PRos in Training

Author: Kelli Matthews

  • You’ve Got to REALLY Love Your Tires

    Or maybe really love Kat Von D.

    Either way, this year at SEMA, the trade show for aftermarket automotive accessories, Dunlop Tires offered a free set of tires for anyone willing to get a Dunlop Tattoo. A real tattoo.

    The promotion was so popular at SEMA that only about half the people who wanted to were able to get an appointment and brand themselves with the Dunlop logo in various forms (also available: tire treads).

    You really have to be a Dunlop evangelist to get a tattoo of the brand, right?

    Tattoos are more mainstream than ever with 40% of 24 – 29 year olds sporting ink. Dunlop clearly understands its target audience.

    I have to count myself among those who have been needled, but I’m not sure there is anything I’m evangelistic enough about to do this. But apparently, there were plenty of takers. This is a really clever marketing strategy – it fits the venue (SEMA), the location (Vegas) and the audience.
    For more, see Debra Mastaler’s post here.

    photo from Kat Von D’s Web site.

  • Measurement Posts Galore!

    Thanks to Geoff Livingston at Buzz Bin, you can find all the posts related to the measurement thread that both Tiffany Derville and I participated in last month.

  • Sharpen Your Pencil and Take Out a Clean Sheet of Paper

    No, this isn’t a quiz. It’s an invitation to write during this winter break. You’re often writing term papers and assignments for PR classes and other formulaic sorts of things. Try spending the break writing something for fun. Journal a bit or start a blog about something you enjoy (not necessarily something that will win you accolades from a future employer).

    For example, I was talking to one of the instructors in the magazine major at Oregon’s Journalism School and telling her how rarely I get to write feature-length article-type pieces. So when I’m required to, it’s not easy. It’s a writing muscle that, for me, rarely gets flexed. I wish I could write longer pieces more often.

    What do you wish you had time to write?

  • Social Media in Plain English

    Brilliant! I’ll be using these.

  • I Just Need to Get it Out of My System


    From Arrive Alive, a South African road safety organization. These adhesives could be found on the floors and walls of bathroom bars. I think they are pretty remarkable. My partner said, “I don’t get it. What does that have to do with drinking and driving?”

    I wonder how effective these are?

  • Try Out Some New Tools (Or Just Better Understand the Basics)

    Chris Brogan has written a social media starter pack post on his blog.

    His categories are: Listening, Speaking, Community and Rich Media. This is a terrific way to breakdown the tools that are available when using and participating in social media.

    Listening: In social media, as in life, listening is twice as important as speaking. Online, the tool for listening is a news reader. This type of software allows you to understand the conversation going on out there, and the best of them permits you to do a little more understanding of what you’re “hearing.”

    Speaking: As Chris notes, there are a ton of ways to speak in social media. His suggestions are for improvement. I haven’t created an RSS feed for this blog with Feedburner, but I will! Great tip. Bottom line, be findable. If people are interested in speaking back – make sure they have lots of ways to do so.

    Community: About social networking, this part of social media is tremendously important. Beyond MySpace and Facebook, Twitter, Ning and even Flickr or Digg are helping to build communities.

    The last part, Rich Media, is the section I haven’t delved into as much as the others. Chris talks about some great tools for audio and video. Check out the post for more info.

    My students will be creating a podcast Winter term in Advanced Writing, so I’m sure I’ll be coming back to this post for advice.

  • I’m Popular

    The PR blogosphere hosts many ranking services. Top 150 this, top 100 that. These are excellent places to start when you’re new to the blogosphere or looking for something new to read and I check them out on a regular basis.

    One I had not heard of before, PRVoices, has it’s own ranking which is a “social ranking.” According to PR Voices, I’m #39. I’m not sure what this means, but it’s still pretty cool.

    PRVoices’ list is a good one. Lots of good bloggers, and regardless of the methods used to compile the list, I’m in good company. So we’ll see if PRVoices launches me into PR blogging superstardom.

    Image: Corbis

  • Creating a "Brand Cloud"

    Thanks, Scott at Media Orchard for this great tip.

