Steel Solid in Home Opener

Since this is an attempt at a sports blog, I am going to bring up how well my Steelers played this Sunday at home in their 2015 home opener at Heinz Field. The Steelers were the favorite with a 6.5 point spread and the Steelers won 43-18, so the spread was well covered. In the game, the Steelers were without 3 of their best players, 2 of them to suspension. Ben Roethlisberger looked good as ever completing 21/27 passes for a completion percentage of 77%. I won't go on the stats spiel as much as I will about how good the Steelers played against a team that was hot last Monday Night on ESPN in front of the whole nation. The Steelers opened up at New England against the defending super bowl champs and were without 3 of their star players and only lost 21-28. They come home against San Francisco, who beat up on Adrian Peterson last week and had a good running game in former Ohio State running back, Carlos Hyde. Apparently Pittsburgh likes a challenge because they rose to the occasion like no other. I was at baseball during the game so I had to constantly check my teammates for updates on the scores. I asked first and it was 8-3 Steelers. I came back to the dugout in 2 minutes and it was 16-3 Steelers. Then I went on a run for conditioning that took a little less than 5 minutes and my teammates yells, "Case, its 22-3 now!" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My Steelers were beating up on those sorry 49ers. The Steelers have been my favorite team ever since I was a little kid, so when they win my day immediately improves. Antonio Brown, who is arguably the best receiver in the NFL, had 9 catches for 195 yards and 1 Touchdown. Antonio Brown has 34 consecutive games with 5+ catches for 50+ yards or more. The Steelers will be returning All-Pro running back, Le'Veon Bell this week when they take on a tough St. Louis Rams team on the road. Seeing my team succeed and execute, as a sports fan, is very exciting feeling. Why do we get so into the world of sports and invest so much of our time and emotions into it? Because it is a passion that either you have, or you do not have. I certainly have a passion for sports and any opportunity I have to watch sports, especially the Steelers or Notre Dame football, you will find me in front of the closest TV.

Dislike the Dislike

It has been in the works for a while now, but Facebook is finally coming out with a "dislike" button. In an article on Gizmodo, the pros and cons of the dislike button are explained and it makes me wonder what the reason was for Facebook to change their mind about adding the feature. Facebook has always said they don't want a dislike button because it promotes too much of a negative image. "You don't want to go through the process of sharing a moment that's important to you.. and then have someone down-vote it. That isn't what we're here to build in the world" said Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. I agree with Zuckerberg here because adding in that "like/dislike" element sort of copies the app, YikYak. YikYak is an app with anonymous posts and when you post something, people that see will either up-voted on it and promote that post to other users, or it can be down-voted and be less popular among the media. Facebook pretty much invented the "like" button and with it, its popularity took off. The Gizmodo article credits the changing age demographic for the acceptance of the dislike button. The majority of the traffic and audience on Facebook today are adults. The chart below is a from the article on Gizmodo. It shows a large portion of the adults online use Facebook, as opposed to the other mediums such as Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. So even though all these old people are using Facebook, what does this have to do with the dislike button. Zuckerberg notes that times are changing for Facebook and the general audience and users of Facebook are parents and grandparents, not vulnerable teens talking about high school gossip. I would agree, more news related posts and current events is what I see on my Facebook Timeline than the social media content I find on Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram.

Social Media: Perfect or Poison?

Social Media seems to be a controversial topic today. Some people see the good in it and how it has to potential to revolutionize communication and networking. Others see social media as being sleazy with your resources and that it is not a professional way to network. In David Meerman Scott's book, "Real-Time Marketing & PR", chapter 13 covers the topic of companies social media policies. In the forum this week, I posted two companies social media policies; Adidas' and the Los Angeles Times. Those two companies are pretty successful and have been towards the top of the food chain in their respective fields. One reason could be they have adapted to the world we live in and have advanced their marketing, public relations, and publicity. The book states,"engage your marketplace right now, free your people to communicate in real-time." This made me think of the "United Breaks Guitars" incident and how they're social media policy came into play with the YouTube storm swirling around them. The social media policy in play was obviously not a strong or sensible policy because United did not react in real-time. In that situation, social media and a real-time reaction would have been so greta for United. I feel as though social media gives us an opportunity as an organization or company to try and level with our audience. When people see a large corporation or someone with a large platform make an effort to connect with them, it has more magnitude than just 140 characters. It creates a good image, it builds trust and allows the audience to have a closer connection with the said organization or company. I do admit social media can be abused, but that is why the policies are made. To prevent people from abusing it or using it inappropriately. I personally believe social media will do nothing but improve the nature of business, PR, and almost any aspect of the business professional world.

