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.

Hard work pays off

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after four years in college it’s this:

Hard work pays off.

As I approach my final months of being a college student, I’ve been looking back a lot lately at the past four years, evaluating my experience, identifying what went right and what went wrong. But one thing that remains constant throughout those experiences is that the harder I worked, the more I achieved, and the happier I was in the long run.

If you know me, you know I’m a big fan of goals, a la Rachel Berry from Glee. I am a strong believer of following your dreams, but an even bigger advocate of hard work.

I found a quote a few weeks ago that I really identify with:

"Some people dream of success, while others wake up and work hard at it." --Author unknown


We all have dreams, and we all want to believe we can achieve anything we set our mind to do. But the reality is, that’s not enough—it takes a lot of time, a ton of effort, and probably a few sacrifices along the way.

One of the best decisions in my college career was joining the student PR firm, ImPRessions. Never in my life have I met so many hard-working and dedicated people in one group. I was reminded of how lucky I am to be a part of it today, when we announced that our firm has been honored with national affiliation status through PRSSA National.

In the past few months I’ve found it harder and harder to motivate myself as senioritis and anxiety of life after graduation have taken their toll, but then I remember to take a step back and remember that slacking off isn’t going to get me anywhere.

If I could offer any advice to younger students or my peers in general, it’s find something you want in life and work harder than you could have ever imagined to get there.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this…do you agree? Disagree? What advice do you have?

A new view: agency PR

I’ve officially completed my first two weeks at Maple Creative, a Charleston, W.Va. based public relations firm. This is my first foray into agency PR after having worked the past two summers in corporate PR, and I’ve already seen in my very limited experience how different the two are. Here are some of my key observations of these differences:

1. Billing your time. At most agencies, you have to track the time you work for each client on a daily basis. For me, this has been the hardest thing to get used to. It does help me remember what I’ve accomplished each day, which is a definite plus in such a fast-paced environment. Which brings me to my next point:
   
   
2. Fast-paced environment. In any PR job this is likely to be the case, but in my opinion the agency world steps it up a few levels. Non-stop phone calls, e-mails, meetings and trying to fit in everything else in between is no easy feat. I finally gave in and invested in a BlackBerry, which has been a lifesaver in helping me keep up.
   
   
3. Time management. When managing several clients instead of one, there is a lot more juggling involved. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to stay organized, and so far that has been keeping an ongoing to-do list and making sure I write down everything I possibly can.
   
   

Regardless of the differences I’m thrilled to have this opportunity and I’m loving everything I’m doing so far. Good luck trying to catch me this winter break, ‘cause I’m going nonstop!

PR happens

Never in my life have I seen more focused and driven students as I saw at this weekend’s PRSSA National Conference. You could just feel the energy in the sessions as PR minds came together for a common purpose: surviving and thriving in our chosen industry.

Back in Athens, there is a stereotype of the “Scripps kids” as being highly involved, very confident and exhibiting an eagerness to learn. I can report with certainty that our hunger and passion for journalism and PR is not unique to our neck of the woods, but is shared across the country.

With the current state of the economy, it seems that our generation seeks an omniscient power to descend upon us and give us the answers to our questions of whether or not to go to grad school, if we should choose agency or corporate PR and what makes us stand out from our competitors in the job market. While I’m sure most professionals, advisors and professors have opinions of what the answers to these questions should be, I’m beginning to see that in reality there is no one answer.

I admit that I am guilty of asking these questions to everyone who will listen to me, lately emphasizing the grad school inquiry. Not only is my incessant interrogation likely annoying, but in reality nobody has a clear answer for me, and they shouldn’t. Decisions about something as important as my career need to be those that I can personally be proud of and stand behind.

As public relations students and practitioners, we are so focused on our clients and our other “publics” as we strive daily to please them, but I would argue that we are forgetting one very important key public: ourselves. There is no possible way that we can be all things to everyone in this industry—there are simply not enough hours in a day. And while I’m not advocating limiting yourself by any means, deciding what your key values are and finding something you are passionate about are integral steps to becoming the professional you want to be.

Some overall advice from the PR pros at National Conference:

•Be hungry and demonstrate hard work, but also be a team player.

•Always show your thanks and gratitude. That extra mile can go a long way.

•Present A+ work all the time.

•Become an expert in something—it will set you apart.

•Listen to the conversations going on about your company.

•Passion is not a substitute for planning.

•Never limit your creativity.

•Be who you are.

What else would you add to this list? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

A senior's guide to surviving and thriving in college

Senior year. It’s hard to believe that three years have gone by so quickly. It seems like just yesterday that I was moving into the dorms without a clue as to what college was all about. I can say that it was everything that I expected and nothing at all like I thought it would be. I’ve had lots of ups and downs, make lots of mistakes and enjoyed lots of successes.

While I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I will attempt to savor these last nine months at Ohio University. Despite the expense of attending an out of state school, I have never regretted my decision to come here. I cannot image being anywhere else, and I will be a Bobcat for life.

For those of you who haven’t started college yet or those of you who still have a couple years left, I hope the following advice will help you make the most of your college experience.

1. Get involved. I know it’s intimidating to join an organization in which you don’t know anyone or know anything about, but it will be worth it. If I hadn’t gone to my first PRSSA meeting in fall 2007, I would have never gotten the chance to network with professionals, meet other PR students or even join ImPRessions. Not only have I met some amazing people, but I’ve had the opportunity to gain leadership experience that has been vital to my success.

2. Work hard. The workload in college is extremely intimidating at first, but if you stay on top of things you’ll be fine. I’m not saying you need to get a 4.0 or study 24/7, but establishing a killer work ethic early on in your college career will not only make the next few years seem easier (because you’ve realized you can handle the work) but it will show future employers that you have what it takes to shine. My secret to long nights of studying: energy drinks, studying in groups and taking breaks so you don’t get too burnt out.

3. Save time for fun. This may seem contrary to my previous tip, and it is the lesson I’ve had the most difficult time with. I get so caught up in school work, meetings and my organizations that I forget to let myself have some free time. Take time away from your stressors and go see a movie, go to the gym, hang out with friends or simply do nothing at all. Nobody expects you to work 100 percent of the time, so you shouldn’t expect that of yourself either.

4. Try something new. While I’m not exactly adventurous, I have taken opportunities to try new things in college. I’ve gone to a Latin dance night and attempted to keep up with the authentic dancers, played intramural softball (a sport I’ve never played in my life) and flew to Chicago, my first flight without a chaperone.

There’s no doubt that I will be sad to leave Athens in the spring. I’ve made a lot of good memories in my time here and have made amazing friendships that I hope will last a lifetime. Even so, I am looking forward to what the future brings. People say that college is the best four years of your life, and while I agree that it is a unique period of time like which you will never again experience, I don’t think it’s a completely true statement. My belief is that these four years will be my gateway into fulfilling my dreams and is a foundation upon which I can build my future.

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.