You have to Listen

Katie Paine's book "Measure What Matters" a great book for determining what you need to measure and how to measure when it come to social media.

One lesson she writes about is that you have to listen to the marketplace. This is important because in order to serve the marketplace, you need to know what they are saying and thinking.

Here are some tips of how you can listen to the marketplace. 

1. Use Google Adwords:
Figure out people are saying about your company and, equally as important, what they are saying about your competitors. Figure out the "hot buttons."

2. Determine your positions:
Once you've figured out what the hot buttons are and what people are saying about you, determine where you stand on these issues.

3. Verify which outlets matter:
After monitoring for a while you will begin to figure out which sources of information are most influential and which outlets frequently mention you.

4. Remember:
It's not about how MUCH attention you are you're company is getting; it's about WHAT you're getting hat matters. If you're getting a large amount of information but it's a bunch of nothing, then you don't have a large amount of information that you can use.

Listening to what the marketplace is thinking and saying is a great way to start building relationships with the marketplace. Everything ties together when becoming a good PR practitioner. First, listen. Next, build. Finally, maintain. Do these things and you have a good chance of being successful. 

Thanks for listening,

Jake

Keeping Up-to-Date

Social media is one of the fastest ways to get information out to the masses. Breaking news about anything can be put on social media and reaches hundreds of thousands of people in seconds.

This can come in handy when, let’s say, a hurricane is about to rip through your beloved hometown and destroy everything!

I was reading an article from the Khaleej Times about how different platforms have taken steps to help inform people who are going to be affected by the storm, or people who are looking for information. On Twitter #Sandy is trending. People can follow that hashtag to learn more about safety and the latest news on the hurricane.

Google has set up a map that will the storm and its predicted path, and it locates the nearest storm shelter for you location. AccuWeather.com has set up a Google+ hangout so people can get answers to questions they may have by meteorologists in real time. Also a Facebook page has been set up to provide information as well.

In times of trouble social media can be an extremely useful tool because of the ability to pump out information at such a fast rate. I use Twitter everyday and I know that if I lived along the east coast I would be checking #Sandy frequently, as well as using the other social media platforms. I would want to be as informed as possible.

This is just another example of the many uses of social media and how important it is in our lives.

Thoughts and prayers to those affected,

Jake

Who Runs These?

Has anyone else seen the increase in the funny ONU related Twitter accounts? I may be late noticing this but I still find it rather amusing. As of last year @ONUstudent was the only humor-based ONU account I was aware of. As of today there are four that I know of: @ONUstudent, @ONUproblemz, @ONUBlackSwan and @AdaGoggles. The last one I discovered tonight while looking at my Twitter feed.

I’m not sure what the fascination is with creating these parody accounts or who has the time to run these accounts on top of their own, but I’m kind of glad these accounts were created. Like most normal people on this planet I enjoy laughing and things that are humorous. So naturally, I enjoy reading the tweets from these accounts. Grant it much of the content is what some would call “information that puts ONU in a negative light,” but for people who attend ONU the content is funny. This is because most of it is true or someone on campus has thought or experienced something similar.

Sometimes the content may be inappropriate, and something that I, as a good PR major, would never tweet, but it does provide a good chuckle. So to whoever are the account owners for those ONU Twitter handles, I thank you for providing the ONU community with laughs.

Tweet on ONU,

Jake

Measuring Relationships

In our social media class we are reading “Measure What Matters by Katie Paine. I’ve really enjoyed this book because it gives the reasons why social media needs to be measured, and how you can actually measure.

In Chapter 4 Pain talks about measuring relationships, and if you have read any of post before you know that relationships are a big deal to me. So naturally I liked reading this little section.

Paine mentions research done by Linda Hon and James Grunig and the six components that you can measure relationships with, and once again my kindness is coming forth and I have listed them for you.

1. Control Mutuality:

Stable relationships require that both the company and the publics have a little bit of control over the other.

2. Trust:

There are three components of trust: integrity is believing the organization is fair and just; dependability is believing the organization will stand true to its word; and competence is believing an organization as the ability to do what it says it can.

3. Satisfaction:

A satisfying relationship is one where each party feels positively towards the other and the benefits trump the costs.

4. Commitment:

Both parties need to feel that maintaining the relationship is worth the time and effort. There are two components, continuance commitment, which is a line of action, and affective commitment, which is how the two parties feel emotionally about each other.

5. Exchange Relationship:

This is like a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” type of relationship. The parties do things for each other because one or the other has given benefits before.

6: Communal Relationship:

In this type of relationship the two parties do things for each other because they are concerned each other’s well being. These types of relationships are very important to develop in the PR field (Grunig and Hon, 1999).

There you have it. Now you can go out and measure any type of relationship you have!

