Video Shenanigans

For our social media class Katie Jones and I worked together to create a video to help promote ONU's public relations program.

We wanted to highlight the opportunities you have by being a part of ONU's PR program. The two that were talked about the most were getting involved in True North PR (our student-run firm), and being able to go to PRSSA National Conference. I've talked about both in previous blog posts, so I won't get into those again.

 The end of the video also highlights the other many opportunities that our awesome PR program has to offer.

So here is our attempt at creating a video!

Enjoy,

Jake

Your Typical Break

One of my many blessings in life is the fact I have a huge family, and we are all very close. This makes the holidays and other get togethers extremely fun because of the atmosphere of the grandparents’ packed house, all the food and of course the joking and laughs.

I had an awesome Thanksgiving break this year. I spent quality time with the family, was able to get some Christmas shopping done on the infamous Black Friday and may have gained a few pounds from the copious amount of food I ate.  

With all the fun and food came very little down time, which necessarily is not a problem. That is, if you don’t have a research paper, a case study and Bateman to work on! I planned on getting some work done over break, and I actually did get some done but it was nowhere near the amount I wanted.

So what does this mean for me? A lot of caffeine and late nights in the PAC lab (the computer lab us PR folks at ONU use). Needless to say I have my work cut out for me and I have said before how I need to work on not procrastinating, but I would not change anything I did over break. I had a great time last week and these late nights will be worth it.

It’s go time,

Jake

How to Get an A in Higher Education

Chapter 14 in Katie Paine’s book “Measure what Matters” talks about doing research and measuring in higher education. One of the points she makes in this chapter is that when dealing with higher education institutions there are lists of audiences that you have to address.

With most companies or businesses you have two or three target audiences, but with a college or university there are three or four target audiences on campus alone. Then there are many more who are outside the campus.

This point brings up the importance of knowing ALL of your audiences and how it’s vital to prioritize them properly. But when it comes to prioritizing there is no one size fits all. Every scenario or situation will require some of the audiences to move up and down the ladder. A campaign for trying to bring in donations will have the alumnae at the top of the ladder, while a campaign to increase participation in a certain on campus organization’s activities will have the students at the top of the ladder.

I feel this is a powerful lesson to realize if you are going to be working in an institution of higher education or working with one. Knowing who all of your target audiences are and how they’re prioritized is crucial to the success of anything you do.

That’s how you get an A in higher education,

Jake

Can Only Go Up

The Ohio Northern University men’s club volleyball team had their first tournament this weekend at Kent State University.

In the past the men’s club team has been very successful and was very talented with a lot of veteran talent. This year however was a little different. In our pool there were four other teams; two darn good teams and two ok teams. We went 1-3 in pool play which was disappointing, especially in comparison to the fact the team won our first two tournaments, but we are a young team with great potential.

This year’s team consists of three players who have never played organized volleyball before, two freshmen who played a little in high school, two players who only have one year experienced, and four players who are season veterans.

Needless to say we’re a young team. But even though we have youth we also have so much potential talent that just needs some experience.

Now, while our record did not particular show any positives, we did play well and this tournament was a good bench mark for seeing what we need to improve upon.

So even though we were disappointed in the outcome, we felt positive about our performance because of the good things we saw.

Excited for the future,

Jake

Look Who's Tweeting

Social media is everywhere around us. If you haven’t realized that by now you’ve either been living under a rock or have been living a sad sad life.

I’m well aware of the fact social media is in our everyday life, but did not realize the true outreach until tonight.

Tonight I was watching an epic high school football playoff game between St. Ignatius and Mentor. Anyone who has any appreciation for sports would have enjoyed watching the battle between these two teams. The game went into three overtimes and was a highly intense and exciting game. But I digress.

My realization of the true outreach of social media came to me after the first overtime began and St. Ignatius scored on a perfectly thrown pass. Immediately after the touchdown my brother and I both picked up our phones. I went to Twitter and I thought my brother was checking a txt message or something. After the second overtime started (obviously because of a Mentor rebuttal) and St. Ignatius scored again, I went to Twitter again while my brother picked up his phone again. I then realized that my brother was live tweeting the game! My 15 year old brother, who’s a sophomore in high school, was live tweeting a game! The PR nerd in me became a little excited.

I realized that younger and younger generations are getting on the social media bandwagon and have more than enough capability to do so. This is just one small sign that social media is spreading at an exponential rate.

If you are in an industry, or one day will be, whose target audience is the teenagers, you need to be on social media as of yesterday. If you don’t do this you will be left in the dust.

Get on it,

Jake

A Little Help from Grunig, Grunig and Dozier

Once before I blogged about how a crisis could happen to anyone or any company. In Katie Paine’s book, Measure what Matters” she lists Grunig, Grunig and Dozier’s Four Principles of Crisis. When it comes to crisis everyone can use all the help they can get, so here they are!

1. Relationship Principle:

You can withstand both issues and crises better if they have established good, long-term relationships with their publics.

2. Accountability Principle:

You should accept responsibility for crises even if it’s not their fault. This is because it’s better let the truth come out and prove that it wasn’t your fault than to fight the situation and run the risk of it actually being your fault.

3. Disclosure Principle:

You must disclose all that you know about a crises or problem. Pretty simple.

4. Symmetrical Communication Principle:

You must consider the publics’ interest to be at least as important as your own.

Understanding these principles can help you in a crisis situation because at some point, in some capacity, every PR professional will encounter a crisis situation.

Hope this helps,

Jake