P.R. pays off at home

When my mother calls me, a senior P.R. major, for help with an internal P.R. campaign for her company I'm honored. However, my first question is why do they have an Information technology manager working on an internal P.R. campaign? What she told me surprised me. She hired an outside P.R. firm to run the campaign and she in turn was the client. The problem was that the P.R. people assigned to run the campaign did not impress her. They did the bear minimum even though there was a large budget at their disposal as well as her full cooperation but, she was not satisfied with the work they produced. My mother said there was a serous lack of creativity (which is one of the main reasons she hired them) and the work they produced was sub par. To be honest this is exactly the type of P.R. professional I do not want to be. I explained to her the types of things we were doing in my classes and she was impressed. Impressed because we are learning the tools and skills to produce great results. in the end she wrote down some of my ideas and called a meeting with the P.R. professionals to talk about how they could make them apart of the P.R. campaign. I still don't know the results of this meeting but I am pleased that she liked my ideas and was suggesting to the P.R. firm that they use them in their campaign.

Tip Top

Look around you right now. It does not matter if you are in the library, in a cafe, on front campus or at your house; what do you see? Are people wearing the same style jeans? Do you own a pair yourself? Have you ever wondered why we were all wearing similar style skinny jeans instead of the flare leg jeans that we were all wearing five years ago. The answer is simple. Sometime about five or six years ago their was a small group who started wearing these jeans. Gradually, through word of mouth, a connector helped to send the skinny leg jeans into main stream society. The skinny leg pant trend is similar to how hush puppies came back into style. A small group of kids in New York City bought the shoes because no one else was wearing them, they were seen by a connector and the rest is history. Five years ago, skinny jeans hit the tipping point.

The tipping point, as described by Gladwell, is the point when an idea, product, social movement, or epidemic becomes popular in mainstream society. For example: Once upon a time there were four talented English musicians who met, formed a band and a few years later became "more popular than Jesus". We now call them the Beatles. The Beatles were not over night sensations, they played in many small, less than popular pubs in England before they were seen by what Gladwell would call a maven. The maven saw the band and told a connector about the band, and from there the four musicians became the most popular band of all time.

In order to tip the athletic auction we need to make people care about the athletes who benefit from the auction. Our class needs to act as connectors, mavens and salesmen. Perhaps we could get an article published in the Baldwin Bulletin or Union Recorder about the auction. We should educate the community by letting them know what and who the proceeds go to benefit. I have found in the past that if you put a face on a cause more people get involved. We should also get local businesses involved by either buying tickets or donating something to be auctioned off. We need to make the community care and we need to let the right people know about the event.

As I was reading The Tipping Point it was interesting to try and classify myself as a connector, a maven, or a salesmen. A connector is one of those people that knows everyone. This type of person has many acquaintances and "simply likes people in a genuine and powerful way and he finds the pattern of acquaintanceship and interaction in which people arrange themselves to be endlessly fascinating." (Gladwell 43) A maven is someone who enjoys collecting information and then passing it on to others. A maven wants to help people simply because they like helping people. A salesman has the skill of persuasion. They are usually very friendly, upbeat people who have the ability to make everyone feel welcome. I am a maven. I am always reading and collecting new information from people I meet. Once I have this information I decide weather the information is useful, if it is I tell my friends, family and now I tweet about it. An example is that a friend of mine saved $500 on a plane ticket to Sweden because of information I gave her about STA travel. Another one of my friends was able to get a job overseas because I told her about a student work program I had read about.

Tweeting has really helped in my never ending quest for new information. I am able to keep up with the music scene, domestic and international news, the best and cheapest ways to travel as well as the coolest places to go hiking in Georgia. Twitter is a wonderful way to stay informed and connected with both friends and associates, however, I have not hit my tipping point on this site yet. I have hit the tipping point on facebook though. I remember getting a facebook account the summer before I came to college and not really using it. Then I got to college and I started checking it everyday, then twice a day and at the peak of my obsession I checked it every time I was around a computer. This is because suddenly every one had a facebook account, it was the best and easyist way to get in touch with people. I can't wait for my next tipping point.

Online social networking is with out a doubt one of the newest and most widely used tools in PR and other media outlets. The problem is that facebook has become so large that everyone is getting in on it...including employers. When facebook first came on the scene it was for college students only, then it went to college and high school, now it is open to everyone. So the problem is "How do we separate our personal lives and our professional on facebook?" The social Times published an article " 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know." http://tinyurl.com/c59bzd

The article explores many different ways to separate your friends from your family and your colleagues. The first setting is different friend lists. You can create as many different friend lists as you want and each friend list has it's own privacy settings. This means that you can be friends with your co-workers and bosses but they can only see as much of your profile as you want them to see. Another great thing about these friend lists it that you can send out a message or invitation just to the people on that friend list.  The second setting is to remove yourself from facebook search results. This will enable that no one can see your profile if your not friends with them. The third step is a long the same lines, remove yourself from google. I got lucky and didn't find anything about myself until about 10 pages back. However this is due to the fact that there is a swimwear designer by the same name as well as a famous jazz musician so I'm not really a good example. The fourth point is if you are going to use Facebook as a professional tool avoid being tagged in less than flattering pictures. Now, I'm not talking about a picture where you think you look bad, I'm talking about those party pictures that would be better off not being on the Internet at all. The only problem is you can't control what other people post on facebook but you can control who sees the pictures on facebook. The fifth point goes along with the fourth, make your photo albums private and limit them to those who you want to see them.  Relationship statuses are another good point. if you are in a relationship and it ends do you really want everyone at work to know about it right away? I know that I don't. It is also suggested that you make all of your contact information private. Only let your "Friends" see your phone number and such.  Now for the point the ninth point and the one that I found really helpful, avoid the embarrassing wall posts. I don't know how many times I have had to delete wall posts that my friends have written on my wall because I don't want everyone to read what that person said. Now I won't have that problem because I learned you can control who sees your wall and who can post on it. For instructions on how to do these things on your facebook account just read this article at http://tinyurl.com/c59bzd.