So for most of you who do not know much about me, I work at The Ohio State University’s recreation center. Otherwise known as the RPAC, for those of you who are Ohio State students. Anyway, I am a facility manager (kind of a big deal……just kidding) and I figured that I should use my resources at the RPAC to apply for a marketing internship.

So a couple of weeks ago I asked my boss if she knew if the RPAC’s marketing team is looking for interns.  She gave me a contact number and told me to e-mail the head of marketing and tell her that my boss told me about her.

Well it worked! The lady e-mailed me back and asked for my schedule and resume. I was so excited.  But then a couple of weeks went by with no reply after I sent my resume. I was pretty bummed by then.

BUT it got better! She finally e-mailed me and asked if I was available for an interview the day before Halloween. We set up a time and place and I was all ready to go.

The day of the interview comes and I was nervous but completely ready. I felt like I had enough experience and the fact that I already work for the RPAC really looked good.  I am still waiting for a reply, but I feel pretty confident.

I am writing about my experience because I wanted to talk about what looks good to employers and what to expect when applying for a marketing internship (based on school, resume, experience, etc.)

In my interview I talked mainly about two topics:

1. My past experience as a marketing intern (if you have never interned it is okay).
2. My experience from classes, specifically classes dealing with marketing.

The lady seemed pretty impressed by the things we are doing in my communications class I am taking now.  We have learned so much, and everything we have learned and done hands-on is what she said I would be doing if I got this internship.

She really liked the fact that I have done press releases, media advisories, blogs and also that I have edited website layouts. Most of these things are what we are learning in my communications class.

For my internship over the summer I did a press release, created a website and worked on a brochure. I felt like this is a lot of hands-on experience, but as I was reading an article about what employers look for they stated a few different things:

1. Communication

2. Organization

3. Leadership

If you want to know more I would definitely recommend reading this article. It is pretty good at explaining what employers are looking for. I wish you all the best at luck at finding an internship and hopefully I get mine! Fingers crossed.

#RHONJ trending

Hello everyone,

Ever since the “Real Housewives of ‘whatever place’” started I always said how stupid they were and that I would never watch them.  Well I lied because I pretty much watch most of them religiously now.  My favorite one is “The Real Housewives of New Jersey”, there is just something about those women that is entertaining to watch.

The other day I was watching this show and I saw at the top of the screen #RHONJ. I sat there the entire episode trying to figure out what they stood for. I felt like such an idiot that it took me so long to figure it out. How long did it take any my readers to figure this out? Probably not as long as it took me.

ANYWAY, ever since then I always see those hashtags at the top of the screen or even the bottom during a show. It is crazy how popular Twitter has become, it feels like it happened over night. Mainly every show on Bravo has a hashtag on the top of the screen as the show is going on.

I was so interested in how many hashtags have appeared on TV that I looked up why they are so popular.  In a blog I read they list out why hashtags make sense.

• Not distracting
• Monitoring conversations is easier
• Increased chance of “trending”

I bet after reading this blog you are going to keep watching out for all the shows that have hashtags.  It is pretty addicting and it is crazy to see how many shows have them.  Pretty soon every show and maybe even every movie are going to have hashtags. I guess we will find out.

Thanks for reading!

(P.S. for those of you still trying to figure out what #RHONJ stands for it is “Real Housewives of New Jersey”, your welcome.)

Miranda Lambert’s Got Milk.

Howdy ya’ll.

I just want to start off by saying how I am completely obsessed with anything Country.  Country music, country living, country dancing, you name it I am obsessed.  I am mainly obsessed with country music and singers.  My all-time favorite country singer is Blake Shelton.  He is very good looking and his voice makes me melt.

Speaking about Blake, his wife Miranda is amazing too.  She just did this commercial for “got milk?” because it encourages Americans to enjoy breakfast at home and set the table with milk in the morning.

Miranda says that her favorite way to start the day is with a tall glass of milk and a bowl of cereal while strumming her guitar.  I can only imagine what she looks like in the morning with a bowl of cereal and her guitar.  How does that even work? Wouldn’t her guitar get in the way? Anyway, the “National Milk Mustache “got milk?” campaign unveiled Wednesday at the Country Music Association headquarters in Nashville, TN.”

So many actors/actresses have partaken in the “got milk?” campaign, some of the well-known actors I know are:

• Hayden Panettiere
• David Beckham
• Beyonce & Tina Knowles
• Carrie Underwood (oh look another Country singer!)
• Sheryl Crow (Country again.)
• Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen
• KISS
• Britney Spears
• Taylor Swift (COUNTRY)
• Lindsay Lohan
• Mandy Moore
• …and so on.

I wonder if Blake will be next?  The “got milk?” campaign is such a huge campaign, they must be doing something right.  This ad was named as top ten advertising campaign in 2012.  This is crazy, all they do is take a celebrity, animal, or child, give them a milk mustache and put “got milk?” over their foreheads and BAM top 10 ad campaign.  Good for them.

