4 Reasons Why Everyone Should Have A Hobby

By Lizzy Fillback and Robin Ezell

        Throughout the semester, we've used this space to tell you about the importance of going to college, finding a job and becoming a better student. Our post this week is all about finding something that makes you a better-rounded (less stressed)  person. This week we're talking about hobbies!

           Having a hobby is a great way to maintain your healthy, balanced lifestyle. While brainstorming ideas about why you we have hobbies, we also came across another great blog post here HERE. This article helped us get better educated about the benefits of having a pastime or a passion outside of our vocations. 

Why Have A Hobby?
           You may be thinking to yourself, "Why should I have a hobby," or "I don't have time for a hobby!" But did you know that your hobby just might save your life? Whether you are in school, working or retired, you still need an interest, or passion, or hobby to keep you sane and keep your brain in tip-top shape.

              According to our source above, there are many ways a hobby can enhance the work ethic and help someone succeed in their chosen career. When a person places too much emphasis on only one aspect of their life - at the expense of others - difficulties tend to arise. An individual, dedicated to his/her professional career, can perform phenomenally at work temporarily. Single-mindedness can help us achieve our objectives. Still, behind the façade of success, one is also prone to suffering from poor health and having dysfunctional relationships with family members, and even lacking any real intimate or interpersonal relationships.

What It Is A Hobby?
               According to dictionary.com, a hobby is any activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation.  Hobbies are credited to lower stress levels that are beneficial restorer in maintaining balance and harmony that maybe missing from your life. Hobbies can provide the outlet needed for our innate need to create. A hobby can uncover and nurture talents you didn't even know you had.
Four Steps For Choosing A Hobby

1. The first step is brainstorming. Brainstorm about what you like to do as a past time and think about what you are good at.
   Such as cooking, sewing, bead making, woodworking, painting, drawing, and crafting gifs, sculpting, playing sports such as golf or basketball and photography.
2.  The second step is  choosing a hobby is to pursue a pastime. These can be things such as a craft, club or association with people who have similar interests. By doing this you will broaden your social life with people who share a common interest in order to swap tips and stories about their passions in life.
3.  Once you narrow down your favorite past time the third step is easy. The step allows you to turn your favoite past time into a hobby. One can do this by discovering your inner talents.  By completing this step you and others around you will begin to notice a change in your behavior. This change will reduce of stress levels. When your mind is fully engaged in your hobby, the trials and tribulations of life in our fast-paced society have to take a backseat for a while. By the time you return to your life, all those problems and challenges don't seem quite so overwhelming and you find that you can handle them more effectively.
4. The last step will increase your overall health. A hobby will increase a sense of competence and accomplishment. By completing a hobby, your body is able to decrease stress levels, boost your confidence and are able to spend more time creating than thinking about your hard day at work or school. If your hobby involves creating something, there is also the satisfaction of making something special for someone special. A hand-made gift says to the recipient, in no too uncertain terms, that you care. You cared enough to take the time and make the effort to create something truly unique for them and them alone. That gesture says more than any expensive, store-bought ever could.

Hopefully, you've already got a favorite pastime. If not, there is a great wide world of choices out there. Start experimenting until you find your bliss.

Love in PR,

Robin Ezell and Lizzy Fillback

#bestappsforsuccess

Now that you have a basic understanding of how to tweet your way into the minds of an audience, it's time we find the sticks and rocks for your nest. (In Twitter-speak, that's when we successfully create a widespread presence on all our social networks.)

A number of people have created tools, called Twitter apps, to use twitter uniquely and  in conjunction with other websites. There are hundreds that exist, but we will share our top 5 apps to increase your fan base and develop a positive image among your followers.

1. Twitpic: Anyone will tell you that by far this is the most commonly used app. It  provides a platform for users to easily upload pictures to Twitter. Even citizen journalists often use this app to upload photos with stories that they are reporting on in real-time.
www.twitpic.com

2.Tweetdeck: A desktop app that lets you lets you manage multiple Twitter accounts from one place. It is an organizational tool that helps your filter tweets, schedule tweets and stay updated with all your followers. This is a very useful tool for public relations professionals to manage their many clients' accounts in a more structured manner.
www.tweetdeck.com

3. Twistori: This app gives you control of not only the present, but also the past. Twistori backs up all your previous tweets and allows you to organize them into a calender, such as  iCal or Google Calender. You can you archive an individual's tweets on a single calender, and also, a whole company's tweets too. For PR professionals this is a way to track growth and success and see the common trends at different points of a month or year.
www.twistori.com

