interning experiences at Charleston Area Medical Center and Maple Creative from my previous posts.)

It’s a few weeks after graduation, and I’m back in Charleston, W.Va. Soon, I will be joining the team at CAMC that helped me fall in love with PR in the first place. I am truly honored to have this opportunity to work along side people who have inspired me so much and whom I respect more than anything.

Did you take the road less traveled? Did it lead you to where you expected? I’d love to hear your stories.

It's not the medium--it's the message

In today’s world of information overload and constant communication (thanks to real-time networks) it is nearly impossible to stay afloat. This is especially difficult for students (like me) to break through the clutter and try to grasp what is important. Words like content marketing, social media, crowd sourcing, geotagging, ROI, etc., are thrown around at hyper speed and we barely have time to stop and breathe trying to keep up with it all. Each week like clockwork, a Mashable blog post shows up in my Google Reader graciously alerting me of somewhere between 30 and 50 digital resources I may have missed. Sometimes it seems hopeless that I will ever dig out from under the vast amounts of information out there.

In July, I wrote about how to break through media clutter. I talked a lot about different tools to use to manage your information, but have recently come to the realization that it’s not the channel that’s important.

No matter what the medium, tactic or program, there are some key components of communication that ring true no matter what. New outlets and mediums will come and go, but as long as we stick to a solid communications strategy and integral steps in the process, we can’t go wrong.

Research: My PR capstone instructor mentions research at least three times per class period, and with good reason. Chances are good that you won’t be an expert in the field your client is in, so there is always room to find out more about it. Not to mention the constant shifting of the media industry, requiring a close eye to identify or at least keep up with trends. Sound research will not only help avoid future roadblocks but can help you come up with new ideas. I try to read as much as I can about tons of different topics and have been pleasantly surprised at how a little extra effort can go a long way.

Planning: Even though some of your communications tactics may seem easy or less important, thus not requiring a plan, but that’s really not the case. I catch myself wanting to jump headfirst into social media or any new communication tool or campaign, but it’s always important to think things through strategically.

Monitoring: Once we’ve set a campaign in motion, it’s such a relief that we finally get to implement that we forget that we actually have to check up on it. While technology is great, it’s far from perfect, so constant monitoring is vital. Google Alerts are a godsend in monitoring brand discussion and keeping tabs on the online conversation about it.

Evaluating: This is something I’m sure we all put at the very end of our communications plans, but how often do we actually go back and track our results? As students, evaluation is a process that is often an afterthought, or one that we don’t do much of in the classroom until our upper level courses. Getting in the habit of constantly evaluating your campaign or program will put you in the mindset to push your communications further than you thought possible.

Do you agree or disagree? Is there anything else you would add? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Saying "I Do" to your career

I’ve been working on a project for my Advertising Strategies class about brides-to-be, building a consumer profile. Thus, weddings have been top of mind for me this quarter, and it got me thinking about marriage and how it applies to my life right now.

No, I’m not engaged. Not even close.


I’m talking about my chosen career path.

We’ve all heard people warn us not to be married to our careers, to have a life outside our work.
But I tend to disagree. In researching marriage and weddings for my project, interviewing several brides-to-be, reading countless wedding magazines and researching the history of weddings, I’ve come to realize that maybe being “married” to your career isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Think about it. The way you choose your career path is perhaps similar to the way you pursue any relationship. You want it to make you happy, give you a reason to wake up in the morning. You want it to challenge you, push you to be your best.

And of course, just like in a relationship or marriage, there will be times when it lets you down, when you wonder where you would be had you chosen to do something else. You’ll have rough days when nothing seems to be going right. You’ll make mistakes. But at the end of the day, you’ll remember why you chose your career in the first place, and remembering that will make the difficult times seem a little less gloomy.

So, to the love of my life, public relations, I guess it’s for better or worse!
Think my analogy is too extreme? Do you agree? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Photo courtesy of Google Images.

How to sort through media clutter

With the Internet at our fingertips now more than ever, the amount of information we are exposed to continues to grow exponentially. Every time you log in to Facebook or Twitter, you are inundated with information like what your best friend ate for breakfast or what song John Mayer’s latest heartbreak has resulted in. When you search for anything on Google you will probably get at least a few million results, not to mention the paid ads that show up.

With so much information at every turn, just trying to figure out what is going on in the world can be mind-boggling. Luckily, there are ways to make sense of it all. I’ve come across some useful tools to make the web a little less intimidating.

RSS: If you’re like me, you probably get most of your news online as you are drinking your morning coffee, checking e-mail and contemplating what the rest of your day will entail. I use Google Reader to aggregate all my news sites and blogs into one space. It lets me organize them however works best for me, and I get the day’s news in a much shorter amount of time than I would trying to search for news sites on my own.

Tip: Most news sites have a separate RSS feed for breaking news, so if you are just looking for the top headlines, that’s a perfect way to go.


Twitter lists/columns: According to the Twitter website, there are currently more than 100 million users on the site and about 750 tweets per second. That is a LOT of information even if it’s only in 140 character increments. If you use Twitter frequently, you are probably following a lot of users. Luckily, Twitter now allows you to organize the people you follow into “Lists.” You can create separate categories for as many things as you like and can label each followee with a “List” category. Each list can be made private or public, allowing other users to follow your list.

If you want to get more advanced with your Twitter use, you can download (for FREE) a desktop application like Tweetdeck to help you organize your information. Tweetdeck allows you to personalize your application with an unlimited number of columns and even lets you administrate several different accounts at once.