    A tag cloud is a visualization of the popular words found say, oh, on a Web site, in a blog, or part of a del.icio.us page. Tag clouds show you what is important in that content – the bigger the word, the more times that “tag” can be found. Typically a tag cloud consists of the key words the author or site manager has identified as such (but that’s not a hard and fast rule).

    Tag Crowd is a cool service where you can upload a document, or copy and paste content to determine the important words in that content – intentional or not. So, Scott at Media Orchard suggests taking the top three results from a Google search for your organization’s name and pasting it into Tag Crowd. What you get is a visual representation of the important themes.

    Okay, example. My name: “Kelli Matthews,” came back with this:

    So my “brand,” so to speak, as an individual is fairly PR and social media focused. That’s largely because the bulk of the content was from my blog, the first result for my name. The second result – my blogger profile and the third the “about” page for my agency. In fact, of the top 20 links, 18 are about me and they are all accurate (things I’ve put online at some point). Some are old, but still intentional.

    Eugene, Oregon – my fair city, had this result:

    I was actually pleasantly surprised at the result: arts, downtown, center, events, university and track. That’s pretty accurate (and pretty positive).

    What about you? And your organization? What’s the brand cloud snapshot you get?

  • Final Linky Love for Fall Quarter

    This is the last week of classes for Fall Term. A few finals to grade and then off to Winter break. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get back to blogging about some interesting issues in public relations when classes wrap up. Stay tuned!

    This weeks posts:

    Done Anything for Your Personal Brand Lately? As my students in Adv. Writing get ready to hit the real world, I’ve been editing resumes, giving advice and generally providing support (and connections when possible). This blog from Marci Alboher talks about going beyond the cover letter and creating your personal brand. Who are you? And what do you want to be known for? Do your actions support your aspirations?

    Universities Finding Text Messaging Not the Panacea They Thought. After the tragedy at Virginia Tech in April, universities were abuzz about how to best notify students. And text messaging was seen as a good way to reach students quickly. What do you think? What would your recommendation be for administrators wanting to reach, say the population of the University of Oregon simultaneously?

    TIA Wages Aggressive Initiative on Toy Safety. With the recent rash of toy recalls, safety is at the top of every parent’s mind during the holiday shopping season. What do you think about this industry initiative?

    Edelman Ups Social Impact in Latest Unit. A recent Edelman survey says 85% of consumers would be willing to change brands or their consumption habits to contribute to a better society and the environment.

    Eye Tracking Rules. Eye tracking studies help designers understand what people look at when they view anything visual – like a Web site. Do you find these rules to be true about how you see a Web site?

    Millennials: Clued In or Clueless. What do you think, you millennials, you?

  • Link-to-the-Love


    Well, well, well. It’s Friday again, so time to dig around in my Bloglines account and find the best of the posts from the last week. This has been a crazy week, professionally. I’ve been a busy bee. But it looks like there’s been a lot going on and, as always, people talking about interesting things.

    Brendan Cooper’s PowerPR list: A top 100 list that includes some of my favorite bloggers, so it must be valid.

    Media Guerilla – Online Response Tactics 101: How do you know when to respond to buzz, positive or negative online? Mike Manuel has three simple questions that can help you decide if it’s worth the time and energy.

    Stop Worrying that Your Twentysomething is Lost: From Penelope Trunk (The Brazen Careerist). Penelope always has great posts related to the job search and mostly for young pros. You might want to forward this post to your parents.

    Memory Almost Full… Of Junk – All that Web Surfing Could Hurt Your Work: Bart Cleveland contributes to Advertising Age on small agency life. It’s specifically about small agencies, but I find lots of useful things for students and for public relations. This post talks about his concern that younger employees’ work is suffering because they just aren’t paying attention.

    Spam One-Liners: Art created from one-liner subject lines in the artists’ in box.

    When Candidates Give Up: A political ad from a bottom of the barrel candidate… can you smell the desperation?

    Teachers Should Blog, Tweet and Flirt Online Like the Rest of Us: In Ohio, the public school teachers’ union strongly recommends that teachers not participate in social media sites. What do you think?

    Related Posts with Thumbnails