Ready for a New Chapter

Well here it goes, my last mandatory post for my social media class. I'm not sure if i'll be keeping up with posting after this, probably not nearly as often and consistent, but I guess we'll see. The past week has been a little crazy for me, but busy all the same. The weather has been amazing and it makes me so excited for summer. After a recent break-up, I've gotten to connect with more of my friends and just hang out with everyone. I've had so much support and can keep myself busy and I'm happier now, too. I've loved laying out by the pond with my best friends and taking walks throughout campus and on the Green Monster. I'm starting to study for finals, but I'm also  going out to make the most of these last two weeks here of my junior year.
I'm pretty excited to be home with my family and for camping at the lake and fishing and skiing there, too. I have my old summer job back at the pool, which I've had for the past five years, but I'm looking around for something that's going to be more beneficial for my job search next year. The one marketing company that I had been talking to for a few months has still not gotten back to me with a final answer, saying that they should know by "next week," several times. It's very frustrating to have a company do that though, because I need to know if I need to continue looking around for somewhere else or if I'll really be able to work there. It definitely sucks because I just feel like I wasted so much time thinking that I had this position and I could have been contacting other companies for opportunities. I just think it's so disrespectful. I mean why keep dragging me along if you're not going to offer me the job and wasting my time if you're not going to know for a few months. In our business classes, we're taught to follow up with a thank up card right after an interview and I think that companies should show that same timeliness and let you know within a two-week period or something. Luckily I've been able to contact another company who is hiring summer help in their marketing department. I have to call them this Friday and set up an interview. Hopefully I can land this so I won't be stuck at the pool again and have to roast in the sun six hours a day this summer. I guess we'll see how it plays out though. Wish me Luck!!

Thank God for Mothers

In honor of Mother's Day, I am dedicating my life blog this week to my amazing mother, Lisa Wilson. I am so thankful for my mom and everything that she's done for me. 

My mom has been there for me through absolutely everything. She supports whatever I do and helps me out more than I can say. Though we look very much alike (and absolutely everyone tells me that, too), we share many of the same traits and characteristics. My mom is very organized and on top of things, which has been instilled in me and it has helped me in my school and work life. She's used her knowledge and past experiences to help guide me and go through these major steps in life, like shopping for things for my apartment and getting all my stuff ready for college and all that good stuff. 

My mom has been to all eleven of my dance recitals and driven me to many dance competitions while I was in high school. She's helped me get ready with all my costumes and with hair and makeup during the hectic changes. She's also gone to all the football and basketball games to watch me cheer at them. It really means so much to me that she comes and watches and is always in the crowd for me to find. I love that.

 < This is my mom with Klondike at on of the ONU football games earlier this fall.

With this summer coming up, I can't even say how happy I am that I'll be home for one more summer and being able to live at home and still get to hang out with my mom. I think the longer that I'm away from home and after my third year in college, the more I miss and cherish the time that I do have at home with her. Sometimes now it seems that when I was at home, for holidays and whatnot, I would rather hangout with my mom at home than go out and hang out with friends from high school that I really didn't keep in touch with too much.

I hope that when I become a mother, someday in the future, that I can be as supportive and loving as my mom has been for me. I'm sure that I don't get to tell her nearly as much as I should, but I love my mom and I so greatly appreciate everything that she does for me.

Got Milk?

The National Milk Mustache "got milk?" Campaign is one of the most recognized and respected advertising campaigns, with a message that has helped boost awareness of the nutritional aspects of milk. Personally, I love milk and it's one of the few drinks I like. I think that Got Milk Campaign is great because it uses the buying personas that we talked about in our social media class. They promote milk to families, and most recently had Angie Harmon, a model and actress, posed with her daughters with the famous milk mustaches. Harmon said, “A mom is most often the largest role model in her daughter’s life and has tremendous power to influence their health and nutrition. Something as simple as watching mom drink a glass of lowfat milk can help influence her kids’ beverage choices in a positive way.” Other family-related promotions included a milk and cereal back to school program, a milk and cookies program, and the Pour One More program. Another profile used is athletes, because chocolate milk is such a great source of nutrients needed to refuel after a workout. Because low-fat chocolate milk has been scientifically shown to refuel and rebuild muscles to help athletes recover after strenuous exercise, the got milk? campaign has provided information for coaches, school sports teams and athletes. I think it's pretty sweet to see a company that actually has examples of the multiple distinct buyer personas and designates their marketing plans based on those consumers' needs.

