Twitter Has Other Uses

After reading Chris Brogan's post, "50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business,"and listening to Ellen lecture on other Twitter applications. I can now see why Twitter has become as popular as it is.
At first I hated hearing about Twitter in the news, mainly I would hear of celebrities using it to say what they were doing that that, or where they were going to be (I thought celebrities wanted their privacy, but I guess not). Chris really helps move the spotlight onto how Twitter can help promote a business. What opened up my eyes the most was Chris saying, "Instead of answering the question, 'What are you doing?', answer the questions, 'What has your attention?'" And by thinking that way, you can use all 140 characters at your disposal in a manner that helps your business flourish and become the gossip of Twitter. I can see myself using Chris's other ideas of, "What to Tweet About," when working at a company that would like me to Tweet for them. Where I work at now, (which I will not name) needs to move into the social media world. They are stuck in the old ways and trying to attract the same audience and not venturing out using Twitter and Facebook to draw our internet generation. Hopefully some day they will after listening to enough complaints about being "out of date" with their new upcoming audience. Maybe they can learn to use Twitter, to promote sales of the weekend, ask what products they should carry, what changes should be made to the stores, how can guest service be imporved. The list goes on and it seems like Twitter will be a tool to help solve some of these problems instantly, or at least get the word out.

Web Writing vs. Print

Writing For The Web

In my research class we talked about Jakob Nielsen, a web readability expert. Nielsen says users of the web scan, instead of reading everything.

For class we were given a task to take the article from the Mankato Free Press by Robb Murray, "'Politics of food,' other hot topics at Women and Spirtuality Conference" and rework it in to a user/web friendly piece.

Women and Spirituality Conference

This years women and spirituality at Minnesota State University, Mankato, will host nationally known keynote speaker, physicist and author Vandana Shiva.

Shiva founded Navdanya, a national Indian-based movement to protect resources and promote organic farming. She also started an international college for sustainable living in Doon Valley, India.

To hear Shivas discussion on her book, "The Gendered Politics of Food," find her in the Centennial Student Union Ballroom at 11 a.m on Oct. 31.

More than 100 workshops and discussions going over a variety of topics will be at the conference. Registration is required.

For more information, full list of worshops and sessions, and a registration form take a look at the brochure.

14 Key Attributes

After reading Dave Fleet's 14 key skill & Attributes for new public relations professionals, I do like how he included both old style of skills and the new and upcoming skills. It is nice to see that the old skills are still being used and we are still being taught these today in our classes. The one attribute that still needs to be worked on and paid a little more attention to and Dave has in his list is work ethic. Everyone talks about having a 9 to 5 job when they get out of college, but Dave mentions that your work day just doesn't begin right at 9 or end right at 5. You need to stay until the job is done and not have someone else pick up your slack. This may be a big problem for our generation since we are all use to having everything right at our finger tips and getting things done instantly. But once out in the "real world," it will not always be that way and we will have to work our butts off to keep that client or in that matter keep our job and not just have instant gratification.

How to think differently

After reading the first couple of chapters of Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge novel, "Putting the Public Back in Public Relations." I found myself thinking differently about the PR world. A major point I took from in the first chapter in a little section called "PR for PR People," is that a PR person should spend most of their time figuring out WHY it matters to the people what that PR person is representing. And not just think about while you are at work but, on your own time. I thought this was extremely important and will try to remember as I continue on into the PR field. The authors go on from there sharing that in order for a PR person to know their customer they need to get out there in the new social media and the biggest social media being the internet. A PR person can now go out on the web and read their customers points of view on a product and see what they can change and make it better. It will be interesting to see what changes lay ahead for social media, since it was such a major change from 1.0 to 2.0 just because of the invention of how much the internet has changed and all that blogging has offered and changed as well.

Bing is Dinging

We have all come to terms with Google being the dominate force with its massive search engine, but Microsofts decision search engine is trying to change all of that with Bing. I found a short blog post on a new feature Bing has introduced.

This new visual search feature Bing has come up with is a great idea. Since most people now a days when searching the internet like to see what they are looking at before clicking. With the visual search a person will be able to see and find exactly what they are looking for and even narrow down the search with different categories.

This alone will not bring down the giant that is Google, but will give Google competition and show people you don't always have to rely on Google to find your answers.

To check out bing.com, just click the hyperlink.

-Tyler Larson

Ethics

Today in class we had a short lecture on the ethics in PR and what ethics we feel are most important to us. To me confidentiality between you and your participants and also between you and the company that employed you to do the research, ranks highly among my top ethics. By keeping their confidentiality, you can gain a persons trust and once you have that, it's easier for a person to share their true feelings about what is being asked of them. If you can also keep this information secure for that individual or company it may help with building a good reputation and lead to you being hired by more companies to do studies and research for them.

To continue on with ethics that are important to me is the golden rule. Treat others are you would want to be treated. Everyone should have respect for everyone, even if you may not like a the person, you shouldn't go around bad mouthing people and spreading rumors that are possibly not true. If you're doing a study for a company and end up harming someone in a physical or mental way, you should try to fix it as much as you can and not let that person suffer. People you have asked questions to or asked for help in the study, have some reward for them and tell them you will try to have it published. Do whatever you can for the people to make it comfortable and an easy time for them.

There are so many ethics out there for people and everyone has a different view point and understanding of what ethics are. These are just a few ethics that rank highly in my book.

The Machine

The short YouTube video our professor had us watch was quite entertaining. What I liked most about the video is how it showed how the internet has changed our way of gathering information, news and anything else we are trying to find more about. It went into some detail about how people use html and how easy it is to manipulate the information you are trying to put out there for people to see and read. Showing that just about anyone, after maybe a few lessons, could/can post their views onto a website.