#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.