Kelly Adams

Ansley Black

Jill Bledsoe

Emily Canan

Kelly Cargill

Alison Christenberry

Kelly Coffed

Carey Beth Elder

Ragan Gibson

Emily Horne

Caroline Inman

Karen Jones

Lianne Lopez-Ceparo

Evie Maddox

Mikey Mahone

Kimberly Meyers

Mallory Middleton

Emily Petree

Whitney Prothro

Maria Prysock

Elizabeth Reynolds

Merry Whidby

Jacob Wilder

Jordan Woo

Below, you will see links to all of the digital portfolio and resume projects from my students last semester, Fall 2008.

You may also find them at PR Prospects, the site I created to promote our wonderful Auburn students.

Check them out. Hire them. Bring them in for internships. A few have already graduated and landed jobs, but some are still looking. We always tell them not to ‘settle’ for a job, but rather to seek out the job they really want.  Find that “right fit” for themselves.

Your firm or organization may well be the fit they are looking for in public relations/marketing.

Here they are in the order in which they sent me their URLs last semster.

• Emily Jeter
• Sydney Thompson
• Mary Catherine Hamilton
• Polly Payne
• Taylor Lamb
• Abby Leigh Rhodes
• Audrey Pannell
• Kelli Hood
• Erin Newton
• Lauren White
• Courtney Breslin
• Katie Garfinkle
• Kathryn “Beth” Storey
• Ashlan Yielding
• Laura LeAnne Peacock
• Ragan Helms
• Brooke Bloom
• Anna Leigh McGilvray
• Lindsey Migliorisi
• Elizabeth Traylor
• Jenni Elizabeth Breland
• Haley Adcock
• Sarah Little
• Russell Warren
• Jeff Hajek
• Jacob Smith

A nice crowd of students, practitioners and faculty were on hand.

So, I promised links and notes …. so, although it took awhile, here they are.

First, this zip file contains a lot of information (34.2 mb download). Remember we talked about reading? Well, these 20 PDF files are from various sites around the Web. I’ve collected them over time and find them to be great food for thought.

Then, as if that’s not enough, check out these readings, too. (36 mb download) Both of these collections are what I’ve shared with my students over time … and a lot of new ones, too.

Now, sites to check out. You’ll find a variety of tools, blog posts and more. These are the things I read beyond the usual PR blogs.

HubSpot is offering many tools to play with. website grader, news release grader, and twitter grader. Take them for what they are. Not absolute answers to any questions, but good places to start and gain food for thought. One note, on the press release grader, this is only applicable for those posted online. I find their results too heavily tweaked for Internet marketing, not for submission to journalists. Still, a good tool to explore.

prxbuilder.com and pitchengine.com :: Both do essentially the same things, yet have different options. PRXBuilder allows you to post them through PRNewswire.com (for a fee). PitchEngine offers a social media newsroom (for a fee). Most importantly, for learning the elements of a social media release, these tools teach you how to do it by practicing with them and making a release.

I need to come back and put these in order … my apologies, but here are the links I suggest you explore.  I just wanted to get there up here and share.  Any suggestions for links you believe people should check out? Share them in the comments below.

