Releasing Some Press, PR Style

After writing my first press release I definitely learned a few details about marketing and public relations that I did not know before. The biggest, and I would have to say shocking, thing I learned was how expensive one press release is if one wants to have that message spread to a wide market. I was shocked to see that it costs 200-300 dollars for a press release 0n a more well known site. I can’t even imagine what a companies public relations department budgets just with costs like that.

I went with the cheaper, being a college student, option and used Free Press Release for my submitting my release to the public. With there free option, you are guaranteed search engine indexing, but nothing more than that.

My press release was about “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” by David Meerban Scott. In the book Scott elaborates the notion that old concepts in Marketing and PR are now being affected by “new rules” brought by an increase in social media innovation. The book works quite well with what is covered in class, and helps with understanding the concepts of how to get rich content to the audiences that we want reading it.

Social Media Knowledge = Jobs

Society is now in the middle of a communication revolution that has happened many times in the past. Society has shifted from to telegrams to telegraphs, postal mail mail to email, land line phones to cellphones, and the Yellow pages to the World Wide Web.

The way people communicate with each other has been something that has revolved around innovations surrounding them. With that, those trying to be ahead of the game in the job market must notice these changes and not be a laggard to them, but an innovator.

Anyone who has spent time searching for jobs or internships can see that it has become harder and harder to differentiate from other candidates for those jobs. Qualifications that used to be more eye-opening are becoming more and more standard for employers. Employers now are looking towards the future, and the future encompassed social media usage.

The New Media Drivers License course covers concepts and practices that are in the slide show above in regards to where the marketing industries are heading. Best practices on blogging, social media marketing, digital public relations are all presented in this course by a industry profressionl, Derek Mehraban. The course also covers how to effectively use social media to promote oneself to possible employees with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. There is not a single course at Michigan State that currently provides students as much real life experience with social media concepts and practices.

SEO ASAP!

Search engine optimization, or SEO, has become critical for publishers get their content visible for those who truly seek it. With the amount of content growing on the Web exponentially everyday, it has become hard for rich content to be visible at a greater rate and near the top of search engine results like Google’s.

What many experts in the field, such as David Meerman Scott, are saying now is is that it all comes down to content creation techniques, and content richness steered toward niche audiences. In addition, David elaborates on other key tips towards search engine success by having more developed content, better site structure, and influential public relations strategies.

After looking through the  tools provided by the New Media Drivers License I found the most beneficial piece of literature was the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. Before even reading the content of the pdf I felt the best idea would be to read SEO best practices from the market leader is search engine technology, Google. The best practices starter guide goes step by step through important code structures, if a developer, to writing the best for web viewing and search engine indexing as a PR consultant. The key points I took out of Google’s best practices was how to use headings tags appropriately, writting better anchor text, and optimizing the use of images on the site. I find that with blogging, tagging and linking has led to increased site hits.

Social Media Superhighway

Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn all can contribute to the passing of information and networking of people in different ways. I have had Facebook since 2005 and initially used it to network with students at Michigan State and build potential connections for the working world after graduation. As many now see, Facebook has changed in its primary uses and now include many applications that do not include the same implementation model that it once did. Many of the current applications are for entertainment purposes and not as much networking. I plan on continuing using Facebook as it still hold the majority of the social media user market, but would say that I am striding towards using LinkedIn as my primary social network medium.

I find LinkedIn to be much more niche, and stirred towards what I really am looking for in terms of social networking for jobs and future career opputunities. In my opnion, LinkedIn is much more straight forward than Facebook, and gets to the point in terms of what you are on the site to do. It is very simple to upload resumes and input valuable information that could lead to potential employment.

I find Twitter to be like the last  player to be picked for the pick-up basketball team. Twitter’s  real-time short messaging service is found in both LinkedIn and Facebook, and is somewhat to simple in my opinion. I do not plan on using Twitter much as a social networking tool, and more for just fun and games. I can see how news can be pushed to others using Twitter, but I also feel that the use of RSS feeds are much more efficient, and compabitble with different servicies and programs.

Google Adwords

My Google AdWords experience is one that I would say was not one of my better ones within the realm of Web 2.o technologies. After investing 15 dollars into the campaign, which I was not that fond of, I did not see any return in investment. I was scared giving Google my credit card information, as they already have 3 years of my life trends by sifting through my Gmail emails on their server.

Outside of the financial issue I feel that Google does allow those interested in advertising a very easy route of doing so. It is really easy for a user to define the scope of their campaign, as well as define the markets that they want to reach. I did like the idea of being able to choose what location in the country I could target my marketing. For smaller, local business’ it probably would help a lot because they know they won’t have customers from the other side of the globe.

