College Football Podcast

This weekend after going home, I had the chance to sit down with my best friend Brandon Kohl. Although Brandon is not a professional, I chose Brandon to be in my podcast because of how good he is at arguing and proving his point. Also me and Brandon watched college football all weekend long and we've played football along side each other since we were 8 years old, so we have a pretty firm grasp on football in general. In this podcast, Brandon and I were originally going to be doing one topic in college football. Instead, Brandon made a good point to just do a college football segment, and in that segment, cover all of the points that were going to chose from. Attached is the link to the podcast. Making the podcast in itself was pretty easy to us because it is just us talking like normal guys about something we are passionate about. The hard part of editing out all of the long pauses or speech miscues. Luckily my editing class in the past and my experience working with convergent media helped me find my way to the finished product. I also have given a link to my podcast on my Facebook and Twitter pages. The bond me and Brandon share is unique and he is someone who relates to my problems better than anyone else, so when I thought of who could I get to do this podcast with me, BK was the first one to come to mind. Enjoy the podcast and if you like what you heard, come get some "moe".

Can Snapchat take the Crown?

In the timeline of social media apps to come out, none of have been as personal, hot and trending as much as snapchat. The app is owned by a variety of age groups and even some professional organizations have a snapchat profile to show their everyday business and to give the audience a more personal look at what their day-to-day agenda looks like. For example, the Pittsburgh Steelers have a snapchat account and as a fan, I follow the account to see what is always happening in Steeler nation. Whether it be the videos of practice drills, players talking to the camera or just plays captured in action, the account gives its fans and audiences the chance to see content that most other news outlets and journalists couldn't capture. The app also has the ability now to chart and track events all around the globe and bring them to the tips of your fingers. I may not know what is going on in the Presidential campaign right now, but if I look at Snapchat, I can find the Story feed for the Presidential campaign and what the candidates are doing to win our votes. Even other stories are shared, such as a story for Paris or Rome or any city for that matter. Snapchat is starting to take over the social media turf and it's major competitors are still the "big 4", but the little ghost we all love is making its way to the top. When someone snaps me, my first thought almost every time is, "how can I respond?" The app really forces us to carry on a conversation because when we send a snap to someone, we can see when they opened and when they opened it. I also think that because Snapchat is so instantaneous and real-time that we want to send back an immediate reply to carry on the conversation. Although Snapchat is popular, it does have it's downfalls and is a reason why it has yet to take that extra step and separate itself from the other younger and less popular apps. Snapchat has no trending ability for SEO. There are no keywords we can look up to find content, but that is because the content we see in a snapchat is gone after the snap is over. Granted, the story is up for 24 hours, but after that, there is no way to track your click-rate, your content and how long it was viewed. There is a feature on snapchat that allows you to see how many people viewed your snap and who viewed it, but you can't see how long they viewed it and how often they viewed your snap. The room for improvement is there, but the app is progressing at a rapid pace. Snapchat is here for the long run and could spook out the competition in years to come. 

Brand as a Media: Share This

This week in our class reading for the book, "Share This" we covered the topic of brands becoming their own media and how that can be an advantage for public relations professionals and journalists around the world. It is happening in many magazines, newspapers and publications and has created something called "brand journalism". Brand Journalism is simply promoting your type of journalism through your brand. An example of this can be used as sports journalism is brand journalism because it is predominantly fed through ESPN the magazine or Sports Illustrated. The brand almost owns the media because when people pick it up, they are not only reading what the magazine represents, but what the brand as a company or corporation represents as well. When people see the ESPN body issue, it can be a toss up. I am sure there are plenty of people out there that are opposed to seeing the 350 pound nude body of Texas Rangers baseball player, Prince Fielder. An argument to that would be that these players are having the courage and comfort to show their bodies to the whole world because their body and their sport is their craft, respectively. When I read an article online once about the ESPN body issue, I saw a different, more artistic side about how the athletes approach the offer and how the photographers really capture the elegance in these athletes' bodies. The brand that ESPN is giving off to some is an appropriate way to get athletes to show their sexy side and is too vulgar for some audiences. The brand that ESPN is giving off in my opinion (and I'm sure I'm not the only one), is a brand that isn't afraid to push the envelope in our day and age and takes something that could be seen as sinful and graphic, and turn it into something beautiful and strong. The journalism of sports is something that has more content to it than just pictures of naked athletes and washboard abs, but this little inkling of sports journalism belongs to ESPN the magazine now, because no other sports magazine will be able to take the body issue that ESPN has created and mimic it in a better way. The brand of ESPN transcended with the body issue and will only get better with all of the highly tuned athletes still come in the future.

