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This is the final day of finals week of Winter term 2008.

The last few days I’ve been out of town helping at my parents’ house in Henderson, Nev. following my dad’s 5-way heart bypass surgery. No an ideal place to be trying to finish grading for 60+ students, but you do what you have to do.

I want to offer a few tips for preserving your sanity (students) and not making your instructors cranky as you wrap up your term.

1. Follow Directions: Each assignment sheet provides instructions on how to succeed; formatting requirements, length,etc. Just follow the directions – knowing is half the battle.

2. Try the Technology: In some classes, you’re trying new technology (GarageBand, Audacity, SlideShare, etc.). Try it out immediately, so you can make adjustments well before the deadline.

3. Test the Technology: Once you’ve created a file (particularly an audio file), test it. Make sure that’s the length you think it is, that it looks the way you think it should and it works the way it’s meant to.

4. Ask for Clarification: If you don’t understand the assignment or the requirements, ask for clarification. Ideally not an hour or two before the deadline.

5. Think Ahead: Asking for an extension the day of a deadline is not looked upon fondly. If you have a genuine reason that you need a couple of extra days, and it’s possible for me to grant an extension, I will. But you have to ask well in advance. (disclaimer: We’re a deadline-driven industry and many instructors won’t give any extra time. Better to meet the deadline to begin with!)

6. Offer a Solution: If you’re stuck, your technology is not cooperating and you’re at your wits’ end, it’s ok to let me know that. At the same time, offer me a solution. Ex: Slideshare is not uploading my audio file for the slidecast. I may need a couple of extra hours. If I’m not able to make it work by 9 pm, I’ll send you separate files of the audio and slideshow and you’ll have it in your email box by the end of the day.

Some of this is too little, too late for my Winter term students. But maybe provides some food for thought going forward.

Other tips?

Spring term (start date: March 31), I’m teaching the capstone PR course, PR Campaigns at our Senior Experience program in Portland. I’m looking forward to it… mostly.

Normally, I work with nonprofit organizations based local to our Eugene campus at the University of Oregon, in lovely Lane County. The nonprofits vary in what they need from the basics of a PR program, to fundraising and donor communication to internal communication. And the students usually do a stellar job.

Next term, the class client will be the PR major itself because we’re hoping to host a strategic conference either this fall or next spring that connects professional with academics (and vice versa). So the whole course will be around event management.

I gotta tell you, I’m logistically challenged…

The best lesson I’ve learned from event management experience is to schedule a massage the day after a big event. Thanks, Marilyn!

I’ve found a few good resources, though, to get started. So I thought I’d share:

• This will be our coursebook. I’ve looked through most of it, and while it’s not mindblowing, it has some great information just to keep you on track. Everything from how to choose a site (complete with lists of questions/details to include in an RFP) to tips on how to set up a room and even some checklists and sample agreements.

• The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has a free event planning booklet you can download here.

I am positive that this will be an adventure. If you have ideas about what you’d like to see at a conference (speakers, breakout sessions, etc.) or have any event planning tips, please share!

Uploaded by robynejay

Howcast is a video sharing site (think: YouTube), with tons of how-to videos. Everything from how to make green beer (very timely) tohow to handle the terrible twos (also very timely! ugh.) to how to wake up early when you absolutely have to.

This one is on how to write a cover letter – basic, but a good place to start:

I’m busy.

All professors are busy. All professionals are busy…well, most, anyway.

Whether it’s for a scholarship or for a new job, you’re ultimately asking me for a favor, to take time out of my schedule to write a letter of reference or to answer some questions over the phone about a position you’re after.

When I feel prepared, I don’t mind doing it. When I don’t, it’s awkward. So, with the high-season approaching for the job search, here are my tips for asking me to be a reference and for helping me help you.

1) Please ask if I’m comfortable being on your reference list or comfortable writing a letter of recommendation. There are some triggers that will result in an enthusiastic “yes!” from me:

• Be a good student. Get good grades, be diligent and responsible. Come to class, do your best work, etc. etc. I rarely say no, but I will if I’m not comfortable with your performance in class. Or I’ll be honest about what I can say and let you make the decision about whether to include me. Just being in my class, doesn’t entitle you to a reference.
• Help me get to know you. There are students who never say more than a dozen words to me all term. Take the time to chat, come by office hours and talk about what you want to do after graduation. I know things (and people) and can probably offer some insight.

2) If I say, yes, please let me know that you’ve begun sending resumes. The very worst calls are the ones I get from prospective employers and I didn’t realize that I was listed as a reference. There have been times where I had a hard time answering the manager’s questions about a former student.

3) Tell me which jobs you’re applying for. I’m in PR, I know how to answer questions in a way that is targeted to the information a manager needs, and highlights the your strengths appropriately. If I don’t know what jobs you’re applying for, I can’t speak to the position’s specific requirements.

• A quick email will give me the heads up that I might be getting a call.
• Send me the link to the job post, or forward it to me in an email.
• If you know the company is looking for a particular skill set, tell me. I can feature that in the reference call.

