Five things I’…

Five things I’ve learned in PR:

5. I learned how to tell my friends what public relations involves. I can explain the definition and tell them why I chose this as my major

4. I learned that there are many different jobs that I could find that I didn’t even know where out there, non-profit included.

3. I learned that I’ll be writing a whole lot more than I thought, luckily, I’m a great writer.

2. I chose marketing as my minor and I’m glad I made that decision. I learned that marketing and public relations go hand-in-hand.

1. Lastly, I learned that a job in PR is definitely for me. I love every aspect: writing, marketing, advertising, management, event planning, everything you can think of!

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/191/p90.mp4/

Three things

Discuss three (or more) things you have done to secure a job in public relations and three (or more) things you must do.

Well, the first thing I did was decide to get an undergraduate degree in Public Relations from one of the only schools in Georgia who give this degree. I know in other schools, you can major in general studies or communication with an emphasis on PR, but with a Public Relations degree, I hope to be one step ahead when I graduate.

I recently chose PR as my major so I still have a few things to do. I have to acquire an internship for Spring 2013. http://www.aboutpublicrelations.net/intern.htm It’s a lot better to have experience when you get out into the professional world of PR instead of just having the degree. I hope to have some experience under my belt along with the undergraduate degree when I move into a PR career.

I’ve looked for different types of jobs in different locations and I’ve decided to head in the direction of Atlanta. I’m not sure if I want to deal with marketing, crisis management, journalism, advertising, event planning, or what specific area I’d like to go into yet, (http://careercenter.nd.edu/for-undergrads/job-search/jobs-in-the-following-fields/advertising-public-relations/) but I’m hoping to work somewhere other than a large corporation, but if that’s my only option, of course I’ll take it. I wouldn’t mind working for a large company, I’d just prefer to start off small if I need to, get experience, and work my way up

When you start at the top, you have nowhere to climb, but when you start small, you can always work your way up!

My comments on peer blogs

Chelsea Rodenheiser, “Public Relations and Yoga… this may be a ‘stretch’”
– I was confused as to how you’d relate these two, but I like it! It makes sense. I can totally see where you’re coming from with the coordinating examples.

Morgan Love, “Event Planning is for Me!”
– I always wanted to be a wedding planner. I know it’s not exactly PR event planning but that’s what got me interested in event planning haha.

Kristiana Towns, “My Blog”
– You should make a Tumblr as your personal blog. It can be anonymous if you want to post about things more personal than fashion and funny stories. It doesn’t have to be anonymous though  it’s much more user-friendly than WordPress. There’s lots of pictures. Kinda like Pinterest.

Sunny Salzman, “What is PR?”
– PR becomes a lot easier to explain after you’ve gotten experience. You can describe different aspects and how each different sector works.

Paul Eddings, “First Exposition to Public Relations”
– I hope to continue on the advertising path as well. I’m a PR major with a minor in marketing. I plan on starting another school after I graduate from Southern and move as well.

Holy Muhlhan, “How I Found PR”
-I came into Georgia Southern as a Spanish major and when I started my junior year, I decided I didn’t like it anymore. That’s why I also switched to Public Relations 🙂 it’s way more hands-on and less of doing the same things over and over again.

My personal blog- “Jamee All Over”

Lets talk about your blog. How did  you devise your blog name? Who is the target audience for your blog? What are the popular forms of communication among your identified audience (i.e. word of mouth, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)? Is your blog connected to, or do you post your links, on any social media platform beyond wordpress to generate buzz? Why or why not?

I’m not going to give the URL of my personal blog on here because it isn’t related to college or school or a career or Public Relations at all. I don’t use WordPress for my personal blog, I use Tumblr (http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard) because it’s more user-friendly and can be extremely anonymous. But the title of my blog is “Jamee All Over.” Jamie All Over is the title of a song by my favorite band, Mayday Parade, who I talk a lot about on my blog. So I just changed the spelling of the title of their song to fit my name.

I post a lot of things about Mayday parade and my second favorite band, A Day to Remember. I’m in a long-distance relationship, so people come to me for advice on my blog about how to manage in their own long-distance relationships. I love How I Met Your Mother, so that gets brought up a lot. I’m interested in tattoos and peircings so those are hot topics too. My target audience is a mixture of men and women (men like the music, women like talking and reading about relationships), 18-30 (because there is a lot of sexual content and explicit lyrics from some of the bands), anyone in a long-distance relationship, anyone who needs relationship advice, people who enjoy art, body art, piercings, tattoos, and anyone who listens to pop-punk (I post about a lot of pop-punk bands besides the two I mentioned).

A lot of people I know on the blogging site I use hate Facebook. They go off on rants of how they hate Facebook and everyone who uses it. (http://hungryforlove-thirstyforlife.tumblr.com/post/20529036290/can-we-get-all-the-dramatic-facebook-bitches-off-of) However, Twitter is popular on the blog site that I use. A lot of people link their Twitter to their blogs. I have my Twitter feed present on my personal blog as well as on this blog that I use for school. Twitter is just to update people and I feel like it’s more acceptable to post 9749832 Twitter posts than it is to update your Facebook status to: “Going to sleep, waking up, taking a shower, washing my hair with my new shampoo..” etc. I connect my Twitter to my blog because I talk about a lot of the same things on both, and I use Facebook for talking to my friends rather than talking about my ideas.

