Final-SMNR’s

For our final I decided to write about Social Media News Releases, also known as SMNR’s. A social media news release is a press release format designed for the online media world. The press release was written with just the “press” in mind, but in the online world your story needs to be told in a format that is relevant to a wide variety of people – journalists, bloggers, publishers and the public at large. http://www.realwire.com/servicesSMNR.asp).
One of the advantages of an SMNR is how they are “formatted so information is easy to scan, utilizing bullets and lists of ready made quotes instead of dense text.” Michael Lissauer, the executive vice president of Business Wire, gives another advantage of writing an effective SMNR and how if you can “write a news release effectively, they can bypass the gatekeepers, the journalists, who always had the opportunity of interpreting the release how they wanted” Another advantage is how hyperlinks are often used in the text and they connect people to other social media networking sites. They also give people the opportunity to view news releases in a different aspect than other avenues (traditional news release) such as seeing a video or hearing a podcast. Consumers are just as big of the target audience as the media sources and The increase in common-person (vs. media outlet) viewing, allows SMNR sites to gain more of a community involvement toward SMNR’s sites, instead of just making it a strictly a corporate vehicle for big-business news sources. (http://lowoodward.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/final-smnr-blog/).
Some disadvantages of SMNR’s are that they contain too much information and sometimes include too many hyperlinks which draws the focus away from the main point of the message. Some people say that they are too expensive and not worth the money because no one reads them. Also, Some people say the online version of the news release takes away from the traditional offline news release.
PR practitioners should consider using an SMNR because they are very big with blogging and move across the web well and can reach many different and diverse audiences. Also, they don’t have a specific audience in mind, and are written broadly and presented blandly. (http://www.copyblogger.com/social-media-press-release/).
One website that is of excellent help on how to make an SMNR is http://www.auburnmedia.com/wordpress/2006/12/20/prx-builder-smnr-wordpress-plugin/. Another one is http://pressitt.com/.
A link that to an SMNR that an organization has created is http://ford.digitalsnippets.com/focus/.
5-10 tips for SMNR creation:
*Be creative-do your own ideas and make them different from anyone else’s. Make sure that you stand out.(http://lowoodward.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/final-smnr-blog/).
*Be professional-take this seriously and do your best. Make sure that you proofread your work and look for things that you can change or possibly make better.
*Do not overdo it-Be creative and exciting but don’t go overboard. Make sure it is colorful and informative but deifinitely not over the top.
*Use short headlines and subheads to highlight main points and interest. They should not just be a repeat of the lead paragraph. (http://mc02131.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/social-media-news-releases-smnr/).
*Include links to pages where multiple instances of your key words/phrases reinforce your message.

PRCA3330-Week 9-Advice for Blogging

What advice would you offer PR students who are new to blogging? Come up with your own Top 10 list

1. Always use the right grammer and punctuation and always proofread your posts.
2. Comment on other’s blogs. It will help you learn things and also help them better their blogging.
3. Make your page easy to read, exciting, and creative. It will make others want to read your blogs and interact with your page more.
4. Make sure what you post is informative and interesting. No one wants to read something that is of no use to them.
5. Do not worry about the length of your blogs. Write what you want and enough to get through to your readers.
6. Write something originial 🙂 Use your own ideas and creativity.
7. Post frequently. Make sure your readers know that you will always have something interesting waiting for them to read.
8. Read others comments to you and take their advice. They are the one’s having to read what you write.
9. Add appropriate links to your blog that helped you with your topic or the information that you put into it.
10. Last but not lease, HAVE FUN! If you do it right and stick with it I promise that it can be something fun to do in your spare time!!

PRCA3330-Week9-PR people drive journalists crazy!

1. PR people can be annoying to journalists!-To avoid this make sure that you let the journalists breathe and trust that they will write the right article about your client. Give them enough instructions and information but do not be overbearing.

2. Give enough information!-Make sure that you give your journalist enough information so that they have something to work with. If you don’t give them enough information it is going to be hard to write about your client and will probably end up not being a good article.

3. Always be able to be reached!-When a journalist needs you, they are going to expect you to answer. Make sure that you are always available via e-mail or telephone in case the jounalist has a question that they need an answer to immediately.

4. Don’t try and tell journalists how to do their job! (http://lowoodward.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/week-thirteen-10-ways-pr-people-drive-journalist-crazy/)- Journalists went to school too and they hate it when PR people try and tell them what to do. Relax, and have faith that they know what they are doing.