All I need to do is come up with something as clever as this campaign and maybe I’ll become successful. Good luck to me.

Bye ya’ll.

Save a Life and Donate

So this week in my communications class I am working on an advertising assignment.  It is pretty interesting because we are entering it into a contest and have the chance to win $200 if our ad is chosen.  I am not very creative with projects like this and I am having a difficult time trying to find a picture that I want that is not copyrighted. I am currently waiting for a free trial of photoshop to download so maybe I can use that and make my own creation of a photo so it will definitely not be copyrighted.

If any of you are design majors, or really like creating advertisements I really encourage you to enter this competition.  It is for the sponsor Gift of Hope which encourages people to donate their organs.  They have a few objectives and elements that have to be portrayed in the advertisement, but other than that it is a free for all and you are allowed to create pretty much whatever you want.

I wish that I was better at designing things, but I am going to try my best and see what happens.  I am leaning on putting a picture of a soldier and saying something about being a hero if you donate your organs.  It has to be sad and make people feel bad for not donating their organs, so hopefully my idea will work.  I am obviously going to say that one donor can save more than 25 lives because that is the most obvious selling point that will reach out to people who aren’t organ donors.  I know that that fact got me  interested and that is mainly the reason why I am an organ donor.  Hopefully you all create an ad for this competition and enter to win. Good luck to the both of us! May the best person win (probably not me).

All Hallows Eve with Harry Potter

So on October 30 (yesterday) I went to The Ohio State University’s Recreation Center for a halloween event.  It was a lot of fun because the event was all about Harry Potter!  Yup, that’s how cool our school is.  Anyway, I went to the event because in my communications class we have to live tweet at a campus event.  I chose this event because I work at the Recreation Center so I knew some people who would already be there.  Also, I went to this same event last year and it was a lot of fun they even had a flash mob.

At this event we drank butterbeer, decorated pumpkins, we were given what Hogwarts House we would be in and did some Harry Potter trivia.  I did really bad with trivia and did not win a shirt, but my boyfriend played corn-hole and made it in the hole his first try and won a t-shirt!  I didn’t try the butterbeer, but my boyfriend said it was good.  I was put into the Ravenclaw house and I decorated a pretty cool pumpkin!

Anyway, as I was tweeting at the event I realized how rude I looked.  I dragged my boyfriend with me and then I pretty much sat there the whole time tweeting about what I was doing.  It was a smaller event so I feel like being on my phone the whole time looked pretty rude, even though I was tweeting about the event the people around me didn’t know what I was doing.  Maybe if it was a bigger event like the football game where there are so many people around it wouldn’t be rude if you were sitting there tweeting about the game.  The marketing people for the recreation center took a lot of time to plan this event and for someone to be sitting on their phone the whole time is pretty impolite.

I was reading a post about if live tweeting an event is rude or not.  The person who wrote this post also says to avoid tweeting at a more personal event.  Like I said, a smaller event would not be a good place to tweet because then it takes the attention off of the event or the speaker.  It’s just plan rude, don’t do it or try to avoid excessively tweeting. Pay attention to the event/speaker I’m sure you’ll learn something, isn’t that what you’re there for?

#PR20Chat

Today (Tuesday, October 9) from 8-9pm I was involved in a twitter chat.  It was very interesting to say the least. Tweet chats are so fast paced it is so hard to keep up.  Also, I was very confused sometimes if someone replied to my tweet which one they were actually replying to.  Other then that it was interesting to read peoples responses from all over the place.

During this twitter chat the moderators ask several questions throughout the hour to get the conversation going.  People respond to questions like, “What’s your process for sharing awesome content? Do you schedule posts? Pros; cons?” or “How many blogs per day do you read? How much time do you devote to reading & keeping up with news, trends, etc?”. As people answer the questions other people either retweet or respond.

I thought that it was interesting to watch when the moderators (prtini and Justin Case) would throw out the questions. It seemed like when the conversations died down that is when they would ask the questions. For a second there would be little to no one responding but right when the question pops up there were several people tweeting about it. I thought that the questions were good questions that even got me wondering what other people would say.

My favorite question of the night was “When you feel overwhelmed from information overload, how do you catch up and destress?”. My answer was that I like to take a nap. Some people said to go outside, to the gym, and to even just put your phone on silent. Pretty cool to see what people had to say about this question.

I really enjoyed this twitter chat, but it got a little overwhelming at times. I would probably do it again sometime but I wouldn’t do it weekly or daily because it’s hard to follow at times.

What is Strategic Communications?

So many people ask me what my major is. Before I went into Strategic Communications (Strat. Comm.) I was a journalist major and had no idea what Strat. Comm. was. After talking to my advisor she pointed me in the direction of this major because she said I seemed to be mainly interested in advertising and public relations and that is what Strat. Comm. is all about.

