August 9th, 2008 · Life
I’m sorry for the lack of posting during the month of July – it was a rather hectic time of my life. To give you a short synopsis: I got a promotion, I got engaged, and mid-July my fiance accepted a position in San Francisco and will be moving there this week.
I’ve basically been spending the last two or three weeks helping her look for places to live, figure out the BART stops, and helping her prepare. She leaves on Monday (and I’m super sad…), but at lease it will definitely let things settle down a bit and I’ll have a lot more time to write.
I’ll be posting a little later this week – for now I have to go help her pack. Have a great weekend!
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There was an interesting post today on the Ogilvy 360 blog discussing an article in Adweek that suggests in five years, advertising companies will have employees that seamlessly work with digital, broadcast and online media.
It’s not too far of a stretch to see PR going the same way. Even as a new PR practitioner I can see the field headed towards a time when a PR pro needs to generate content that needs to be search engine optimized, have digital media (pictures, videos, podcasts) embedded, and are prepared for journalists and bloggers alike.
Many would argue that this is already happening, as can be seen with the increasing popularity of the Social Media News Release (SMNR). While there has already been a lot of discussion regarding the pros and cons of a SMNR, it’s possible that it’s only a matter of time before even more media is consolidated and it becomes standard.
I remember my freshman year of college (Summer 2003) I purchased a refurbished first generation iPod from Apple and all of my friends thought it was the coolest thing. The funny thing is, when I bought it, students were still carrying around CD-Players with a bunch of CDs in their backpacks. (Unfortunately, I lent my CD-Player to a friend when I got my iPod, and never saw it again.)
By the time I graduated from college, I had upgraded to a 30gig video iPod and pretty much everyone walking around campus had a Nano, Shuffle, or something of the sort. Then you consider that now podcasts and video have become much more prevalent with things such as GarageBand and Flip Cameras – it’s pretty easy to see how in 5 years professionals in the communications fields will need to be familiar, if not experts, in all of these types of new media.
I suppose saying we will need to be experts in the field may be somewhat of an exaggeration, but I’m sure you can see how quickly new media is being consolidated and how that can have implications on our careers as PR professionals.
So what do you think? Will we all have to be experts in these different types of media in the near future in order to truly be full service agencies?
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Well, it’s been a little over a week since my first post – and I’ll confess that I’m still trying to get into a routine with blogging – I plan to be posting about once a week at the very least.
There’s been a lot of talk and discussion lately about just how effective social media is, especially when it comes to using mainstream venues like Facebook.
Well, as a recent college grad (UT ’07), I have to say that advertising on Facebook is a little iffy for me. A few weeks ago I set up a Facebook Event for my friends and I to go see Iron Man on opening night and I decided to purchase my tickets on the internet early. To my surprise, the next time I logged into Facebook it had posted on my newsfeed “Dominic just purchased tickets to Iron Man from –Internet Site-!”
This was even more disturbing because I had gone out of my way a few months earlier to make sure that my newsfeed was shut off and all of my privacy settings were as high as possible.
I explained this situation to a colleague of mine, who told me of a similar situation she had heard of, except that it happened when a young man bought his girlfriend an engagement ring.
I’ll be the first to say that movie tickets pale in comparison to an engagement ring – especially when it ruins the surprise of the proposal. Had it been me, I’d have been furious.
The most daunting aspect of the entire situation is that somewhere along the line, I know I probably agreed to it when I just scrolled to the bottom of some set of T&Cs and just hit “I agree” without fully reading them.
It’s situations like these that can end up alienating people from using the site. That’s why advertisers have a long way to go and it unfortunately seems like it will mostly be by trial and error. I don’t really think this sort of “brute force” method is the most effective way to get advertising best practices, but that’s one of the problems of social media – it’s pretty much all uncharted waters and we’re all still trying to find the best way to communicate with our publics.
I doubt Facebook or advertisers have a lot to worry about though – with literally millions of people on the site and it’s popularity in high schools and colleges I think it’ll take a lot more than a few advertising blunders to really hurt the site.
As for the advertising, I think it’d be a better solution to see what events/groups a person is in and just advertise, “Buy Tickets for Iron Man on –Insert Movie Site-“ rather than have unsuspecting individuals endorse that particular company. It also begs the question – is any of my online shopping safe from Facebook?
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Hi and welcome to PRSnackBar.com. This is my first post and I want to thank you for taking the time to stop by my blog.
This blog is intended to take a look at all things social media and look at the impact social media has had on our lives. It’s pretty amazing to think that in just a few short years things like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs, and so many other social media devices have been popping up and have not only revolutionized the way people communicate with each other, but have also had a dramatic impact on how organizations communicate with their publics.
As for me – I work in high-tech PR in Austin, TX and graduated with a degree in PR from the University of Texas at Austin about a year ago. I’m fascinated by all the different varieties of social media as well as the challenges and opportunities they offer organizations from a public relations standpoint. In addition to writing about social media, I’ll also be commenting on the challenges a young PR professional is faced with and try to offer a fresh perspective on social media and the impact it will have on our careers and profession.
Thanks for stopping by! Please feel free to leave comments or shoot me an email if you have any questions or anything to say.
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