5. Do not get mad if your story did not get covered! (http://lowoodward.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/week-thirteen-10-ways-pr-people-drive-journalist-crazy/)- Journalists are constantly getting asked to cover stories and different news and they CANNOT do it all! Don’t freak out, bug, or get mad at journalists if they don’t cover your story. It won’t be the first or last time that will happen.

6. Make sure you meet your deadline! (http://kk00700.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/10-ways-pr-people-drive-journalists-crazy/)- It is very important to comeplete your work on time and get everything into the journalist that he/she needs so that they can get the story in on time. It is very irritating to have to wait on something and journalists to not like to rush.

7. Double check your work, no mistakes!- Journalists try and make their work grammatically as correct as possible, so PR people should as well. Double check your work and make sure that there are as few mistakes as possible.

8. Do not overwhelm them with gifts! (http://tajanicole20.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/10-ways-pr-practitioners-can-drive-a-journalist-crazy/)- Gifts are good and all but they can get kind of annoying. Don’t try and persuade journalists with gifts, it can get over the top.

9. Get them the best news!- Often journalists think that PR people do not know what is “newsworthy.” Make sure that the news is interesting and not something that is easy or that fits your agenda. Give the journalist something good to work with so that they will want to work with you again.

10. Sending news releases to, or leaving voice-mail messages for, multiple reporters and editors without revealing that other people on staff have been contacted for the same reason!(http://www.pionline.com/article/20100614/PRINTSUB/306149974)- This can be a very big time waster for journalists. Be considerate.

PRCA3330-5 Steps to MultiMedia Storytelling-Week 7

This week we took the 5 Steps to Multimedia Storytelling. While taking it I learned the best way to choose a story, how to make a storyboard, how to report with multimedia, how to edit for the web, and how to produce the story. It was very interesting and taught me a lot.
Now I am able to: Identify the elements in a multimedia story, understand which stories are more suitable for multimedia, sketch a concept for a story, and identify tools needed to gather content in the field. I never knew that all this was needed in order to make sure a good multimedia story. It was actually a lot harder than I expected it to be.
Like I just said, what surprised me was how hard it actually was and how much was to go into it. I did not think that it would be that complicating. It was need how to learn how to do all the audio and how much it actually helped the story once you figured out how to do it. It added so much more and so much more depth to what you are trying to get out to your audience. I would like to know more about this subject and more on exactly what to do in further depth. I would also like for someone to explain it to me instead of me having to do it by myself because I think that I would better understand it to have someone explain it to me instead of having to read it.
I really liked this exercise and thought it was extremely interesting. It fascinated me how much you can really add to writing by using video and audio to help spice up what you are trying to replay to your audience! Writing can be exciting if you try!! 🙂

PRCA3330-Podcasts-Week 6

The podcast that I decided to listen to was Inside PR. The people talking were Martin, Gina and Joe. I thought it was very interesting that they were all communicating but not in the same place, they were all over the world!
They talked about a conference that Martin and Joe went to and they were telling Gina how they met many “great communicators” and look forward to doing something like that again in the future. At the conference they talked about social media trends and how wherever they were they couldn’t believe how flat the ground and terrain was. They were so funny to listen to! Martin kept telling them how he would get up early because his Blackberry was messed up and be about 2 hours early for his conference and he became very tired towards the end of the day! Everything that they would say they would connect it to social media and made it extremely interesting to listen to.
They even actually talked about Twitter (which we worked with last week) and Facebook which I think everyone nowadays is very into. Joe interviewed with someone that was launching a book and he explained and helped him with social media to get his name out there and promote awareness of his novel. After that the author of the book, Terry, got on and talked about how he used social media in order to get his book selling. It made me realize that social media means everything and can help you in many ways after listening to this podcast!
Listening to PR podcasts can benefit PR students or new PR practitioners because you can actually lsiten to what PR people are doing around the world and can learn many tips and ideas on how to better your career and future with PR. Usually people like things that are audio so you can listen to it on the road or while exercising. I found podcasts to actually be very entertaining and helpful, something that I was not expecting. I encourage PR professionals and students to listen to podcasts because I believe them to be very beneficial!

