Taking a class in Public Relations was a great experience. It helped inspire me to get myself a great internship. I am now an Intern for the South By SouthWest Festival and I wouldn’t have been so motivated to apply if it weren’t for this class. I had to really be proactive to earn this. The most important thing I learned from this class was to be proactive and make good use of your previous networking connections. Networking is key to success in the communications field. You can’t write that you are a good person on paper. Someone has to recommend you. Experience is everything and I’ve learned that I need a good hands on experience before I even think about entering the workplace at a professional level. I could really see myself as a PR professional one day. I really know how to achieve my goals and I’m starting to become very serious about my future career. The speakers were very helpful in conceptualizing what the workforce is actually like. I learned what distances I have to go towards in getting a job, making an impression, and following up on networking. One of the small things that stood out to me from the class was simple. When someone from the PR field meets with you in a group, you want to follow up and make sure you keep that contact afterward. When I went to the Social Media Club, I met a girl in the independent gaming industry and made sure we kept in touch. When I interviewed for the SXSW ScreenBurn internship, I made note that I knew this girl, and they knew exactly who I was talking about. I also used my previous blog posts as part of my application. This class has already helped me in my career. This internship is a big step forward in getting a career after I graduate. I love where I’m at right now and I’m grateful for the important information I have learned.
IMC
A theme that interests me is Integrated Marketing Communications. I have an interest in advertising, marketing, communities, and public relations, and this basically combines them all together into one. It’s much more cost efficient and the goals of IMC are much more integrated and focused than different groups for all the sections.
In theory, Isolating each group is problematic. The objectives of the groups aren’t clear, and the fluidity of the whole project would be underdeveloped. You have to wear a lot of different hats, but it pays off because the information is controlled by a single group.
I think of it like this: a face to face conversation is more intimate and involving than a long distance phone call. There can be messages interpreted incorrectly over the phone because the message isn’t as clear. However, with a face to face conversation, the message is much more direct and straightforward. That’s how IMC compares to segregated divisions of advertising, marketing, and PR.
Don from the Real World
Don is a very interesting woman. She has great advice from her experience in the PR world. She slaved away to start her own PR firm and I respect her for that. I really appreciated all the advice she had. What I took away from her talk was that I learned it’s okay to make big mistakes. She old a story about how she totally ruined the planning of an event because she didn’t double check the invitations before they were mailed out and they had the wrong address. The story was absolutely cringeworthy. I could barely listen to it without feeling sorry for her, even though it was so long ago. The real moral of the story was that she learned from her mistake, and she never made another mistake like that again because she will always double check important documents like that. I know it sounds cheesy to say you learn from your mistakes, but to actually hear someone from the real world admit that they messed up and learned from the experience, it’s a lot more meaningful. I can’t wait to make mistakes in the real world. It sounds weird for me to say that, but until I make an actual mistake with real consequences, I will always be scared of what COULD happen. Mistakes make you stronger and thats what I learned from Don.
Looking Up
A few years ago I was really worried about my future’s path. Like most kids, I simply had no idea what I wanted to do. However, now that I am a junior, my vision is much clearer than it once was.
Last month, I worked hard to get the internship of my dreams and I got the job. I am now working for the South By SouthWest Festival as an intern. Even better, I am working for the ScreenBurn conference, which is the gaming section of the festival. I hope to make a lot of connections over the next couple months and hopefully some will land me another internship or job in the gaming industry. I have a friend who is a community manager intern in Florida for a company called Trendy Entertainment. They just released their first game and it’s become instantly popular. I would love to work with a developer as a community manager.
I don’t know how far this gaming career dream will take me, but I have goals set and thats all that matters to me. I wouldn’t be this hopeful if I didn’t get this incredible internship. In the next six months, I hope the impress everyone I work with at the festival, make great connections, and plan ahead for another internship at a higher level in the industry.
To be exact, linked is my dream job. Maybe someday!
Malts for Memories
The Malts for Memories presentation was very impressionable and left me with a great idea of what their company would actually look like in real life. The digital media kit was very well thought-out and the story was very creative.
Reading out all the flavors out loud was unnecessary. The only one that needed to be mentioned was their new product, “Watermemories,” which was being presented. Listening to the other flavors dragged on, and even though it was only about a minute, it was just distracting from the rest of the presentation.
However, most of the presentation was outstanding. I haven’t seen that much effort in a project in a while. The costumes, home-made ice cream, video, and website all blew me away. It was fun to watch, engaging, and come on, who doesn’t love homemade ice cream? When they left the stage, I had a great understanding of their business and the attitude it portrayed.
Interrelatedness
If you were to ask me my opinion on social media, my answer would be a bit biased. I am happily dependent on the internet. I’ve been hooked ever since I started using AIM around 2001, when I was 11. I use social media every day to keep in touch with the news, my family, my friends, the community I live in, and for information. I love the interrelatedness of the internet. It gives a voice to the people of the world. I love being connected with the entire world through my computer. There is no other two way communication system like the internet, and there has never been anything like it in history.