According to Ohio State’s website, “Strategic Communication (SCM) teaches you the ways in which organizations communicate in order to accomplish a goal.” It is a broad topic that includes advertising, public relations and persuasion.

So far I have really enjoyed all of my classes that have pertained to Strat. Comm. They are all so current and mainly deal with the Internet and so-called “hip” trends that are going on nowadays.

I have chosen this major mainly because of the public relations portion. I found a definition of public relations in an article I found and they said that, “Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the flow of information between an individual or an organization and the public.”

This interests me because I really like working with companies that are struggling to communicate with their audience. I like to create different things to show people what the company is all about. I am also interested in advertising because I like creating ads to get people’s attention.

Strategic communications is a great major for me because it has a lot of variety. I have yet to choose whether I want to go into PR or Advertising but I know as I go on with my courses I will have a for sure answer sooner or later.

I would really like to know why any of you are interested in Strategic Communications. So let me know! Thanks.

Oh and p.s follow me on twitter!

 

We Just Want a Little Appreciation.

What exactly are employee relations? I believe that it is the way a company manages their employees.  Companies do many different things to show their appreciation of their employees. For example, a company named Quest just recently had a National Truck Driver Appreciation Week party.

Quest served the drivers breakfast and lunch to show their appreciation for all of their hard work. This is an exceptional idea because the drivers need to know that they are appreciated. They work their tails off every day driving from place to place at such odd hours of the day that a week of appreciation is deserved!

That is just one example of how a company tried to make employee relations better. To be able to connect with their employees and show them that they are thankful for their hard work and dedication.

In my opinion, the recent economic downturn didn’t really change the relationship between employers and their employee public. I guess that this is sort of a tricky question. I haven’t analyzed every company and asked people whether or not they feel like they are appreciated by their employers.

But on the other hand, I have experience with different employers and I know how they treated me when I worked for them. For example, I work for the Cleveland Indians when I go home for the summer and they did a lot for their customers. We had a “end of the year” party for all of the staff and it was really nice. Also, right now I work for The Ohio State University’s recreation center “RPAC”. They do an exceptional job at recognizing their employees. They have recently implemented a new plan to get their employees excited to work. We had a training day where all we did was play “Battleships” in the rec center’s pool. It was so much fun, and I know that everyone the I work with enjoyed it.

I think that with the economic downturn people are getting laid off, but companies are trying to make up for that by trying even hard to make the companies that they still have feel important. So maybe, employee relations is getting better because of the economic downturn. What do you think?

Just a Comment About Commenting.

Commenting on blogs is very important. I just recently read an article talking about ten reasons why commenting is good. The author says you can make friends by commenting, and create publicity for your own blog.  It helps you out because if you comment on someones blog more than likely those people will look at your blog and comment back.

My comm 3334 class teacher is having us comment on at least four blogs (for now). At first I thought that it would be super awkward and I wasn’t looking forward to doing it, but now that I have commented on four posts I feel encouraged to comment more. It was interesting reading posts that were similar to my interest of Public Relations. I felt like I could help out the person because people are always looking for different insight about their ideas.

Also, I love getting a comment. It’s just like Facebook and getting a “like” on one of your posts. It makes you feel happy and better about yourself that someone enjoyed what you said.

I was also reading a blog that talked about how to write good comments. Vicki (the author) says to make it a good comment you have to:

• Back up your opinion and explain why you like/dislike someones opinion.
• Show the author that you hear them
• Reinforce opinions you agree with
• Draw attention to your own blog (but not too much attention

It’s a pretty interesting post, so I encourage everyone to check out Vicki’s blog!

Week of Tweets

Hey guys,

Over this past week my comm 3334 class teacher had our class make a “professional” twitter account and tweet over the course of the week. Before this assignment I already had a twitter, but I wouldn’t call it “professional”. The only reason why I joined twitter in the first place was to stay in contact with my friends from back home since they don’t believe in Facebook anymore for some odd reason.

I can never stay in the loop with new fads going on. Once I got used to myspace (ha myspace) it turned over to Facebook, then finally I got used to Facebook and now it’s Twitter! What’s next? instagram, pinterest.

I sure hope not pinterest because I tried getting into that, I just didn’t care too much for it. I guess I didn’t really try hard enough, but I just really don’t want a new fad. Twitter and Facebook are fine to me. I rarely tweet and when I do it’s usually a retweet. Even though I look at Twitter at least 5 times a day. I just like to keep up to date on the news and what better place then Twitter?, Right?, Right.

You know what the best part about Twitter is? The fact that you can find anyone and anything to follow. For example, you can literally follow “Twitter”. I am not joking. If you don’t believe me, you can check it out for yourself at https://twitter.com/twitter. It’s actually pretty cool and they have their own blog. Well that’s all for now, hope you enjoyed my rant about how Twitter and I get alone!

P.S. follow me on Twitter @stephmartin2492 . Please and thank you!