PRCA3330-Twitter-Week 5

I have had a Twitter account for awhile. At first I got it for fun about two summers ago and was very into it until I slowly faded away from it and stopped using it for awhile. Then I had to tweet for my Intro to PR class and now for my PR writing class. Personally, Twitter is not my favorite. I am more into Facebook to be honest. I just don’t really see the point in updating statuse’s with everything you are doing. The only good thing I am getting out of it is since I am following many PR professionals and my classmates, I have read many interesting articles and information that should help me in my future and with my career. I do think that Twitter is a great thing for the professional world and I hope and believe that I will use it and find it much more helpful when I go out and get into the real world. A way that I think I might find value in continuing my Twitter account is like I said before, with the professional world. I am a senior and will graduate next May, so therefore I will be looking for a job very soon. Also, since my major is PR and we are all about networking, news and communicating I think that Twitter will help me, especially now that I am following many major firms and professionals that could help me get my feet in the door. I have had a pretty good experience with Twitter and have found some useful things that come along with it. Although, it may not be my favorite type of networking I am going to stick with it because I believe that it can help me in more ways than one with my classes and my future!!

Tweets by AnsleyKWoodard

PRCA3330-Week 4-Lead Lab

I thought that the Lead Lab was very, very helpful. I personally am not very good at writing leads and I believe that this lab helped me a lot with things that I will hopefully remember in the future. The 5 “W”s and an “H” were also very helpful. What happened, who did it happen to, where did it happen, when did it happen and how did it happen. Also, it explained how you need to focus in on the two basic questions of what’s the news and what’s the story about? Look for the tension in the lead and pick a lead that is right for your story which depends on your news organization, the news, and the timing of the publication. You need to be able to say your lead in one breath, make sure that it doesn’t put you to sleep or confuse you, don’t stumble over words and does it sound like something you would tell a friend over the phone? Make sure you revise because just because it appears in print doesn’t mean that it doesn’t need to be revised. Make sure the lead is accurate and tighten them by replacing verbs in the present continuous tense. Good leads with help with effective comprehensive reporting. There are many myths with leads. Some of them are: leads must never begin with a quote, leads must always contat attribution, a good lead is never more than three or four lines long, and a lead must sum up the story in a paragraph. They said to remember that your editor can pinpoint problems in your lead that confuse your audience. This lab helped me a lot and I think that it will defiinitely help me for the future. I hope this will make my leads better and help my writing skills as well. I would never want to bore my readers!
http://www.newsu.org/angel/content/leadLab/Explore_the_lab.html

PRCA3330-Week3-Comments and blogging

Comments are such an integral part of blogs and blogging for a few reasons. The whole point and reasons for blogs is to let people know what you are thinking, what is on your mind, and also what you know. For example to let people in on the knowledge that you have and share something interesting that might be of help to others and tell them something that they might learn from you. Commenting is so important because it lets people tell you what their thoughts are on what you have wrote and maybe even tell you something that you did not know before. And when you comment on others blogs it does the same thing to them as well. It also helps you interact with others and it makes you able to communicate with people on a topic that y’all both might be interested in talking about. When you comment on blogs it is like having a conversation with another person and helps y’all to be able to talk and share things with each other. My adivice to others on writing effective blog comments would be to write where the other person can understand what you are trying to say, for example, to use effective grammer and writing techniques. Also, to write something to them that they would be intersted in reading and something that would be of use to them. Make sure that you write enough where there are no questions in what you are trying to get across to them and make it something to where they can also share the information with others. While blogging I have learned that it is very important to keep all of these things in mind and to use them effectively. Be sure to never leave something that might surprise or dissapoint the person’s blog that you are commenting on.

PRCA3330-Week2-NewsUCleaningYourCopycourse

This week we took the NewsU Cleaning Your Copy course (http://www.newsu.org/courses/cleaning-your-copy-grammar-style-and-more). I thought that it was extremely helpful and really made me realize what errors of my writing that I need to focus more on. I learned that when using numbers 0-9 you spell them out and when using numbers 10 and on you use numerals. I also learned that certain words are to be hyphenated when before I always just thought it was right when it was either one word or just separated without a hyphen. What surprised me is how detailed and picky everything has to be. I didn’t really realize how specific a lot of this is and how one little mistake can make it wrong and not in AP stye. While taking the quizzes a lot of the right answers surprised me because I thought that I knew how to do most of these things. I realized how useful this stylebook really is going to be to me and how it will hopefully help me and other courses that I will take in the future. I would like to know later on how to use the stylebook better and ways that will help me find what I need easier. It was confusing when I first got my hands on it and took me awhile to really get used to how it went. I feel more comfortable now and hopefully the more that I use it it will get easier and easier. I thought that this course was very helpful and something good for everyone to touch up on things and also refresh our brains on what we might remember from the past. I hope that the rest of these courses we will be taking in the future are just as helpful. I look forward to learing more about how to make my writing so much better!