Halloween 2012

This year for Halloween two of my friends and I dressed up as loofahs. We went to OU for their annual Halloween party. Or if you are an avid Twitter user their HallOUween party. HallOUween was the hashtag for the weekend. My roommate through all of ONU, Megan, graduated last May and she now goes to OU medical school. This was our first time visiting her since she started school. I had never been to Athens before this past weekend. It was great to get to see her and her very own "big girl" apartment. On Saturday morning Megan drove us through the campus which was so beautiful, especially in the fall. The campus was a little too spaced out for my liking but it was still great. She also drove us downtown and through Athens other neighborhoods. The downtown is adorable. The roads are brick and there are many little shops and different restaurants. I hope that I can go back when we have more time to wander around and try some different restaurants. Saturday night was great. Athens blocks off the main road by campus and the street is lined with bars and there were people everywhere in the street. It was awesome to walk down the street and see tons of people dressed up as so many different things. We saw everything from marshmallows to Clifford the big red dog. We all definitely had a good time but it was very crowded. I think everyone should experience OU Halloween at least once in their life, especially just to see that many people dressed up in costumes. But I don't think it's something I feel the need to do every year. But if you love Halloween and costumes, check it out!

New Rules of Social Media and PR

Measure What Matters by Katie Paine described the rules of public relations and social media changing. This isn't the first time I have heard this. We live in a very different world than we did 10 years ago. Social media has changed everything. Katie Paine describes the new rules:

1. You're not in control.

2. There is no market for your message.

3. It's about reaching the right people.

4. You WANT to be talked about.

I think the most important rule in this new list is the fourth rule. Your company WANTS to be talked about. People are so used to things being bad if your company is being talked about. But customers talk about good things your company does too. Even if your company is being talked about in a negative light at least your customer's care enough about your company to talk about you. Katie Paine mentions that if your company is not being talked about it is hard to convince journalists that your company or product is newsworthy. It's important to spark conversation with your customers and customer to customer conversation as well.

If people are talking let them talk. And most importantly listen. If your customers are talking negatively about your company you can learn what they want to change. If they are talking positively about your company, keep listening. It is always a good idea to know what your company is doing to make your customer's happy.

Google +

I feel like I'm pretty up to date with social media. As long as it has been popular I've had some form of social media. I had a Xanga, which seemed a lot like Blogger. I had friends/followers and I would basically write a blog post for everyone to see. With Xanga you didn't really interact with people other than commenting on their posts. You couldn't write on their page like you can now on Facebook.

After Xanga I had a Myspace. Myspace was a lot like Facebook in some ways. You had friends/followers like with Xanga, but you could write on another person's page. With Myspace you could rank your friends and everyone was over dramatic and thought it was a big deal to be on someone's top friends list. But eventually Facebook took over and a lot of us, including me, left our Myspace page high and dry. 

Now I have Facebook and Twitter. I love them both separately. They both allow me to do the social media things I want to do. One allows me to keep up with friends and the other allows me to read funny posts and keep up with celebrities and current events. But I don't understand Google +. I'm not trying to discredit Google + but I'm not sure what it can offer that the other sites already have. If anyone can tell me what they love about Google + that Facebook or Twitter doesn't have I would love to hear it. I guess I'm just wondering if there is a reason to add it to my list of daily checked social media. Social media already takes up a good portion of my day. And I'm reluctant to add another if it just the same thing I already have. So if there are any Google + lovers out there I would love to hear from you! 

Can Twitter make you smarter?

An article I recently read said that smarter people tend to enjoy using Twitter over Facebook when using social networking. A study at Michigan State also revealed that students who use Twitter tend to be more engaged with their studies and have higher grades.

As I have said before in my blog I prefer Twitter to Facebook. I don't know if I see any correlation between Twitter and my grades but I feel like Twitter helps me to stay connected with current affairs more than Facebook does. When the presidential debates were on I recorded them but followed the hashtags on Twitter because I wanted to know what people were saying about the candidates. I follow a lot of people on Twitter that I really respect the opinions of. Mostly the people I wanted to read tweets about were celebrities that I respect. When I would get on Facebook during the debates I felt like it was just a bunch of people complaining about the candidates and not really saying anything productive about the debate. This may just be one example but I feel like Twitter is more educational but it can also be funny and pointless, it just depends whose tweets you are reading about or what topic you are reading about.

In my news writing class we have to write news stories all the time and our teacher gives us advice on how to get better at writing our leads. One of the tips she gave us was to pretend like the lead of our article was a tweet on Twitter. She said to pretend we only had 140 characters to get our point across and we had to fit the most important fact of the article in those limited amount of characters. This really helped me because it made me condense what I was saying and really focus in on what my article was about.

I think I would have to agree with the article I read. Twitter can be educational. I'm not sure if it can make you smarter but if you are using Twitter the right way it can definitely make you more aware of current events and even make you a better writer if you use my news writing teacher's tip!

