A Series on Blogging

Blogging is a great way to share useful information. I found the following article on the Public Relations Society of America website about ways to improve your blogging.

Polish Your Posts: Three Ways to Improve Your Blog Copy Posted by Ann Wylie on August 5th 2011

“Blahger: A blogger whose message primarily consists of blah-blah-blah.”
—BuzzWhack.com
Nobody wants to be a blahger.  But too many blogs aren’t worth their pixels. Here are three ways to make your next post more relevant, interesting and accessible to your followers:
1.  Deliver value.

Your followers don’t care about your organization’s stuff. They care about themselves. So why not write about what the reader cares about?

• Focus on the customer, not on the company. Don’t let your posts sound like a series of press releases. Instead, ask, “What problems can I solve? What expertise can I share? What issues can I weigh in on?” In social media, education is marketing.

• Think of your company as a publisher. “Blog like you’re the best trade magazine in your industry,” suggests Kipp Bodnar, inbound marketing manager at Hubspot.

• Promote resources, not products and services. Think about white papers, studies, webinars and conference speeches.

The good news: Offering tips and techniques that serve your customers also helps you position your organization as the expert in the field.

Repeat after me: “The topic isn’t the topic. The reader is the topic.”

2.  Have a voice.

A blog, theoretically, is a personal journal. So have a personality. A real person’s personality, not a PR department’s personality.

“Talk as yourself, not about yourself,” counsels Dan Zarrella, viral marketing scientist at HubSpot.

Having trouble? Take the “Hey, did you hear?” test. Say, “Hey, did you hear?” then read your post aloud.

If your copy sounds as if it could reasonably follow that conversational intro, you pass. If it sounds like the teacher in a Charlie Brown cartoon — “wah wah wah wah” — keep working.

3.  Think visually.

Look at your blog post. Squint. What do you see?

Don’t ask your readers to wade through a river of gray text. Lift your ideas off of the screen and make your copy look more accessible. Break your post up with display copy — subheads, bullets, bold-faced lead-ins, links and highlighted key words.

It’s always important to make your copy scannable — whatever your medium, channel or vehicle. But when it comes to your blog post, it’s essential. Because you know what your readers were looking at before they arrived at your post, right?

Twitter.

This article originally appeared in the July 2011 issue of Public Relations Tactics.
Ann Wylie, president of Wylie Communications, Inc.,  works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. To learn more about her training, consulting or writing and editing services, contact her at ann@WylieComm.com.
Want more tips for making your posts, tweets and status updates more interesting, relevant and accessible to readers? Join Ann Wylie at the 2011 PRSA International Conference Pre-Conference session, Writing for Social Media.

State Dept. Coordinator Program

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Public Affairs is seeking applicants for the 2012-2013 Foreign Affairs Campus Coordinator Program. This program is designed to create a network of State Department student contacts on college and university campuses across the nation. By relying on students’ academic experience, interest in foreign policy and knowledge of their campus community, the Bureau of Public Affairs seeks to reach a wider cross-section of students on college campuses and surrounding institutions.

The Bureau of Public Affairs is responsible for fulfilling the Secretary's mandate to help Americans understand the importance of foreign affairs. College students are a large and important segment of that audience. The mission of the Foreign Affairs Campus Coordinator Program is to establish outreach partnerships with universities throughout the United States, to better inform college students about U.S. foreign policy priorities.

We are reaching out to faculty members at colleges and universities around the country and asking them to encourage students who would be the most ideal candidates for the program to apply. Up to two applicants per school will be selected. Attached you will find the program application and program overview which provides additional information about the Foreign Affairs Campus Coordinator Program.

With the guidance of the Bureau of Public Affairs, Campus Coordinators connect academic communities to the State Department by:
· Utilizing social media tools, such as Facebook and Twitter to promote U.S. foreign policy
· Arranging video and phone conferences with Department officials
· Conducting workshops and round tables on U.S. foreign policy priorities and career development
· Serving as a campus liaison for visits by Department officials
· Partnering with university faculty and Diplomats-in-Residence to inform students about U.S. foreign policy priorities and the roles of the Department
· Organizing events centered around commemorative days in U.S. Foreign Policy, e.g. UN Day, AIDS Day
· Disseminating information on U.S. foreign policy to campus community
· Facilitating campus participation in Department programs when applicable

Students wishing to apply to participate in the Foreign Affairs Campus Coordinator Program should submit the application at this link http://db.tt/2GvzQEXy along with their resume to the Bureau of Public Affairs, Office of Public Liaison at campuscoordinator@state.gov by Monday, October 8, 2012.

Hot 99.5 Internships

HOT 99.5 currently has intern positions open for the upcoming fall semester in both the programming and promotions dept.

Interested candidates can email Gillian Sussman at raven@hot995.com.

JOB DESCRIPTION

As an intern for the programming department of HOT 99.5 interns will primarily be

an assistant producer to the on air personality. As assistant producer, interns will

gather show prep online and summarize for on air and post on line in our jock

blogs. Interns will screen incoming phone calls on our request lines, track requested

songs, and assist contest winners with information regarding their prize. Interns will

assist on air personalities with their blog on our website. Interns will assist as

needed with production including air checks, syndication and producing

commercials. Interns will be responsible for weekly updates of our stream fill

content which will include but not be limited to editing songs, creating original

content and producing segments. Interns will have the opportunity to learn how to

run the board and assist with music research as well as have the opportunity to sit in

on record label meetings.

