Kelly and I recently sat down to reflect on our experience at the Ragan Social Media Boot Camp and to provide a few tips for businesses and organizations striving to create a social media presence.

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As a recent college grad, I am all too aware of the bleak job market. In the months leading up to my graduation, I spent every spare second I had scouring the Internet for jobs. Despite my determination, I had no luck finding an ideal position directly out of school and opted to intern during the summer. But my search never ceased and my career aspirations came true this October when I joined the Largemouth team as account coordinator. Here’s what I’ve learned though my job-hunting experience!

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By now you've probably heard of Pinterest, or at least seen Pinterest content shared across a range of other popular social media channels. You may even have an account. But if you aren't familiar, Pinterest is essentially an online bulletin board where users can create categorized boards and "pin" – or bookmark – related images and videos from websites or uploads. They can also "repin" and share pins from other users. 

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Reaching the masses on social media seems like an easy thing to do. Facebook has more than 800 million active users, with more than 50 percent of them logging in every day, Twitter claims 300 million.

But, while these vast user populations may represent great opportunity for the consumer-facing side of the business world, their translation into the business-facing community remains a bit unclear.

In judging the value of participation in this forum, BtoB marketers and decision makers often see two sides to the debate:

1. A complete lack of presence could reflect poorly on a company – especially in a BtoB world where staying “ahead of the curve” is everything.

2. With indistinct analytics, lead-generation value and return on investment, how can a budding BtoB company justify the expenses and time commitments associated with maintaining a social presence?

Furthermore, those businesses that go with door #1, often quickly become frustrated with their results, and fall back into door #2, unable to justify the investment.

I personally believe that with social media, you get what you put in. So, I’ll bring this discussion back to the bare bones of PR. Our overarching professional theme – know your audience – doesn’t magically disappear when thrown into the realm of social media...

 

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At the close of an infamous week marked by both an earthquake and a hurricane, I'm relieved to have missed the biggest disaster of all; the Twitter fail whale that arises from too many tweets and prevents users from viewing the site. Lately, every major event has further proven of the importance of Twitter as an instantaneous news source and an arena for completely unfiltered commentary and interaction. But as social media's role shifts to further evolve into a news platform and society's reliance on social media for disaster preparedness and awareness continues to grow, can popular platforms' systems keep up with the flow of information?

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Instant messages and blogs were the roots of all my future social media use. There is an entire generation of young adults that share the same background. Now, as we mature alongside advancements in technology, we are changing the face of business communication.

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At Largemouth, we understand the importance of considering legal ramifications of all types of communication and PR, which is why I decided to take part in a webinar titled, "How To Avoid Legal Pitfalls with Your PR Initiatives."

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The ways to interact with the media have grown exponentially in the past years. My media contacts get my e-mails, retweets, @ replies, connection on LinkedIn and Facebook fan status. Every time they write a story, I want them to think about my client and how I can help them.

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Some people love flying and others hate it. I am of the latter but do it all the time anyway.

On a recent flight back to Raleigh-Durham International I had the pleasure of sitting next to an instructor of airplane maintenance. As we flew he educated me on many of the mechanical processes of the plane, especially during the take off and landing. This knowledge helped me relax as I learned that the buzzing noise wasn't the plane falling apart. Simply having the instructor on board also gave me a sense of security; if anything bad happened I knew there was someone besides the pilot that would know what to do.

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A client recently expressed curiosity into what social media sites like Digg and del.icio.us are all about. Wanting to be thorough, I did some research into how - and if - companies should use the sites as well as how they could potentially fit into a public relations strategy. I felt my conclusions were worth sharing.

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