Study Abroad for PR Students

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By: Jackie Sears

Studying abroad is a great way to understand how PR works across the world.  There are many opportunities that studying abroad will help with learning more about public relations, on an international scale.

Each country varies on how its communication is involved with the public and stakeholders but in the end, PR has a similar meaning across borders. The more a PR professional knows about other countries and cultures, they will be able to correctly do business or seek job opportunities outside of the United States. It is good to keep in mind that a lot of corporations are international, meaning that there are multiple locations that are planted throughout the world. With this said, it is important for PR professionals to research and understand a culture before releasing information and speaking with the public when it comes to two-way communication, crises and promotion.

It only means so much to learn cross-cultural PR, but if a student actually experiences living abroad for a certain amount of time, they can benefit in their career by learning to grow with public relations and networking across the world. Not only will it make someone a stronger communicator, it will give you a diverse personification of yourself whenever looking for jobs.

I get to experience this by studying abroad in Japan. In five weeks of time I will be able to pitch stories to media outlets, research a cultural topic and write a blog. These opportunities will allow me as a PR student to learn more about a culture and apply it to every day writing and grow my horizon as a journalist. The studies that will take place are cross-cultural reporting and international PR. These classes will help with further understanding how to communicate in Japan. By doing this experience, I feel that as a PR professional I will be able to differentiate myself.

Public relations is the factor that keeps loyal followers towards a brand. By having an international experience and learning how to adjust to a new culture will help any student learn how to communicate with new publics and from that be beneficial to a brand.

Sources Cited

CIS Abroad. (n.d.). Why Study Communication, IT and Design Abroad. Retrieved from http://www.cisabroad.com/study-in-your-major/study-in-communication-it-and-design

UNT Study Abroad. (n.d.). Mayborn in Japan. Retrieved from https://studyabroad.unt.edu/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram

Periscope- A broadcasting App that may change PR

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By: Jackie Sears

Live-streaming is the new form of releasing information to a public. What better way to make your brand more personal and interactive than to create a Periscope? If you haven't already heard about this app, it is time to brush up on your knowledge about the great features Periscope can add to your PR strategies.

Periscope is an app that was released in March 2015 that was bought by Twitter for $100 million. This app is designed to live broadcast the user's daily life and allows instant interaction. Like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Periscope allows you to "like" or "heart" a live-stream. For Periscope, users are allowed to like the live-stream more than once and highlights what part of the live-stream is the most popular. It allows the broadcaster to stream whatever they like and once downloaded the app allows you to follow your favorite celebrities, journalist and creative users that interest the broadcaster.

Periscope is a useful tool for public relations professionals to incorporate as a tactic. Streaming apps like Periscope will allow PR professionals to directly capture and communicate with audiences in a whole different level. This could help at a shareholder meeting (if the live-stream is made private and shared with the necessary users) interviews with company executives and other public relations focused tributes.

With Periscope, it allows a global reach and allows public relations professionals to expand their publics by sharing the stream on Twitter. Since Twitter has purchased Periscope, it allows in its setting to share the live-stream on Twitter to be clicked on either mobile or watched through the computer. With the location tagging, Periscope will notify people nearby that the stream is occurring as well as be available to people around the world. Periscope features statistics to measure the broadcast. The statistics include the total number of viewers, total time viewers watched, number of hearts received and where hearts were most received. This tool is extremely helpful for PR professionals to focus on what content should be repeated in the future.

Periscope increases control over messages sent out to the world and more importantly, the target market. With a live-stream,  it will allow press conferences and interviews to be clear with more control and less interruptions.

Will you consider using Periscope in your PR tactics to reach your PR goals?


Cited Sources:

Findling, D. (2015, May 11). How Meerkat's fighting against Periscope: Apps. Retrieved November 20, 2015, from http://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/11/how-meerkats-fighting-against-periscope-apps.html

Gaab, K. (2015, August 21). 6 Ways to Connect With Consumers Using Periscope | Cision. Retrieved November 24, 2015, from http://www.cision.com/us/2015/08/six-ways-to-connect-with-consumers-using-periscope/

Pierce, D. (2015, March 26). Twitter’s Periscope App Lets You Livestream Your World. Retrieved November 25, 2015, from http://www.wired.com/2015/03/periscope/

The ‘Honest’ Company isn’t so honest

By: Jackie Sears

The most ironic scandal that has appeared in the media in the past year involves Jessica Alba’s ‘Honest’ products. Alba co-founded a $1.7 billion brand called The Honest Company that cherishes its natural and safe ingredients supplied in its products.

