Hannah Bernice's Blog

Along with signing my internship work agreement, there was also a technology and internet usage agreement before I could begin working. This is a relatively new protocol for work places. Social media and online information is something that we consume on a regular basis and ingest without realizing how much of our life it really pervades into. This can obviously lead to distraction and inefficiency. As an intern, especially, it is important to keep these habits, or time drains, in check to make sure you are really dedicating your time to the organization and learning the tricks of the trade. Here’s are some key tips I’ve pulled together from different websites for you to get started on appropriate internet behavior during the work day.

Phones (regardless of how “smart” they are)

For many people it’s second nature to check your phone every few minutes for texts and email updates. You might even want more points on your current (verb)ing with friends, but your phone should really be left alone while at work on silent. Some professors you can get away with sneaking a peek at the touch screen of glory, but you never know if your boss, or their boss, will be walking up to your desk right then.

Social Media Platforms

I’ve struggled with this part in my past internships, not because I can’t resist logging onto Facebook or Twitter, but because my intern assignments require me to be on the platforms for research or content growth. It makes it difficult when a notification from a friend pops up in the middle of that, but I try my best to resist checking on it.It’s best to not be logged into these if you can.

If there are lulls in your work day, that’s perfect time to ask your supervisor for another task, help someone else out, or question another person in the office about their job and tasks. Use the extra time to grow, since you were lucky enough to be offered the position to learn from that company.

As silly as it sounds, saving up your notifications, messages, and alerts until the end of the work day give you something to do on your commute home or nights with no homework. Think of it as playing hard to get with your thousands of followers!

Email Proofing

My generation has become more and more casual with our methods of communicating, through email to text to HeyTell to having Siri write your texts for you. It is important to remember at the office that email ettiquite applies to even inter office exchanges. Some quick tips:

• BCC and CC supervisors when appropriate
• Double check and triple check who you are sending and what you are sending them. No one wants to create lag in the correspondence and reply with “there was no attachment!”
• Be brief and to the point, everyone is busy busy busy
• Remember that your work can most likely monitor all your email and web activity. Keep personal emails separate and at home
• Understand how your company is represented in each email you send out

Sources:

Bad Tech Etiquette to Avoid at Work (Mashable)

101 Email Etiquiette Tips

Now that the worst of junior year is done and finished, I have had a bit of a summer break and have jumped right back into working, or interning that is. I am interning at a small PR firm in Greensboro and enjoying yet another summer at Elon. Since I will have more free time, I plan to blog a lot more here again in preparation for my senior year, and GASP, post-graduate life and career! Hope y’all are having good start to summers and getting back into the swing of things after the long weekend!

Here’s a bit of what I did on Saturday with my family and friend:

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Here’s an interesting infographic I found sharing how Twitter is affecting the dissemination speeds of news content!

My favorite part is the list of news stories that broke on social media including the Hudson River plane crash, annoucement of the royal wedding (almost one year Will and Kate!!), Whitney Houston’s death, and Osama bin Laden raid and death. Crazy! Or should I say, #crazy!

The last-month-kick of school has been aggressively “kicking” me so I apologize for the lack of updates recently!

Earlier this week, the USC Annenberg Strategic Communication and Public Relations Center published its seventh biennial Communication and Public Relations Generally Accepted Practices (GAP VII). According to USC’s website,

“The survey provides practitioners with practical information they can use to better manage the communication functions in their organizations; identifies Best Practices against which they can benchmark their own organizations; and pinpoints trends to be aware of as they plan for tomorrow.”

I’ve copied their key findings in order to keep their language and message exact, but I thought it was worth sharing! Overall, the PR industry is growing at a health rate (with a spot being assigned for someone in the c-suite), social media participation and measurement is accepted as necessary, and traditional marketing/PR is declining as emphasis is being put on social, customer relations, and internal communications. Enjoy!

