The End

Oh man... College is over!  Well, almost over.  Here I am, writing my last mandatory blog posting for one of my last classes of schooling ever.  All that stands in the way of me and a diploma, is a final on Wednesday and a final on Thursday.  I can't even think back to what I was thinking this time last year, or this time ten years ago.  It's so weird to go back and think about what I've accomplished in life and where I've gone, and whats to come for me.  It's really exciting, yet scary at the same time.

In high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do.  All through high school, it seemed as if I changed what I wanted to do every month or so.  It's so strange that I entered college with the same major that I am graduating with right now.  That is rare that people do that it seems.  I am the only one graduating in my class that was a broadcaster from the start.  That is something that I am proud of.

Honestly, I feel like I could go on and on about my life and going through college and what it means to graduate, but I don't want to.  I don't want to end up all emotional with this blog post, and I kind of want to leave it in the middle, without an ending.  That's how I feel life is going right now, this isn't the end, it's the start of something.

-GP

Commit to Transparency

The New Influencers this week was about transparency.  I have been learning about transparency in my Intro to PR class as well as my social media class and how important it is to be transparent.  I personally think that it IS important to be transparent.

If you are transparent, then everyone knows exactly what you mean.  It's easy to know what you want to get across if you are transparent.  If you aren't, then sometimes things can come across in the wrong way and people could get the wrong idea about what you are saying.

This, I suppose, could be applied to everyday life as well.  If you are transparent, then you can be truthful and honest with everyone.  This wouldn't always be helpful, but I think the pros would outweigh the cons in this situation.

- GP

Mother's Day

I think it's funny what the social media world can do for holidays.  People can take one tiny, simple idea, and it can circulate around the blogosphere like it was a national idea.  Things along the lines of changing your profile picture or changing your name.  It is really fun and interesting to see the people that go along with these ideas, and what they end up posting.

Take for example this holiday that was celebrated today, Mother's Day.  The new thing that went through facebook was to change your profile picture to that of your mom to celebrate.  This was something that I had done already, but it was fun to see the reaction that everyone had to this.  Many, many people changed their profile picture to honor their mother and show their love for their moms.

So even on the Internet, we all know where our hearts really lie, in our moms!

Love you mom!

- GP

The Epic-ness that was 127 E. Dobbins Ave. Last Night... Redux!

Stripper Pole Party - part 2!

My second blog post ever was about an awesome party that we threw at my house, and I think that one of my last blog posts should be about an awesome party that was thrown at my house.  This party that was at my place last night was a sequel to the party that was there a few months ago, that I made a previous post about.  I was thinking of copying and pasting the same post, but decided against it.

Same style of party, actually, it was basically the same party, only without the "Orange" theme.  So, there again was a dance floor and pole in my room.  It was a pretty interesting night.

This party was basically held as a result of the first one being great.  The strangest part about this party though, is that I was only in attendance for less than an hour.  I was actually doing the smart thing and getting work done, instead of having fun.  I was working on my resume tape, so that I could apply for jobs.  So, I was at the radio station in Freed for over six hours, and I finally got it finished.  So happy that I could finish.  That is a big relief, and it gets the monkey off my back.  It basically takes the past four years of school, and puts it into six and a half minutes.

- GP

Buyer Personas

We learned a little bit about Buyer Personas this week in class.  We learned that buyer personas are the first and key step in creating a PR plan.  You must start with it, and go from there with whatever you found out in the buyer persona.

To start a buyer persona, you must start with writing down as much as you know about the people you are researching about.  Then, from there, you start to research about your target audience.  The hardest part is thinking about where to research your target audience.  You need to find out more than you currently know.

Then you need to decide if you are going to interview others.  You also need to figure out what types of media and where to listen in or read to find out about this target audience.  Figuring out their language and what types of key words or phrases are used.

These things make it so tough to actually write up one of these buyer personas.  You really have a lot of work to do.  So, when you are preparing to do something along these lines, make sure that you have plenty of time to get what you need to get done.  It will take longer than you originally anticipated.

