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.