Personal Learning Networks

One important thing I’ve learned while studying at Full Sail University, is to build and maintain personal learning networks (PLNs) via the web. For those of you who don’t know what a PLN is, it is anyone that you engage and exchange information with. Think of it as your social network, but one that is more gauged towards learning. 

Photo courtesy of: http://www.olecommunity.com/the-power-of-personal-learning-networks-wait-what-is-a-personal-learning-network/

Blogs can be an excellent source for PLNs, but they need to be written by credible sources. I have a number of public relations blogs in my PLN. One of my favorites is Richard Edelman’s 6 A.M. blog. As the president and CEO of the world’s largest independent public relations firm, Richard Edelman can certainly be considered a reliable source for any public relations practitioner. I find his blog posts to be extremely helpful because he writes about what he is currently doing in the field. For example, on March 5, he wrote about his trip to Vietnam and China. Readers not only get a first hand look into the life of a public relations practitioner, the blog also offers information on how public relations is practiced in countries all over the world. 

Another one of my favorite daily reads is the blog PR in Your Pajamas. Written by Elena Verlee, founder of the Cross Border Communications agency, this blog covers a wide variety of different topics within the field of public relations. For example, on March 13, the blog featured a post titled, 7 Critical PR Lessons for Launching Start-Ups. I found this post to be extremely beneficial while working on my business plan in graduate school. 

These are only two of the blogs in my PLN, and not all of them are public relations related. It is important that your PLN covers a wide variety of topics. My PLN is also comprised of technological and social media blogs that I find to be extremely beneficial. Consider setting up a really simple syndication (RSS) feed for all of your favorite blogs. Google has a great RSS reader that can help you get started. You can also use your Twitter to keep track of your PLN. Both writers of the blogs above have Twitter accounts. By following your favorite blogs on Twitter, you can easily find out about blog updates and new posts.

Which blogs do you consider to be an asset to your PLN? Do you a use a different reader for your RSS feed? 

YouTube Trends

I recently watched a speech on Ted given by Kevin Allocca. The first line of his biography alone is enough to grab your attention. “Kevin Allocca watches YouTube videos. For his job.” He is the trend manager at YouTube and his speech, titled Why videos go viral, discusses how YouTube sensations come to be.

Allocca begins his speech with an astounding statistic. Over 48 hours of video get uploaded to YouTube every minute. My first thought was probably something close to yours. If that much content is being uploaded, how does anyone stand out?

Allocca makes it simple to understand. He attributes it to three different, and recently new occurrences. The first, are tastemakers, or influencers. These are the people that have a wide variety of followers, and with one tweet can cause a mass of influx to someone’s YouTube post. For example, think Tosh.0 or Jimmy Kimmel.

The second occurrence is linked to communities of participation, or culture. Once the masses become aware of something, they spread the phenomenon even further. They tweet about it and even make their own parodies, in turn, creating viral videos.

But before a video can accomplish any of that, it needs to be unique and unexpected. It wouldn’t matter who the tastemaker for a video was if it was lacking entertainment. Simply said, videos have to stand out in order to go viral.

After listening to Allocca’s speech I began to think about how this trend could be applied to all areas of social media. With so much content, no matter the medium, being added to the web, how is it possible that anyone is able to make a splash? I think these same three occurrences or phenomena could be applied to the Internet as a whole. Let’s look at blogs, for example. According to Web Designer Depot, there are over 100 million active blogs on the Internet. It’s safe to say that in order to have a successful blog you need original content. You also need followers to read your blog and spread the word, so to say. If you have the first two and could get a tastemaker to endorse your blog, the sky would be the limit.

Photo courtesy of: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30311/10-Amazing-Blogs-About-Blogging-to-Start-Reading-NOW.aspx

As our culture continually changes and the public becomes the gatekeepers of information, I think that content will become much more quality driven. Tastemakers will still influence the masses, and the Internet clearly isn’t going anywhere soon, but I believe that the content that drives those trends will begin to improve.