Susan Macool Public Relations Masters Program

So You figured out Who, now to tackle how!

What’s Next? In my last blog, I talked about the importance of really drilling down on who your ideal customer is.  I covered the importance of targeting a specific individual in order to increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.  If you followed my instructions, you probably have a pretty good idea of who you want to reach.  The next step is to understand how to reach that target…

Every month I have been writing an new tumblr post about how the class I took met my expectations.  While some exceeded expectations and some met them, there were none that fell short.

This past year has been a whirlwind of new information that culminated with the submission of this months Capstone Thesis project.  Something inside me told me I needed to do this, and I am so glad I did.  During the course of this past year, I was forced to switch jobs and so much of what I have learned is part of the everyday functions of my new position that I do not know that I could have done this new job without this education.

I am so pleased, overall, with the vast amount of knowledge I have acquired. 30 years of experience is great, but the speed of technology and it’s developments can often times make someone in my age group obsolete.  At the same time, a 20 something graduating may have all the education in the world, but without real life experience, it doesn’t have the same meaning.

I currently serve 30 clients, all over the US, Canada and one is even in Australia!  So far, they have been amazed at what I know and can help them with.  One client told me that it is so refreshing to talk with someone who can explain social media on his terms, not a young kid talking down to him.  I was so please that Full Sail provided me with the tools necessary to do this.

When I began a year ago an looked at the list of courses I would be taking, many of them seemed very familiar.  Most all of them had some sort of meaning to me, but honestly, I wasn’t completely sure what to expect from Online Media Room.  

 Since I wasn’t sure what to expect, I didn’t expect much of anything, because I wasn’t exactly sure what we would be covering, but it turned out to be one of my favorite classes!

 I loved using some of the new online tools we were introduced to this month and I am looking forward to using them in my brand new position with Ulistic, Inc.  I am now a strategic marketing coordinator and I think my clients will really benefit from some of what I have learned this month, especially storify.  I love how easy it was to use and I already know of a couple I plan to recommend it to this week.

 I also enjoyed giving and receiving feedback from my peers.  There wasn’t a lot of opportunity to do this before now and I really enjoyed seeing some of the work my classmates have presented and getting their feedback on my work.  

This months class in reputation management could not have come at a better time for me.  The company I am featuring in my Capstone project is currently on the verge of dealing with a major crisis.  I that I have learned this month in reputation management is going to be used to help them maintain the stellar reputation they have built over the past 20 years.  

 In 2011, the Champion for Children Foundation purchased a historic building in town to save it from demolition.  They managed to fundraise almost a million dollars to restore the building, originally the area’s first movie theatre, into a beautiful venue, with hopes of renting it as an ongoing contributing income stream for the Foundation.  

 Unfortunately, our area is small and the Foundation does not understand the logistics of marketing outside of word of mouth so business did not build quickly enough to even sustain the cost of running the building.  After 3 ½ years of multiple attempts at generating income they are now forced to shut down the building, hopefully temporarily, while they search for grant funding.  This is not going to be well received by the public.  I have worked, using the information I garnished from assignments this month, to draft a crisis communications plan for them and press releases to control the direction of the information the press receives.  

This month started another class that I had a bit of an “ok, am I really going to learn anything new?” attitude about.  I am the General Manger of a rental venue and I have been an event planner for about 20 years.  I figured there wouldn’t be much new to learn.  As usual, I was mistaken.

 Yes, some of it was what I do every day.  Planning and budgeting for events.  Looking at all the logistics from staffing to clean up, but there were some new things I had never dealt with, the webinar being the biggest of these.  What a great idea!  Not only had I never thought to promote a group or event this way, I had no idea how to do one!

I am so excited to be able to walk away from this class knowing how to do this.  I have several clients I work with that I am looking forward to presenting this as an option for them.  It’s hard to continue to provide new and innovative ways to reach people and I think the webinar is a great one.  I was intimidated at first thinking I would never be able to come up with pertinent, interesting content that would fit the assigned requirements, but the more I immersed myself in the project, the easier it became.