• SOCIAL MEDIA SITES & ARTICLES
• socialmedian
• Poynter Online – E-Media Tidbits
• Nearly 70% of Online Adults Use Social Media, Often Research Products at Retail Marketing – Shopping Center Marketing – food for thought, but taken with a grain of salt
• TWITTER
• Twitter
• Birdhouse TweetCrunch
• Twitter Search (formerly Summize)
• Online Advertising + Twitter = Twittertise
• 10 reasons to monitor Twitter
• Twitter Hack – Send Direct Messages To Non Followers | Tech Spikes
• 10 tools for listening in social media. » My Thoughts On Social Media
• twemes.com
• POPThis – shorten URLs
• TweetScan
• Twitter Applications
• Twitter Toolbox
• More Twitter Tools
• Twitter Applications
• Twitter Downloads
• SOCIAL MEDIA SEARCH ENGINES & SITES OF INTEREST
• Google Insights for Search
• best social media search engines – Google Search
• MediaVidea: The Social Media Search Engine, ver 0.5
• Beyond Google: Social Media Engines First, Other Search Engines Second
• Social Media – Search Engine Guide Blog
• 123people.com | Find everyone you (want to) know!
• The Social Media Search Engine
• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit
• Techmeme
• Forget ABCs – The Social Media Alphabet Is DNRS
• Search Engine Land: Must Read News About Search Marketing & Search Engines
• Insights – MarketTools
• OUR SOCIAL NETWORKS
• ASCCA Friends
• The Loveliest Village
• PROpenMic
• PR Prospects » PR Prospects for you from Auburn University
• PRblogs.org – free blogs for PR students, faculty and practitioners
• GREAT LIVE BLOGGING TOOL
• COVERITLIVE.COM – Great tool for liveblogging an event
• EASY AUDIO & VIDEO PODCASTING
• TubeMogul – post one video to many sites
• Utterli (formerly Utterz) – audio podcasts and more
• seesmic.com – sort of video Twitter
• Seero – Putting Video on the Map
• 12seconds.tv (alpha)
• Links from a recent Dean’s Council presentation
• Poynter Online – E-Media Tidbits
• 10 tools for listening in social media. » My Thoughts On Social Media
• MediaVidea: The Social Media Search Engine, ver 0.5
• Beyond Google: Social Media Engines First, Other Search Engines Second
• Social Media – Search Engine Guide Blog
• best social media search engines – Google Search
• The Social Media Search Engine
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit
• Techmeme
• Forget ABCs – The Social Media Alphabet Is DNRS
• Search Engine Land: Must Read News About Search Marketing & Search Engines
• Insights – MarketTools

Gee Ekachai, of Marquette University, linked to the author of the slideshow – Corinne Weisgerber, of St. Edwards University.

Both are involved with PROpenMic, by the way. Visit their profiles in PROpenMic: Corinne Weisgerber and Gee Ekachai.

Truly a great, simple slideshow that all educators should use, IMO. It drives home the point of personal brand management. Some of the better quotes, “Google is the new resume” and “Find the Skeletons in your cyber closet”. You’ll enjoy this one.

One other point of interest, Corinne shares her class syllabus (PDF), too. Can’t tell you how great it is to find all these adopters of social media curricula, like Corinne and Gee.

Well, we got quite a response. Students, faculty and practitioners responded.

The list below represents the post I shared on the front page of PROpenMic. I hope you’ll go check them out, too. And, join PROpenMic if you haven’t already. We just crossed the 2,000 members mark and well on our way to 2,100 and beyond.

We want to promote your blogs, and have created this post for you to share your’s for a mention here. I wanted to rotate these, but got so many. So, I’m sharing them all for a week and will put next week’s up here, etc. Go share your blogs, too!

• Leo Bottary, Practitioner – Client Service Insights…(CSI/Season2)
• Paul Matson, Student – Off the Record
• Brian Camen, Practitioner – Everyday PR
• Katherine Lynch, Practitioner – Dine Magazine
• John Taylor, Practitioner – Dilbert is Funny for a Reason
• Marsha Keeffer, Practicioner – ToneHall
• Katherine Strate, Student – Dawg Food – A class project that Katherine has kept up for the past year. Great inspiration of what you can do in your own town!
• Samir Bhavnani, Practitioner – Got Tannins?
• Luke Walker, Prospective Student / Aficionado – Media Ramblings
• Nicole Stivers, Practitioner – Brown Miller Communications
• Joan Holman, Practitioner – Joan Holman’s Quiet Time
• Daniel Lally, Practitioner – Pit Bulls and Labradors – The Dominant Narrative Theory
• Termeh Mazhari, Practitioner – New York Buzz
• Barbara Nixon, Faculty – Public Relations Matters
• Brigitte Andrade, Practitioner – The Adventures of Bibisports in China
• Kate Scozzaro, Student – Scozz Blogz
• Helena Makhotlova, Post-Graduate – Helena Makhotlova’s blog
• Malayna Williams, Practitioner – Release It!
• Holly Grande, Practitioner – HollyGrande.com
• Rosalind Sedacca, CCT, Practitioner – Child-Centered Divorce
• Jeffery Biggs, Practitioner – Jeffery’s World
• Texas Public Relations Association, Practitioner – Communicators’ Connexion
• Miguel Albano, Practitioner – (It’s) Not About You – A Blog about Digital Communications and Social Media written in Portuguese for the Portuguese blogosphere
• Shane Haggerty, Practitioner – Social Avenue

And those previously promoted here:

• Allie Osmar, Practitioner – The Creative Career
• Carlos Teixeira, Student – fractura
• Bill Handy, Faculty – OKPRPROF
• Mihaela Vorvoreanu (Dr. V), Faculty – PR Connections
• David Binkowski, Practitioner – DavidBinkowski.com

Please note Karen’s comment below. They are “taking educator and professional registrations now but student registration info won’t go out until August, when classes resume.”

