Week 8 Reaction

My podcast is posted to the Podcast weblog set up for this class!

Called Colleen Mullins Week 8 Reaction…Check it out! I dont know how to post it to my blog…let me know if you do know how!

CNN Twitter Sources

CNN apparently now quotes random tweets in their articles.

An article I read on my CNN app for my phone called “Netflix whiplash stirs angry mobs–again” quotes peoples reactions about Netflix axing its Qwikster.

Here are some examples….

“Netflix does more flip-flopping than a fish on a hot dock,” a Twitter user named Steve Harrison wrote.’

“I don’t feel the need to go back when they’ve already made too many changes too fast,” said Adam Britten, a 21-year-old in London.’

This was extremely surprising to me when I was reading through the article, and it also brought up a lot of questions for me. One of my questions is, how do they get these tweets? Do they just go on Twitter and go to the #Netflix page and pick tweets they like? Do they tell the people whose tweets they are using, that they are using them?

It is also interesting because normally quotes in big articles from CNN are from extremely credible sources that the companies Public Relations practitioners carefully craft. With CNN giving the voice of the quotes back to everyday Twitter users, it shows a paradigm shift that people feel that those sources a credible. This also seems like a nightmare for Public Relations practitioners because now quotes are being grabbed from everywhere at anytime, and they are losing a lot of control.

However, I also wonder how far CNN will take this. The article that used peoples tweets was about Neftlix and how people were angry. So it seemed appropriate for them to go to the people for quotes and their reactions. However, will CNN go get people’s tweets for quotes about the War on Terror or the trail of Dr. Conrad Murray?

I am interested to find out….and maybe one of my tweets will make it.

Posting Comment Rant

Okay so this original post isn’t going to be about a social media article I read this week. This post is about me off loading some steam about posting blog comments. And I am not complaining about the fact that we have to comment on peoples blogs, I don’t mind that because it gets me reading different peoples views, however it is about the actual submitting of a comment itself.

I don’t know if I am the only one that seems to have problems posting comments, but every time I go to post a blog comment something new pops up pretty much saying I can’t do it.

Some blogs don’t have a places to post comments at all, and that is a problem in and of itself. I realize people can take off the feature of allowing comments, but isn’t blogging all about being interactive.

The blogs that do allow comments to be posted always seem to have some restriction when I actually go to post the comment. Half the time it says I need to log in or create an account. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have a wordpress, tumblr, weebly (and the list goes on) account. Just let me post the comment. Second, some sites allow you to post by logging on to your Facebook, google account, twitter, and other random places. However, half the time mine won’t log on, or even if it does work it won’t actually post the comment. Plus why do they want me logged on to see what comments I am making? I don’t want my comment to pop up on my Facebook account.

This is just something that bothers me to know end, because you would think this blog sites would just allow people to comment freely, and not restrict them, considering that is what blogging is all about.

I’m done ranting.

Week 7 Reaction-RSS feeds

After reading chapter 9 in PR 2.0 about RSS feeds, I wanted to discuss an idea that got brought up multiple times in the chapter. And that idea is that RSS feeds are a direct-to-consumer way of disseminating information to your target audience and what this means for public relations practitioners.

The author talks about what this RSS direct-to-consumer way of getting information to consumers means for public relations. A key component for public relations success is the credible third party endorsement. People drop their guards when reading an article written in a newspaper or in a magazine, because, even though it most likely was written by a public relations professional, the reader doesn’t know that. The reader thinks that the “credible” journalist did the research, wrote the story, and that it is not just from the companies point of view. This has always been a huge part of PR. But now…with the the direct-to-consumer capability with RSS feeds…does it make it seem less credible with readers knowing it is coming right from the company.

I stand somewhere in the middle. If people want your new directly from them, then by all means this is a huge win for you. Companies, although they MUST keep it newsworthy, can phrase things how they want and present their company in specific light. If consumers are willing to read this then take advantage of it. However, I feel that consumers are still going to read this with their guard up a little bit, knowing it coming from the company itself and maybe thinking they are hiding something.

Therefore I think that it is still equally important to get your news, and press releases to journalists to hopefully pick up to gain that credible third party endorsement. Although the book talks about this, that they third party endorsement is becoming a little blurry with journalists, bloggers, social networking sites, etc. having any third party endorsement still makes me drop my guard.

Week 6 Reaction

The article Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship made a lot of good points about social network sites. One being that these social network sites are not based on latent ties but rather to connect with the people we are already connected with. However, after ready through the article one thing really stood out to me and interested me…and that was how different sites become popular among different demographics of people and different countries.

Reading through the article, it kept listing different social networking sites, and who they are popular among. Friendster became popular of Burning Man attendees, bloggers, and gay men. Orkut became extremely popular in Brazil. Mixi in Japan, LunarStorm in Sweden, and many many more.

This just got me really interested, because I was thinking how and why certain groups are drawn to certain sites. I would have understood it more if the social network site was created in the country and for those people, but Orkut wasn’t created in Brazil, it just became popular there. And my question is why?

I would love someone to do research on the reasonings behind why certain groups of people gravitate towards certain social network sites, even ones that aren’t designed to be for a specific social group. It would be really interesting if someone did research to tell us what certain aspects of a certain social network sites draw Brazilians, homosexuals, or corporate.

Its all about the Tweets…I mean the fashion.

Using my new social media bookmarking site Digg (Tune in Oct. 6 for Jessica’s and my presentation on it!) I came across an article about London Fashion Week and social media. Before I read the article it was hard to picture the extremely wealthy, somewhat snobby (no offense) designers and participants of London Fashion Week using social media to engage the lowly fans…but I was wrong and Burberry proved that to me.

