Listen to Shia

PR is not only a vast field, but a fun field.  It is not just a job based on work, but based on relationships.  Life is based on relationships.  PR is not just a job, it is a passion and it is something you just have to go out and do.  As the great philosopher Shia Labeouf once said...JUST DO IT.

The PR project of working with the basketball social media was not only a success in my opinion, but a lot of fun too.  I've enjoyed going out and seeing the accounts become more successful.  I've enjoyed getting to have more people interact with the team.  So much of this project was just following through with ideas and I think that that is a lot of PR.  You have an idea? Do it, just make sure it is not controversial or offensive.


David Scott says that one of the biggest things that holds us back from doing PR is fear.  Managing fear is important in any profession, but especially PR.  He said this in his PR book, "The beauty of the web is that you benefit from instant access to conversations you could never participate in before...so not only is fear overblown-it's often dead wrong."  Fear is an insecurity in many, but to be able to take the thoughts you have and put them into action, you need to be able to manage your fears.

We are all unique and we can all come up with something new.  New and fun ideas are the heart and soul of PR.  All of the ideas I've written out in this blog were followed through, and the results have been successful.  I am so happy to be able to say that.  PR is fun if you let it be fun.  Be yourself and help your client look better.

Media Reach

As I have talked about in this blog and my readings this semester have only confirmed, the rules of public relations have changed and are ever changing.  The world changes in a blink of an "i."  A new app is developed, a new phone comes out or a new social media hits the web, it is safe to say that with our ever updating technology, we have an ever updating world.  This is the same case with reaching the media.  The media used to be reached through press releases and through expensive PR firms being hired, but now so much of PR can be done in house.  Our own personal PR or company PR can be shown to more people now than ever before.

One way to reach the media is through blogging.  Anyone can make it mainstream these days.  A 20 year old girl can write a blog about how much she loves Starbucks and thousands of people will share this post and even more will read it.  If just one of these thousands is involved in the media can pick this up.  A radio interview is a phone call
away.  A news station can find this girl and talk to her about her Starbucks addiction.  So many things can trickle down from that one blog post, and this is the same with companies.

We live in an updating and viral world.  The more we do, the more we learn.  The more we share, the more we see.  The media is everyone now and reaching them has never been easier.  Doing something well is the best way to do this.  Excellence should always be demanded and this is true with PR.  The more excellent you are, the more the media will appreciate you.

Video is Worth a Million Words

Video is a great way to improve PR.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million.  If people can see what is going on they can enjoy it and understand it even more than if they are just told.  Youtube used to own the online video sharing market, but now every social media site can share video.  Vine has proved that these videos don't even need to be excessive.  Simple frames are something that clients love to show and audiences love to see.

One of the best parts about video is that it is interesting.  If done right, a video is very entertaining and can bring much pleasure to a viewer.

I have seen this with my basketball project.  Two of the most trafficked tweets I have sent contained video.  As I have written before, our market isn't very big.  A successful tweet is something that has 8-10 favorites (I refuse to call them likes) or retweets, but one tweet, containing a hype-video for Troll Madness (read one of my earlier posts) received 13 retweets and 21 favorites and had over 900 views.  Another tweet, also containing a video from Troll Madness of a game winning shot, had 3 retweets and 16 favorites.  These were two of the most successful tweets that this account has had and I think that this is because of the videos.

Videos are a great way to show a lot in a short amount of time.  You can get the attention of the customer easily and use less time to do this.  In the world we live in, we no longer need to spend thousands of dollars on video equipment.  Just like image capturing, anyone can pull out a smart phone and take a video that can be used and viewed by anyone.  In the world we live in now, videos are easy to make and almost as easy to share.

"Imag(in)e All the People"

In our ever growing mobile world and our ever growing mobile life, the use of photos and images has skyrocketed.  The increased technology makes image capturing easier than ever before.  The fact that an iphone or other smart phones can now capture great pictures makes image sharing not only easier, but more quality.  Image sharing is a large part of modern Public Relations.

Images are a great way to tangibly show your customers what is going on in your clients word.  You can show products, events or anything that is going on.  Images are a great way to update people.  Instead of taking all of the time to describe something, you can share a picture that the viewers can see the full story.  People want to SEE more than be told.

The best medium for image sharing is Instagram.  I created a basketball Instagram account and so far it has been pretty successful.  It has raised raport for the team and students are enjoying it.  David Scott speaks a lot on how great Instagram is because of how simple it is.  You can show what is going on in seconds. I have really enjoyed this account and it has helped this project a lot.

 Photo sharing is not only helpful, but also fun.  It can help improve PR, but also be something that both sides enjoy.  It is something that is very simple in our modern world and is one way that PR has evolved.