4) Give me the tools I need to be your ambassador. Despite the fact that we’ve talked about (even at length) your career goals and ambitions, I have a lot of students. On top of students, I have several clients. And the cherry on top of all that? I have a toddler. I’m surprised I remember to wear matching shoes and where I parked my car. I will not remember every nuance of every discussion we’ve had.

• Send me your resume. A complete resume with explanations of particular jobs, internships and responsibilities is useful. It doesn’t have to be the resume you’re sending to employers or schools. It could even be a spiritual resume.
• Send me your transcripts. This might be more useful for a graduate school or a scholarship application. It certainly never hurts.
• One student created a folder with all the information I would need to respond to her request. She has now set the bar for awesome in this category.

I love seeing students succeed. I want you to find your dream job, get into the best schools and win the most prestigious awards. It reflects well on the school and on me, being associated with such talent! Help me do a good job for you!

More tips here. And here. Also check out Careers category from Alltop for lots more general tips about the job hunt.

Any others? What’s worked for you (as a student)? And what do you appreciate (as an educator or professional)?

Here’s a few posts that I found interesting this week. Enjoy!

The Art of Email Writing and How it Can Make or Break Your Business (Freelance Switch): A nice refresher about email writing and email etiquette. I wonder if it would be rude if I sent this to a couple of my clients.

Boldface in Cyberspace, It’s a Woman’s Domain (NYTimes): A new Web site for women, by some of the strongest women in media, publishing, writing and entertainment. Looks like fun!

Graco Blog is Fantastic (Community Guy): I love the Graco blog. It’s a great example for consumer-oriented companies who are thinking about blogging. (Great job, Converseon!)

Typos are a Big, Hairy Problem (Bad Pitch Blog): Oh lord, this is funny. Leave a comment with a one-line response to this ad.

Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing (How to Change the World): So clear! I love the concept of storytelling and I talk about it a lot. But it’s hard to do well. (note, this is actually an old post that I read over the summer, but it resurfaced today so I thought I’d add it).

Twitter for Health (Spare Change): Nedra pulls together lots of ways Twitter is being used for good.

Elections are About Emotional Connections (MWW StraightTalk): Blogger is a Hillary fan, but talks honestly about the problems with her campaign relative to Barack’s.

Five Blogging Rules to Make a Great First Impression (PROBlogger): AND… since many of you are interested in building your blog traffic, this post may help you with the long term commitment by starting with the first impression.

Three students picked up on the link to the article last week on Generation Y. It was a pretty negative article, and I’m not surprised at the response from some of my students.

Two colleagues and I are embarking on a study looking at just this issue. Draft title: Relationship Management, Ethics, and Organizational Culture for the Millennial Generation of Agency Practitioners

In short, we’re looking at how firms build relationships with their young agency practitioners (and if they are effective), how young practitioners make ethical decisions and how they fit (or don’t) with organizational culture.

Considering the research and business press material I’ve read so far, it’ll be interesting to see how young PRos line up with the information about GenY as a generation. I’m nearly through Generation Me , which takes a pretty negative view suggesting that GenY’ers are “more confident, assertive, entitled – and more miserable than ever before.”

I’m beginning to wonder if our young PRos will defy the stereotypes of GenY.

I know my students are ambitious. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve had (and have) students that fit the “GenY” descriptions – negative and positive – to a “t.” But generally they best students don’t fit the negative aspects of their generation. They are ambitious, but they have a sense of what their first years in an agency or corporate environment will be like. They are confident, but not obnoxiously so (or without reason). They work hard for good grades and understand why when they earn one that’s less than an A (even better, they work to do better the next time). And don’t seem miserable.

But the data shows that these students may be an exception, rather than the rule. We’ll see how our PRos line up with the data. In the meantime, three of my best student bloggers – and I have a lot of great bloggers this term! – have sounded off about the GenY stereotypes. Read them here:

Thoughts of a Generation Y Graduating Senior (Eileen Chang)
Blogging is the New Staff Picnic (Lee Magner)
Should I Be Embarrassed? Gen Y in My Defense (Lisa Poplawski)

I had a hard time narrowing the choices down this week, so there are a bunch to take a look at. Enjoy! and thanks, blogosphere for some terrific posts.

How-To: Identifying Influences, Neutralizing Detractors, Marketing Vox: Tips on how to find those individuals to whom you should be listening.

Getting to Know GenWhy, BusinessWeek: An experts look at managing millennials (that’s you).

For Small Companies, Blogger Relations’ Double-Edged Sword Bites Deeper, PR Squared: An example of how a small company does it wrong with blogger relations.

Inspiration Matters, Presentation Zen: Garr Reynolds has a great post about inspiration in words, speeches and presentations and why it matters.

The Oprah Factor, Origins of Brands Blog: Branding expert Laura Ries sizes up each celeb endorsement behind Obama and Clinton.

Social Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing: Do you know the difference?

Grad School Decision Time…; More With Les: MA, MBA or IMC… so many questions. For those of you considering grad school, this is a good post.

