Managing your Social Media.

Hi Everyone :)

So, this week in college has seen me running around the library like a headless chicken trying to get too much work done at once.

Funnily enough, I was doing a project involving looking at new and emerging social media and communication tools.

One thing I noticed, is that there are a lot of sites emerging that help you too manage your social media on a broad scale. This really is such a good idea, as it takes the pressure off trying to keep up to date on every site, big time.

Some sites in particular are very helpful;

Hootsuite is a way to manage all of your social media from one site. You can post on multiple sites at once, either the same message or tailor it for different ones. Schedule your tweets, no need for constantly thralling the Internet anymore!

Socialbro is an insight into how you can use Twitter to your best advantage. It programs around when is best for your company to tweet so your target audience will see it, how to reach them directly and how to analyse your competitors.

Cloze Organises email and social media updates so the ones from the people who matter most show up at the top of your email feed—be that family, friends, competitors or fellow business partners, what matters most will be at the top.

I had been looking at them from a business's point of view, but I can also see how they could be useful in day to day life of a PR consultant as well as in a business. If you wanted to send a message, you could simple send it via Hootsuite and send the same message to all the sites, or alter it for different ones. This is so handy because it saves you having to thrall through all the sites and just gets the job done quickly and efficiently.

Social Media is such an important part of Online PR and Communications today that these kind of sites are making our jobs SO much easier! An effective social media campaign can be the make or break of any campaigns taking place, as we are moving on from news papers and articles. The best way to reach people is though their Mobile devices such as phones, laptops and tablets. People are online now more than ever and to be successful in any business, you need to use that knowledge to your advantage.

 

 

Sites such as;

Google Alerts are perfect for helping  you to manage all your social media sites, updates, and help you keep and eye on the competition. Email prompts will send you reminders, updates, and even links to what your competitors are doing if you register with them. What more could you need?

 

 

Talkwheel takes a brand or business and gives them a mobile social profile. This profile is accessible via devices such as smart phones, apple devices and tablets. “Life isn't linear, neither are your conversations.” Could be very useful to promote business that are applicable to a larger audience.

 

 

 

 

 

So, I recommend you have a look at these sites I have mentioned if you are interested in social media and how it works. From a PR perspective i can see how implementing these social media sites would benefit a business and help to promote and publicise your business/brand/product/service with out the confines of article size or paying large sums of money for advertising. You can simply do it your self, be that from the office, or your bed! 

 

 It really is so astonishing, the way we have developed the way we use the Internet in the last 10 years.I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to seeing where things go in the next ten!

 

 

 

Blog-ception.... Yeah you heard me!!!

Hi everyone! :P
So I went ahead a did something really clever, programmed two blogs I wrote on the same day to be released in February of NEXT year... its okay, I have blond highlights still. So I will post them again later in the week.

So what I want to talk about today is blogging its self.

Blogging has become something that 1 in every 10 people do. They either blog themselves, follow a blog or read them every now and again (*cough* If loyal friends ask them to read them...*cough*).


Obviously as I have said, I am required to do this blog as part of my IT and the Media module in college. I don't think I would ever have started one other wise. Surprisingly, since starting, I have read some more blogs and realised how influential and useful they can be.


Maybe this is from a Media students point of view, but a good blog that is well written, can have a huge influence on a person. I don't know if its just because you know its a real person on the other end of it, not necessarily someone paid to give their opinion, that makes their view point more relate-able or believable. A well written blog can sell you a product, idea or way of thinking, if you're gullible enough!

Blogs are the new diary. But they can be a solid platform for people who want to go into writing or journalism. They are often used in conjunction with a magazine, TV show, radio show etc to draw people onto the online resources that the business have. Read the blogs, follow the twitter, like on facebook, you know how it goes. But blogs are actually not that bad. Some can be really informing and honest. Naturally there are some out there that are written by 'trolls' that just critique everything under the sun, but that is life. They can be useful from an online PR perspective as there will always be blogs reviewing any campaign you work on, or any person you are representing, so following them can give you a great insight into who your target audience are and how to market to them and reach them more effectively. They are also a solid career in themselves. Companies look to sponsor some of the people who write them and advertise with them. A lot of magazines will have an online blog, such as


Cosmo's multiple blogs :)
Stellars Blog :)
NME's Blog :) Irish Apple Blogs :)






Now of course those are just some examples, there are thousands of blogs out there, by thousands of beginner and professional people writing about what they love, or hate! you can pretty much search any topic and you will find it there.

Keys to writing a good blog are pretty simple too.
1:Identify and write for YOUR key audience: For me, that's you guys. So I write in a style that is generally easy to read and not too laborious. If you were writing for professionals in a specific area, or academics, you would obviously use a different style.
2: Write about relevant topics: Something they want to hear about, something they already know about but from a different angle, something they don't know but that they would be interested in. If you write about different breeds of cats, you wont ramble on about food for gerbils, will you ?
3: Keep the blogs interesting: No one wants to spend 10 minutes of their life reading something that's going to bore them to tears. The occasional meme or joke provides a break in the seriousness.
4:Blog regularly : Now, we are all human, but you need some sort of order... right?

Those are just a few pointers for any of you thinking about starting your own blog. It is also handy to have a plan of topics you can blog about so you wont run out too fast. Instead of writing a really long blog that no one will read, turn it into a 2 or 3 part blog over the space of a week. Makes from easier reading and no one will pass out due to boredom.

So that's it for today, and I'll be posting the other blogs that didn't go up with in the week. I clearly didn't stick to number 4, huh...

Thanks for reading :)