My Internship: Salvation Army, Weeks 13 & 14

The last two weeks at the Salvation Army have been a whirlwind of both emotions and busy work. I've gotten to finish out a lot of projects I've been working on during my whole internship and gotten to experience different aspects of the public relations industry I knew nothing about.

Getting to work with Kelli throughout my time here has been an experience I'll never forget. She really cared about my learning experience and answered any and all questions I eve had.

Thank you to Kelli and the Salvation Army in Cnetral Ohio for an amazing experience as the Community and Public Relations intern for the fall of 2013.

Have a good one!

My Internship: Salvation Army, Week 12

This week i spent time working on some different graphic design elements to use in the next couple weeks. After Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping there come Giving Monday. Giving Monday is a day for people to give monetary donations as well as other charitable donations in the spirit of the holiday season. There are also a lot of times to donate food to local pantries before Thanksgiving comes upon us.

Until next week, have a good one!

My Internship: Salvation Army, Week 11

Now that we are getting down to my last few weeks a the Salvation Army, Kelli is is starting to leave a lot of what I am doing up to me. She lets me know all the various projects she has to do for the remainder of the year and is letting me decide what I want to do. She said she wants to make sure that I am getting every possible experience out of this internship and that it will be something that will benefit my future. 

Kelli is the kind of supervisor I hope that I get to have throughout my future careers. 

Until next week, have a good one!

My Internship: Salvation Army, Week 10

This week Kelli and I worked on creating some thank you videos on iMovie to upload to YouTube and send the video in the thank you emails to all of the businesses and people that came to the luncheon. It was actually kind of fun because I knew a little more about iMovie than Kelli did and got to teach her some of the stuff I have learned over the years using it.

I am glad that some of my own background knowledge is coming into play in my internship.

Until next week, have a good one!

My Internship: Salvation Army, Week 9

This was a really big week here at the Salvation Army. On Thursday we had the annual Need Knows No Season luncheon where donors and special guests from the Salvation Army and around central Ohio gathered to talk about the various hunger problems happening in the central Ohio. The days before were simply spent preparing for what was to come and the event went on without a hitch.

The lunch was delicious and the venue at the Columbus Convention Center was amazing. Definitely a day to remember in my internship.

Until next week, have a good one!

My Internship: Salvation Army, Week 8

This week was another design week at the Salvation Army for me. I was working on some different banner ads for the organizations website homepage. I also got to work on some mock up infographics to use for the upcoming giving season. November is the biggest food giving time of the year for the Salvation Army, especially because of the Thanksgiving holiday season.

Until next week, have a good one!

My Internship: Salvation Army, Week 7

This week at the Salvation Army I worked on the press release I've been researching. I wrote up two different drafts of the release and had Kelli look over both and give me her suggestions for both. After that I chose the one that worked best for the GED training center story and Kelli showed me how to submit the press release to different written news outlets in central Ohio.

Getting this kind of real world experience is exactly what I wanted from this internship. I hope that all of the experiences here are going to help shape me into the kind of public relations professional I want to be.

Until next week, have a good one!

My Internship: Salvation Army, Week 6

This week was spent working on research for a press release and designing a flyer for a retreat hosted by the Salvation Army. The research was pretty easy, I was really just looking at GED programs in the central Ohio region because the Salvation Army was going to be opening a new GED training/testing center on the west side of Columbus.

The retreat flyer was fun to design because I had a lot of freedom in my design, just as long as I was following the branding guidelines. I am really enjoying all of this design experience I am getting and glad that I am getting to build up my portfolio.

Until next week, have a good one!

My Internship: Salvation Army, Week 5

This week I was able to go into Mills James Creative Media where Kelli and another woman from the office, Erica, were going to work with one of their editors on promotional videos for the "Need Knows No Season" event at the end of October. There are three different videos that they are working on and all of the background music they are using is music that I picked out, which is pretty exciting for me.

It was really interesting to see a professional video editing process and all of the tools and equipment they used to create the pieces. The experiences I'm gaining from going out and joining Kelli on projects like this are what I feel will be invaluable to my future career.