Lewis Green: Green and Authenticity Make a Good Marriage, Marketing Profs: Lewis says ethics and values drive transparency and gives a glimpse into what business looks like when you “lead with your heart.”

Paul Williams: Food for Thought, Marketing Profs: Planning a team meeting, planning session or a brainstorm, Paul shares a list of the best fuel for brain power and it’s not chocolate chip cookies and white cheddar cheetos. I’m shocked. Shocked, I say!

The Novelty Curve, Logic + Emotion: Where are you?

Teen Girls Outnumber Boys as Web Content Creators, PR Week: A recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project determined that female teens are the primary creators of Web content, far outpacing their male peers in the areas of blogging, Web site building, and creating social networking profiles.

Tomorrow morning I’m meeting with a client to brainstorm ideas for their brand spankin’ new social media campaign.

I’m very excited – despite my best efforts, so far my social media campaign ideas haven’t been terribly well-received and the implementation? a little half-baked. Usually I’m passionate about the idea and see the tremendous potential of social media and the client just isn’t ready yet.

Once the campaign rolls out, I’ll share it with you, but until then, I thought I’d share my process for getting started. If you have ideas to contribute, please (please!) feel free to include them in the comments, or take the discussion to your own blog.

****

Take Stock of the Conversation: I knew social media was going to be a good fit. When I did a Technorati and Google Blogsearch on my client’s brands, the results were great. I didn’t expect posts to be bad, but for a decidedly low-tech product, I was a little afraid that I wouldn’t find anything. Primarily what I found were posts and discussion forum conversations about customers using the product. Great news! The posts and comments were very positive and really showed the ingenuity of some of the product’s users.

Using this stock of current conversations, the next step was to pitch my ideas to the client. I focused on two strategies, a corporate blog and a YouTube channel. I talked about all the great reasons for participating, I referenced some successful campaigns and anecdotes and the return on investment that they saw and I walked through how we could work together to ease any worry on their part (mostly around staff demands and time requirements). In the end, social media will be more than half of our annual public relations budget.

Moving forward to the planning process, we’re going to spend a couple of hours talking about blogging and making videos. Client is on board with both, but I want to start out with some basics. I’ll show the Common Craft Blogs in Plain English video and share Rohit Bhargava’s 25 Basic Styles of Blogging slideshow (or part of it, anyway). I’m also looking for some popular videos that were low budget and fun/shareable, too. I like Will it Blend? – it’s relevant to this client/product and the response to Blendtec is remarkable.

Inventory Existing Content: The client’s product is project-related (think crafts, home improvement), so we plan to mix in a heavy dose of how-to projects alongside guest posts from product developers, posts related to the local community and others. To write (or even repurpose) the how-to posts, we need to develop an inventory of what we have and what we need. I know this client likes the how-to focus, so I think starting here will get them thinking and open up the discussion to wider posts.

We’ll do the same process for the YouTube channel ideas.

This process of taking stock of what’s out there, inventorying the projects and content that already exists and making a list of “what to order” will put on a good path.

Low-tech, project oriented and a lot of fun! I expect this brainstorm and the subsequent planning session and the implementation to be a terrific way for this company to connect with its audiences. I look forward to sharing more details with you in the future.

Thanks to all the smart folks that contributed this week to some outstanding insights and conversations – here are my faves. MWAH!

Does Knowledge of Social Media Make You a Better Job Candidate?, my 2 cents: Interesting post. Some great insights and I always love when professionals back up things I say in class. Thanks!

Measurable Objectives Precede Meaningful Evaluation, Les is More: Les, a professor at Towson University, is judging the IABC awards and provides some advice about the PR process that leads to a well-planned and executed campaign.

Social Media Will Change Your Business, BusinessWeek: I’m sending this link to every business owner I know.

Consequences for Not Having a Blogging Policy, Neville Hobson: We’ve been talking about blogging and ethics policies in class, so this is a perfect example of why such things are important.

Cleansing Your Online Reputation, Murphy’s Law: Understanding search engine results is, apparently, one piece of the pie. Three firms in the US and UK are offering services to clean up your reputation online and ensure only positive results.

27 Proven Freelance Marketing Tips, Bad Language: Thinking about freelancing? These are some great tips to consider when trying to make it work.

Old School Pols Running the Campaigns Still Missing the Social Media Boat, what’s next: BL Ochman says the presidential candidates aren’t using social media to their advantage and relying on old school campaign techniques.

© Bob Jacobson/Corbis

Lots of my students want to plan and implement special events. I’m not great at meeting/event logistics (caterers! florists! incentives! promotional items!), so I find special events a bit tedious. The best lesson I’ve learned from event planning experience? Plan a massage the day after a big event. Thanks, Marilyn for that lesson!

That said, there are tons of great jobs in event planning. And what a great way to meet people, make connections and go to a lot of great parties.

Ned’s Job of the Week email newsletter has a section specifically for the Hospitality and Event Planning Network. Weekly job posts galore! If you’re interested in this field, you can subscribe and get updates via email or via your feed reader.