In 2015, The Honest Company was under a $5 million lawsuit that was brought on by a customer named John D. Rubin who claimed that some of the Honest products, weren’t honest. Products in The Honest Company have found to be mixed with unnatural ingredients and an ineffective product has surfaced to public eye. This lawsuit claimed under the brand’s so called “natural” ingredients included unnatural ingredients found in its products such as: hand soap to dish soap, diapers and its multi-surface cleaner. The claim specifically shined light on the brand’s sunscreen that had major backlash and caused many customer complaints because of major sunburns.

According to Benoit’s Image Restoration Strategy, Alba’s brand took step one and shifted the responsibility by acknowledging that there were some issues with the sunscreen in the past. With this claim, it reached step two of image restoration by evading responsibility highlighting the accident. The Honest Company handled the situation by releasing a statement that it would have a third-party testing to ensure the product as safe and healthy for its customers to hush claims over the sunscreen crisis that caused customer’s sunburns. The company had previously shifted its ingredients and released the product to the public before these claims, it hasn’t changed anything since.

The third step of the image repair theory was reached when Alba’s brand reached out to people who posted on social media about the potentially faulty sunscreen to ensure that it was out for its customer’s satisfaction and trust. With this action, the brand was compensating with the customers by reaching out to who had a bad experience with the sunscreen. The company also encourages people to express their concerns over any product and claimed it will do what is right for customer satisfaction in its product. By doing this, the company is working transparently to ensure its customer's trust.

The final step of the image restoration strategy is mortification. Although the brand did not formally apologize for the sunscreen, it did take note to test and ensure its product for customer safety and released a statement that its customer’s concerns and confidence is important to the brand.

Overall, The Honest Company has used the consequentialism theory by serving the greatest good for the greatest number. It takes in concerns of its customers, but it listened to the majority that has not had a bad experience with the sunscreen after third-party testing.

The Honest Company explains the sunscreen should be applied 15 minutes before going outside and evenly on the skin, whereas people who have had bad experiences may have not applied it correctly.

The brand since then has released a disclaimer that it is not a perfect company and as science and research improves, it will improve its products with it.

Sources Cited

Alesci, C., & Wattles, J. (2015, August 4). Jessica Alba's Honest Company defends its sunscreen. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/04/news/companies/jessica-alba-honest-company-sunscreen/

Moran, G. (2015, September 8). Jessica Alba's Honest Company is expanding—just as shoppers are questioning "natural" products. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2015/09/08/alba-honest-company-beauty-line/

Nauman, Z. (2015, September 3). 'Honest isn't': Jessica Alba's nontoxic natural product company facing $5 million lawsuit after claims items they sell are ineffective and contain chemicals. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3221953/Honest-isn-t-Jessica-Alba-s-nontoxic-natural-product-company-facing-lawsuit-claims-items-sells-ineffective-contain-chemicals.html

The Honest Company. (2015, August 3). A message from the founders. Retrieved from https://blog.honest.com/a-message-from-the-founders/#

Research, the platform where all good PR officials stand on

 

 

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By: Jackie Sears

Research is an extremely important tool to use because it shows validity to your campaign and your posts as a public relations official. After you have found your target market that your company is appealing to, keep in mind to configure a research plan in order to correctly target your audience. There are multiple ways to do this, but the two to consider are primary and secondary research.

One of the best ways to do this is by doing primary research. Most companies have access to online survey tools like Qualtrics and other data based websites for secondary research like MRI+. It is important to know what your target market is thinking about your product or the competitive brand. In order to do so, by interviewing and having a focus group based off the common answers you have received from an online survey. The great thing about having an online survey from Qualtrics or SurveyMonkey is that they both allow the consumer to answer honestly without feeling judged. Some people in group settings won't answer honestly or there will be a certain person who speaks their mind and doesn't allow anyone else to speak. Once you have collected your primary research from online surveys and one-on-one interviews and focus groups, you can learn more about how to reach your target audience as well as sell your brand to them.