Instagram Blows up on 9/11 post

In his newest movie, Entourage, actor Adrian Grenier has received a lot of publicity and fame for the film. This past week on his Instagram account, he received a lot of scrutiny and insults, due to his posted picture in remembrance of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. The post read the following: "R.I.P the 2,996 Americans who died in 9/11," the graphic said below an image of the Twin Towers. "R.I.P the 1,455,590 innocent Iraqis who died during the U.S. invasion for something they didn't do." The post caused quite the uproar and had some graphic comments left that aren't appropriate for this post. "Disrespectful!! You are a horrible American!!" a follower commented. The article that was written about Grenier's post said that he deleted the post, but as social media and news has taught us so many times, whatever you put out there, it can always be found and retraced. A post like that on a day of infamy and solace is something that in my opinion, deserves an apology, and he has not yet given a response to the post besides deleting it. If we put our real-time marketing hats on for a second, we can tell that this is a bad move on Grenier's part for not responding to "crisis". His image is definitely in danger, at least it is in the U.S. Social media is tearing him apart for that post and it should be interesting to see how he responds to it all, if even does end up responding. 

Luck O' The Irish strikes again!

For the second week in a row, my Fighting Irish of Notre Dame have pulled off another remarkable victory. I know these consecutive posts may be tedious, but it is highlight of my weekend because of how the win occurred.  The Irish had played a pretty great game up to the third quarter. Then the crap hit the fan. Starting quarterback Malik Zaire went down with a broken left ankle and the Irish had to put in redshirt freshman, DeShone Kizer. I wanted to turn the TV off right then and there, because last week the starting running back tore his ACL and is out for the season, so now it seemed like our season was in for the worst. But the luck of the Irish had come around once again and the Notre Dame found themselves in a tie game on the road. The freshman Kizer, dropped back and found Will Fuller down the field to deliver a perfect pass and put the Irish up 34-27 with only 7 seconds left in the game. Notre Dame definitely escaped Virginia with a win, but under the circumstances that they played under, I can't help but be proud of my Irish. Every week, ND plays a top 5 conference opponent and they've done that for as long as they have been around, so to see them compete like that with their team captain out for the season was very "Ohio State like" of them. 

Notre Dame was the only team of my 3 favorite football teams to win this weekend. When a football game makes me jump out of my seat and start hooting and hollering, then it is a successful weekend in my book.

Embracing the Tweet: Real-Time methods

Twitter is more than an app. Twitter has become a global phenomenon that has linked people, friends, and businesses to connections that wouldn't be possible without it. The reading in "Real-Time Marketing and PR" talked about "Embracing the Tweet" in chapter 10. The author talks about how Twitter is so easy to use and allows its users to search whatever they want, whenever they want. The more I thought about how true that statement was, I kept thinking of ways to better my fraternity's Twitter profile. My fraternity, Delta Sigma Phi is an organization just like a business or company with a Twitter page. Our social media was a little out of date until the beginning of the semester, when we had one of our brothers go through all of our channels and update some information. One of our brothers is in charge of the social media channels right now, but after reading this book, there are some valuable tips that I could implement into our profiles. Those changes could make our image more appealing and give us more followers. In this article, it talks about the positives and negatives of social media for Greek Life. Recruitment is a vital part of the social media aspect for Greek organizations because the millennial generation is starting to become known for it's attachment to social media, and the best way to get in touch and connect with those potential new members is through social media. David Meerman Scott talks about how Twitter can sometime make an organization/business's image look sleazy if the post seems to have too much hype. Twitter is more than an app. It is a useful tool that can help our businesses and improve our overall public relations with others around the globe.

Real-Time for Real Businesses

In todays business world, the time to react is key. Knowing how much time you have to complete a certain task is vital to not only yourself and your business, but your associates as well. In this weeks reading of David Meerman Scott's, Real-Time Marketing, I was introduced to the idea of "Real-time" strategy used in businesses. First off, I learned that a standard time for a response for a journalist or someone in public relations is 72 hours. Being a journalist, this is important and pertinent to my major and career after school. In Scott's book, he notes in the world of business, you are rewarded for speed. Especially in any field with the media, speed is vital. Speed is not just what we think it is. There are laws for speed and in real-time, those laws can make or break your career and job. There are laws on how to disseminate the news and how to spread the word through different news outlets. Now these laws are not legislative laws, they are more advised principles to follow to better yourself and your business. At the same time, Real-Time thinking is not an "either/or" thing, it is a mindset that we must have as entrepreneurs, co-workers, and professionals. In our world of news, we need to use real-time methods and use speed in our work, because you’ve got to react quickly to the news. If not first, then early, because you can’t react late.