Until next week, have a good one!

My Internship: Salvation Army, Week 4

This week was pretty relaxed as far as work went. A lot of the time was spent on finding background audio for some promotional videos that were going to be used at the big end of the year Salvation Army "Need Knows No Season" event.

Next week I will get to go to the studio where Salvation Army in Central Ohio has all of their promotional videos recored and edited by professionals.

Until next week, have a good one!

My Internship: Salvation Army, Week 3

This was the first week I was able to do some graphic design work for The Salvation Army in Central Ohio.

I created a design piece that was to be placed on the website's homepage in the photo slider that contains a lot of the organizations upcoming events and campaigns.

This specific design piece was targeted toward their Hunger Knows No Season food drive campaign that is to take place at Central Ohio Kroger locations.

So far the internship is going well and I am getting a lot of freedom in the way I write and design pieces for the organization.

Until next week, have a good one!

My Internship: Salvation Army, Week 2

This week, as I dove further into this internship, I was able to work on some news writing and press releases for the Salvation Army. I contacted some business owners for sources on stories we were sending to the Dispatch and received some good advise from my supervisor on how to format and write these releases.

My supervisor is Kelli Trinoskey and has worked for The Salvation Army in Central Ohio for a few years now as their director of public and community relations.

I found out that next week I will be able to start working on some graphic design pieces for the organizations website homepage. Definitely looking forward to that.

Until next week, have a good one!

Beginning of My Internship Process: Salvation Army, Week 1

This was my first week working as the Media Relations intern with The Salvation Army in Central Ohio. I applied for and received this internship a couple weeks ago and have just completed my first week of work. My schedule throughout the semester is going to be M-W-F after i get our of classes (around 3:30 p.m.)

This week I did not have much to do as I was just getting started and my supervisor was getting in order what all she had planned for me this semester.

I worked on updating the Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn connections of The Salvation Army in Central Ohio as well as looking over past press/media releases so that I could get a feel for the writing style of The Salvation Army.

I am looking forward to what this internship will bring about in myself. I have never done anything with a non-profit so that is something I'm really looking forward to.

This blog will now turn into a week-to-week update on how my internship is going throughout the semester.

Until next week, have a good one!

Sports Injury Leads to Social Media Outpour

This past Sunday, one widely talked about and covered sports injury took place in the NCAA Tournament. It is being reported as one of the worst injuries basketball has ever seen. 

In the Duke vs. Louisville game, University of Louisville player Kevin Ware suffered a compound fracture in his right leg. 

Ware had 6 inches of bone sticking out of his leg, but encouraged his fellow teammates to quit worrying about him and to go and win the game. His fellow players took his message to heart and won the game, beating Duke 85-63.

Not long after the injury took place and was shown nationwide, professional athletes, college ball colleagues, and sports enthusiasts started an outpour of remarks and condolences across social media for the young college ball player. Ware went into emergency surgery after his injury and is recovering currently.

People like Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann, ex-professional basketball Michael Jordan, Boston Celtics swingman Terrence Williams, Miami Dolphins wide receiver Brian Hartline, Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III, Phoenix Suns forward Jared Dudley, television and radio host Larry King, Duke's Seth Curry, rapper Lil Wayne, and Houston Rockets shooting guard James Harden all had kind words to say for Ware. 

"Prayers go out to Kevin Ware. No athlete wants that to happen to anybody," tweeted Michael Jordan.

"I've never seen a worse accident in a basketball game. I wish Kevin Ware nothing but the best," said Larry King.

"And my thoughts and prayers to Kevin Ware!," said Seth Curry.

All of these messages of condolences were able to reach Ware through the use of social media. I send my own condolences to Ware, his family, his teammate, and all the Louisville fans.

Google Getting Bad Social Media Buzz?

Now that the Best/Worst Social Media Practices assignments are all done for our class, it was interesting that today, Google, the company that my technology group used as our best practices company, is getting a lot of hatred for something they do every year and actually all the time around holidays or other special days in history.