-GP

@GeoffPeterfy's Twitter Assignment

@Marvel

I am a big superhero guy, and it's kind of my weakness.  I like superheroes and I love superhero movies.  With Thor coming out next week, I thought that following Marvel Comics would be a good company to follow.  Marvel is a company that tweets a lot.  There were many tweets that I got from them everyday.  They also utilize links a lot in their tweets.  Every single one of they tweets has a link in it, and 99% of those links go back to their official web site.  So, they are using Twitter as a stepping stone to their web page.  They also used hashtags a lot.  Whenever they talked about a specific superhero, they used the hashtag to talk about it.  #Thor was obviously mentioned a few times with the movie coming out next week.

@nfl

I also am really into sports, as if you couldn't tell from my previous blogs.  The NFL draft was this week, so I figured that the official NFL Twitter page would be a good thing to follow.  It was good for during the week.  There were a lot of links to pre-draft things and mock drafts from "experts."  The NFL did a good job of utilizing everything that Twitter has to offer.  During the draft, the Twitter page was used solely to say which team picked which player.  They used a hashtag to the team, a link to their website with all the pick on it and a hashtag to #NFLDraft.  Overall, I think that the NFL has a good idea of how to use Twitter effectively.  Now if they could just figure out collective bargaining...

@SteveNash

Steve Nash is probably my favorite athlete in America.  Well, let's face it, the world, because I don't really follow international sports.  But, Steve Nash does follow international sports.  He is a point guard for the Phoenix Suns, but he is from Canada.  This means that he loves hockey.  He also loves soccer.  So, with the Suns not being in the playoffs, Nash has a lot of time on his hands.  His tweets were a lot more personal than the NFL or Marvel's tweets, because he is actually a man, and even though he is famous, he keeps his own Twitter.  Many of his tweets were about soccer games going on in Europe, and the NHL playoffs.  Very few were about the NBA playoffs though, which isn't that surprising, but is very surprising at the same time.  He had links that went to his personal photo albums of pictures that he has taken.  Many of them just walking around New York or places he has visited.  He also responds to a lot of his fans, but too many that he is obnoxious.  Nash really has social media down, as his Facebook page is pretty well kept as well.

@mcuban

I was thinking about who to follow for another professional person.  Someone that I would actually enjoy reading about.  So, I thought of people who owned companies.  Which brought me to owners of sports franchises.  I didn't want to do two people in the Phoenix Suns organization, so I chose Mark Cuban, who owns the Dallas Mavericks.  Cuban is a great owner.  He seems like he is just like a normal guy.  But, he is a great entrepreneur, and he knows what he is doing.  He goes to all of his team's games too, usually sitting in the front 2-3 rows, wearing a tshirt and jeans.  The way he uses Twitter is a good mix of professional and fan, the same way he presents himself.  He uses hashtags, and replies to people.  It is fun to watch him and see how the higher ups can act.

NFL Draft Failure

This weekend was the NFL Draft.  This year was a little bit different in how the draft worked.  With all the crap that is going on in the NFL nowadays and how the collective bargaining stuff is failing, the draft had to be run different.  There were no players that were allowed to be traded, because technically the teams don't own the players right now.

This is besides my point.  My favorite NFL team is the Minnesota Vikings.  They were selecting 12th in this year's draft.  They're biggest need or concern was the lack of a QB.  There were a lot of QBs in this year's draft, and a lot of good options for the Vikings.  Going in I knew that the best ones would be taken early, but I figured that the Vikings would be able to get one in the second round that still has a lot of talent.  

The Vikings chose a different route.  They saw that ahead of them, three QBs were taken and they panicked.  This led to them choosing Christian Ponder at #12 overall.  This is a QB that could have been drafted in the late second round or in the third round.  I am appalled that they chose him so early on.  It's just so frustrating, but, there is nothing I can do about it know except complain to people.  Oh, well.  Maybe he'll turn out to be something special later on.  One can only hope.

-GP