One Of Those Days

I have only finished 2 full weeks of classes and the assignments are starting to pile up. Unfortunately the majority of my course-load falls on very early and late Mondays.

Starting at 8 a.m. I attended four hours of class, breaking for four hours to read and finish up existing assignments. Then, from 4-6 p.m. I practiced for my first match of the fall season tomorrow. Finally, to cap the day off I attended a 4 hour consumer marketing class. Needless to say, today rocked.

I don't know who decided making a four credit-hour class once-a-week for three and a half or four hours was a good idea, but I think there is a serious disconnect between student (or at least my) needs and course offerings.

On the other hand, the freedom granted during "off days" is a nice compensation for the four-credit hour once-a-week class. My "off days" this quarter are Wednesday and Friday; my course-load dilemma stems from physical inability to do ANYTHING on any Friday.

Fortunately for me, I get to play a match tomorrow and workout some tension. I suggest everyone come out and cheer us on from the beginning of a third straight championship season.

Facebook Heats Up in Chile

The omnipresent social meedium facebook continues to assert its' importance to the future of PR 2.0 with blistering growth from Aug-Sept. Reported by Matt Dickamn on his blog Techno//Marketer, Facebook experienced major growth in many foreign markets, with Chile leading the pack, gaining more than 1,000,000 new users throughout the month.

This type of continued growth coupled with the increasingly useful social marketing and trend tracking tools are making facebook more appealing to a wide variety of users.

According to Inside Facebook, a blog about tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for Marketers and Developers

Facebook has just launched a limted test of a new version of Lexicon, the tool for researching what users are saying on each other’s walls on Facebook. The previous version only showed relative volume of terms over time, but the new version has several key enhancements:

• Actual numbers, instead of just relative volume. Now, you can see how many wall posts are actually being written containing the given term.


• Demographic breakdowns, by gender and age


• Geographic breakdowns, by US state, Canadian province, or UK country (no data is available outside of these 3 countries yet). You can also do comparisons between two terms on the same map.


• Sentiment over time. Facebook has not said exactly how it determines this measure. You can also compare sentiment between two terms.


• Associations. You can see terms frequently mentioned alongside a given term.

Tools like these give me hope that the difficulties of quantifying message and campaign exposure that have plagued PR and Marketing practitioners alike, are soon to be a thing of the past.

Marketing Language

I was struck by an an amazingly concise, thoughtful observation while reading David Meerman Scott's The New Rules of Marketing and PR. "Marketing language that can be substituted for another company's isn't effective in explaining to a buyer why your company is the right choice."

At first, I dismissed the line as common sense, but when I started looking around I saw countless examples.....EVERYWHERE, that violate this principle. Just go searching through PR Newswire and browse any industry release; there is a 90% chance (*Caution, fictional statistic) what you've read is a cookie-cutter press release stuffed with corporate jargon about cutting-edge ideas and break through technologies.

My question is, when did it become out of style to write like your talking to a human and not a biological information processing unit (if that doesnt make sense in context them in clearly not as clever as I think I am). I liken corporate jargon to today's Politically Correct (P.C.) speech. Although it serves a purpose in some cases, the language often detracts readers from the real point of an article.

SO I ask myself, what can I do to avoid falling into the same traps when I get "out there?" Luckily, Scott addresses this idea a little further in his own blog, and suggests several good texts to help remedy the matter. Hopefully, with a little help we can all eliminate this problem and help rid the world of marketing language.

Rats + KFC = Bad Press

Quick follow up to A blog a just posted on; heres a good example of some bad press that doesnt seem to be "spinable."

PR Ninjas?

I was doing a little surfing and came across this slide show and a brief article about the need to translate popular Guerilla Marketing campaigns into the evolving social-media field.

This brings up a great point; what do PR practitioners (or anyone else for that matter) really need to do to attract A-list bloggers to help spread the word about their latest social-media campaigns? Furthermore, how does a novice to the social-media game gain experience and learn how to obtain the tools to attract the high-profile bloggers? As for now, I'm still in the dark, but I guarantee it wont be for long.

As for now, I agree with richard.menneveux, the same principles of marketing still apply and clever marketing and shocking facts like those shown in the slide show are a bloggers best bet.

jvaidya1

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Why is northwest Ohio so windy?: The untapped resource

As I sat in my living room watching the treetops sway violently, I couldn't help but ask myself, why am I living in the windiest and flattest place in Ohio? I think ONU should feel obligated to let people know they are moving to a giant wind tunnel, and that "The Tundra" isn't really a nickname, but a description of the local ecosystem.

HOWEVER, this brings up a good point that I haven't thought about in a minute, but has crossed my mind a few times, why doesnt northwest Ohio employ the use of wind turbines for GREEN energy? Somewhat surprisingly, I'm not the first person to think this. Even more surprising, Bowling Green already has several wind turbines that are being used for research purposes.

I hope this turns out to be a viable resource for everyday people in the area (so living here may actually seem worth it). Fortunately, some positive results seem to be popping up!