Today, for Easter Sunday, Google featured American farm worker, labor leader and civil rights activist, Cesar Chavez on it's homepage. This act, something they again do all the time, riled up Christians on social media sites.

Anti-Google tweets began appearing, bashing Google for using Chaves instead of Jesus Christ on such a day.

The reason Google chose Chaves was because it would have been his 86th birthday.

One tweet protestor mentioned how he was going to start using Bing from now on, Google's biggest competitor. It is interesting to note, though, that Bing did not feature Jesus Christ either. Instead, there were brightly colored easter eggs.

I thought this was rather interesting because it appeared that Google, in my eyes, was just trying to be neutral, and offend no one person or religion by choosing a historical figure like Cesar Chaves.

I guess you just can't please everyone.

New Facebook for Android?

Facebook announced to the media via invitations that they would be unveiling a "new home on Android" on April 4th. 

The social media site has already announced it would be releasing many new things this year but this invitations seems like it is going to be something special to only Android. TechCrunch speculates that it might even include an altered version of Android.

Speculations of this unveiling include the possibility of Facebook acting like the user interface “skins” that companies like Samsung and LG use on their Android devices. It may also act as an “application” layer that integrates native applications like Messenger into the phone. Other rumors point to the idea behind “Facebook Home,” which would essentially be a heavily skinned Home screen.

Obviously these are all just rumors and speculations, but regardless, something big is coming with Facebook and Android.

Equality Painting Social Media Red

With the Prop 8 and DOMA hearings taking place this week, you may have noticed many social media platforms changing with a sea of red. Users are changing their profile pictures to the Human Rights Campaign sign, only this time shown as a red box with pink equality lines. 

The image is replacing profile pictures on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and elsewhere. The usual symbol of yellow lines on a blue background was changed to this red and pink format to symbolize the color of love.

HRC release the image on Monday, before the hearings, and by today there were and estimated tens of millions of shares.

Some wondered if the message that HRC tries to convey with their symbol was being muddled by the fact that many memes and spoofs of the image were being made, mostly in a positive way though. Images of the symbol with the frowny Internet star Grumpy Cat and "True Blood" fangs began to appear, as well as many other.

"There's a lot of serious conversation going on and there's an awful lot of important concepts that the Supreme Court justices are discussing," said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C.  "What this logo going viral means is individuals have reduced it to a very straightforward concept."

So it appears that the widespread usage and sharing of the image, in almost any form is a welcomed occurrence. Thanks to social media sharing, things like this are possible.

Criminals Get Caught Because of Social Media

People commonly use social media to let people know what they are up to on any given day or at any given time. Most people, though, wouldn't think of a criminal doing so when they are committing a criminal act. ABCNews.com just reported several criminal acts caught via social media. These criminals were basically showing off their crimes for the world to see.

1. A Pennsylvania man's nativity Jesus was stolen from his yard during this past Christmas season. While trolling through Facebook pages of the various people in his town, he came across a picture of the Jesus figurine that was taken from him. Police contacted the Facebook user who, along with a juvenile accomplice, had indeed snatched the figurine.

2. Couple Tareq and Michaele Salahi made the mistake of posting a picture on Facebook of themselves crashing the White House state dinner. Most people know that it is actually a crime to crash that specific party.

3. A 19-year-old young man broke into someone's home to steal various items, and while in these strangers home, proceeded to long onto his Facebook page and then flee the scene. His Facebook page was left open for the homeowners to see when they arrived home.

4. A man posted all over his Twitter as to how his recent computer hacking activity lead to the stealing inappropriate pictures and other various items of an innocent person. One thing he forgot to do, other than just not saying anything at all, was to turn off the GPS data his Twitter was providing, which lead authorities right to him.

5. An alleged rapist decided to chime in on a string of Facebook comments about his crime, speaking directly to police. This prompted the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office to inform him, also via Facebook, that his warrant "calls for nationwide extradition." McCombs continued on, despite the Sheriff's Office continued reminders, and eventually a demand, that he make use of his right to remain silent.