4.  Monitter: Keeping track of specific keywords is an important job to better understand your publics and people in general. Monitter lets you search and watch several keywords at a time in a sleek columned layout with a pause button. It gives you the power to track topics in real time without the refresh button.
www.monitter.com

5. BubbleTweet: So, you've got pictures and your written words on Twitter, why not video? This app lets users record short videos and post them to their tweets in the form of a url. When users click the url, it takes them to the BubbleTweet website for them to view the video in a small bubble that pops up on the screen. This app is new and exclusive to Twitter. At the moment, you can only use it on your computer, but mobile uses are in progress.  
www.BubbleTweet.com

In conclusion, there are so many ways to use Twitter, and the applications discussed here may assist you and help boost the creative ways you reach out to followers.

Until next time, sweet tweets! 


- Kathryn and Allyson-

Get LinkedIn with a job

People are getting job offers everyday through LinkedIn. The hard part is where do you start? Here are a few helpful tips to get you on the right track for the opportunity with a future employer:

• Search companies who are hiring in your area: If you are looking to stay close to home or have a particular area you would like to relocate to, do an advanced search for companies hiring with your specific skills. For example if you are experienced in Photoshop, do a search with the area code for companies looking for that particular skill.

• Become acquainted with the hiring manager: It is important to connect with the proper people who can get you a job. The hiring manager is someone that you need to build a positive relationship with and analyze their profile for future references during an interview. This will show that you truly care about the company and your future position.

• NETWORKING: We cannot stress the importance of networking enough; who you know can go a long way. For example, one person who you are associated with can help you build connections with different companies or individuals. And you never know, that connection may provide a future job opportunity for you.

There are plenty of ways to make you more desirable to future employers: recommendations, current profile and showing your expertise in the Q&A boards. By being active on LinkedIn, you have a better chance of being recognized by future employers. SO stay involved and check this link out!

Stay Connected,

Mandy&Kelly  

#rightontarget

This upcoming summer, both of us (Kathryn and Allyson) are participating in internships at Porter Novelli, a global public relations firm known for its extensive work in social media. We will not be in the same office this summer, for I will be in New York City and Allyson will be in Washington D.C., but we will be sharing a lot of company procedures and tools along the way.

One tool we are most excited to learn about is called TrendingTarget. This was created by Porter Novelli to help gather information about what audiences care the most about in real-time. Using keywords from tweets and hash-tags,  TrendingTarget shows popular topics that people are tweeting about. This tool helps Porter Novelli get into their clients minds and further understand their wants and needs.

Porter Novelli has even made a video about this tool, describing it in more detail.
Click HERE to watch it!

As budding public relations practitioners, we hope to get experience using this tool first-hand this summer. We believe that TrendingTarget has the potential to become a leading analytic tool in social media marketing. Not only does it give you visuals of the statistics, but it also helps organize the actual tweets creating them.
This is only the beginning stage of TrendingTarget, but with time and revisions, it could become something used across the public relations spectrum.

What are your thoughts on TrendingTarget?




Until next time, sweet tweets!

-Kathryn and Allyson-

Content Strategy for Social Media

      As the semester winds down, I've been thinking about what I learned most this semester regarding content and my future profession. We all have social media for personal use but in recent years, social media has become necessary for companies who wish to stay relevant. Therefore an understanding of social media is more than necessary, it is VITAL for today's PR practitioners. 


Let's face it... 
     Whether you're using Twitter, which makes content short and simple, to Facebook posts (a little longer but still simple) or blog posts, which are undoubtedly more complex and involved but not rocket surgery...content can be confusing.


      Click here to download this basic "Content Rationale Worksheet", a great first step to defining the type of content you want to create and giving you a nice direction for your content once you know the answers.

created by: Jay Baer

When you're developing a broad social media content strategy for larger organizations, you have to ask yourself many more questions, of course. Tune-in next week (cliffhanger, alert!) as I discuss some of these organizational, audience and content-related questions that may be helpful as you craft content in the future. 


Love in content,
Austin and Zach

Austin Wildmann

Be inspired.

People love quotes, always have. There are days where we spend hours upon hours searching for the perfect quote, the perfect song lyrics, the perfect inspiration. 


As PR professionals, inspiration is critical to survival. Between blogging, managing a client's Facebook page, sucking down that third cup of coffee and catching up on the news, it is important to stop and smell the roses. It is important to stay inspired-inspired to write the perfect news release, the best headline and the meaningful blog post. 


So, take some time. Take some time out of your hectic day to be inspired. Brad Phillips, a writer for PR Daily shares 20 quotes to inspire PR professionals. 

