For our topic of the week this week I am having Maranda Butler on here. Thanks Maranda and enjoy guys!

My Ode to Social Media
I am a fan of social media. In fact I am so addicted that I want to
dedicate this whole post to my love for it.
I experience cold shakes and nightmares when I am away from social
media for too long.
At night I can hardly sleep because I am impatiently waiting to get up
in the morning and log onto Facebook or Twitter.
When I am sad or mad about something I post a Tweet, it makes me feel better.
In social media world everyone is special. Popularity is measured by
your number of followers or friends (as on Facebook)
I desperately rack my brain for ideas to come up with new social media
sites. It is so much money in them.
In social media sites I do not need friends. Who needs real friends
when you can have the perfect relationship via the internet.
Some of my best relationships have been built on social media sites.
Without social media I would not be able to talk to celebrities like I
know them. I often tweet Ciara and other Celebs my thoughts, I know
they are not going to respond, but its fun anyway.
If I had to go on an island I would bring food, water, and internet
access for social media.
I look at my blackberry apps for my social media sites often
throughout the day.  I probably look at my phone once every 5 minutes
unless I am physically unable to.
If you were a boy, I would kidnap you and lock you in a closet so that
you could be mine forever.Yes, these simple phrases may seem like slightly delusional symptoms
of a crazy person. But this is my life after social media. It has been
a pleasure ..
You now have the right to know!

Wednesday, April 14^th,  Twitter problem prevented the PR expert panel from recruiting from the #PRStudChat community, they decided to move the event to Wednesday, April 21st.

The April 21st #PRStudChat will begin at noon eastern and focus on helping spring graduates with their job search. Along with the #PRStudChat professionals and educators, students will engage with the full original panel.

The examiner offered information on this panel:

• Jessica Porterfield, a recruiter with Fleishman Hilliard. Jessica has eight years of experience in the Biotech/Pharma industry and now recruiting in PR.
• Jessica Bayer, a Public Relations recruiter at Qorvis Communications.  Jessica specializes in Public Affairs, Government, Crisis, Interactive, Creative, Consumer and International relations.
• Laurie Bartolo, a recruiter at Ogilvy. Laurie’s career spans almost 20 years and covers a wide geography, from Florida to Washington DC to New Mexico and now Michigan.
• Lindsay Olson, a recruiter, founder and partner with Paradigm Staffing who spends her days helping companies build public relations and communications teams nationwide.
• Rachel Kay , President and found of RKPR. Rachel, whose firm is currently hiring, is an award-winning public relations expert with experience spanning a multitude of industries including consumer technology, food, beauty and fashion, the Web and more.
• Kate DiChristopher, Human Resources Manager at Marina Maher Communications

As planned, student guest moderator Brittany James, will join co-founders Deirdre Breakenridge and Valerie Simon, to facilitate the discussion, which is open to all PR students, professionals and educators. More information about the conversation (including planned questions) can be found in this post on Breakenridge’s blog, PR 2.0 Strategies.

The comments on this YouTube video, to me, show that some people are ready to stop talking about it, while others still have a joke to say.

I, for one, am ready to get “back to golf”. But, I also do question the ad.

There have been a few theories over the years on how Twitter was going to turn their free site into a profit earning entity. According to an article from PRSA.org, the solution is here and Twitter debuts sponsored tweets.

Twitter will now be charging for ads that appear when a user searches on the site. The top results is an ad that “is a tweet that users can “re-tweet” to others, mark as a favorite or reply to.” The advantage is to use these inquires as a chance for the company to begin a conversation with those customers.

The top ranking result is bid on by advertisers for the keywords on a cost-per-thousand basis. Eventually they hope to sell the keywords based on click-through, retweets and how many it’s times marked as a favorite.

This is an assignment for my class, Social Media & PR (PRCA 3030) These reading notes are taken from:

A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization Strategies, Tactics, and tools for Succeeding in the Social Web by Deltinia Hay

Ch. 11 is ” More Social Tools”. In this chapter, other social media tools that had not yet been discussed are introduced here. Some other media tools mentioned are:

• Social Calendars
  • posting events in social calendars can get you extra exposure.
  • upcoming.org is a good example to search and publish upcoming events in your area.
• Social Pages
  • these are sites where you create a page about a particular topic, usually “how to” pages
• Wikis
  • a collaborative website that allows anyone to update its content
  • comes from the Hawaiian work “wiki” which means “fast”
• Social Search portals
  • offer visitors a unique search experience at your blog or Website
• Virtual Worlds
  • these sites are 3-D created by participants.

Ch. 12 is “Putting It All Together. The focus of this chapter is using your social media tools to optimize your existing website and making them all work together to minimize your efforts of maintaining your presence. Here are the authors tips for an optimization plan:

• add a blog or RSS feed to your website and optimize it
• offer several ways for others to subscribe to your RSS feed or blog
• if your blog or social media portal is external to your website, add a prominent link to it on your website and show the link on every page.
• add badges or widgets that link to your profile and pages on other social networking sites
• use widgets that let visitors share your website on social bookmarking and crowd-sourcing sites
• feature your shared images and videos from media communities on your website using widgets and badges
• use widgets or badges to highlight the other tools you utilize on the social web
•