Favorite slideshows from my social media class

Over the course of the past few semesters I have made some of the slideshows I use in class publicly available on Slideshare. I also shared most of them on this blog. Since I periodically get requests for particular ones, I've decided to make the most popular ones available in one post here:

Blogging 101:

View more documents from Corinne Weisgerber.

Twitter for PR:

View more presentations from Corinne Weisgerber.

Using Twitter to Connect with Audiences:

View more documents from Corinne Weisgerber.

Twitter & Social Media for Crisis Communication:

View more documents from Corinne Weisgerber.

Monitoring Conversations Online:

View more documents from Corinne Weisgerber.

Guide to blogging, commenting & managing your personal brand

Since we will start setting up blogs in class next week, it's time to address blogging etiquette, reputation management and personal branding. That's why I've put together a slideshow on the topic. Take a look:

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: blogging reputation)

Resources for PR student bloggers

• Guidelines for PR student blogs: By Richard Bailey (lots of good ideas/links)
  
• Advice to start out careers in Public Relations - Bloggers with the Advantage: By Rajiv Harjai
• Should PR Students Blog? Hell Yeah: By Paull Young
  
• A View into the State of PR Education: By Richard Edelman (Why should you blog? Because Richard Edelman says so!)
  
• PR students: you are what you blog: By Stuart Bruce
  
• Promoting PR student blogs: By Karen Russell (Now that you've read about why you should blog and how to blog well, you should think about how to promote your blog)
  

Hillary Clinton promises government blogs in an effort to entice voters

In a campaign speech in New Hampshire on Monday night, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton suggested that blogs could play a key role in making the U.S. government more transparent.

According to Clinton, "We should even have a government blogging team where people in the agencies are constantly telling all of you, the taxpayers, the citizens of America, everything that's going on so that you have up-to-the-minute information about what your government is doing, so that you too can be informed, and hold the government accountable."

If corporations can blog successfully, why not government? Would be interesting to see though if government blogs could convince the rest of the blogosphere of their authenticity and honesty. Judging by the current level of mistrust of all things government, that should prove to be a difficult task. Maybe comparable to Wal-Mart's trials and tribulations entering the social media scene?

Update: Incidentally, the White House yesterday launched its first version of a blog - a travel blog designed to report about President Bush's trip to the Middle East. The Trip Notes from the Middle East seems more like an online diary than a real blog though since it lacks any interactive functions (there's no comments feature).

Use your blog to pay for college - seriously!

I just stumbled upon this scholarship opportunity for college bloggers. The bad news: the application deadline is October 6th. The good news: the application essay for this $10,000 scholarship has a 300 word limit. So what are you waiting for?

Some ideas for deciding what to blog about

Since you are required to start blogging on a regular basis starting this week, I thought I'd add a few tips on how to identify potential topics. Remember that the idea of these posts is to get you to engage the course material critically and to have you keep your eyes open for interesting material to blog about. You will need to become an active learner and start being on the lookout for material to incorporate into the class instead of relying on me, as the instructor, to tell you what is important. Your blog posts should demonstrate your ability to locate examples of PR applications of social media on your own.

1. Start reading the PR blogs (Micropersuasion, PR 2.0, PR Squared, etc.). I have added a number of them to our course blog. This is where you'll find a lot of info pertaining to our class.

2. Read technology blogs. There are tons of them out there!

3. Watch/read the news. The presidential candidates, for instance, have been using different forms of social media for a while now, and you could find out about their latest uses by keeping up with the news coverage of their campaigns.

4. Start using some of the social bookmarking services we talked about in class. Find someone who tags social media sites and subscribe to that person's bookmarks via RSS. That way you'll come across sites/stories you may never have looked up on your own.

5. Just keep your eyes open while you are online - and have fun!