Last year’s conference was a a great inaugural event. This one promises to be worth your time and effort to attend, too. A video from Dr. Kaye Sweetser is today’s featured video here, on the front page. It is embedded below, too.

Held in their beautiful Student Learning Center on the UGA Campus in Athens GA, you are sure (I believe) to have a good experience. Congrats to Karen Russell, Kaye Sweetser and all of the students at UGA that do so much hard work to make the conference happen.

As their site states, space is limited and the registration deadline is September 12, 2008.

Updates and news are being released on Twitter, at UGAConnect. They have a Facebook group, Connect 2008 and a ready to populate Flickr account at ugaconnect08′s photostream. Their blog is UGA Connect.

One caveat, the registration fee this year is $150 and is mentioned on their register page (and not, as yet, mentioned on their Web site or blog), but not on the actual form you fill out … that’s why I missed it.   I believe the cost is well worth what the conference promises.

So, go sign up for Connect, right now!

During the chat, we talked about how Utterz might be used for a client.

The idea of spot news, or breaking news, came to mind. Certainly it could be useful. With Utterz’ new cross-posting function, you can have it automatically post to many platforms like:

Blogger, LiveJournal, Tumblr, TypePad, Twitter, WordPress, MovableType, Flickr, YahooGroups, Twitxr, Drupal, LiveSpaces, YouTube, MetaWeblog API, Pownce, and blip.tv

For instance, I just set up my Utterz account to autopost to my Twitter account. I also set it up to post to this blog as a draft, so I may consider using it as a post.

News organizations could use this for spot news. Any organization could have a ready to luanch site set up for an emergency. Utterz could be just one aspect of the quick post / response site. The new ability to autopost makes it much more viable. Qik.com would be another useful crisis comms tool to add into a pre-built site ready to launch in case of an emergency.

The idea of using these tools to add content online without all the hoops we used to have to jump through kind of intrigues me. At the same time, it poses some problems re: vetting information that goes up online. I’d like to see a new crisis comms plan that has incorporated many of these new bits of technology into their practice. Anyone know of some such plan? It would be great to share with students.

Here’s an example of a brief Utterz post from our class this evening.

I saved Gary’s interview for last because along with his practitioner experience, Gary teaches a graduate level PR course at the University of California-Irvine. A unique course, at that.

The course is called Edge. It is described as follows, “Edge is the Merage School’s new and ground-breaking course that explores how technology and globalization are transforming the business landscape.” The course is led by John Seely Brown along with Merage professor David Obstfeld and features a long list of great contributors. I want to learn more about this course.

With that in mind, I thought it would be good to hear what Gary thinks about the best practice / approach to a digital media course at universities.

Enjoy the interview and many thanks to Gary for sharing his thoughts with us.

Find more videos like this on PROpenMic

Yes, I’ll be pointing the students here and saying, “Hey, now there’s a success story. Admit it! You want to be like MK.” 

You see, it is quite true to say that Mary’s so wonderful. You know the type of person you meet and say to yourself, “Now, that’s a truly nice person. If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be like MK.” Yeah, that kind of person. That’s Mary.

So, I asked Mary about the conference, why Edelman chooses to host it each year, and generally what she’s doing. MK gives us the straight story in her inimitable style. Here it is. Thanks, Mary!

Find more videos like this on PROpenMic

I can feel Jen O’Meara’s pain. We likely all can. She has a project she loves and it isn’t going anywhere. Frustration. We’ve all felt it, right?

David Meerman Scott shares A viral marketing story suitable for bedtime. It is a story of disappointment and sadness. But, at least the author, YOBI CIO Jen O’Meara, tries to tell it with a tongue-in-cheek spin.

Jen’s no dummy – you’d think. A Ph.D. under her belt, no less, she’s struggling to get her startup Yobi.tv site off the ground. Yobi.tv claims to be a “unique blend of social networking, reality show contests, and user-generated content (that) will revolutionize the world of online entertainment.” Well, it’s good to have a dream.