Google Alerts: If you’ve ever searched anything in an online search engine, you have experienced the endless pages of search results that appear for almost anything you could look up. This can be overwhelming, especially if you are trying to research for a client and stay on top of online discussions that include them. To make the task easier, I suggest using Google Alerts to filter the information for you. You can choose in your settings to subscribe to an “Alert” of any keyword/s you like. I have Google Alerts for individual clients as well as the student PR firm and my employer for the summer. You can set each Alert to send you an e-mail with any new search results pertaining to your keyword daily, weekly or as Google finds them. Within each Alert setting you can choose to include news, blogs, videos, discussions or everything in your Alert e-mail.

Of course, the tools I use are far from the only ones out there. I’d love to hear about other things you may come across.

The power of collaboration

This quarter I have learned the power of collaboration. While I have worked with many student organizations in the past and still do, my organizations have never done a large-scale collaboration with another organization.

This spring was different. My ImPRessions team and our client, Backdrop Magazine, decided to produce a huge outdoor event to celebrate the release of Backdrop’s latest issue. We couldn’t fund it ourselves, so we looked to two major student organizations on campus, University Programs Council and the Black Student Cultural Programming Board, got funding from Vision Ohio, and the rest is history.

Collaborating is such a unique experience because it allows everyone to bring their most valuable talents to the table to produce something amazing. It also proves difficult at times trying to make sure everyone’s goals are met and that communication is optimal.

Through this event I also learned a lesson or two in crisis communication. The artist canceled 16 days before the event, which is arguably the worst problem that could come up in planning and implementing a huge concert. However, we were not daunted. The team was incredible and acted quickly in searching for a new artist. I was very impressed with UPC and BSCPB in their experience and poise in such a difficult situation, and am very grateful Backdrop and ImPRessions (the rookies in implementing huge concerts), had “seasoned professionals” working with us.

We were very nervous about publicly disclosing the fact that we had no artist two weeks before the event, but we made a statement on our Facebook group and, to my amazement, received nearly zero criticism from students. In fact, many tried to offer solutions to us. This to me is a testament to the power and importance of being open and honest and communicating effectively 100 percent.

Once we found a new artist (two actually: Clipse and Consequence), everything else came together seamlessly. There was not a cloud in the sky on the day of the event and I think people really enjoyed the concert.

I have learned so much from working on this event and throughout the year with my client in general, and I’m actually going to miss it all next year, but I have the utmost confidence in my successors and look forward to seeing what they come up with for 2010-2011.

Communication is the best policy

Communication is such a vital part of life, especially in the world of PR. This is easy to forget when going through the everyday motions in a PR firm of event planning, media contacting, tweeting, crisis management and other client needs.

This quarter has been a whirlwind for the Backdrop account. Between collecting survey results to measure awareness of the magazine on campus and helping to promote the launch of the latest issue, my team and I have been going non-stop.

But even with the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it is important to take as step back and remember that communication is the number one ingredient to a successful PR campaign.

Not only is it imperative to keep open doors of communication with your client, but with your team as well. If everyone is not on the same page with the campaign, then it will ultimately be doomed for failure.

To make sure we are communicating effectively, we have created individual positions for each member of the account so that tasks are divided up and each person can focus on a specific specialty. At each weekly meeting, each position is responsible for bringing up any issues or concerns regarding his or her assignments.

To further our organizational and communication skills, we are implementing the use of Google Docs to create our PR plan and to keep track of the details of all of our jobs and deadlines. We keep in close contact throughout the week when we have a lot going on and support our client in any way we can.

While the mediums of communication have multiplied in recent years, I still find that the best medium is face to face. Your words simply cannot make the same impact in a tweet or text or e-mail or even phone conversation as they can in person.

In a 2.0 world, my advice is this: take the time to really, truly communicate, whether it’s with a friend, a boss, a colleague or a client. There is so much to gain from effective communication, and it should be a priority for all aspiring public relations professionals.

From my post for the ImPRessions blog

Communication

I just got e-mail confirmation that my business cards have been shipped. I guess that makes me one step closer to achieving my goals. Recently, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what I truly what out of all aspects of my life. One of the things I’ve come up with that is the most important to me is communication. Whether it be in a relationship or a job or even with yourself, I have come to see how imperative it is that you get across the correct message, or at least correctly portray the one you want to send. And being honest is usually a good thing as well. I’m slowly learning how difficult this can be at times and how much thought must go into every aspect of communicating. As we are getting deeper into our PR plan for ImPRessions, it amazes me how one word can change the impact of what your message says. I have a new-found love for my thesaurus and I finally understand the term “power words."

To sum all of this up, I think I’m finally starting to grow up and I guess I’m listening to myself more then I ever have in the past. And once you start communicating, it’s so much easier to continue the conversation.

A new "digital divide"

We had a very interesting discussion in my Intro to Public Relations class today. Our topic was Public Relations and the Internet and we discussed how e-mail, blogs and other forms of internet media relations are coming more and more into the forefront.

One thing that really struck me during the lecture was the idea of this "digital divide" that is supposedly present in our society. I started thinking about it, and I came to the conclusion that the digital divide has changed to mean something else besides it's original connotation. Almost anyone who wants it has access to the Internet, at least in this country. Most libraries offer free Internet during operating hours, so even those who cannot afford computers or Internet access still can keep up with the new medium.

My thinking is that the new "digital divide" is defined by the different ways that people use the internet to communicate. Most people in my parents' generation are proficient in email, search engines, and online shopping, but probably are not involved in a whole lot of social media. My grandparents barely even know how to turn on a computer, let alone surf the web.

As more and more internet media venues develop, there is a fight to keep up with it all. So this digital divide becomes an issue of who is using what kind of media and for what purposes. Many companies are starting to use social media, but many more are still lagging behind in that area. Some are not even willing to try to use the new mediums to communicate and are satisfied with the ways with which everyone is familiar, such as print media. But as companies are striving to attract a younger generation, they are going to have to step over the digital divide and get their feet wet in this new phenomenon.