6. A young woman posted a YouTube video, where she completely confessed to car theft and bank robbery while obviously under the use of illegal narcotics.

These criminals may not be the smartest when it comes to committing their crimes and making it known to the entire world, but they sure know how to use social media!

My First Twitter Chat Experience: Finding Out More About LinkedIn

Last night I participated in my first Twitter Chat experience ever. I'm still working on getting the hang of using Twitter, so I'm really glad that my strategic communications class assigned us a Twitter Chat assignment. We were asked to attend an entire Twitter chat session and contribute to the chat.

The chat session I chose was #LinkedInChat. This chat session focuses on answering peoples questions about using linked in and people also give advise about how to make your LinkedIn profile better.

I just recently created a LinkedIn profile and I am working on improving it's quality and contents. The chance to get some questions answered and see other people's questions and answers really helped I believe.

Here are some of the tweets I sent out using #LinkedInChat:

It was great to contribute to the chat and I actually got some great feedback from people I directly asked questions to and even people I didn't. I look forward to attending more Twitter Chat sessions that relate to other areas of interest I have in my professional life as well as my personal life.

The #LinkedInChat chat session happens every Tuesday night from 8pm-9pm. The hour I spent attending this chat session seemed to fly. Everything seems to happen so fast. I could barely keep up with all the tweets attached to the hashtag for the chat session. 

The one thing I really liked about this chat session was that even though the moderator, Viveka von Rosen (@LinkedInExpert), provides a discussion topic for each nights chat session, you can ask her any question you have. It does not need to relate to the discussion topic, it only needs to relate to LinkedIn.

I would definitely suggest people who want to get advice on making their LinkedIn accounts better attend this twitter chat session.

Social Media Profiles Serving as the New Resume

Many companies are focusing more and more on their social media presence these days. With that being said, looking for new employees to already have great social media reputation and professionalism is key. 

Time magazine recently reported that a Jobvite survey of over 1,000 companies found that 92% of employers said they will use or already use social media as a means of recruiting. They even seek out shared connections on social network sites and even message potential candidates directly.

Having a strong presence on social media can be an effective way for people to get noticed by companies, as hiring practices are moving away from emailed resumes and job board postings. 

The best way to get employers to even look at you in an online format is to make sure your name is a search magnet. If employers look you up online and can't find a single thing about you, your chances of getting the job, through social media or not, are less likely.

Recommended ways of getting noticed online include:

• Maintaining blogs,
• Keeping active LinkedIn profiles
• Posting evidence of professional skills
• (YouTube video of an impressive speech)

So, when making posts on your Twitter and Facebook, make sure you are being aware of what you are writing, how you are writing, and who is able to see what you have written. Hopefully you already have nothing to worry about and can use your social media profiles in a more professional manner.

Instagram: Now on Your Computer and For Your Business

A few weeks ago you may or may not have noticed something interesting about your Instagram. Instagram announced that they would now be allowing users the ability to browse their entire Instagram feed on the web, just like they can on their mobile devices.

Users are able to use the web to do the same things they can do on their mobile phones. Browse through photos, liking photos by double-clicking or clicking the like button, and conversing with others through inline commenting. 

Instagram felt a strong need for the creating of a web page to allow more accessibility to it's  ever growing community.

The website is only meant to allow browsing through your Instagram feed, as Instagram is focused on keeping the taking of photos to be on the go, in the real world, and in realtime.

Instagram is proving to be a great platform for companies to start using as it gives their followers a more unique and visual form of interaction with the company. Many clothing stores and event planning companies are finding Instagram to be a very valuable asset.

Reasons businesses should use Instagram include:

• Showing your products
• Showing how it's made
• Going behind the scenes
• Showing what your products can do
• Giving a sneak peek
• Showing your office
• Sharing travel experiences
• Introducing employees

Twitter and Facebook are known for being the leading social media outlets, but now it's time to start making room for Instagram.

