Twitter is Important!

After my #PURE3600sp14 assignment, I have learned why twitter is so important. I will share with you a few reasons that I think it’s important for a company to have a twitter account and why they should use it on a regular bases.

Twitter is important for a business looking to expand social reach. Retweeting and lists, for example, reach potential customers far outside your normal marketing methodologies. Your followers become the distributors of your message, so their followers see mentions of your company as coming from a trusted source. This adds credibility to your company and spreads your message to previously untapped demographics.

Twitter is important for many businesses when their clients and customers are frequent Twitter users and likely to follow a feed. Search for your most important clients on Twitter by using the “Find Friends” search through the “Discover” page. If several of your high profile clients are on the site, then it will be useful to your company to use Twitter regularly. If you update your feed regularly, reply to direct messages and tweets sent to your company, and follow and comment on your client’s Tweets, Twitter provides you with another means of deepening the relationship and communication opportunities between you and your major clients. Consider as well that if your current major clients are Twitter users, there is a good chance that other companies in your target demographic also use the site. Potentially, you could reach them by building a strong and highly followed Twitter account.

Twitter allows you to reach your followers in something very close to real-time. Your updates are instantly posted to your Twitter feed, and anyone who checks feeds regularly also sees your Tweets immediately. This is a valuable tool for providing up-to-the-minute coverage of events, specials or breaking developments at your business. For a business in a fast-paced industry where being the first out of the gate is an advantage, this can give you an edge in a competitive marketplace. The ability to easily Tweet from almost every mobile device also allows you to maintain this real-time connection no matter where you’re physically located.

Twitter is as valuable as a communication tool as it is a broadcasting tool. To send a message straight to your audience, your email list or website works to get content delivered. Twitter provides and encourages communication between multiple parties in a public forum, allowing you to get instant feedback from customers and potential clients. Because the communication on Twitter is open for everyone else to follow, it encourages openness and accountability in communications. Companies that consistently demonstrate these traits will gain more solid customer faith in the company brand. Twitter communications also reach a large community very quickly. As a result, a Twitter-savvy business can gauge reactions instantly, as well as provide customer service by responding to any consumer complaints, questions or concerns as soon as possible.

The Importance of PR to Companies

The business world is strife with competition. There are few ideas left that aren’t already being marketed by one company or individual. If a new idea does hit the market, it isn’t long before knock-off ideas or products start flooding the market. For this reason, a good public relations campaign is imperative to a company’s success. While sales will determine the overall profits of a company, it’s how the consumer relates to it that will help bring in the sales. If a company is struggling to turn a profit or isn’t growing their client base, it should look at its current marketing strategies and public relations campaigns to see why the public isn’t flocking to their product or service.

GOOD PR TELLS A GOOD STORY

Public relations isn’t just about earning fans or clients, it’s about embracing your community and giving them a reason to like your company. There’s nothing better to attract the public than a feel-good story. You achieve this by planning a public relations campaign that has you giving back to your community. Whether you donate money for a charitable cause, use a manufacturing process that helps the environment, or send your employees to conduct charitable works, you must inform the public in a way that endears you to them.

The best way to conduct public relations is to make your feel-good story known to your target audience. If your company sells products for mobile devices, than your target audience is the younger business demographic. If you have a press release about your product and how the manufacturing of it helps the environment but you don’t publish it in places where the young business demographic can see it, you won’t have a successful campaign. Once the public sees that your company takes to heart topics that are important to them, they’ll start utilizing your business for their needs.

PERSONAL PR AFFECTS YOUR BUSINESS

The other type of public relations that is important is how your employees deal with clients. You can have the best marketing campaign in the world, but if a client deals with a rude employee or is made to feel unimportant, it can ruin your company. In the past, the only one in charge of public relations was the company itself. If a customer had a bad experience they told a few of their friends and family, but that was it. With online sites now dedicated to company reviews and ratings, if a customer has a bad experience with your company thousands may hear about it. In a way, the Internet has given clients the ability to control some of the PR, so it’s imperative that your employees keep the customers happy.

A good public relations campaign helps to endear your company to the public. Good customer service helps guarantee that you won’t have to worry about negative PR from customers. If you combine a great campaign with good customer feedback, your PR can help increase your success.

Inside #Instagram

Just a couple of my Instagram posts!

Nothing is better than spending St. Patrick’s Day in Galway, Ireland! #CliffsOfMoher #HappyStPatricksDay #Irish #Green

If you thought Ireland was cool, Easter Sunday in Rome, Italy is just as cool! Excited to meet our new Pope, Papa Francesco in Vatican City! #EasterSunday #ILovePapaFrancesco #VaticanCity #Rome #FirstJesuitPope

Practicing my Spanish cooking skills in the states! #TortillaEspañola #España #Yum #TraditionalSpanishFood

Today is the day! I am graduating from Spanish school. So thankful to all my family and friends who have supported me during my wonderful Study Abroad experience in Madrid, Spain! #graduation #diploma #SpanishSchool #UniversidadComplutenseDeMadrid

Welcome the newest member of the Andrade Family, Tanner Andrade! #Puppy #FirstFamilyPet

I cant believe this is my last Alpha Phi Red Dress Gala. Thank you mom for being my biggest supporter for the last 22 years. You are truly amazing. LOVE YOU! #AlphaPhi #RedDressGala #SeniorYear #CardiacCare

Client Blog

Mary Jones is a 30-year-old woman who graduated from DePaul University in Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in 2006.  She is single but spends as much time with her 18-month twin nephews, Jack and Joey. She hopes to have a huge family in the near future. Mary recently bought a 2014 Corolla, knowing it is a safe family car. She enjoys crafting, running and volunteering her time, especially with organizations that support veterans.