Happy Measuring,

Jake

Why We're Awesome

One of my very first blog posts was about why I chose ONU. One of the biggest reasons I’m at ONU is because of the atmosphere that is unique to this campus. From the beautiful surroundings to the small student-teacher ratio, this university is unique. This couldn’t have been proven to me more strongly than when I was at PRSSA National Conference.

I know I just wrote about conference in my last post but this is a completely different topic. While in San Francisco I got to see firsthand how lucky I am to be a part of the ONU public relations program. At conference I met a lot of PR nerds from all over the country and naturally we talked about our chapters and advisors and what department our programs are in. After talking with the other people I noticed something, and it was that the relationship between the PR students and the advisors is nowhere near as strong at other chapters as it is at ONU. It made me feel special knowing that our chapter has an amazing relationship with our advisors.

For example, some of the students at conference barely knew their advisor, while our chapter had a potluck dinner at one of our advisor’s house the night before conference! I would bet that an extremely low percentage of chapters have done something like that.

I know sometimes I have taken for granted how lucky I am to be a part of an amazing program, but after realizing just how awesome the relationship between the students and advisors are I won’t be making that mistake ever again. 

Honored,

Jake

Post-Conference Remarks

So I’m going to once again blog about PRSSA National Conference because it’s awesome and this my blog, so I can do as I wish.

Conference was amazing this year. It was in a great city (San Francisco) and the conference hotel was a nice venue.  I got to hear some amazing speakers such as Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, and Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora. I also was able to hear sessions led by other chapters from around the country. They gave great advice and I learned quite a bit from them.

Our chapter did one of these sessions and it was about student-run firms. I felt we did an amazing job, and luckily other people thought the same. I did have one goof up in my grammar and it ended up being quite funny. Instead of saying “Be college kids” or “We are college kids,” I decided to combine the two phrases and it came out “We be college kids” and I had no idea I even said it until afterword. Awesome, way to go Jake. But it was ok because the context it was used in made the phrase funny instead of a huge mistake.

 

Also, our PRSSA chapter president, Katie Hozan, and myself helped our professors by presenting at their professional development session. That was really cool because people who write the textbooks that Katie and I use were at the session!

I love to network and I met a host of new people from across the country who are PR nerds just like me. At one point I was sitting in between a guy from the University of Alabama and girl from the University of Oregon. Only at National Conference would this happen.

To top it all off I was able to bond with some of the other members of my chapter and we made some great memories along the way!

Conference is an amazing experience, and if you are on the fence about if you ever go to one I would strongly encourage you to go. You’ll learn a lot, make new friends and become closer with your chapter, and you really can’t ask for more than that.

I be a college kid,

Jake

Who's Excited for Conference?

PRSSA National Conference is this weekend! As I’ve posted before, I’m pretty excited. One of the main reasons I’m excited is because the ONU chapter is doing a chapter development session. For anyone who doesn’t know what a chapter development session is, it’s where a chapter will pick a topic and present about it in hopes to share insight with the other chapters.

The topic for our session is student-run firms. Our PRSSA firm, True North PR, recently underwent a complete rebrand and we are going to talk about how other chapters can do the same. Also we’re going to touch on various other aspects of a student-run firm; like why it’s important to be involved or the importance of becoming nationally affiliated.

The specific section I’m talking about is relationships. As any good PR person knows, relationships are the reason we get up in the morning and why we have (or will eventually have) jobs. They are important when it come to a successful student-run firm. Relationships with clients and other members of the firm need to be smooth in order to function properly.

This year’s conference is going to be amazing. Presenting a session is a great way to make connections with some many other chapters. Senior year is going great so far and conference is only going to add to the good times.

San Francisco here we come,

Jake

Words from Royalty

This weekend was homecoming at ONU. Homecoming in college is a little bit different than homecoming in high school. In high school there are different themed days during spirit week and there is a dance on the weekend. In college we have a theme but there are no special days during the week where you dress up or anything like that, and there is no dance. This year's theme was "Where in the World is Klondike?" Klondike is the name of our mascot. 

While there are some differences, just like in high school ONU crowns a king and queen. I’ve been on homecoming court twice; last year representing Habitat for Humanity and this year I was honored to represent Sigma Phi Epsilon. Basically any organization can nominate representatives to try and run for homecoming court. The week before spirit week there is voting for the court. The top five men and five women are chosen and then make their bid for king and queen during spirit week. Throughout the week there are some activities where there’s free food and prizes. Then on Saturday there is a parade in the morning I got to ride in a sweet yellow corvette with Shayla Moyer, one of the ladies on court.   

Like I said I was honored to represent Sigma Phi Epsilon, but I’m even more honored that I was crowned homecoming king! It may seem like a trivial thing and that it’s just a popularity contest, but it’s cool knowing that people like you. I think I was in the lucky car because Shayla won queen.

I’ve always had fun on homecoming, but this year was a little more special. I’m excited that I won and could represent Sigma Phi Epsilon. I’m also happy that my parents could be there.

It’s good to be the king,

Jake