Secondary research is available throughout your organization's resources of books, scholar articles as well as online searches. It is good to know what the public thinks about you by searching your organizations name as well as the different brands that you are working for. This way you know how to approach your target market as well as make improvements for the brand and interacting with it.

Research is crucial for public relations professionals to strategize on what is best to do next for the company or brand. Without it, PR would not be efficient or doing its job. In order to reach advancement in your followings on social media and loyal customers you need to have strong brand engagement leading to customer satisfaction and profit increase for the brand. It is important to stay loyal and open with your target market, but first know how to reach them.


Sources Cited

PR Friend. (2016). The importance of research in public relations - PR Friend. Retrieved from http://www.prfriend.com/research-in-public-relations/

Sanchez, C. (2013, September 24). 3 Reasons Why Research Is Crucial to Effective Public Relations | Weber Shandwick Seattle - Public Relations and Digital Marketing. Retrieved from http://www.webershandwickseattle.com/2013/09/3-reasons-why-research-is-crucial-to-effective-public-relations/

Snapchat, the revolving social media

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By: Jackie Sears

Social media is revolving through out the decade to the point where there has been numerous platforms made available and instant. A popular platform for college aged students as well as young adults that has been around for the past four years is an App on smart phones called Snapchat.

Snapchat started as an idea from a college student at Stanford that has made its way to having over 100 million active users. This is substantial to the social media realm and has since made a quite a few changes in Snapchat's settings as well as social media history. Facebook has since then bought out Snapchat, but with such a creative and interactive App, Snapchat is offering more than users could have imagined four years ago. 

Mid 2013 is when Snapchat released the "Story" setting where users could post their snaps to a 24-hour storage where all of their followers could view and respond to the posted snaps. This is when businesses started to step in on the platform as a social media marketing and public relations tool.

More recently, in the past year of 2015 Snapchat has offered companies and news stations to take advantage of the social networking tool's new launch, the "Discover" page. This page has allowed ESPN, National Geographic, CNN among many others get information out to the public at a fast rate. In reality, millennials are getting news from social media, so by offering news platforms an opportunity to get their news and updates on Snapchat is huge for the millennial generation and those to come.

Snapchat is a realm that public relations officials need to evolve in their campaigns. Since this App is very active and entertaining, it is important to promote your brand's Snapchat on other social media platforms as well as e-mail blasts to notify your target market to follow the brand's Snapchat username. Be unique and exciting when promoting the brand to encourage more followers and viewers, which will in the end enhance your public and allow more of a personal relationship and involvement with the brand.

With social media, public relations has become more of a personable field since it encourages two-way communication while putting a face to a brand or organization. By using Snapchat, public relations and marketing officials can use photos and videos to promote what is going on within the company and what promotions are made available for the audience to participate in.

Happy snapping!

Sources Cited:
Conlin, B. (2014, May 27). Cheat Sheet: Snapchat for Marketing and PR | Cision. Retrieved April 08, 2016, from http://www.cision.com/us/2014/05/cheat-sheet-snapchat-for-marketing-and-pr/

Vaynerchuk, G. (2016, February 01). The Snap Generation: A Guide to Snapchat's History. Retrieved from http://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-snap-generation-a-guide-to-snapchats-history/

Content Marketing and Social Media

By: Jackie Sears

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Social media is a great tool for reaching out to your target market. A strategic way to look at social media is that it is a way to perform content marketing towards the selected audience your brand is targeting to. In order to do this, here are some things to plan by:

Listen to your public. This is what makes your brand personable and relatable. If you are not understanding of what your audience cares about, you will not be able to relate or engage correctly with them. Once you have learned the background about your target audience, a great tip to consider is to plan out a content catalog for your social media websites to engage your audience.

What is the final action you want received by the public? Once you have a background on your target market, you will know what social media platforms you should be publishing content on. It is important to specialize in a social media platform that is convenient for your target market and move them from that select platform on to your brand’s website, become a subscriber to your e-mail blasts or whatever platform you want them to engage in. Once you have found the correct social media platforms, it is a necessary step to take into importance of what you want the followers to act upon- i.e. sharing, retweeting, re-blogging etc.

