“Measure what Matters”

As I have now finished this book, I can look back at the value it has.  As the landscape of social media constantly changes, this book may become outdated within the next few years (in terms of some its recommended methods) but as of the moment, it is a great tool for PR practitioners.

The perception a business has is the most important thing.  A business’s image, whether good or bad, can single-handedly determine the success or failure of said business.  It doesn’t matter how ethically upstanding the business may be.  If it has the public perception of being morally corrupt the business will suffer.  This is why measuring public perception is of utmost importance.

With the rapid development of interactive social networks over the past decade or so, communities that businesses market to have become more blended and connected with one another.  Business perception from one community can leak into another community due to everyone being connected, especially with a website like Twitter.  Due to twitter’s real-time updates and design, people don’t necessarily have to go looking for information, as it may be found by accident. 

Another significant point in measure what matters is monitoring public perception to see how two competitors are viewed.  When measuring, a benchmark is always needed, as is a meter of success.  Therefore, if a company can have a better perception in the eyes of consumers, this would be a benchmark as well as a method of measuring success. 

The foreign language of sleep

What is sleep?  Sleep is something I don’t partake in anymore, that’s what.  As of this moment, I have gone a little more than 33 hours straight without sleep.  If you know me personally or have read some of my previous blogs, you may know I am no stranger to staying up all night or going long periods without sleep.  Most college students are more adept to it than others.

It’s kind of a cultural thing in college to undervalue sleep.  If I use a lot of caffeine and stay active I usually can stay awake for as long as I need to.  But I’m sure it depends on the person.  Over the summer I had similar experiences to this.  I worked three jobs (more or less cause two of them were part time) and had one instance where in a span of 72 hours I had 7 hours of sleep.  Even without working, a healthy dose of sleep over three days is between 18 and 24.  It was a kind of living hell at certain points, especially when working third shift. 

Right now though, there’s just under two weeks left of school, or should I say, “under two weeks left of not sleeping.”  There are probably many other students who are in similar circumstances I am.  After all, misery does love company.

The Cosby Nightmare

Bill Cosby, a stand up comedian who has seen profound success in his life of comedy and television, is currently the target of several accusations of sexual misconduct from several different women.  The allegations range from serving alcohol to and then molesting minors, forcefully kissing women and then date rape.  As of the moment, 21 different women have come forward claiming Cosby drugged and raped them.  One of the accusers, P.J. Masten, claims she knows of at least 12 other women who are frightened and too embarrassed to come forward.   That would put the potential number at least 33. 

Several of the women who have come forward against Cosby are former Playboy bunnies or were affiliated with playboy, either working in one of Playboy’s clubs or being an actual model for the company.  Cosby is accused of a variety of despicable actions, most of which consist of drugging and then raping women.  Cosby was no stranger to playboy and was always welcome at the Playboy mansion.  He and Hugh Hefner have been close friends for decades.  One of the girls accusing Cosby of misconduct, Judy Ruth, says she was just 15 years old when he molested her at the Playboy Mansion. 

Cosby’s lawyer has denied all accusations, saying they are “completely false” and claims they are attempted extortion.  Not much has been said from the Cosby camp besides this.  The public accusations have supposedly inspired a lot of private conversations among former Playboy models.  Masten claims some of these women have personally texted her and said they were victims of Cosby, too.  It will be very interesting to see how Cosby will respond if more women come out and accuse him, the man accused of being a “serial rapist.” 

If you want to read more about the Cosby scandal, you kind find it here. 

Thanksgiving break

I found Thanksgiving break to be very enjoyable.  It provided a time to relax and recharge after a couple of difficult weeks.  It seemed for some of my classes professors wanted to get some things out of the way before the final few weeks of school, which was probably a good idea in retrospect.  Besides the all-nighters I had to endure sometimes, it wasn’t all that bad because I expected it. 

Over break, I was both lazy and productive at the same time.  To my surprise, I actually did work on some schoolwork.  But then I slept until one at least every day besides for Thanksgiving, when I slept until about noon.  I have a feeling I’m not the only returning student who did this though. 

I was also able to spend some time with my family and friends from back home and my favorite football team (the Eagles) won on Thanksgiving day which made it all the better.   In addition, I may have actually finalized my spring break plans (see previous blog, “vacations on breaks”) which is especially exciting for me considered I’ve never traveled on spring break. 

The one downside, it went unbelievably fast.  It’s hard for me to believe how fast it went.  However, when I look at the date and realize that there is only a little more than two weeks left in the semester, I’m left wondering where on earth this semester went, let alone the fact I’ve posted 40 blogs counting this one.  Thanksgiving break, along with this semester, have gone incredibly fast.  