I know Jen’s video below reveals that she’s been panned by many. So, a critique of the site may seem like a pile on. Looking at the site and watching the first six bits of random content featured on the front page (it rotates each time you reload the page), it seems to tell (at least part of) the story of Jen’s problems.

First, let’s examine what content greeted me (Warning: Signup required to view):

• Terror of Frankenstein Yobitv Trailer – Hey, it’s the kid’s first effort at video, so cut him a break. Pretty good for a first try.
• Pretty photo “Taken from 5000 feet in a hot air balloon over San Diego.” – Um, can’t I go to flickr for this?
• A photo of a sunflower posted as a video – that won’t play … um, because it is a photo!
• Interesting photo a pretty old house and its front door & windows – Again, hello flickr?
• Interesting photo, but not too remarkable, of the Golden Gate Bridge in fog. – Again, hello flickr?
• A truly ridiculous (read that as lame) video of “My husband was threatening to throw me into the lake. Instead of helping me, my cousin ran up with the camera and took this video. They both bug me.” – This one gives meaningless a bad name.

So, the reality is … Jen’s reality TV ain’t that hot. In fact, it is like 99.999% of that on YouTube and many other video sites. It sucks. It is boring. It is mostly mindless dribble.

There are two blaring, glaring omissions in her site’s setup and philosophy for gaining viewers. I can’t believe she hasn’t spotted them, yet. In fact, it seems she’s so confident in her contests and content … she actually doesn’t want to offer them.

So, what are they? There is no sharing function for embedding the content and sharing it on other sites. Then, and perhaps the goofiest of all, there is a forced registration process. Yep, you can’t see any of the videos unless you sign up! To me, after signing up and looking at the content … well, anyone can see why her site is failing.

You know, Jen, I wouldn’t necessarily blame all the various forms of emerging digital media – or social marketing – for the failure of Yobi.tv to gain traction. Certainly, online marketing doesn’t always work. In Yobi.tv’s case, though, I’d blame a rather un-inviting Web design, a very unattractive logo (what are you, a nuclear reactor?), no clear information upfront about Yobi.tv contests (what Jen declares as her big draw), bland copy and graphics, along with a rather boring overall presentation.

Jen’s YouTube rant about her fate is below. Then, you’ll see her e-book … well, actually just 14 slides in – again – a very bland presentation trying to recite her video in Powerpoint form … yikes! She’s kidding again, of course (I hope). But, now even the joke has grown old and I’ve only known about this for what … 15 minutes?

Jen continually compares her site’s woes to the splendid success of Blendtec’s wildly fun and (here’s a good word for ya’, Jen) relevant content at Will It Blend?

Jen, I’d suggest you (a) take a clue from the Google ad on your site (right) and (b) decide just what it is you’re trying to sell. No, as you suggested in your video, you aren’t giving something away. You’re selling contests, Jen. Face it and work with it.

You’re trying to draw in viewers. But, to what? Sure, you’re giving away up to $10,000 in your contests, but where is the description and snappy copy to lure folks into your contests? Jen, you seem to believe that an offer of money – alone – will do it. Nope, I don’t see it. And, why is your site more relevant (more fun) than the dozens of other video sharing sites? Ooops! Sorry, I forgot. You don’t share! First rule learned in kindergarten (and social media), Jen. Share!

In fact, the best copy on your site is that found in the Google ad for the french fry contest. That’s kinda sad. It is especially sad when you realize what the ad is for, and what it is doing. “Predicto Mobile gives you access to unlimited surveys, votes, and news alerts for $9.99 billed monthly to your mobile phone bill.” Jen, they are charging people $9.99 to participate in mobile phone contests that likely offer a one in a gazillion chance of paying off. I’m willing to bet that Predicto is likely making money, Jen.

Here’s the bottling of the egg on this one. There are dozens of video sharing sites. Most of them are slick and clean in their presentation. They tend to truly feature interesting videos on their front pages. They have easy to understand and follow navigation. And, Jen, here’s the big kicker … on those sites you can actually take the videos/photos and embed them elsewhere. You don’t offer that option, Jen. This was the most glaring omission of all when I first arrived on the site. I can’t believe you actually launched a video sharing site where the only place they can share … is with you! Are you serious?

Jen! Hello? Ya’ can’t go viral if people can’t share your videos and photos. No brainer, Jen. Sorry. You may be your own worst enemy. I’m sorry you’re not having success, but don’t blame it on anyone but your site, your product and your team. You guys are causing your own problems.

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