Blogging Experience

I use to blog for Communication Career Services on Campus at UT to show the student perspective for finding jobs and internships. Here are two examples:

NETWORKING at the 2008 PRSSA National Conference

Getting a job in Public Relations depends on who you know…NETWORKING! This word is engrained into our minds from the first PR class taken here at UT. If you are a PR major and haven’t heard it yet, you better learn it now!

As I explained in my last blog entry, I am a senior PR major. I would like to share my networking experience at the 2008 PRSSA National Conference in Detroit.

I would suggest attending this conference or any similar opportunity depending on your major. Imagine 500 PR majors trying to get their names recognized by the national recruiters at the same time. Sound intimidating?? Well, multiply that by three.

The PRSSA conference gave me the opportunity to meet peers, recruiters, and other practicing professionals in every possible type of PR, such as public affairs, agency, corporate, consumer, etc. The special networking events during the conference allowed me to ask questions about what the professionals actually do from day to day. I even met a professional who graduated from UT in the 50s and used to work at this college!

Overall, the PRSSA conference assured me that PR is want I want to do!

Now, don’t misunderstand me. This conference was not life altering.It was, however, a chance to meet practicing PR professionals. I received valuable tips and practiced selling my “brand” to potential employers.

10 reasons to attend the PRSSA conference next year:

1. Lots of business cards (aka Networking)
2. 5 days of “vacation” in the middle of the semester
3. A chance to view a different city! (next year: San Diego)
4. Practice selling your “brand”
5. Make new friends from UT and around the nation
6. Résumé enhancement
7. Learn the newest trends (instead of reading outdated textbooks in class)
8. Free stuff!! (from employers and other schools)
9. Catered food (no ramen noodles for 5 days!!)
10. Keynote speakers!! (Mitch Albom was AMAZING!)

Here are a few tips from the professionals I met at the conference:

1. Use your student status! This gives you the opportunity to ask questions about the field and the companies without looking like a stalker. It also gives you networking possibilities.
2. Read and Write everyday!!!!
3. Getting internship experience should be your priority. If you don’t have experience, it is nearly impossible to get hired.
4. Don’t dismiss opportunities because something might take up a Saturday or an entire weekend. Use every resource available while you are a student to learn and make yourself stand out in a crowd of 1,500 students.

Why did I go to the Career Fair???

If I could share one word of advice as a PR senior, it would be to PREPARE before the internship and job fairs. I definitely noticed a HUGE difference between my two experiences at these fairs.

Last year, business casual didn’t mean business casual. Everyone wore suits, and I felt completely out of place. I felt like everyone knew something that I didn’t, and everyone seemed to one-up me! BUT…I was going to make the best out of the situation. I waited in the long lines for the three PR firms, and I really didn’t know what to say when I finally got a chance to speak with the recruiters. I didn’t think to research the firms and didn’t know what to say about myself. I left completely frustrated!

You would think that I would never step back into that ballroom. Like I said before, I am a senior, and I need a JOB! So, I decided to try again.

This time, I researched all the companies and picked the ones that looked the most appealing to me. I put on my suit jacket, since I was told that I can’t dress the part until I have been offered the job. Then, I walked into the ballroom with my revised résumé and confidently waited in the lines for the different firms. After I left the last booth, I truly felt accomplished because I had made valuable networking connections.

Here are a few things that I noticed and would like to share:

1. I was interviewed on the spot. The recruiter conducted every conversation with students as if we were in the actual interview.

2. Some recruiters wanted specific names of media that I pitched 2 years ago! I am glad I knew everything I stated on my résumé.

3.Some recruiters are nice and some are not……

4.Dress for success because it really will give you confidence. (It did for me!)

5.Don’t ignore a booth that is not looking for your specific major. I went up to a company that was recruiting CSD graduate students. I talked to the recruiter to learn more about the company, and he told me that they have a marketing department at each of their locations.

These are just a few things that I noticed as a PR student. Hopefully, if you actually read this entire posting, you will not make the same mistakes that I did!

Social media, my other lovah

Social Media
Form MY own Community
Place to share MY thoughts


I LOVE social media because:

The Facebook stalker wall keeps me updated on useless information about my extremely close acquaintances.