The high fashion line of Burberry thought totally outside of the box and decided to show their new 2012 collection by tweeting it! Before each look walked out onto the runway at London Fashion Week, Burberry took a picture of each look and uploaded it on Twitter. I thought this was an extremely genius idea for multiple reasons.

First off, the people who aren’t able to attend London Fashion Week saw the Burberry collection BEFORE all the high profile people who paid a lot of money to be there. That helped engage the fans and brought a huge buzz around the new line. Whether it was the best or worst line of the show, it was the line that definitely got the most attention.

Second, by tweeting every look, it became a trending topic on twitter and got huge exposure. People who didn’t even know it was London Fashion Week or would rather shop at Walmart than high end stores, knew the Burberry was doing something completely different and unusual.

Burberry found a way to use social media to actually interact with its fans and gain a larger scope of fans. Got to give them cudos for their creativity…in the design and in the social media.

week 5 reaction

The reading Critical analysis of blogging in public relations was interesting, however, pretty much things that were already known. We all know now that people have to be extremely careful with blogs, you don’t know who is writing them, etc. However, being published in 2007, this information was probably new and unknown.

With that being said I did like how the author really stressed that blogs are enthymematic, meaning that bloggers usually only go to blogs that support their own viewpoints or with information that they are extremely interested about. I think this is the most important factor for Public Relations practitioners…that everyone following or reading a certain blog actually cares about that topic and the information provided.

This seems like it would save Public Relations practitioners and companies a ton of money when it comes to sifting through different target publics and finding the ones that are right for you. It is already done for you. I heard a quote once that, “I know I am wasting half my advertising dollars. I just don’t know what half.” Although we are not in advertising, I still think this quote applies to the PR side. Blogs can narrow down your target audience, and even though you are not reaching as many people, you are reaching the people who are actually going to do something about it, which seems more important to me.

However, with blogs being only full of people who really care about a specific topic, if you are using blogs for research purposes, your data can be skewed. Blogs can’t capture the sentiment of a lot of people, and often times the people who take the time to post or really comment on a blog are people are have extreme feelings either way.

53 Billion Minutes…yes with a B

I just read an article and the title is “U.S. spent 53 billion minutes on Facebook in May.” Article below.

http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2011/09/12/u-s-spent-53-billion-minutes-on-facebook-in-may/

Once I read this article I was in awe. That is only Americans, only on Facebook and only in the month of May! That is a lot of time and I think it goes to show the power that social media has, and that it is only growing. Although many of those minutes on Facebook are for personal use, this is a gold mine for Public Relations practitioners to be able to access people, and even that hard to reach Gen Y. Public Relations professionals need to focus on Facebook, and try to interact with their consumers, because obviously it is something that us Americans take a lot of time out of our day to use.

One interesting fact in the article that I also find pertinent is that 40% of people who access social media do so through their mobile devices. That means that people are often times on the go when looking at social media and public relations practitioners needs to take this into account. If that many people are accessing social media through their mobile devices, then that means PR practitioners need to hit the target audience quickly, or maybe create an app for a phone that people can use to be interactive.

Finally, the study showed that the most active people using social media are woman of Asian/Pacific Islander descent between the ages of 18 and 34. This came as a real shock to me, because I did not know that Asians and Pacific Islanders were active Facebook users. However, if they are, companies that target or cater to these markets need to know that they have an active consituent base on Facebook and they need to cater to that.

Either way, 53 billion minutes is a TON of time, and although it is kind of a sad statistic, it has a lot of implications for public relations practitioners.

Week 4 Reaction-SEO…very sneaky

After flipping through many of the YouTube videos that were posted on our class delicious site, I came across the video about Search Engine Optimization. Although this video was nine minutes, which for a YouTube video feels like forever, it was actually really interesting and something I always wondered about but never knew how it actually happened.

One of the most interesting parts about the video that I found, was in the beginning where it says that 80% of people who Google click on the first three sites! That is an unreal amount, and I bet that number is probably 99% for the first page. You can see how crucial it is for your website to be up at the top, and to be in the “trustworthy” section… not the paid advertisement section.

I also found that really interesting, and how are brains works. I was thinking about my own googling actions, and I realized that I do perceive the top three unpaid sites to be more trustworthy and credible. I don’t know why I feel this way, maybe because I am apart of Gen Y and we are very resistant to advertisements, so I feel like those top three paid sites are kind of cheating.

Although a company has to put in a good amount of work to have successful SEO, it is definitely worth the time because it can drive so much traffic to your business…and lets be honest, people Google everything for any reason at any time!

Social Media helping us Remember.

Today is the 10 year anniversary of September 11, and social media is helping us remember and share stories about the people we lost.

I think this is a great example of how social media can be used for good causes and really have an impact on our community. It was hard to miss the trending topics of #neverforget and #godblessamerica on twitter along with tweets about why I the United States is a great place to live, and names of people gone but not forgotten.

Twitter was not the only place that social media was making an impact on remembering that devastating day. Blogs were a place where people could share stories about the ones they lost, or stories about being at ground zero. People even said that being able to blog about their experiences was almost like a therapy session that helped them get through the worst of it.

Facebook also was full of pictures of people who lost their lives that day, and statuses of people remembering.

I feel as if social media really helped reunite the country today in remembering and paying respects to everyone that was lost. It is amazing how so many people can come together using social media to express their feelings, and I am sure it meant a lot to those of the loved ones  who lost someone that day.