Andi Narvaez: All of the above

Yesterday I got up at 6:30am (an ungodly hour for me) in order to make it to the first day of BlogHer’s 6th Annual Conference in New York. I have met and had great conversations with many of the women here and picked up some great tid bits of knowledge from the sessions, but I honestly don’t think I could summarize or try to encompass all of it in one post.  In lieu of that, I grabbed links to useful BlogHer ’10 resources and the live blogs.

But my job is not done.

This was a guest post on “The Buzz by Mike Schaffer.” Mike writes about public relations, social media, pop culture and sports. Mike is AMAZING. Stop by his blog and follow him on Twitter. Tell him I sent you!

Hi, my name is Andi Narvaez and I’m addicted to LOST. Like some of you, I was told by the rest of you, “you HAVE to watch it. It’s sooo good.” And not only did I watch it, I’ve devoted the last seven weeks of my life to catching up from the very first episode. That’s right. If there are six seasons, a total of 121 episodes, each 45 minutes long… you do the math. The sad thing is that after the second season, it wasn’t even worth it. But like a good addict, I couldn’t quit it.

As a public relations graduate student and a very active (annoyingly so? please don’t tell me ) social media user, I’m always interested to learn more about both fields and the neat things we create using social media.

Enter Help a PR Pro Out (HAPPO).

HAPPO is designed to help connect PR job seekers with employers looking for top talent.

The conversation has really taken off on Twitter. Using the #HAPPO hashtag on designated dates as well as on a regular basis, public relations job seekers and employers are benefiting from each others’ participation.

Albeit a few days later than I had originally announced due to a few changes to the syllabus, my students have turned in some great social media case studies. But don’t take my word for it!

Each group picked a brand and wrote a case study that illustrates how social media humanizes brands and helps them be a part of the same communication process and the conversations that everyday individuals, like you and I, engage in. Please check out their brief abstracts below and vote for your favorites! The authors of every case study that earns at least three votes will earn 2 extra credit points on their FINAL course grade. My students’ fates are in your hands!

This was a guest post on “The Buzz by Mike Schaffer” this week. Mike writes about public relations, social media, pop culture and sports. Mike is AMAZING. Stop by his blog and follow him on Twitter. Tell him I sent you!

This week I’m teaching my COMM 107 students all about social media . Well, as much as I can teach them in such limited time. Check out the presentation I built using Prezi (posted below).

Just as I was racking my brain for a social media-related homework assignment that would help my students see the same light I saw about two years ago thanks to my teacher, Vidya Ananthanarayanan (@mapetite) … I get a DM from @MikeSchafer

Whether launching right around Valentine’s Day was part of Google’s strategy for Google Buzz remains an unanswered question; however, after turning Google Buzz back on to see its progress, I caught two “buzzes” (is that what we’re calling them?) that made me post an update to my followers:

If there is something this whole Google Buzz episode has taught us, it is that the community of early adapters that is connected by social media REALLY wants to see things improve and move forward for everyone . Whether or not they will use this product themselves is irrelevant… someone else might find that it’s the perfect fit and that is reason enough.

This weekend, I read a few articles on public relations research that got me thinking (I think that’s what my professors were going for ) The general consensus is that public relations research is often limited to the evaluation of the products of short-term communication programs when what it should be doing is evaluating the products, processes, and the outcomes of both short- and long-term programs (Grunig & Grunig, 2001; Michaelson & Macleod; 2007). Of course, this statement assumes that organizations are conducting research in the first place…

This semester I’m taking “Public Relations Publics” at university of Maryland, which focuses on what matters (or should) the most to public relations practitioners — the people.

We discussed the difference between the terms “stakeholders” and “publics” and agreed that stakeholders are those who are affected by what the organization does and have stakes in the results of those actions. Publics are not only affected by organizations’ actions, they also have the potential to become involved in those actions and to influence organizations that way. This concept of publics comes from the Situational Theory of Publics, developed by University of Maryland Professor James E. Grunig (yay Maryland).

It is true what they say. The good ones are worth the wait.

Christmas came early for those of us — in fact, most of us, according to a November 16, 2009 article on Read Write Web — who use TweetDeck as oru third-party Twitter client of choice. This week, TweetDeck released a series of several updates including Twitter lists, geolocation, more Facebook support, and brand new LinkedIn support. A great article on Read Write Web covers the most significant changes in the new version of Tweetdeck. Here, I will discuss some implications and considerations for those of us who plan on continuing to use TweetDeck now that it has been cranked up to 11.