Media interview quotes

1. “Does anyone have any questions for my answers?” —Henry Kissinger 

2. “It is always a risk to speak to the press: They are likely to report what you say.” —Hubert H. Humphrey

3. “The most guileful amongst the reporters are those who appear friendly and smile and seem to be supportive. They are the ones who will seek to gut you on every occasion.” —Ed Koch, former mayor of New York

4. “The questions don’t do the damage. Only the answers do.” —Sam Donaldson

5. “No word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. —Mark Twain

6. “An orator or author is never successful till he has learned to make his words smaller than his ideas.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

7. “This business of saying the same thing over and over and over again—which to a lot of Washington insiders and pundits is boring—works.” —Michael Deaver, deputy chief of staff to President Reagan

Message development quotes
8. “I am sorry for such a long letter. I didn’t have time to write a short one.” —Mark Twain (also attributed to others)

9. “Short words are the best, and old words, when short, are the best of all.” —Winston Churchill

Crisis communications quotes

10. “By the time you hear the thunder, it’s too late to build the ark.” —Unknown

11. “It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and only a few seconds to destroy one.” —Unknown

12. “If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.” —Henry Kissinger

13. “Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more.” —Mark Twain

14. “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” —Theodore Roosevelt

Public speaking 

15. “A mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.” —Quintilian, Roman rhetorician

16. “Three things matter in a speech: who says it, how he says it, and what he says —and of the three, the last matters least.” —John Morley, British politician

17. “It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” —Mark Twain

18. “According to most studies, people’s No. 1 fear is public speaking. No. 2 is death. Death is No.2! Now, this means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” —Jerry Seinfeld

Body language and delivery

19. “What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

20. “It is better to speak from a full heart and an empty head than from a full head and an empty heart.” —Dublin Opinion magazine (h/t Dianna Daniels Booher) 

Click here for the full article.

Be inspired.

-Abigail & Tia

#tweetsin90secondsorless

Has Your Ticker Tocked? 

When tweeting, time is of the essence. You need to plan your tweets not around when it is convenient for you, but when your followers are most likely to read them. If your audience isn't there to see your message, it can easily get lost in the Twitterverse. According to Social Media Revolver, a message has up to 90 seconds before it can get lost below the fold, or in other words, off a single screen. 

Understanding what times your audience is available is key to increasing visibility and awareness. Research done by a company called KISSmetrics says that noon and 5 p.m. are the peak times to tweet. Noon is popular because Twitter users are sitting down for their lunch break and 5 p.m. because they are getting home from work ready to relax, unwind and retweet. 

Also, you must be aware of how much you are tweeting during those hours. Your followers don't want a clutter of messages that will fill their Twitter timeline, just a few powerful messages. KISSmetrics states that 1 to 4 messages is the perfect amount to keep your followers interested. 

But what days are best to tweet, you might ask? KISSmetrics shows within their info-graphic that people are most prominent on Twitter on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Don't disregard your account on the other days of the week, but know that they will not get the same amount of feedback as you will on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. 

Click here for an expanded view!

Until next time, sweet tweets! 

-Kathryn and Allyson- 

Avoid the Plague of Bad Content

Warning: this week's post topic is bad ... very, very bad.

A few weeks ago, Zach and I wrote about good content and how to create it. This week, we are compelled to discuss bad content - and how you can avoid it.

“Content is king” is a familiar saying for those of us in the communications field.  It's nothing we haven't heard before and yet it is truer than ever before. Good content is not only engaging and interesting but it is also intelligent.

After 10 years of upheaval, the public relations industry is still smack dab in the middle of re-inventing itself. It is no longer enough to tell people that your product is best. Consumers are so much smarter these days. They are through with advertising and PR campaigns that they find insulting. Today's publics demand reality. They want the real story.

Next Stop? Snoozeville

3 Quick Tips to Help Your Avoid Bad Content

•  Do not place search engine optimization above quality: Make sure you aren’t just stuffing a bunch of keywords in a blog or website and calling it content. Don't be boring, be engaging!

•  Follow the 4-second rule: People should know the purpose of your site/blog within four seconds of visiting it. If not, why would they stay there??

•  Keep it simple: Your status, tweet, web copy or blog post must have a clearly defined objective and be easy to navigate. Use fewer words and more powerful imagery.  It's that simple.

We look forward to discussing all the awesome stuff we’re learning this semester. Let's "engage" next week when Mr. Peacock plans to tickle your mind with some grammatical stylings!

Love in content,

-Austin and Zach 

Austin Wildmann

Zach Peacock