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.

Twitter: Breaking News via Social Media

My previous post discusses the impact of social media on our everyday lives. Social media is utilized daily by a wide variety of demographics, and the statistics from 2011 support the growing trend entirely. According to Edison Research, in 2011, approximately 46 million Americans over the age of 12 checked their social media sites several times on a daily basis. While the article refers to Facebook as the driving factor behind most of the statistics, there’s no doubt that Twitter is catching up.

Photo courtesy of: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/twitter-worm-hits-googl-redirects-to-fake-anti-virus/7938

Since the site’s launch in 2006, the social media platform has exploded with users. The most recent example of the website’s popularity was displayed this past weekend when music icon, Whitney Houston, passed away. According to this article on Mashable Entertainment, Twitter released the news of Houston’s death before the mainstream press.

Many people, myself included, might say that the primary job of the press is to break stories as they happen. Considering that the first tweet about Houston’s death went out 27 minutes prior to any news station mentioning it, it’s safe to say that the press let us down in a way.  The press does deserve a little slack though. It’s not like this happens on an everyday basis, but it’s not the first time Twitter has outdone mainstream news.

Not only did Twitter break the news first, but the first reported tweet about the incident even alluded to the possible cause of death.  Twitter user @AjaDiorNavy was the first person to tweet about the incident. The tweet claims that Houston was found dead in the bathtub, a fact later restated by celebrity gossip website, TMZ.

While TMZ doesn’t register to many as the most credible website, it’s astounding that someone on Twitter not only reported Houston’s death first, but may have also reported it right.

So far, there are not many incidences where Twitter has broken a top story, but no one can say what will happen in the future when Twitter’s popularity has doubled or even tripled what it is now. Will the general public become the first source for breaking news via social media sites? How did you first find out about the news of Houston’s death? 

hootsuite

Today’s world heavily relies on social media, and websites like Facebook and Twitter have become an integral part of most people’s daily lives. As these outlets continue to change the way that people interact with one another, it also changes the future of public relations. Since the main goal of any PR practitioner is to obtain free publicity for their client, social media outlets can be one of their most useful tools. Many companies get free publicity just from the fact that happy customers are writing statuses, “tweeting” and blogging about how happy they are with a product. At the same time, negative feedback must also be monitored and responded to in a timely manner.

With that being said, all of these social media channels can sometimes become overwhelming. Unless updating statuses, tweets and posts is your main job, it is almost impossible for anyone managing multiple accounts to keep up. Luckily, the website hootsuite has come to the rescue. The self-proclaimed “leading social media dashboard” gives frequent social media users a variety of tools that makes life on the web a lot easier.

First, hootsuite lets you to add a number of your social media profiles to the site. For example, users can add their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blog, but those are just a few of the options. The site is a huge time saver in that you can monitor and post to all of your favorite websites from one place. Hootsuite makes it easy to navigate between different networks by structuring users’ home pages in tab format.

Different streams within the tab make it easy to see who’s saying what.

Many social media companies will find hoosuite to be a huge advantage because of the custom analytics tool. It allows you to track company and product mentions and follower growth. In addition multiple users can be added to one account. So, if your company monitors the Twitter page of a local fast food chain, for example, more than one person from within the team can contribute to updates and customer replies.

One of my favorite tools to utilize on hootsuite is the scheduler. Let’s say that you know you have a jam packed day tomorrow, but still want to keep up with your updates. You can schedule up to 50 updates to happen throughout various times of the day. Even better, if you want the update to appear only on Twitter it takes only one click.

I’m pretty new to hootsuite, but so far I’m obsessed! It will definitely be one of the tools I use most as a public relations practitioner. In the past I have used Twaitter, but once I was introduced to hootsuite I considered it to reign supreme. There are a number of different sites that allow you utilize many of the tools I’ve talked about. Six Revisions has posted a useful article that compares the pros and cons of different sites here so that you can decide which one is best for you!

Do any of you currently use hootsuite? If not, which social media dashboard is your favorite?