A Weekend Much Needed

This weekend I found my happy place. Fall Break was setting in, my birthday was still on my heels and my bets friends birthdays were still to come. My 3 other best friends have birthdays on October 9th and October 12th. All 3 of us were turning 21 this weekend so one can assume that we would celebrate appropriately. I have been having a rough time the last few weeks and in case the reader is not a dedicated follower to this blog, my post last week caught some people's attention. I come to you all in a much better place than before. On Friday night I had the chance to go out with some friends and get my mind off of things. When we are with people instead of being alone, it makes us feel alive. We're human and we yearn for the company of others to make us feel wanted and loved. Loneliness can be a sickness and the best medicine for loneliness is friends to lean on. I was well medicated this weekend. I got the chance to see some close friends from high school that have gone far away since graduation. We all rendezvoused in Columbus for the Ohio State game. Columbus is always a great atmosphere as it is, but if the 64 degree fall weather of Ohio is in the air, it is a no brainer for me to head southwest. One of the best friends I was most excited to see was Cory Wilder, who is a pitcher for the NC State baseball team. Cory's family moved to Georgia last fall and it isn't as easy to see him anymore. Luckily, Cory is a great guy and hasn't changed in the big division 1 spotlight. He said he loves when he has the chance to come to Ohio to see all of us because we all just love having Cory around in general and his younger brother Chase is now a freshman at OSU, so visits are mandatory ;). Being a pitcher, Cory gave me some advice on how to bounce back from my knee injury and even though I am five days older than him, I have always looked up to him. As we sat down and just had a good private talk, I came to the realization that no matter how many bad things happen, there are always gonna be good people there for me that love me and will do whatever they can to help. I have thought for a long time that just keeping my problems to myself is what is best for me, but when I use the friends and family that I have been blessed with and keep them close to me, nothing can bring me down for long. Having Cory and the rest of my friends around really helped my morale and how I am looking at this stage in my life. Today is Cory's birthday, so it is only fitting that a post be dedicated to the one and only Cory Wilder.

"What has Google Ever Done for PR?"; Share This

In this week's reading of "Share This: The Social Media handbook for PR Professionals", the author mentions the many ways that Google has revolutionized not only the world, but the PR profession in particular. In just our Social Media Principles class alone, we have seen that Google Analytics is one of the many critical tools for success in PR. The other ways to use Google for PR are Google Alerts and Google News. The worldwide phenomenon of Google is used every second by someone on the Earth. Someone on the globe at every point in time is searching something on Google because it is so iconic.

Google Analytics, which is mentioned multiple times throughout the book, is a system of algorithms by Google that can determine statistics which couldn't be accessed otherwise. Information such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay-per-click) are now at our disposal. These statistics and analytics are numbers that
have completely changed the way we can use the internet and online networking. Knowing what times of the day people visit our website, how long they stayed on our site, what content they viewed and how long they viewed it and when they viewed it. All of this information is critical to the way we improve and progress as a profession.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is another way that Google has helped the field of PR. SEO is a way to determine what keywords were generated or put into the search engine to find the site. If for example, my site was a Nike Shoe site, I would probably see the key search words, "Tennis shoes, running shoes, kicks, Nike shoes, or workout shoes." This kind of information is also vital to how we will move forward. If the key words that are searched are low in hits or views, then we can adjust the way we want to have our product or site be found. Awareness of the site also comes from this information. The more views, hits and traffic a website has

'Lurking' behind closed doors

Today's adolescents are constantly spending time on social media. The Plurals generation has a staggering amount of people that are considered social media "lurkers". According to this CNN story, the term "lurking" means, "reading the never-ending stream of their peers' activities without posting anything themselves." The lurkers of social media are purely checking their peers posts and not posting anything with their own opinion or stance.

When I first saw this article, I had to ask myself, "Are you a lurker?" I am an avid social media user, but I often catch myself lurking and simply roaming through the social media feed just to like things and explore others posts with no intent to post anything myself. The lurking method to social media is more apparent and popular than we may think. A lot of my friends are terrible Twitter junkies and will do whatever they can to find the newest trend on their timelines. Even when they get on Instagram or Snapchat, they are opening the app and looking at the activity with no intent to post something themselves and start a new conversation on their own.

Lurkers are a new breed to the technological audience. Does that mean because they are new, that they are unimportant? In some peoples opinions, yes. Social media can be used for multiple reasons, and in my opinion, just surfing the web for the newest meme or the funniest vine, is pointless. I hate seeing guys, especially guys my age, go nuts about being on Twitter and talking about their timeline. Don't get me wrong, Twitter is an amazing tool for networking, communicating and PR, as well as to socialize, but when all you do is get on Twitter and waste your data on retweeting videos of cats using GoPro's and 30 second fight vines, it is a waste of resources and just a desperate attempt to entertain yourself.

Polar Bears Take A BIte Out Of The Blue

All hope seemed to be lost for our Polar Bears on Saturday when they were playing the John Carroll Blue Streaks in a conference football game in University Heights, Ohio. I wasn't in attendance, but I knew that our football team had a big game on its plate versus a nationally ranked John Carroll team. A win would move the Polar Bears to 4-1 and maybe the best start to a season in a while for ONU. After using social media, I found some tweets on my timeline talking about the game. Coincidentally, I was driving back to Ada, so as a loyal listener, I tuned in to 94.9 FM The Beat and listened to the broadcast of the ONU game. With the game on the line, on a 4th and 20, Freshman QB Will Freed chucked a deep ball to senior tight end, Justin McCray and he pulled the ball down for a 37 yard touchdown pass. The Blue Streaks still had 4:22 left on the clock but the Polar Bear defense prevailed and held their ground. ONU is off to a hot start, maybe its hottest in recent years. A freshman QB from the West Coast is under center, an electric receiving core and a defense that refuses to give in. The Polar Bears have beaten 2 teams in a row that have been major problems in years past, so now with Mount Union in the near future, Coach Dean Paul and his troops will truly be battle tested.