Starting the second week of an internship, interns will be responsible for completing

a weekly written assignment. These assignments will be used as a training tool to

provide information on programming and production. There are 11 total

assignments. The final three assignments will be the precursor to three final projects

that will be due before the end of the semester. These projects are: a 30 second

commercial fully produced and written by the student, a complete marketing

campaign outline for a $30,000 budgeted promotion, and finally a 1 hour aircheck.

These three projects will account for 60% (20% each) of the interns final grade. If

the student will not be earning a grade and rather a pass/fail, the final percentage of

the three projects will then account for 100%.

Internships are not paid; all interns are required to earn college credit

For questions regarding the internship please contact:

Gillian Sussman

Music Director & Programming Coordinator

240.747.2833 raven@hot995.com

PR Internship at Argyle Middle School

An associate of mine is looking for PR interns to join a team to promote the magnet digital program at Argyle Magnet Middle School.

Invent the Future With Us!
A Magnet for Digital Design and Development
2400 Bel Pre Road
Silver Spring, MD
Tel: 301-460-2400, Fax: 301-460-2423

MEMORANDUM

To:  Rochelle Daniel, Coordinator/instructor, public relations, Bowie State

From:  Peter Daddone, Magnet Coordinator, Administrator, Argyle Middle School

Subject:  Developing internship collaboration

The purpose of this memorandum is to provide specifics on the potential partnership between Argyle Magnet Middle School and your students.  Listed below are the types of media relations and promotions activities we would like support in completing.

• Developing one page hand-outs promoting our programs and our October 24 Open House at various elementary back to school nights.  There are approximately 12 elementary school back to school nights beginning the first week in September that we would like some of the public relations team members to attend to provide information about our programs.  Each event usually starts around 6:30 and ends at 8:00 p.m.

• Provide input and develop a press kit to be distributed to visitors and at guests for our Open House October 24.

• Provide promotional assistance on October 24 at the Open House from 6-9 p.m.  The Open House is the one day potential students and their parents come into the building, see what we are about, and hopefully make a decision to attend our school.

• Provide Community outreach from the first week in September until October 24 by developing an “Everything Argyle” traveling promotions event.   The design of this event should be a mobile marketing  plan to reach out to community members through recreation centers, apartment complex club houses, in front of supermarkets, etc.  Promotional team members should brainstorm what to include in the mobile marketing kit, contact and coordinate dates to roll out the “Everything Argyle” event and attend the promotional event.

• Develop Public Relations strand through press releases to local press affiliates, work with Arygle staff to create a Youtube channel dedicated to Argyle promotional videos, develop a Facebook page, and coordinate with MCPS Public Information Office to publish in in-house publications.

• Be a physical presence in the building, developing partnerships with students and staff, allow students to see that education can be a pathway out of poverty.

This internship provides the opportunity to network with professionals, build resume and relations experience, and help establish role models for students.  The internship is a non-paying internship.  The production of the internship is front-loaded in the months of September and October, but will taper off considerably in November and December so that interns can prepare for mid-terms and final exams.  Although the internship is non-paying, we can discuss compensating interns for transportation costs.  We can also arrange for lunch or dinner to be provided for those interns who commit to meetings or promotional events that include working during those hours.  This is an excellent opportunity to learn about non-profit and educational public relations!

Response to a PR student: A student deserves an A...

I like your question. A student deserves an A when he or she meets all requirements for a class including receiveing As on all work (quizzes, exams,etc.). Sometimes a student may receive an A in a class when he or she has gotten mostly As and one or two lower grades but the As must be high enough to outweigh the lower grades and the lower grades can't be too low. Another important factor to remember is that the expectations for each class may be different. Some teachers have higher expectations for their students than other teachers. What I find with many of my public relations students is that they do creative work but they don't always read which results in less than As on their exams and quizzes. I urge my students to read and study the text because those are usually the students who receive As in my classes and other teacher's classes unless extra credit is given or the lowest grade is dropped. I don't like to use these techniques to raise student's grades because it does not give them a true sense of the quality of their work. When they have to compete for Internships, scholarships and jobs with students or graduates from other schools, they need to be absolutely confident in their abilities.

Can you speak?

Any good public relations professional should be a good public speaker. If they lack the necessary skills, they need to acquire the skills ASAP. Here are some characteristics of a good speaker: Eye contact with the audience,animated,humorous, deliberate gestures, articulate,vocal variety. A few of my favorite public speakers are President Obama, Oprah, former President Clinton, Les Brown, and J.C. Haywood. Who are some of your favorite speakers?

PR is Writing

Every public relations practitioner should know that writing well is a must to be successful in the field. That's why I emphasize to my students that they must make every effort to improve their writing skills. I give them lots of assignments to help them with this. For example, this summer my public relations writing class have been assigned to set up and write weekly in their blogs about topics of their choice. Writing for social media is not new for them because they use twitter, facebook and other such tools. But I think they would agree that it takes discipline to write without typos, grammar/punctuation errors and other mistakes.