Vacations on breaks

This past weekend I visited a couple of my high school friends down at Ball State in Muncie, IN where they go to college.  It was a really good time, catching up on things considering we haven’t seen each other since mid summer. 

Throughout my lifetime, I have had friends always talk of taking vacations to far off and exotic places when school breaks come around.  Usually it’s somewhere warm like Florida or a cruise in the Bahamas and it always sounds like they have a great time escaping the cold and snow of the Midwest.

However, I have never enjoyed such trips.  Of course my family would always take vacations over the summer, but we never were able to during the school year.  That’s partially because of two reasons.

The first reason is my mom is actually a college professor, and has always had different school breaks then my sister and me.  Not Christmas, but spring break is always a different week.  Secondly, my dad works third shift and has difficulty scheduling his vacation days to match ours.  Therefore, we are all rarely on break at the same time.

However, when visiting with my friends this past weekend, we decided to take a trip for spring break because we discovered we all share the same week.  We have no idea where we’re going yet, but I can definitely tell you I’m excited at the possibility of escaping Indiana in the first week of March and going somewhere warm. 

A good Press Release

This past Thursday, I attended a speech at ONU by David Trinko, a local Journalist who spoke about the importance of making pitches and press releases.  That is, doing pitches and press releases correctly.

From a public relations professional’s perspective (excuse the alliteration), if we contact a journalist with a well-crafted press release or are pitching them an idea or something we want them to run, we can’t understand why they don’t do it sometimes.  As Mr. Trinko explained, part of the reason is because they are barraged with emails and phone calls from every other PR professional who thinks the exact same thing. 

According to Trinko, he receives around 300 emails a day.  I can’t even fathom receiving that many emails in one week, let alone one day.  It also must be considered that these emails have to be evaluated and read through to see if there is valuable information that can be used as a story. 

Half the time (and everyone knows this is true) when we receive emails, there are specific ones that we automatically delete.  We know who sent the emails and what emails purposes are, but we don’t care.  Newsletters are a good example of this.  Anyway, imagine reading through and responding to at least 300 different emails a day, and then receiving follow up emails.

This is why PR professionals must make it easier on journalists who are on this incredible time crunch with an incredible amount of work to do.  Having the press release formatted correctly, giving the journalist the important information first, making sure they have all valuable details and making sure they know whom it’s from are a few examples of how to establish a positive relationship with a journalist.  

“Violence Erupts”

In case anyone didn’t hear, a grand jury has not indicted officer Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, after an incident in August when Brown was fatally shot. 

After intense rioting and violence in response to Officer Wilson not getting punished for the shooting, eruptions of protest had mostly ceased until tonight.  According to a CNN article found here police cars have had windows smashed in, objects were thrown at CNN’s own news crew and even buildings were caught on fire.

According to the prosecution, there was a full and complete investigation into the shooting.  Ballistic proof and a testimony from Officer Wilson himself were key evidence in the Jury’s decision, as it was found Brown did approach Wilson when he was shot and that he may in fact have struck him in the face twice before Wilson took the fatal shot. 

The question now is, when more details of the incident and the jury’s decision are brought to light in the next few days, how will the public respond?  Already, violence has occurred when the decision was announced today.  Also, how will the Missouri court system defend the decision?  These are all questions many people are yearning to know.

Of course, if forensic and ballistic proof is on the side of Officer Wilson and the support the jury’s decision, they should not have difficulty.  However, in light of what happened in the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, the African American community could feel a lack of justice for these two young men.

Video Reporting

Recently, I had to produce a video about one of my professors.  I interviewed Dr. Alisa Agozzino, both an alumni and proud professor of Ohio Northern University, to find out what it is she loves about teaching, her field of Public Relations and ONU as a school.  

For this video, I took the approach every interviewer should, which is "you can never have enough information."  Yes, video editing can take a very long time, especially if you have a significant amount of content.  However, if you do not have enough video or quality responses from the person of interest, the video will definitely lack in quality.  

Dr. Agozzino is a professor known for her difficult classes as much as she is for her love of Ohio Northern.  Of course, when I hear students complain about the workload or how difficult her classes can be, it makes me want to ask her both why she may do that and if she cares.  This is addressed in the video.  

When producing the video, I tried to give a wide range of information, even though it had a limit of one and a half minutes.  If you're interested in seeing the opinion of a Public Relations professor, have had Dr. Agozzino in class, or are interested in attending Ohio Northern University, I would check out this video.

You can watch the short video by following the link below. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgUj9lgFEyM