PR Promo

For my social media class we are required to make a video about the public relations program at my school and post it to YouTube. iMovie was incredibly easy to use and you can publish your videos directly to YouTube from the program. For my video I wanted to show prospective students all of the options that the pr program has to offer. I discussed national conference, luncheons, and PRSSA meetings. I hope you all enjoy my video!

Life's a beach: Thanksgiving on the Gulf

We've always said, in my family, that our dream was to spend Thanksgiving on the beach.  Listening to the waves crash as we carved our turkey - that's the stuff of fantasies.  So this year, with my cousin and his new wife living in Alabama, we decided to kill two birds with one stone.  We stopped in to see them on our drive south, and then they joined us on Dauphin Island for Thanksgiving off of the gulf coast of Alabama.
We rented a house, where our backyard was the beach.  Twenty yards away, we set up beach chairs, umbrellas and fishing poles in the hot November sun.  We even managed to meet some wildlife, with a heron joining us for our fishing and dolphins cresting on the waves within swimming distance.  As the shrimp boat tugged by every morning, we watched pelicans dive and splash for churned up aquatic sustenance.  Packs of dolphins, the island's namesake, seemed to appear every day at roughly the same time, to our amazement and amusement.
We decided to cook Thanksgiving dinner a day early, as some of group had to head back on Thursday. The usual fixin's made an appearance: sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows, homemade pumpkin and pecan pies, creamy green bean casserole, and, of course, a juicy gobbler with from-scratch stuffing.  Early that morning, we visited the local bakery (one of only a handful of businesses that existed on the island, which is 6 square miles of land) and returned with fresh bacon-wrapped rolls and cream cheese danishes.  Once dinner was prepped, we all headed down to the beach for some Thanksgiving sun-bathing before we started cooking.
As the sun set, firy red and glowing, all of our appetites were more than sated, as was our desire to get a little sun, sand and surf.  When we packed up our suitcases (and put away shorts and bathing suits for what was probably the last time for at least 6 months) a few days later, it was bittersweet to end this Thanksgiving trip.  But, with the taste of pumpkin still on our lips, sweetness won out, as we decided that perhaps this was the beginning of a brand new Thanksgiving tradition.

Here is my family at Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island.

The view from our front porch on Thanksgiving Day.

And finally, this was our gorgeous house for the week!

Motivation Out to Sea

My family and I arrived at Dauphin Island on Saturday evening and it has been a blast so far. Our has is on the Gulf shore. The house is beautiful. Yesterday we woke up to dolphins swimming right in front of our house. The only problem with all this beauty is I have lost any motivation for homework I may have still had. I just want to lay in the sun and hang out with my family. We don't all get to be together that often so I don't want to spend this time doing homework. But little by little I'm getting things done. Later this week I'll have more pictures to post but for now I will leave you with a preview. This picture is of a heron that was fishing yesterday morning that allowed my mom and I to hang around with him for a little while. My mom and I named him Salvador.

Cell phone crazy

I thought this infographic from PR News Daily was really helpful! It provided a lot of statistics and I have to admit that I do a lot of the things on this list. I sleep with my cell phone in my bed or on the night stand. I use my phone as an alarm clock so it needs to be near me when I'm sleeping. I also usually have the my phone in the bathroom most of the time. I don't really know how it happens but I guess I'm just so used to having it with me that my cell phone just ends up in there. But I do get really annoyed when people use their cell phones in quiet places or when they are checking out at a store or restaurant. I think if you know you are going to have to talk to another human being in person you should try your hardest to not be on the phone at the same time. Read the statistics people! Find out what kind of a cell phone user you are. 

If I don't get it by now, I'll never get it

I was so glad to see that my classmates were feeling the same about Katie Paine's book. I feel like she repeats herself a lot and it makes the book a hard read when you are just sitting in a classroom and can't actually apply much of the lessons she is teaching. The book might be more helpful once I'm a professional with a real job and I'm actually experiencing similar situations to the ones Katie is explaining. But until then, it just seems like she is rambling. I enjoyed all the other books that we were assigned this semester because they didn't repeat themselves and the books gave great examples of different pr situations. Those books I could relate to as a consumer. But from Measure What Matters all I'm really taking away from it is the importance of measurement, in all situations. You should measure even when you don't want to, or when you think it's expensive, and especially when you think you already know what is going on with your company. We have a test over this book tomorrow and lets all just pray that I can keep all of her lists straight long enough to answer all the questions. If nothing else I will just guess that the company needs to find their target audience and set benchmarks!