Application of What I've Learned (Troll Madness)

This past weekend, the Trinity basketball teams had their annual Troll Madness event.  Troll Madness is a kick off to the basketball season including a scrimmage and other fun events to get the student body excited about the upcoming season.  This was a great time to start creating PR for the team and putting the new social media skills and techniques I have learned this semester to the test.  We officially created a team Instagram account (@TrollsBasketball) and used the twitter account (@TrinityMBball) to live tweet the event on Friday night.  I would say that this was a huge success.

The primary use of the new Instagram account this week was to have a countdown to Troll Madness with a different picture and caption each day.  We just created this account the week before, but due to the everyday posts building up to Troll Madness, the account became much more successful.  The account now has 80 followers, which is not that much, but is growing everyday.  The average "like" for post about Troll Madness was 25, which is still not that much, but I would say is a good starting point for before the season even starting.  We also used Twitter to hype this event up.  We had the most trafficked tweet ever on the page when we tweeted out the "hype video" for the event.  It had 21 favorites and 13 retweets, which is not a whole lot, but from observation of other teams in our conference, the team is getting closer to our goal of being the most successful athletics twitter accounts in the conference. 



I believe that the live tweeting of Troll Madness was well liked by students and helped enhance the experience for people there and people away from the event.  We would average around 1.5 favorites a tweet all season last year, but the average favorite for Troll Madness tweets was 7.1.  The tweet with the most activity had 22 favorite and 4 retweets.  These are once again not huge numbers and nothing compared to the tweets of large University athletic teams, but compared to our market, we are doing very well.

This weekend was very encouraging for the social media accounts and I hope that this is just the beginning.  I look forward to taking these tactics into the regular season with the basketball team.  

Real Life in Real Time

As the world becomes more and more digital and we become more and more connected through this digital world, our human need for instant gratification grows more and more.  As we want to get our knowledge quicker and faster, we also want our voices to be heard more and more.  We want a celebrity to retweet our tweet.  We want someone famous to like our Facebook page.  We want more interactions on social media.  This is how we now live in the 21'st.  We live in a connected world where we want to grow with each other, even if that growing is behind a screen.  We want this growing to happen immediately and in real-time.  We want real life in real time.

David Scott says, "In todays real-time world, anyone can share their thoughts with the world as news is unfolding."  This is not only true about news, but all aspects of our lives.  If I want to document me washing my cat on instagram, I can.  If someone wants to make a "snap-story" of them cooking dinner, they can.  If I want to live tweet my experience at Chipotle, I can do that too.  We can give real-time updates of what is going on in our real lives.  We do not need to go to a source to see what is going on in the world, because we are the source.

The thing that is so intriguing to me about social media, especially twitter, is that it seems that we have a limited audience, but we essentially have an infinite audience.  This can be seen even more when we tweet in real time.  One time last year my roommate tweeted a tweet reacting to something that happened in a Denver Broncos football game.  A news station from Denver twitter account retweeted his tweet.  Than all of a sudden his phone was buzzing for two hours straight because his tweet was being constantly retweeted and favorited by people he did not know.  That tweet was intended for his followers to see how he felt about the football game, but his following grew exponentially, even though this was not intentional.  All tweets have this potential, but very few live up to that potential.

I think that this can connect with my strive to better the basketball social media.  One thing I want to do this year is have live tweets of the games.  I think if we can have a unifying hashtag and have students tweet their thoughts on the game to the account as well.  People want to be connected, that is why we use social media.  If the people in the stands feel connected to those on the court during the game, they will have a more enjoyable experience.  This is something I am going to try to do this season.

Our lives develop every second and sometimes we want people to see that development.  In our hyperconnected world, this can be done now better than ever before.  Social media is a great tool for this and can help us learn more and more about ourselves and the world around us.

Thoughts on Content, Content on Thoughts

The internet is very powerful.  It has influence, sustainability, a future and countless other characteristics that further prove that it is one of the greatest powers in our day and age.  The more and more I read about online marketing and public relations, I realize that these fields are trying to tame the internets great power and how hard this task is.  It is not taking a dog on a walk, it is trying to break a wild stallion.  Thought content leadership is one of the ways to do this.

Thought content is exactly that, content that is thought out and meaningful.  Creating this for a sports team was where I found this a little tough.  While reading David Scott, who is focused on business, I thought it fairly easy for a business to do this, but how could I apply this to sports PR?  Scott talks a lot about how goals can drive our content.  This works for me and is something I need to focus on, especially because I now have a lot of set goals for the basketball social media accounts (see my last post).  Thoughtful content is goals based and goals should be concrete and attainable

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Focusing on my goals that I have set and working with my team, Walk-Off PR (Which I will talk about more in an upcoming blog), I believe that we have a lot of thoughtful content ideas to keep Trinity Christian College sports fans happy.  We have a lot of great ideas and plan on executing them.  We need to make sure that all of our content that we put on social media needs to be thought out and helpful to our "client," the school, and our "customers," the fans.  We need to remember that we are not selling anything or trying to make money, but make an experience.