Mary’s sister, Jen lost her husband out in Afghanistan last year, leaving her nephews, Jack and Joey without a father.

Since then, Mary has done everything to help her sister with the boys and has looked into organizations that support veterans because she feels a deep connection to our country’s warriors and desires to serve them as they served out country.

She recently came across an organization called EdgeAlliance that is a Chicago non-profit organization, which assists its members in developing and operating quality housing and providing life-enriching services to vulnerable individuals and families, especially to homeless veterans.

She heard about an event that EdgeAlliance was hosting in order to raise money for homeless veterans. EdgeAlliance’s 21st Dining Out for Life Chicago! More than 80 restaurants will donate a portion of sales for the agency’s HIV/AIDS housing programs. Last year, 9,000 diners came out to raise over $115,000.

She believes building a sense of community is what this campaign is all about, there’s no better way to support a great cause than over good food and fabulous drinks with your friends.

She supports EdgeAlliance because this organization is committed to serving the needs of Veterans that are homeless. Programs aim to achieve stable housing, improve wellness and transition towards greater independence.

News from The O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism

Marquette University’s J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication has announced its inaugural class of three journalists who will take part in The Perry and Alicia O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism during the 2013-14 academic year. 

Dr. Lori Bergen, dean of the College of Communication: “We look forward to working closely with Hal, Dan and Lillian throughout the year to encourage progress as they work side by side with our students to provide expert, in-depth professional reporting.”

FELLOWSHIP DETAILS

• The journalism fellows are Hal Bernton of The Seattle Times, Dan Egan of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Lillian Thomas of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
• They began their fellowship
  sAug. 24,2013, and will reside within the College of Communication for the 2013-14 academic year, with each researching and producing an in-depth public service journalism project on campus and working with Marquette students, giving them first-hand journalism experience.
• Berton, Egan and Thomas will integrate students from the Diederich College of Communication into their projects as reporters and assistants, giving them first-hand experience in public journalism.

OUTCOMES

• Heightening awareness and understanding of an important issue of our time.
• Helping to motivate and inform legislative, civil or societal change.
• Teaching and mentoring Marquette journalism students as tomorrow’s journalists, steeped in the importance of servant leadership through their profession.
• Reinforcing the principles of self-governance and self-accountability among students
• Participating in a two-day conference spotlighting the work of each fellowship project – at an event the Diederich College will produce and host at Marquette in October 2014.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Professional in Residence Director, Herbert Lowe at herbert.lowe@marquette.edu.

Moslow’s Theory and PR Writing

The public relations industry helps companies and other organizations communicate with the public strategically and effectively. To accomplish this goal, public relations writers are often guided by the principles of Abraham Maslow.  Maslow believed that human needs could be ranked in order from the most basic and primal to the most refined and sophisticated.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is arranged into a pyramid of either five or seven levels. The five-level version includes physiological needs such as food and water, the need for safety and security, the need for love and intimacy, the need for self-esteem and the esteem of other people and the need for self-fulfillment or as Maslow called it, self-actualization.

Public relations professionals use Maslow’s hierarchy to target the right message to the right audience. You wouldn’t get far by pitching an aesthetic appeal to a hungry man, so the first thing you have to do when creating a PR message is to determine where your target audience is on the pyramid. A nonprofit operating a homeless shelter might talk about having a warm, safe place to sleep. This targets the first two levels of the pyramid – physiological needs and safety needs. A PR appeal for a retirement community might emphasize all the opportunities for socialization, stressing the third-level need for belonging. A luxury condo development might emphasize exclusivity, stressing the fourth-level need for the esteem of others. A resort that offered yoga and meditation classes would be trying to appeal to the need for self-actualization, the highest level of the pyramid.

Writing is and writing will…

Writing is a form of expression. It allows you to put your ideas, thoughts and feelings onto a piece of paper. When you are writing just to write, there are no rules or expectations. You are free to write about what you want and how you want. You can write about yourself and make it a biography or you can write about a princess and a dragon and make it fiction fantasy. There are absolutely no limits when it comes to writing. I personally, am not a very good writer but I do have a friend who could write for days. He loves to write speeches. He actually writes speeches for politicians in the Milwaukee area and hopes to make a career out of it. Recently, he published an article in the Journal Sentinel. I have another friend who writes poems. She expresses her deepest feelings by comparing her heart to a tree branch (unusual, but she does it). Both my friends write very differently, but it is still writing and it is still a form of expression.

Writing will never die. Writing will continue to be a way that people express themselves, and I think that writing will grow. Especially with technology. Now-a-days people do not have to go to a publisher to get their writingout to the world. With technology, people are now able to write and express what they want over the Internet allowing millions of people to read it. I think that more and more people are going to write on social media such as blogs, twitter, Facebook etc. knowing that this is much easier than getting your writing seen by going through a publisher.  I am a prime example. This is my blog and technology is allowing me to publish my writing so that millions of people can read it… Not that I think millions of people will, but you get my point. Writing will never die in my eyes.