Go to milkdelivers.org to learn more!

Marketing Must-Haves

So here we are, not reading books like normal people from the start to the end. We're making it back to the first few chapter's of Scott's New Rules of Marketing and PR. The sentence that stuck out the most to me was, "When I arrive at a (web)site, you don't need to grab my attention; you already have it!" I think that this is such a great line and that anyone with a website should follow it. Like Scott says, customers and people browsing the web don't want to be bombarded with ads and obnoxious  headliners, they just want information, which is why they're searching the web in the first place. If you're going to have a website for your company or products, I think that it should be filled with information that would be useful for people who are searching for your company/products. These things could include:

customer reviews and testimonials
hours of operation and contact information
product offerings and pictures/descriptions
an easily accessible and clean layout
interesting facts and information to keep attention
a way for people to receive updates and news
an interactive component

links to other relevant content

So these are just a few things that would be good for a successful website to include, and though I know there are many more, I think that these are probably some of the most important. People don't want ads and one-way company propaganda shoved down their throats, they want and need relevant and helpful facts and information; that's what you should give them!

Taking Time to Twitter

For one week, I followed a specific four pages on Twitter; two PR professionals and two companies. For my social media class, we were to follow these tweets and analyze how each person and company uses Twitter to their benefit and promotion and how they utilize hash tags in their tweets. 

From Monday, April 25, 2011 to Friday, April 29, 2011, I specifically followed PR professionals, Brett Pohlman and Todd Defren and companies, Rite Aid and Walmart. I found that Brett Pohlman generally used his Twitter account for more personal, check-in sort of statuses, including "I'm at Vulcan Park and Museum (1701 Valley View Dr, at Valley Ave, Birmingham) http://4sq.com/lAZQ7c" and "I'm at The Wine Loft (2200 1st Ave. North, Birmingham)http://4sq.com/kLuoxO." He did, however, post interesting information and articles that related to advertising or various companies. Pohlman tweeted several times day, though Defren posted three times on Monday and has been MIA on Twitter the rest of the week. He did share an interesting article on PR-Squared.com and actually, he posted about that same article twice. (He must have really enjoyed it.) The other tweet was linking to someone's newsletter, which in the one that I read offered some advice about LinkedIn.

Rite Aid did multiple tweets mentioning the much talked about Royal Wedding. Though their tweets weren't about the stores, they used their Twitter account to engage with the customers, I suppose, and to mention/respond to other Twitter users who tweet about Rite Aid. They tweeted multiple times a day and the most interesting tweet from Rite Aid was, "What Rite Aid Brand products do you find to be as good as the name brands? What products would you like to see produced as Rite Aid Brand?" 

Walmart's tweets, as often as Rite Aid's, were definitely more company focused. Almost every tweet was about their achievements and news about the company. A couple examples of those tweets were "Walmart China has cut water use in stores by 54% since 2005!http://walmarturl.com/eDcLxF ^KL" and "Walmart buys #localproduce in Ohio from family farm in business since 1896! http://walmarturl.com/gHzvcr ^KL."

So I guess what I can say about professional individual accounts compared to company accounts is that though the professional accounts are professional, they can still be personal and used to promote, update and share things about the person, as well as things that they find interesting or worth sharing. Company accounts are more for promotion of a brand and for news and connection with their customers.

Now, in regards to hash tags, Walmart was the only user that I followed to use them regularly. Pohlman used hash tags in one of his tweets about the tornados that devastated the South and about donating money to Alabama and the Red Cross. Walmart used pretty normal hash tags, I think, which included #Sustainability, #Walmart, #localproduce and #milblogcon (representing the Annual MilBlog Conference, the premiere event for the military blogging community.) I think that these hash tags can be useful because anyone seeing them/searching for them will be brought to see Walmart's name and then they'll be more likely to associate Walmart with those key words that were hash tagged.