Two For One: Public Relations Social Media Blog Assignment and Top Five List

Alright, so it looks like for two weeks in a row my blog post will be a class assignment. This time, however, instead of a creative writing assignment, this will be a public relations assignment.

So let’s get down to business, and talk about the strategic use of social media.

Well, I’m pretty sure almost everyone I know uses Facebook for social networking, but I’m pretty sure, that outside of school, hardly anyone I know uses twitter. Before CreComm, I don’t think I would have ever considered using twitter, but in hindsight, before CreComm I didn’t really know what twitter was, or what it was for.

I think most people use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and to plan events, I bet there’s a pretty big percentage that use it to pass the time when they’re bored.

I think with twitter there are actually a wider variety of reasons that people use it. I use it mostly to check out links or post my blog dates. I don’t usually say much, but I think I kind of like to keep my internet foot print small or at least I try to. But there are people who post pictures and links and live tweet events and everything thing you can think of. There’s twitter fiction and stuff. It’s nuts!

There’s also Youtube, which is probably my favorite, I don’t really think it’s part of this assignment so I won’t say much about it, just that you can do even more, I think the possibilities for social media are pretty much endless as far as the uses for PR are concerned, as long as you can find your audience there.

So getting back on track, what does that mean for a strategic use of Facebook and twitter for PR?

This is what I think: I think what you should use Twitter and Facebook for in your PR plan really should depend on what message you’re trying to get across. That being said, I think the most important thing is that you’re active. You need to do things that will keep people coming back and get them involved. You want them reading your tweets, following your links, commenting on your Facebook page. The bottom line is you need to get your audience involved. That’s why it’s called social media; it’s a chance to socialize with your audience.

Your Facebook page should have useful information that you want your audience to know, and you should tweet links to that information. If you can include some sort of interactive portion, like what Old Spice did with that smell like a man not a woman man, then it should be done. Another important thing about social media is that you can’t just sit there and churn stuff out. You can’t constantly put out tons of information, and not take any in. It is good to put stuff out but if that’s all you’re doing then you’re missing out on part of it. Listen to what your audience says retweet their comments, comment on your threads on your Facebook page, show your audience you’re listening too, it will make them listen that much more.

I’m trying to stay away from too many specific examples, just because so much depends on whom your audience is and what you’re trying to communicate to them. That’s pretty much all I can think of for now. So I’ll leave the blog post there.

Because I’ve been doing these assignment blog posts, and not really any other regular blog posts I figured I’d make a top five list, to try and keep anyone who actually reads what I post entertained. Also if you are reading, you should totally comment. Trust me, it’ll be fun.

So here it is, My Top 5 guilty Pleasure songs. I don’t really want to admit that I like them, but I do. I like to pretend I only like them because I don’t hear them often.

1. What a fool Believes – The Doobie Brothers.
2. The boys of Summer – Don Henley
3. Neil Diamond – Mr. Bojangles
4. The Georgia Satellites – Keep your hands to yourself
5. And finally the entire Guns and Roses Chinese Democracy Album, well most of it.
So there you have it in no particular order, and if there is anything else that I like but don’t like admitting, I’m still not ready to admit it.

Creative Writing Term II Blog Assignment: It's like a Michael Bay Movie, But With Less Explosions.

Alright, so the assignment for this blog post is to comment on the relationship between a writer and the publication process. To give everyone reading this who doesn’t have a clue about the relevance of this topic for a blog post to me, let me try to fill you in a little bit. Basically, I’m supposed to imagine that I had just spent two years writing a book, or maybe just a year. I can write fast like that. Maybe my IPP (independent professional project) is a short novella, which it isn’t, but that is beside the point; anyway, I’d have probably done a collection of short stories or poems or something if it were. But, if I did, how would I go about publishing it?

Well, I guess that’s where it gets interesting. I don’t really know, what I’d do. I mean, I think that first off, I’d plan on sending my stories of poems away to magazines. Something like the New Yorker for example. I say this because looking at it form the prospective of not writing for my IPP, I am slow when it comes to creative works. I take a while to come up with an idea, and then it takes me even longer to get my thoughts organized, plus there are all the changes that have to me made to make the story work. I think about the short story I wrote last term when I say this. I basically wrote the entire story around one image, which appeared at the very end of the story and I had to find a way to fit it in. I didn’t even get that far in the first draft, and when I was writing it I felt like I had to force it in, and then go back and change everything to make the entire story work. I also made changes to it would have and ending. In the end I did pretty good on it and received some good feedback.

I was given some suggestions by Winnipeg author David Elias to add more scenes and extend the story some, this was in late November or early December I can’t remember, Ha that rhymed, and I still haven’t got around to touching it. So just based on how slowly I work I think submitting one at a time to a magazine would be the most natural fit to the way I write.

However, at the same time, the idea of having an entire book published is pretty enticing. I think it could be great to have my work published in my very own book. So lets say I could get my act together and get all the work done, I think it would be awesome to have it published.

Now, I have to consider that publishers probably refuse me if I submitted my work. When I was talking to David he mentioned that it can be extremely hard to be published and that often times your work is sent back and either changes are suggested or you are just out right refused. This goes for being published as a book or in a magazine.

I think this would be difficult for me to deal with, just because when write something that I like, I get pretty attached to it. Yet, at the same time I don’t really like the idea of self publishing or uploading to Amazon, because part of the enjoyment of being published would be the good feeling, after knowing my work was accepted by someone else as good enough to be published. That’s pretty vain huh?

I do have “plans” to submit some of my work to publishers or a magazine one-day I think, but I don’t know when that will be or how I will go about it. I feel like I have a lot of time. When I was talking to David about it he said he didn’t start thinking about being a writer until he was a bit older, so I’m not in much of a rush. Anyway, that’s pretty much all I have to say about it.

Maybe this wasn’t as much of a Michael Bay blockbuster as I thought it would be. I think I needed more killer robots, bad special effects. Well shucks.

Let me make it up to you with this.

This is the Pulp Fiction of Blog posts

Okay, I’m pretty sure I had something to write about for this blog post, but I think I forgot. It’s not surprising though; I’ve been super sick for the last five days. It’s the worst. I have barely got any homework done at all. I spent the entire weekend resting and trying to get better, but it didn’t work. Yet, despite how sick I am I haven’t missed any school.

I was planning to use this time to work on my screenplay for my creative writing class, but only the Mac lab was free, and I don’t know how to use the Word script template thinger on the Mac version of word. So I decided to do this blog post.

Oh! As a bit of an aside, I’d like to mention that Quiznos’s broccoli cheddar soup is awesome and will kind of make you feel a bit better even if you’re super super sick like I am. I would also like to note that I didn’t really know the correct way to use the Quiznos name as a possessive. It has the s on the end there but they don’t use an apostrophe, and I don’t know if that’s bad grammar or if the name just has an s on the end. So I gave them the benefit of the doubt and just added the apostrophe and the extra s, but than now that I’m thinking about it, what if there’s more then one Quizno and the s just refers to how there’s a whole bunch of them. Maybe I should have just put an apostrophe after the s. I suppose this is a question for greater minds than my own.

Okay, so I’m way more all over the place than usual. It’s like pulp fiction. You’re like “wait, I already saw Vincent die, how is he back again. Ow I think my brain just exploded.”

Okay, so I’m like four paragraphs in and I haven’t really said anything that makes sense. Here’s a thought: Alec Baldwin is the new William Shatner. It’s true; think about it for a bit.

Okay, well I better wrap this up. I’m gonna have way to many long posts like last term and then right at the end of the term I’ll have to do a bunch of short ones, like last term.

Okay, and I finish this post off with this.