My expectations for this month were, honestly, not much.  I spent 30+ years of my life working in radio broadcasting in almost every position possible from a copy writer to news to management.  I was pretty sure that there wasn’t too much I hadn’t encountered during my career when it came to media relations. Although my specialty was radio, I dealt on a regular basis with other media outlets, including newspaper, magazines and television.  I know from experience that dealing with the media is different depending on your location. Small towns have different expectations then bigger cities, relationships develop easier in small towns, it’s more about who you know than it is the actual content.  In a big city it’s more about ratings and deadlines.  

 What I learned this month was how to better deal with “big city” media.  I have prepare press kits before, but was intrigued to learn the finer points of including some additional information.  I had worked very little with video and was excited to learn the best ways to include it in a press kit.  Although I don’t anticipate actually shooting video myself in the future, it is good to know what is involved as I plan how best to prepare for my clients needs.

 The class was well-rounded and informative and I think that anyone lacking the background I have would have found it extremely helpful.  I have always worked hard to initiate and maintain good relations with the press.  In most cases, it is as easy as remembering that reporters are people too, showing an interest in them and appreciating what coverage they do give you goes a really long way.  

Wow, they say as soon as you really think you’ve mastered something, something will happen to show you how much you still need to learn.  I think that happened this month.  Deciding to pursue my Master’s Degree at this stage of life was a big decision.  Considering I work a full-time job that normally requires 50+ hours a week and a run my own marketing business on the side, while still trying to finish the final years of raising my family, many would say (and did say) that I was definitely biting off more than I could chew.  

 I started Market and Consumer Research Analysis thinking that I was doing pretty well.  I had managed a 4.0 average for the first six-months of classes and was feeling pretty confident.  Now, at the end of this class, I am thinking maybe I am in over my head.  This month I thought I was entering a world I was pretty well versed in, but not only did I not know as much about market and consumer research as I thought I did, but I also am woefully unprepared to keep up with the pace this class set for assignments.  In making the jump from a discussion post and response and a major assignment each week to the work required by this class, I learned that something has got to go.  I am not sure what yet, but if this is the pace the classes moving forward are going to take, then I may need to quit a job to continue.

 That being said, this will undoubtedly be the worse grade I have received in any class thus far.  I am not sure it if it is because I thought I understood material I didn’t or if it is because I couldn’t keep up with the work load, but one thing is for certain, I learned.  

 I learned a lot about understanding my target market and researching them properly to ensure I reach them correctly.  I learned that research must be made up of several levels and multiple perspectives to be accurate and I learned that doing this correctly takes time, lots of it. I already understood the concept of narrowing your pitch to be more effective.  Working over 30 years in media taught me that if you through a stone in the lake and aim at the center, the ripples created when you hit it will spread the message.  I am very thankfully I have learned to take that further this month and how to apply this to social media, what I believe to be the most effective way to reach people today.

Expectations…..

 Basically it’s a judgement you make about something you have yet to experience.  I knew going into Social Media Metrics and ROI that I was going to be looking at numbers.  Numbers are a part of math and math has always scared me a little.  Would I really be ready for this class?  Not that I really put too much into it.  Classes take up a lot of my time and it doesn’t give me much time to look ahead, but I pretty much assumed that I was going to learn how to break down the number of social media.

 I went into the class this month a bit apprehensive.  Last month was hard for me, really hard and earned me the lowest grade I have received so far.  I was determined to bring my A game and really work through this even though it was going to be hard.  Good thing I made that decision because I definitely needed everything I had to get this one done.

 The funny thing is this, as hard as it was to really dive into these numbers and understand what it meant.  I found out first hand that I was getting it.  Not because of my grades, but because at a Drug Free Highlands meeting this week, I actually explained the importance of understand our ROI on our new app and our social media pages.  We have someone new handling our pages and I explained to the board that “yes” they could track how successful our new associate was, just by looking at the numbers and presented content on google analytics.  There were 14 people in the room for this meeting, only 1 knew what google analytics was, and that person had no clue how to use it.  Guess who showed the room?  Yup, me!  I was able to show them some of what I had done and explain some results confidently. They were both amazed at the possibility and confused, as I was in the beginning by some of the results, but bottom line….I actually knew what I was talking about and help someone else understand! What a confidence builder.  