In terms of bidding for words, I did not have any success with my ad coming up with any of my search words. I even placed a bid of 33 cents for my name, just to be disappointedby it not showing up. I may not have the advanced strategies in place, but I am sure with increased financial support I would be able to have it come up on a search for my name.

Overall, I think Google AdWords is a great online application for advertising, but for my blog I do not really think it is worth the investment for what I would want to get out of my blog. If I had a business model for making profits off of my site then I would defintely use AdWords for advertsing.

Google Applications and Tools

Out of the numerous Google aplications available to download, I chose Google Calender as my application to test. I thought this would be a good choice because of the importance of keeping on schedule in college. I had already registered with Google in the past and did not have to do much to begin using the application. Another reason why I chose Google Calender was that I have been struggling to find a service that would allow for ease of access on a mobile platform.

Google Calender is full of features that allow for extensive planning of one’s schedule and tasks. I really like the sharing feature, as my mother likes to know when the best times to call me are during the week. This feature also allows me to make certain events private, which is nice when you want people to know you are busy, but not really with what. One feature that I do not feel is that pleasing is the lack of categorization of events. To make things appear in different colors one must make different calenders to do so. It would be more efficient if there was a drop down menu to select an importance or event type.

My favorite feature of Google Calender is an extension from it to sync the calender events to Blackberry devices. It makes life a lot easier not having to enter calender information in seperate devices. I highly believe that I will continue to use the Google Calender application.

Techno/Marketer

After doing an extensive search using Google Blog Search I was able to find a bog dedicated towards digital marketing and social media. The name of the blog is Techno/Marketer, and the author of the blog is Matt Dickman. He is the Vice President, Digital Marketing at Fleishman-Hillard in Cleveland, Ohio. This blog encompasses his ideas and opinions on topics concerning the marketing and social media  industries. In addition to his own posts on his blog, he invites others to become members of his Techno/Marketer team.

One of the posts that I found interesting on his blog focuses on how well people listen to social media. In the post, statistics were presented through a poll posted on the blog. The poll was able to present many characterisitcs about user behavior regarding how they listened to socia media. From that information Dickman was able to conclude that there are three keys to better listening. They are to find the customer and spend your time there, use technology to be more efficient, and create an ative listening plan. I found this to be a very interesting blog entry of Dickman’s, and one that brought some fresh statistics about what users of social media are looking for, and what they will listen to.

Getting my New Media Drivers License!!

I enrolled in the New Media Drivers License course with the thought that it would increase the diversity of my

A nerd in the making.

education while also adding real-life experience working with adversting based projects. I think that this course offers things that other classes don’t, such as current content about the advertsing industry, real life applications to learn with, and working with students from even larger backgrounds than those from Michigan State University. The course is taught by the CEO of Ingenex Digital, Derek Mehraban. I think that having someone who is currently working in the advertsing industry teaching the course allows for insight on subjects that a student may not get in a large lecture classroom with 300 students. I have worked in the field of technology since I was 13 years old and have seen firsthand how fast technologies change in a blink of an eye. I am hoping to gain knowledge with current best practices techniques when attempting to advertise with the current media platforms found in the market. So far having the ability to create a blog and add content to it is giving me hands on experience that already appears to be very valauble to what I want to do later in my career.

Braised Flat Iron Steak with Tomato and Chile Pepper Pasta

This evening there was need for increased iron in the dinner selection (we felt tired), and ironically “Iron” steak was the answer. Earlier in the week I had purchased it along with some other weekly grocery item essentials thinking I could make it with a very diverse selection of side dishes.

For this evening’s meal I chose to go more Italian with my herb and side selection.

THE PRIMI PIATTI

This consisted of wheat angel hair pasta with a light olive oil, tomato, and pepper sauce. After allowing pasta water to boil I cooked the angel hair for approximately 10-12 minutes until tender. While the pasta was cooking I prepared the sauce by first by adding olive oil, chopped red bell peppers, chile peppers, chopped garlic, and mushrooms. I let those ingredients  fuse with the olive oil, creating an amazing aroma. I then added chopped tomatoes and some simple marinara to add some more consistency the sauce. Lastly, I added the pasta and tossed.

THE SECONDI PIATTI

To  prepare the flat iron steak, I created a rub consisting of dark brown sugar, breadcrumbs, granulated garlic, Emeril Lagasse’s Essence, soy sauce,  salt, and pepper. After mixing those ingredients on every part of the steak, I braised the meat on stove top in olive oil for around 20 minutes. After there was a nice darkening on the outside of the meat, I finely sliced and stir fryed it in the remaing juices and olive oil till cooked to liking.