Source: http://annenberg.usc.edu/News%20and%20Events/News/120326GAP.aspx

Key Findings

• Budgets are mostly up: Public corporations on average reported higher public relations/communications (PR/Comm) budgets than respondents did two years ago. When asked about budget expectations for next year, more than 50% expect no change, while more than 25% actually anticipate budget growth.
• Measurement and evaluation are on the rise: Corporations report an increase from 4% to 9% in the portions of their total budgets allocated to measurement and evaluation of PR/Comm programs. This pronounced rise speaks to widespread adoption of social media monitoring tools and increasing use of primary research in program planning and evaluation.
• How you measure is linked to success: While companies have distinctly different approaches to PR/Comm measurement those measures tend to group into two categories:  “Outcomes” and “Outputs.” Companies utilizing “Outcomes” measures such as influence on stakeholder attitudes and opinions, the bottom line, etc. are much more likely to say they have a good external reputation and are successful than are companies that rely on traditional “PR output” measures — such as clips, impressions, and advertising equivalency.
• PR/COM has its seat at the table: In nearly 60% of responding companies PR/COM reports directly to the “C-Suite” (chairman, CEO, COO, etc.), reflecting today’s increasingly transparent, communication-intensive environment.
• Social media has become mainstream: Seventy percent of PR/Comm departments report budgetary responsibility for social media monitoring and 66% for social media participation. This reflects a 17% and 13% growth, respectively, over two years ago. Further reflecting a shift to Web 2.0 communication is a rise in responsibility for search engine optimization (SEO). However, PR/Comm departments appear to be mostly taking on increased social media responsibilities without additional budget.
• Some social media tools are hotter than others: The most widely used social media tools by corporations are social networking sites (i.e. Facebook, which is used by 53% of public companies), micro blogging (i.e. Twitter, also used by 53% of public companies),  Search Engine Optimization (52%), and sharing and producing online videos. Meanwhile, the use of wikis and virtual worlds has become nearly extinct.
• The field is expanding to include new functions: In addition to growth in social media the PR/COM field is experiencing growth in the areas of Internal Communication (up from 47% to 58% of respondents having such responsibility over the last two years) and Customer Relations (up from 6% to 15%).
• Marketing/product PR is in a state of decline: While still a “Core” function with 51% of corporate respondents having budgetary responsibility for it (versus 61% in 2009), there has been a substantial decrease in the emphasis on traditional Marketing/Product PR. This could be attributable to an increasing reliance on social media to promote products.
• Agency-of-record relationships are vanishing: Over the last ten years, the use by client organizations of a single outside PR agency of record has consistently decreased. In 2002, more than 50% of public corporations reported an AOR relationship. This number decreased continuously and has now shrunk to just over 15%. At the same time, the number of agencies used by corporations on an ongoing or project basis continues to increase. This is likely the result of a need for specialized and/or regionally focused agency services.

Last night, I participated in the Elon Network, a student-to-student networking event. In its second year, “the Elon Network is a student-driven effort that brings together students with great internships and jobs, professionals who want to help Elon students identify career opportunities and paths, and Elon students seeking to take the steps to success.” I took part as a presenter, meaning I had an internship and eager to network with my classmates to share tips on internship success. Selfishly, I got to network a lot myself too! I met many professionals in the industry from local agencies and even talked with people from Elon’s iMedia program. Hearing of internships from my peers also prepared me for my coming plans this summer.

The event was a great success as a grass-roots effort from students to help each other. Career services was there giving out free business cards and representatives from Brooks Brothers even gave advice on office appropriate attire. Talking with professionals and sharing my opinion and thoughts on the industry boosted my confidence AND excitement for my future career. It was perfect timing because I have a 10+ page “career plan” due in my campaigns class today about my goals and exactly how I will get there. As much as I am excited, writing all of those steps and plans out is very daunting; I never want to leave the Elon bubble! Except for when I find my perfect job in a year as a social media analyst and am ready to then be a big girl!

For those us of 90′s-babies, we grew up with campaign after campaign from “Truth” to keep us away from drugs and danger. Surprisingly, a recent study said that Twitter might be more addicting than cigarettes, alcohol, and even caffeine.

There are 100 million users on Twitter and 50% log in daily contributing to 240 MILLION tweets per day!

While obviously this is not as bad as an addiction, I have seen it first hand. Everything funny that happened at spring break was posted, muploaded, or tweeted within seconds to Twitter. The Twitter app on my friends’ phones still rivals Words with Friends and Draw Something. Professionals, adults, teens, kids, and businesses all head to Twitter for a quick, fleeting synopsis of recent news, headlines, stories, jokes. I even recently retweeted an article that people find psychological comfort in hitting up social media platforms like Twitter in times of a natural disaster. Even celebrities are addicted!

Here’s an infographic showing the numbers.

What do you think? Do you think you could go a day, or week without mentioning the little blue bird? Or would that just be a “whale of a fail”?

At first there was a time when Pinterest was just that. Then people realized the great growth and potential that the platform had. Everyone, especially product marketers, was urged to jump in and join. Now, a little down the road, analysts are taking a step back and realizing that maybe Pinterest isn’t for everyone. Since infographics are recently the best way to show lots of data in an understandable, yet creative way, I’ve provided two below. One breaks down data and understanding of the platform while the last one is a flow chart of whether you should put effort for Pinterest marketing.

My favorite part of these is that the first one listed out what users are actually using Pinterest for (aside from the joke of “every girl pins clothes they can’t afford, in a house they’ll never own, to make food they  don’t have access to, with a wedding to a groom they haven’t met”). But here’s what the experts say:

• Expressing themselves through pictures and images relevant to their lives (I’ve actually heard from numerous HR/PR professionals that employees are checking out potential hires’ pinterest accounts to get to know them and their interests)
• Reminding themselves of things they want to do, buy, or revisit (I have a board for each of these!)
• Sharing and recommending things that they think others should know about (Pinterest needs to make their tagging feature among friends more usable and popular and this is complete)
• Learning about and exploring specific or random topics (I love looking through the “everything” feed of pins to see a wide selection of what others are into)
• Searching for and discovering new or specific things to do, buy, look at, or read (Pinterest covers all niches like teacher craft ideas, DIY projects for new moms, all-in-a-day home renovations, sorority crafts for littles, and the list goes on)