Since taking Public Relations courses, I have gained an appreciation for blogging. Not only is a great way to get a message out through writing, but it’s a great way to express your voice and opinion to the world. Blogs can be very personal and they can be very accessible. Anyone can view a blog. Now that I have been writing formal blog entries for almost a year, I can really appreciate that the internet has allowed us to speak up so easily. You have a voice and the world wants to hear it.
Growing into Communications
Everyday I feel more confident that public relations is the career choice for me. I remember when I was a younger, my parents would scold me for being on the internet too much. The concept of being online was so foreign to them but so exciting for me. I spent my days using AIM, choosing powerful away messages and monitoring my buddy profile. Eventually I got my first Myspace profile. My parents and I didn’t realize it back then, but I was spending my days learning to network with others and monitor online presence. Everything was so exciting and new. I loved being on the internet simply exploring the virtual world. I wasn’t encouraged to use the internet, my family opposed my amount time on the internet.
It’s been about 10 years since I started using the internet and I have seen it grow at exponential levels. I have gone through AIM, online message-boards, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. I’ve been doing a lot of self monitoring on Twitter. I want more followers, right now I have 71 and I’m working to gain more. I still have a lot to explore: there is Tumblr and Reddit which a lot of my friends enjoy.
I went to the Austin Social Media Club and I felt totally immersed in an environment that I loved. We were actually encouraged to be on our phones, engaging with each other, and tweeting about the conversation. Being engaged with a group of adults like that was pretty incredible, since I’ve always been taught that social media was always talked about with negative implication. It’s good to finally know my path. I am loving the communications division and I hope it takes me far with my career.
Forums
A lot of the time I spend on the internet is posting and reading online forum message-boards. Most people are unfamiliar with forums for many reasons. Most message-boards have very unappealing user interface. Forums are overwhelming with no real linear path for new users. They are also inconvenient as conversations have to be manually refreshed, topics can easily get buried, and there’s no real sense of direction for conversations.
Very intimate communities come together on message-boards. Members are all brought together by a single passion and it’s almost like an online ‘village.’ Although some are more notorious and infamous than others, but for the most part message-boards are mostly positive environments.
Forums aren’t very well known in the PR world because other outlets of media have been receiving the major attention, Primarily Facebook and Twitter. However, there are companies taking advantage of the communities on forums across the internet. Amazon and Kmart both have representatives that work with the forum Cheapassgamer.com. Yes the name of the forum sounds tacky, but the site has a fairly large community of people looking for deals on games. Amazon and Kmart have realized the potential of the relations with this community, so they have officials post on the site to help inform the community of ongoing sales. Another gaming forum called NeoGAF has around 60,000 members with a low acceptance rate, and lots of game developers post there to engage with the community. Official representatives of different franchises and developers post on the site to interact with the community and give their brand a great name, especially with new releases and controversial or breaking news.
The forum is a dying outlet in social media, and its being taken over by mainstream outlets. However, there is a great potential for companies to reach intimate communities of their products through online communities on forums. The internet is becoming more wide-spread, so ‘online villages’ are being forgotten as companies have started self-monitoring, but there is still a lot of potential for public relations on message-boards.
Edit: Right after posting this, a friend I met on a forum posted about his internship at a gaming developer company. “Made a ton of people happy today on the forums.” He’s a community manager for the developers and that is PR at its finest.
Gaming Communication
My passion is following the video game industry. The business of gaming has become a billion dollar industry, and its become so complex that every business move made is interesting. Its an industry that is evolving quickly. There are successful independent developers, console developers, casual Iphone games, PC games with revolutionary game engines, digital downloads, and new technologies. I love following the business of the gaming world, it has become a huge market.
I don’t program games but I still want to be a part of the industry. To be a PR or social media manager for a gaming corporation would be incredible. A lot of games are starting to use online communities for their advantage. Developers are starting to use social media in their campaigns for promoting their games or brands. Some developers are now integrating social media into their actual games. EA is is boasting about their 100 million dollar advertising campaign for Battlefield 3.
Being a community manager for a developer is my dream job. Video games have created huge communities of all different kinds. The companies need people to communicate and interact with these communities and that is what I would love to do.
Listen up
How long do you think a relationship would last if one partner didn’t listen to the other? Communication is crucial for relationships. That goes for relationships between organizations and their consumers as well. Listening is a huge part of public relations. It’s hard to sell a product when your target audience hates the organization behind it; in fact, its impossible. Listening lets you know what’s working and what isn’t.
When Netflix announced Qwikster, there was a huge backlash. They took away content and decided to start charging more for less. Netflix lost 1 million customers after the announcement. The response on Twitter was negative. Critics and bloggers were upset with the switch. These are all huge warning signs to your brand. They are all great ways to listen; Twitter, blogs, critics, and sales.
The plans for Qwikster have been terminated, but it may have been too late. It took almost a month for Netflix to listen and the damage had already been done. If the signs were obvious enough, Netflix was smart to listen. When your customers lash out towards your brand, you must take action to make them happy again. Netflix seemed to ignore their customers for a while, but eventually they decided to listen and it was the best decision in a bad situation.
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