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.

#Goals

In reading for my college public relations class I realized something, I have not sat down and thought about the goals I have for the basketball social media accounts.  I have ideas of what I want the accounts to look like, but these are not anywhere close to goals.  The more that my goals are visible to the fans, the more likely they are to be achieved.  As David Scott puts it, "An effective web marketing and PR strategy that delivers compelling content to buyers gets them to take action."  I have talked about things I want to do, but this is me writing them down in one central place for you, the readers, and myself to go back to.

These are my goals for the upcoming basketball on social media.  One is that I want to make an instagram account.  I want this account to be fun, but also informative.  I want it to have a mix of videos and photo.  I want there to be photo or video each game day.  I think that this will be a really good way to reach students.

I want to take the base that I have with the twitter account right now and make it better. I am going to find every Trinity student I can on twitter and follow them.  I want the twitter account to be more friendly for the students.  I want it to be fun and profession.  My goal is that students stay connected and get to know the basketball team better though the twitter account.  I want to make the twitter account something the students want to stay connected with.  I want it to be something they look forward to reading.

My goals for the facebook page is to stay in touch primarily with parents and alumni.  I want this to be very informative.  I want to share more links to either stories about the team or about the sport of basketball in general.  I want this to be longer descriptions than the short hitting tweets of games or other events with the team.  I think that this will be appreciated greatly by our older fans.

This blog will be a list I can go back to.  These goals are what I strive to complete this upcoming season.  I think that I can do this and that at the end of the season I will be able to look back and see the difference that these changes make.

Social Networking in our Social World

I think that we easily take the ideas of social media and social networking and equate them.  Social Networking is an action we do with social media and this tool is something that if done right is very useful.  Social Networking is a way for us to reach hundreds to millions of people, all without leaving our desk.  I think that I need to stop "using social media" and start social networking.

One of the pieces of advice that David Scott has for social networking is interacting with the people on the social media page.  This means a lot for the basketball social media.  If a parent comments on a Facebook post, this means that I should comment back.  If a student tweets at the Twitter account, I should respond to it, maybe even with a little bit of wit.  Interaction helps not only current followers happy, but also helps reach new people through notifications.  Interaction is one of the most important parts of social networking.

The team Twitter account needs to be more than just score updates, it needs to be all around team updates.  I have wrote about this before, but I think that the Twitter page should have a lot of fun, but all while staying professional.  This is what I really want to do this upcoming season.  I also want to post something on the Twitter account at least once a day, even if there is no game.

Social networking is very important.  It can help a business or group grow a following and support the previous following.  Interaction and consistency are two ways to do this.  These are two things I am going to work on with the Trinity Christian Basketball social networking sites.

The world of PR has changed.  The ever growing use of social media and other forms of mass media have forced the field of public relations to evolve.  We do not need to rely on the "media" as much, because in the world of social media, everyone is the media.  This is something that is interesting to me on my journey with the sports PR work that I am doing.

The old rules of PR were based mostly on press releases that were sent to journalists who would then share it with the rest of the world.  That is no longer the case.  The internet makes instant updates not only possible, but necessary.  This means with my work with the basketball social media I need to give more up to the minute updates.  Right now I tweet and post the score at the half and at the end of the game, but I think I might need to try to do more than that.  I have to stay up to date as well.  

Seeing as this is for the Trinity Christian College basketball team, an NAIA basketball team, not a large Division I university, the reach and stories are small scale.  Scott touches this on page 23.  He says, "If you are smaller and less famous but have an interesting story to tell, you need to tell it yourself.  Fortunately, the web is a terrific place to do so."  I am telling the story of Troll's basketball and I need to use the web wisely to do so.

I learned a lot about the old and new ways of PR from David Scott.  He has a lot of good suggestions and is very wise.  I look forward to continuing in this PR journey and using some of his tips and guides to help me.

The Social Media Pitch

The 2 chapters we read from Zitron this week really applied to me on this drive to grow in my social media position.  Seeing as one of the chapters was all about social media, I was really excited to dive into these readings to look for advice.  I found very helpful things in both chapters.

Pitching...this is what I found to be more interesting in my application than the social media chapter. I thought to myself, "I'm not going into a business meeting telling people to buy a product, I'm using Twitter to make people know about my basketball team."  There was one passage in this chapter that I loved.  This is what made me think about the fact that I am pitching to people.  On page 79-80 Zitron writes, "Before you write anything, you need to think about one thing: the reader.  The reader might be your client, their fans, another reporter, and sometimes even competition or a rival PR firm."  This made me think back to what I wrote in my last post.  With this position, I need to be really concerned with how and what I write, because the reader is the most important person.

Zitron says on page 107 that, "Social media is trickier than it seems and often misunderstood."  This is so true to me and my job.  I find myself discouraged constantly due to the fact that the average Facebook post or Tweet for the basketball team gets about 3 likes or favorites.  Zitron talks about how you don't need to sell the product on social media, but entertain till the buyer is ready to buy.  It is all about trust.  The social media pages for the basketball team need to be more engaging for the fans.  I need to do a better job at building trust, instead of just broadcasting stats.  I am going to add more humor into the tweets and try to appeal to the students.  Zitron says that humor is great for twitter.  For the facebook page, I am going to try and focus more on the parents.  That is where most of the parents find information, so I am going to appeal to that audience more.

Both of these chapters were filled with great advice and will help me in my journey with social media PR.

How the Heck do I "PR" the "PR" I'm Already Doing?

My name is Joshua Peter Coldagelli.  I am twenty years old and am from the suburbs of Milwaukee, WI.  I have no idea how to do Public Relations.  This honestly excites me.  I usually hate uncertainty, but this time it is different.  I am ready to be molded into a PR machine.  The majority of my blog will probably be related to my job as Social Media Coordinator for the Trinity Men's Basketball Team.  I really look forward to taking what I learn in class and applying it to this position.

The part of the reading that stood out most to me was client relations.  There was a lot, especially in chapter two and, about how you need to get what the client want when they want it.  In a way, I am my own client.  I am a coach for the basketball team, who is also in charge of Public Relations. I am the client, and PR and my audience is the people who follow the Twitter and Facebook page, which is mostly parents and peers.  I think that having this unique opportunity helps a lot.  I can understand the client needs well, because I am my own client.  But this also takes away from the audience experience, because there is a lot of natural bias.

The section that grabbed me most was "No Client is Perfect and Neither are You" on page 54-55.  I am very emotionally invested in basketball.  This can sometimes take away from doing the job right because I want to save face for the team and not post about an embarrassing loss or anything else that would make the team look ba.  Trying to please myself and my client is taking away from the audience.  That is not fair to the audience.

As a good relationist and client for something like a sports team, I need to have a transparency that gives the audience the appropriate lens into the team. Taking the information I learned about clients from this reading, I am going to work on my job as a client this upcoming season and give the full story to the audience as well as try and grow in my relation abilities as the Social Media Coordinator for Trinity Men's Basketball.