Twitter for the win

Twitter played a big role in the election this year, along with all social media. This election year Twitter stood as a forum of sorts for people around the country and around the world to discuss what was going on with the election and the campaigns. According to this article on Technorati Twitter broke many records this month. When Obama was reelected his campaign sent out a tweet of a picture of Obama and Michelle with "Four more years" written with it. This tweet broke the record for most retweets with  455,000 and counting. Twitter and other forms of social media can not be ignored any longer. Candidates from here on out will need to really consider the use of social media in their campaigns. Obama was very present on social media in his campaign but Romney wasn't as present. I don't think this decided the election but I think any little bit helps. Where can you find young voters? On social media. If you are reaching them and getting them excited for the election then they are going to go out and vote, and they are probably going to vote for whichever candidate made them feel so involved in the election. I think it is going to be very interesting in the next election how the use of social media plays a roll. Social media will be 4 years older and more developed and we will have brand new candidates to use these tools for their success. It will be exciting but I think everyone could use the four year break. Those presidential ads were getting ridiculous!

Overwhelmed

I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing it by now but I feel like this semester has the most work out of all my time at ONU. I'm sure the fact that we are on semesters now doesn't help at all. It seems like there is no end in sight and the school is just trying to torture  us. I know that can't be the case but it sure feels like it. I think I have/will write more papers this semester than I have in a single school year my entire life. As much work as writing paper is I would choose this over a class that just takes two big tests over the semester and that's it. Those kinds of classes scare me and I don't think that I learn well that way. I don't like for half my grade to rely on one test. I've never been an amazing test taker. I have always been much more of a visual learner. I have friends that love to take the test class and don't get me wrong I see the appeal. They aren't drowning in school work every week like I am. I wish I could be a two test and done kind of girl but unfortunately that is never going to happen for me so I just have to suck it up and realize that my life will probably be pretty stressful from here on out. Maybe I'll just get better at juggling. Here's hoping!

Communities and Neighbors

In Measure What Matters by Katie Paine she provides another helpful list. This list is the seven steps to measuring relationships with your communities and neighbors. The first step was to agree upon solid measurable goals that are tied to the bottom line. I think this is the most important step. That is probably why Katie listed it as the first step. She must agree. With anything in school or life you have to have a focus. Many times when I'm writing a paper I don't keep that in mind enough. When researching there should be one focus. Before you even sit down to write or research you should have one goal that you are hoping to achieve when you are done.

So when you decide to measure your company's success I don't think it should be any different from researching or writing a paper. You have to have one main focus. And everyone on your staff or team needs to know what that focus is. As Katie Paine says these goals have to be tied to your bottom line. There is one thing your company hopes to achieve. You have to know what that one thing is and all of your work relates to making that one thing successful. Like I said this seems easy but we always seem to forget the simple things. But just remember when you are measuring, stay focused and work towards the goal your company set for itself.

Thanksgiving

Can it be Thanksgiving break yet? This semester seems like it has been going on for years. I'm ready for a break. I want family time with no homework to worry about. It's very hard for me to wait for Thanksgiving break because it is one of my favorite holidays and because my family is running away to Dauphin Island, Alabama this Thanksgiving. My mom, dad, aunt, uncle and two cousins are going. I'm beyond excited to spend my favorite holiday on the beach. It's like an excitement overload. My family usually rents a beach house in the Outer Banks every summer but we all decided we wanted to try something new this year so we picked a new location and a new time. Don't get me wrong, I love the Outer Banks but we always go there and I think it is time for a change. I have also never been to the Gulf of Mexico. I'm excited to experience a new ocean. I'm not a huge fan of Winter and I can feel it creeping in. Its getting much colder and it gets dark at 5:30. I think the temperature is supposed to be in the 70s during the day on vacation and that is just perfect for me. I'm not going to want to come back. I am really looking forward to experiencing a new island. I love exploring and I like to experience all the trip has to offer. So I would really love it if the next 10 days would hurry along. I'm ready to be surrounded by white sand beaches and blue skies! See you in 10 days Dauphin Island! 

Social Media Problems

During the Sandy storm I was watching the live feed on Twitter to stay updated. One of my favorite things to look at are pictures because I'm a very visual person. But the problem I have with Twitter is that some times I'm looking at a very rule looking picture but it is fake. The picture to the right is an example of that. This picture doesn't look as real as some of the others but still I have never seen a hurricane take place so I don't know what it looks like in person. I know this isn't really Twitter's fault because they aren't posting the picture, the users are. But I still wish there was a way that Twitter could tell me, "Hey this picture is fake." I also think it is kind of weird that during a national disaster people are posting fake pictures. I get that people want to be dramatic and make jokes but to the rest of the world looking at the pictures we don't know what to believe. Twitter did do something to react to this. There was an article posted of the top five or 10 fake pictures of Sandy. There were some outrageous pictures and others were normal looking ones that could have easily taken place. I guess I just don't understand the reason for the "real looking" fake pictures. I guess what I'm saying is don't post fake pictures and pass them off as real. If you have a cool picture to post just tell people it's fake. Sorry for the rant guys. I just find this so annoying.