Halloween

I love Halloween! It's one of my favorite holidays. I think it's partly because it takes place in my favorite season, Fall. And I just love the spirit and feeling of Halloween. I've always been interested in witches and the super natural side of things. I'll admit I believe in spirits and ghosts and have always had in odd interest in Tarot cards, psychics and Ouija boards, although I'm not sure how much I believe in them. 

My favorite parts of Halloween are endless. I love:

• Carving pumpkins
• Going to pumpkin patches and picking out my own pumpkin.
• Hayrides
• Cider
• Trick-or-Treaters
• Passing out candy
• Dressing up
• Halloween parades
• Attending Halloween parties
• Watching scary movies
• Going to haunted cornfields

I just love every part of Halloween! I can't wait for the day to get here. I'm dressing up with two of my friends as loofahs. I'm making the costume this week and I'm excited to see how it turns out.

Benchmarks

In the current book we are reading for my social media class, Measure What Matters, the latest chapter talked about the seven steps to the perfect measurement program.

The most interesting step to me was step 4: Determine Your Benchmark. I think this step was the most interesting to me because it explained some things that I hadn't heard of before. All the other steps were relatively familiar to me, especially the step about knowing your audience. But the benchmark step had some new terms that I didn't know before. The three terms used in this section of the book were stretch goal, peer company and underdog. Stretch goal refers to the companies or products that are are more popular or produce a better product than you. In class we discussed the terms in reference to colleges. So Harvard would be a stretch group to ONU because it is an Ivy League school and provides a better reputation and education that ONU does. Then there is your companies peer company. Your peer company would be a company that produces a similar product or service to yours. So for ONU our peer company would be Ohio State or University of Toledo. The underdog is a company that is inferior to yours. In reference to ONU our underdog would be communities colleges.

Not only do you have to track the success of your competitors but your company also has to compare themselves to themselves. It seems obvious to me that you wouldn't know how well you were doing unless you knew if your company was doing better or worse than the year before. Katie Paine reminds readers that it's important to be tracking your companies successes and failures. In order to know where your company is headed you have to know where your company has been. We hear it over and over again, but that's what makes it important. Don't forget to measure your company's programs!

Pinterest

I love Pinterest. There I said it. When I first heard about Pinterest over a year ago I didn't understand the concept at all. One of my roommates is an early adopter of new things so she already had Pinterest and she was obsessed with it. She asked me if I wanted her to invite me to Pinterest so I could also be a member. I replied that it didn't really matter to me either way. But over this past summer is when I really started to understand and use it the most and now I can't stop. I have tried several recipes from Pinterest and I haven't made one yet that wasn't delicious. I will leave you now with my favorite Pinterest recipe so far. If you love Mexican food like I do you should definitely make these Mexican Stuffed Shells. They are easy and delicious! Click here for the recipe! Enjoy!

Surprise!

This weekend  I attended a surprise birthday party for one of my best friends, Cody! It was so fun. He had absolutely no idea that there was a party planned. We took him out to dinner for sushi, which was delicious as always and then we went back to his house where everyone was hiding and the whole house had been decorated. When he walked in the door he screamed. And once he caught his breath he went around and hugged everyone and told everyone how surprised he was. It was truly a great night. Cody was having the best time and all of his friends were there, even people he hadn't seen in a long time and people from out of town he never would've expected. When I was getting ready to leave he told me that this had been one of the best nights of his life and he was sad that it was over. He told me that it was so cool to have everyone he loved in one house for the night. Which got me thinking, how often does that happen. A surprise party really is one of the coolest things. It's one party that everyone that you love comes over and no one worries about who gets along and who doesn't and no one worries about whether or not people know each other because you are all there for one reason that suddenly makes you friends. There were a lot of people I knew and a lot of people I didn't know but everyone was so friendly and by the end of the night I had new friends that I hadn't expected. It was a great party and a great night and I'm so glad everyone was able to keep it a secret from Cody because he absolutely loved it!

Measure What Matters

I'm now reading Measure What Matters by Katie Paine. In the chapter one there is a section called dispelling the myths of measurement. My two favorite myths that Paine points out are: myth #3 measurement is expensive and myth #7 I know what's happening: I don't need research.

Probably my favorite among the two myths is the measurement is expensive myth. It baffles me that companies actually use this as an excuse to not measure the success of the programs they are running. If a company is running an unsuccessful program it could be costing them thousands or even millions of dollars. So maybe measurement is a little expensive or maybe it's not. Either way I can't believe a company would be willing to throw out that much money and not even know if their program is working or not. It reminds me of the saying "you have to spend money to make money". In this case sometimes you have to spend a little money to make sure the money you are dishing out is actually worth it. Do yourself a favor. Measure your programs. It could end up saving the company money.