Content and tone- is it the same across all platforms? First and foremost, it is a necessity to have the same voice across all platforms but content may vary in terms of lengths. This is because communicating to people on Facebook is different than communicating on Twitter. Research what your audience likes in order to know what you need to post, whether it be focused primarily on images and video versus text and links. The best way to do this is to have a variety of posts to keep the viewer interested and intrigued, all in while educating and informing your audience.

Content marketing is how companies educate their target market and engage with them in order to gain sales and even advocacy. In order to do this, it is in your brand’s best interest to know your target market and engage with the followers while intriguing their interests to becoming a loyal consumer or continuing a relationship with a loyal follower.

If your brand has its research on its target market and has a solid tone of voice, you are on the road to success in marketing your brand to the public. Continue to be personable on your social media post as well as on all other platforms and people will continue to be interested in your brand.

Cited Sources:

Baer, J. (2015). Here’s the Difference Between Content Marketing and Social Media. Retrieved from http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-strategy/heres-the-difference-between-content-marketing-and-social-media/

McPhillips, C. (2014, June 20). How to Build Social Media Into Your Content Marketing Processes. Retrieved from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/06/build-social-media-content-marketing-processes/

Will PR practitioners be more ethical or pretend to be more ethical?

By: Jackie Sears

Public relations practitioners tend to get a bad name for themselves because of the way the media and how Hollywood portrays it as an “image making” career. From an outside perspective, public relations might look exactly like the previous statement. Contradictory to that belief, PRSA has stated that PR as a profession and its reputation is founded on a platform to protect integrity and public trust (PRSA). This is grounded in the PRSA Code of Ethics, which “promotes advocacy, honesty, loyalty, professional development and objectivity”.

The field in which public relations practitioners work within is one where ethical dilemmas are around every corner and cannot be avoided. Since this line of job has an intertwine of media and business environment, there have been instances of poor management correlating with problems of not being ethical in the field (Lee, 2012). Public relations may be founded on being honest and objective, but has leaned more towards loyalty of the client, prioritizing the client over applying the professional ethical code (Harrison, 2005). This is found in the practices of virtue-based PR ethics, which only focuses on what is ethical for an individual instead of what is the correct thing to do.

Studies have been researched over public relations and whether or not it remains ethically driven.  As of today there is not an abundance of support for ethics training and baseline education of current practitioners. If this is true, it highlights a misunderstanding of the career that needs to be reinterpreted and valued in current and future public relations practitioners. The value of following the code of ethics needs to be placed in top of mind in order for practitioners to make ethical decisions applied in difficult situations that aren’t being used today. In the end, it will be harder to dig the firm out of an unethical situation ignored by the PR practitioners rather than be ethical and honest with the public in the first place.

PR practitioners will be more ethical because of all of the training we receive as students studying the field and case studies that have been done about other companies that are made available to the public. The code of ethics may not offer what to do in certain difficult ethical situations, but there is never a new problem that a PR firm or organization has not faced. This highlights the importance of studying what other firms have done and taking note of what to do in crisis communication plans. There is never a way to be ready for a crisis or how to handle an ethical situation, but there is a way to take in consideration of the client, the public and the reputation of the PR firm through research and doing what is right. It is important to be loyal to your client, but if your client isn’t able to ethical and loyal to its audience, it is important to consider dropping the client or confronting the client to stand up for ethical practices.

Sources Cited:

Harrison, K., & Galloway, C. (2005). Public relations ethics: A simpler (but not simplistic) approach to the complexities. Retrieved from http://www.prismjournal.org/fileadmin/
Praxis/Files/Journal_Files/Issue3/Harrison_Galloway.pdf

Lee, S. (2012). Ethics Management in Public Relations: Practitioner Conceptualizations of Ethical Leadership, Knowledge, Training and Compliance. Retrieved from https://learn.unt.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-3447337-dt-content-rid-47298209_1/courses/JOUR.4470.001-NT752.1161.1/PREthics2.pdf

PRSA. (2009-16). Ethical Guidance for Today's Public Relations Practitioners from PRSA. Retrieved from https://www.prsa.org/aboutprsa/ethics/#.Vvk9Hz_NWCS