Push for More Social Media at the Oscars

The 85th Academy Awards are expanding their digital outreach with the help of the stars. The Oscars will have photo booth style set-up back stage at this Sunday's show where stars will be able to take pictures with the help of a "Twitter Mirror." Stars will be able to snap photos of themselves and send them out via Twitter, on the academy's official Twitter account.

The mirror will be set up back stage in the green room where stars go before they make their appearance on stage. This gives viewer and Twitter followers to get a look at what goes on backstage at the Oscars, and area normally closed to press and photographers.

The show is also introducing a new video feature that allows fans to instantly view show highlights on-demand after they happen and share with people through Twitter and Facebook. 

Oscars.com will be featuring behind-the-scenes interactive features, as well as a new live blog that collects the show's presence across social media.

The academy's push for a better social media presence is sure to garner new fans of the show as well as connecting with all of the current Oscar fans.

Make sure you watch the Oscars this Sunday and be aware of how affectively the show is using it's new social media practices. 

Interested in Internal Comm Now?

In today's class we had a guest speaker from JP Morgan Chase come and talk to us about internal communications and what she does as an internal communicator for the company. Amanda Atkins is the AVP of Corporate Communications for the company

First and foremost, she was an excellent guest speaker. She really knew what she was talking about and had great tips to share with us on being a successful communications professional. 

Her tips included:

• Building great relationships within the company, both people at the top and bottom of the hierarchal ladder.
• Knowing your business. Not only your own company, but others in the same industry as well.
• Capturing the voice of the speaker you are writing for to ensure authenticity.
• Knowing your audience. Where are the people you are communicating to? What do they do?
• Ensure the messages you create and distribute are easily understood, relevant and actionable.
• Listen to the feedback from those you support.
• Keep your journalism skills sharp. You want to be the strongest communicator in your company.

Some tips I found on my own while researching more on internal communications include:

• Timeliness and transparency are next to godliness.
• Nurture your company’s personal web.
• Your managers are your local spokespeople.
• Survey the staff.
• Follow through with all feedback.

After hearing the presentation from Amanda, and then researching on my own, I think I may have found a new area of communications I might seriously consider looking into besides just public relations.

BuckeyeThon: My Experience For The Kids

I recently attended one of the most inspirational and moving philanthropies and fundraisers on Ohio State's campus. BuckeyeThon is as they put it "Ohio State's premier student philanthropy and Ohio's highest fundraising dance marathon. Buckeyes coming together to fight cancer For The Kids!"

The event lasted from 8pm on Friday night until 11pm on Saturday night. BuckeyeThon benefits the Hematology/Oncology Department of Nationwide Children's Hospital with the ultimate goal of ending childhood cancer.

During and before the event I sent out a few tweets about what was going on and the fun I was having. I used my Instagram and Twitter the share these moments.

Many other Buckeyes were sending out tweets and Instagramming moments from the event. One hashtag used relentlessly throughout the event was #BTFTK, which meant "BuckeyeThonForTheKids." 

This was a wonderful event to participate in on campus and was really great and easy to use social media like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for. I definitely plan on attending this event again next year.

Welcome to my blog...

I am starting this blog as part of a class assignment, but hopefully it can turn into something more outside of this class. The class is Comm 3334 at The Ohio State University, and our instructors are Alyson Moses and Kaylea Annen. The purpose of this class is to expose us to the various types of communications mediums in the current public relations environment.

My personal experience with communications is that I am an Agricultural Communications major at OSU. I chose this major because I have a passion for the way people around the world communicate. Not only about agriculture, but anything else that is a heavily discussed topic. My background just happens to be in the agricultural field.

As I am looking more into what I see myself doing after college, I just keep coming back to public relations time and time again. It just feels like that best area of communications where I can actually see what I have to say being of importance to people. I enjoy the thought of being able to use forms of communication that I already use in my own personal life like Twitter and Facebook, and now blogging.

I hope that the thoughts and views I share on this blog are of importance to someone and can be useful in helping to develop myself in the public relations field.