Next is myth #7, I know what's happening: I don't need research. You may know what is going on with your company but you can not possibly know all the ways your programs are making or losing money. You can't know instinctively how the client or customer is reacting to your product. You have to do research to figure these things out! Don't just go around assuming that everything is fine just because your company's Facebook has a lot of followers. That doesn't mean anything in terms of measuring your product's success.

Companies everywhere, don't forget to research! You could find out some interesting things and you may just save a little money too.

The Path to Great PR

This week we had to read a handout about the path to great pr. On the first page the handout says "Regardless of the platform, it will always be your job to make sure that your public relations and marketing communication are done for the right reasons, at the right time to reach your stakeholders with information, in a manner that gets their attention." Right away we are hearing a lesson that has been drilled in to our heads many times. No one seems to be able to stress enough  how important it is for public relations practitioners to respond to their customers and get involved with the conversation. Just as important as getting involved with the conversation is responding in a timely fashion and using the right media to do it.

I think that if more practitioners thought about how they feel as a consumer this would be a no brainer. When I think of myself as a customer and what I want from a company that I'm involved with in some way it seems simple. I want them to be honest about their company. I'm impressed when I see a company responding quickly to a consumer's complaint. I'm also impressed when I hear someone I know and trust saying good things about the company. I want the company to be up front and transparent about what their doing with new products as well as how they are handling any issues that are presented to them. If the practitioners think in this frame of mind it could really help them know what to do in difficult situations.

Puppy Sitting

My best friend has been in South Carolina for the past week for her sister's wedding. Which means that I have her puppy, Daisy. It has been an interesting week to say the least. She looks innocent in the picture because I was able to catch her in a moment when she was actually sitting still. This kind of thing doesn't happen often. It has been a long week of cleaning accidents from the floor, picking up scraps of what used to be toys and of course in the calm moments (basically when she is sleeping) thinking how cute she is and then she opens her eyes! Probably the craziest moment of the week was when I took her to the dog park to let out some of her energy. It had been raining a little since it basically rained all week. There was one puddle at the dog park that was just one giant watery mud hole and she laid right down in the puddle. Then a dog who seemed to love the puddle even more than she did showed up and they started to play in the puddle together. By the end of the trip she was covered in mud and soaking wet. Thankfully there is a hose there so we just rinsed her off and let her dry before we loaded her up in the car. Moral of the story we haven't been back since then in fear that the puddle is probably still there because it hasn't been warm enough to dry it. Her mom should be home either today or tomorrow and my house will be less exciting when she leaves but I think everyone is ready to go back to their normal routine. I know the cats are ready to see Daisy leave. The cats aren't Daisy's biggest fans. But we will miss her none the less.

Family Discussion

I recently posted a podcast on my blog about a discussion I had with my family about Facebook. The discussion was really interesting and got kind of heated at times. The most interesting part of the discussion for me was that almost everyone in the room hated Facebook but still logged on and used it multiple times a week. I think that is basically how social media works. Most or some of the people that use don't actually like the fact that they spend so much time using it. But we can't help it. It's addictive. As humans we are naturally curious about other people's lives. We want to know what they are doing, who they are with, what vacation they recently took and we definitely want to see all the pictures of them doing said activities. Facebook is the perfect place for us to find all of this information. But sometimes I think it's not really being nosey if the people are willingly posting the pictures and status updates about their recent activities. That is another reason Facebook works so well. People are curious about their friends or acquaintances and people want to post about whatever vacation they just took. Facebook users supply the information knowing full well there will be hundreds of people with access to their pictures and status updates. One of the other most interesting parts of my interviews was when my aunt said that her Facebook time replaced the time she used to spend watching the news. Facebook is more exciting to her because she relates better to Facebook. She can relate to one of her coworkers status updates better than she can to news of explosives over seas. Should we care more about Facebook and social media than what is going on outside our little worlds? Probably not. But we can't help what we are interested in. Somehow we all will just have to find a good balance between social media and current affairs. 

Podcast

For my social media class I made a podcast. I talked to my family about social media which just turned in to a giant discussion on Facebook. Click here to get to my pod bean page and then click listen now on the pod bean page! Hope you enjoy it!

Wedding Weekend

This weekend was my cousin's wedding. My family is very close and growing up I was always around my cousin Andrew and his sister Erin. I honestly think of them more as siblings than I do as cousins and we definitely act more like siblings also. I'm always thankful that my mom made sure we were close because I'm an only child and that can get lonely sometimes. Anyway, Andrew got married this weekend to a great girl that we all love. They have been dating for around five years so she already felt like family to me. I was one of the bridesmaids and it was a ton of fun. They got married in a beautiful park in Toledo. They said their vows on a dock with the fall trees in the background. I meant to take pictures with my phone so that I would have one to post but I failed at that but I'll get some pictures some where and post them another time. This weekend was a whirlwind of family and fun. I'm exhausted but it was completely worth it. It's always hard to get back in to the swing of things after a fun weekend away but I'm making it through. The memories of this fun weekend will hopefully be enough to get me through to next weekend!