What mass media says about PR

Discuss the portrayal of public relations in mass media. Are the images helpful or hurtful to the field? Can/should these images be changed?

What I learned from the mass media about Public Relations is that it’s “fabulous.” I didn’t learn much about PR from TV but what I do know I learned from “Sex and the City.” I saw Sam working with famous people, doing sexy things, meeting everyone in the world, living in New York City. (http://www.culturefeast.com/public-relations-not-as-glamorous-as-samantha-jones-wants-you-to-believe/) But when I started taking the classes, I learned that this is usually not the case. There are different types of PR jobs, not just practitioners. I always wanted to do event planning and I didn’t see a whole lot of PR people working in that field. I think these images may be a little hurtful to the field. A whole lot of girls go into the field thinking it’s going to be a glamorous job where you make a ton of money and never really do work. Guys see only women working in this field, and they’re less likely to go. Public Relations corporations are in desperate need of men, (http://www.online-pr.com/Holding/Devolution_of_Traditional_Media.pdf) and because this job seems so glamorous and fabulous, men are less likely to pursue a career in the field. I don’t know if these images should be taken away, but they should be changed. I feel like the mass media should represent different types of PR work. Not just the practitioners should be shown on TV, the other professions should be represented as well.

Public Relations and fashion.

Public relations is like fashion. With fashion, you’re trying to make your image more favorable. You dress nicely to impress people, you dress “casually” to keep attention away from yourself, and you dress badly if you’re in a hurry or trying to draw negative attention to yourself. Public relations is used to try and make a company’s image more favorable. Sometimes people use new tactics that don’t always work out – sometimes people use new tactics that do work out in a company’s favor.

Nicki Minaj and Lady Gaga are two examples of people whose fashion choices may work for them, but they wouldn’t work for anyone else (http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/What_can_Lady_Gaga_teach_you_about_PR_8318.aspx). Sometimes the idea of “fashion” can be taken too far. These two women are bold and have come up with new ideas, but this new ideas don’t work out ideally in every situation; in PR– agents can take things too far and give their companies a bad name, or companies can take things too far and make it harder for the PR rep. to keep the companies image looking good.

However, there are new innovations in both fashion and PR that work (http://www.prcouture.com/). In both situations, being bold is a good thing. But what’s more important is being current. Public Relations reps want to talk about what’s happening NOW– what’s going on with the company now and how they’ve transformed and become better. A company doesn’t want their PR rep trying to fix problems they had in the 80s. Also with fashion, it’s important to be “current” or you’re not being fashionable.

“What is Public Relations?”

During a conversation you are asked, “What is public relations?”. How would you describe the field of public relations? What tangible items/activities/analogies would you use with your explanation?

When my friends ask me what I’m majoring in (it’s a common question because I’ve changed my major multiple times), and I say public relations, I get one of two responses”Oh cool,” or “what’s that?” I’ve explained public relations so many ways! I usually give the actual definition (http://prdefinition.prsa.org/) but more often than not, people want examples. An example that everyone can relate to is Sam from “Sex and the City.” She’s famous, the show is popular, and quite a few episodes focus on what she does with her job. Public Relations is building someone’s reputation. I think Public Relations does for a person or a business what advertising and marketing do for a product or a service. A sort-of? tangible item that I would show someone is a clip from one of my favorite movies, “Valentine’s Day”! 🙂 Kara, played by Jessica Biel, is Sean Jackson — a well-known football star played by Eric Dane — ‘s press agent. Football season is coming up and there are rumors that Jackson will be retiring. This is getting a lot of hype from the media so Kara decides to set up a press conference (this is part of PR – http://www.eilerpr.com/about-pr-basics.htm) to set the audience straight and ensure that Jackson will be continuing his career next season. Jackson decides to use this press conference to come out of the closet. He decides to tell everyone at the conference that he’s gay, but says nothing about his retirement. Kara, playing the good press agent comes back by asking, “So are you saying you’re not retiring?” This puts Sean back on track, he says he’s going to play and everyone is happy.

How I was exposed to public relations and why it attracted my attention

When I was in high school, I decided to major in everything under the sun. It differed from one year to the next. First it was interior design, then architecture, then Sociology. That pattern continued into my junior year of college. I started off at Georgia Southern majoring in Spanish. I added a minor in public relations my sophomore year, before I even knew what public relations was. The summer after my sophomore year, I decided Spanish wasn’t going to get me anywhere besides being a teacher (and being a teacher is my worst nightmare!) Luckily, over the course of my first two years here, I met two girls here, Tashe and Lauren,  who influenced me to major in PR. We have the same personalities, we’re all really good friends, and the major fit them so I figured it had to fit me too. I love to be around people, I’m confident in my problem-solving skills, I think I’m good at gaining peoples’ trust, and I’ve always had a thing for writing (http://www.careers-in-marketing.com/adskill.htm).

Last semester, I started my first Communication Arts classes. I LOVE them! I feel like I’m much better suited for this than I did for Spanish. After looking around the PRSA website, I found that Public Relations is filled with careers that I dread much less than being a Spanish teacher, thankfully! (http://www.prsa.org/jobcenter/career_resources/resource_type/tools_tactics/CareerGuidePRSAFoundation/)