I can network with thousands of business professionals with the click of my mouse.

Thought leaders with thousands of followers on Twitter care about what I say!

I can blog about any topic possible and at least one person will be interested. (This is completely true – my uncle, age 73, is my Facebook friend. We definitely have nothing in common! Social media is not just for those youngins anymore.)

I can tweet at 3:30 am, and my followers all over the world will read it in real-time….That’s crazy!!

I got an A on an assignment for sending a Tweet to the professor!

I can watch Borat clips whenever I need a good laugh…High Five!

It combines work and pleasure….who wouldn’t want a job that consists of something he/she loves to do?

Social Media as a Public Relations Tool: The Student Perspective

By Aubrey Levinstone, senior, public relations

(original article: http://advertising.utexas.edu/PublicRelations/news/PROD75_024181.html)

"I joined Facebook to become connected with friends from high school and college," says Torey Lopez, a senior in public relations at The University of Texas at Austin.

"I started receiving group invites for companies that I have never heard of, and I think it is really annoying."

Lopez sounds a familiar refrain of student Web users, suggesting that when companies create fan pages and event invites to promote themselves and their products, they may be tarnishing rather than burnishing their image.

Connie Reece is the founder of Every Dot Connects, a social media consortium located in Austin. "PR professionals, whether internal teams or outside agencies, are being swept up in the maelstrom created by the collision of top-down messaging and bottom-up innovation -- and there have been casualties," she writes in her article "Is Your PR Team Social Media Savvy?"

Reece, a recent winner of a Texas Social Media Award, says PR professionals sometimes create profiles on Web sites or communicate with bloggers without the proper knowledge of how to interact in Web 2.0. She also says that this problem has become so troublesome that blacklists have been created to stop agencies from spamming E-mail addresses with badly targeted press releases.

Bloggers are not the only people complaining about this phenomenon.

Students like public relations major Angela Valente say they are often targeted on social networking sites they visit on a regular basis, such as Facebook.

"I am part of the Facebook group Friends of The Blanton Museum of Art because I love going to the museum," says Valente, also a member of the university's chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America.

"I would have ignored the group invite without viewing the profile if I wasn't interested in the company, which is what I do with most businesses that want me to join their groups."

Experts say that businesses that want to engage social media need to learn the basics of how to interact or they will annoy or be ignored by their student audience, or any audience for that matter.

"Listen first. Then, listen again," says Todd Defren in his blog PR Squared. "You may find that the big plan developed six months ago is no longer relevant, since this space moves so darned fast."

Defren says some companies either create profiles without doing their research first or wait too long and their topics lose significance. This is where the audience begins to disregard the messages altogether.

Each company needs to research and listen to the conversations before they actually engage with their target audiences, Defren counsels. The more they know about audience segments and this new type of media, the better chance that their messages will be received positively and at the correct time.

"For my internship, I continually update band profiles and events on Web sites like Myspace and LastFM," says Ashlee McRae, senior in public relations. "We listen to the fans and then update the profiles with some of their requests."

"I also use blog aggregating tools, such as Technorati, to see which bloggers are talking about the bands," she says. "I think it is important to see what people are saying before we start using social media tools."

Although many companies do not know the rules of interacting in Web 2.0, some do it well.

Communication Career Services at the University of Texas at Austin uses social networking tools to give students information relevant to them.

"They have a Facebook fan page and a blog to send out news to the communication students," Lopez says. "I like that I can find out information about the job market without having to go into the office all the time."

Lopez says that social networking sites offer a "unique way to present information," suggesting how effective social media can be when used well.

"I would rather read their blog than look up the information on their Web site," she says. "It seems more personal and important when the author of the blog is discussing an issue."

Yes, I started a blog

All of the previous posts are from a Rhetoric class at the University of Texas at Austin--Technology of the body. These are all random topics, thoughts, and ideas about defining the human body through literature, movies, paintings, documentaries, etc.

After blogging for weeks in the class, I decided it was too much fun to give up. All of the posts after this one are about anything and everything that I think are important to discuss. Enjoy!