When I tell people I am working on my Masters Degree in Public Relations, the first question is always “How can you work full time, raise a family and good to classes?”  My answer is always “Full Sail University makes it easy”.  

 That, of course, is the simple answer, but the truth is, Full Sail has made it as easy as possible for anyone to pursue their dream of higher education.  When I go into detail of what I am doing and how I am doing it, people always want to know if a month is long enough to learn everything a normal semester contains.  The truth, it depends on the class.  I open with this because this is the first class that I have had during my return to obtain my Bachelors, that has left me feeling that a month was not long enough. I was so intrigued by everything this class had to offer that I wish I had at least another month to continue to study all the offerings.  So far, this class has opened my eyes to much more than any other class proceeding it. This is what I returned to school for, to learn to use the tools that this month’s course has outlined.  

This past month as been both difficult and exhilarating.  As a rule, I struggle with law, not following laws, but understand legal terminology. I just can’t seem to wrap my head around legal briefs, court decisions and such.  I always struggled when I was a broadcast journalist and had to read through legal documents for a news story.  For this reason, I was more than a little concerned on how well I would be able to follow everything in this class this month.  

 It was, by no means, easy. I struggled with almost every assignment and worried each week as I awaited my grade.  What I learned was that I may struggle with understanding what I am reading, but I really did understand it in the end and was able to do very well with my assignments.

 I really enjoyed the assignment that had us filing a sample copyright request.  Although, compared to a lot of the assignments, it was easy, that isn’t why I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it because it provided the opportunity to experience something I will probably need to use in my future career in marketing and PR.  

 It is difficult to say which of the topics covered will be most useful to me in my career as I truly believe they will all be equally as useful.  It is so important to understand what you can and can’t do legally, but even more important is providing proper representation for the clients who hire you. I really believe that when an individual or company hires ad Public Relations firm, they expect that firm to know what is legal and what isn’t and protect them from not only making mistakes themselves but to protect them from damage from others.  

 This course gave me the necessary knowledge and resources to ensure that I can be proactive in avoiding legal mistakes.  It is always better to error on the side of caution then defend your actions in a courtroom.  Having the road map laid out for me this month will be extremely helpful in ensuring I make the right moves and avoid mistakes.  

I entered this class with the expectation of learning how to write for this huge new world of digital technology. Having had a gift for writing since a very young age, I have always loved it and found it easy to make the words flow from my mind to the paper.  I was concerned however that the rules had somehow changed and that my advanced age and lack of formal education in these new ways would leave me challenged.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that what I know, what I had learned in my college classes from many moons ago, held strong for this class.  The basics are the same, the structure and foundation hasn’t changed, just the delivery. I think the four weeks of class covered everything I need for public relations that I need to know.  Covering events, people, products; it was all there and it was so good to get the refresher course on it that I desperately needed.  It was great to get some solid insight on how to target specific demographics and which forms of media and technology will reach them both quickly and economically.

The focus on my major that this class had was wonderful.  It gave me the necessary confidence in my skills that I was lacking.  I felt as if part of the world had passed me by while I was busy doing other things.  Sometimes you think you know something but then question yourself.  It was good to receive validation through both lessons and grades that I can do this and do it well.  I believe the single biggest skill a good PR person can have is the written word. If you cannot articulate through words, especially written words, the benefit to the person, product or event you are promoting then you’ll never be able to get the general public to embrace your ideas.

My Mastery Journey continued this month with Public Relations in a Digital World.  It was refreshing to be able to explore a world I know pretty well from a new perspective and to see new options and new ideas.  I work with digital media, press releases, social media posts and creating digital events daily, but I have always known that there is a lot I don’t know.  It is often difficult to stay on top of a daily work load and still keep up with all the technical changes in the digital world.

 I enjoyed week one’s review of the Cisons Best Practices Posts.  Although we were required to read and review only 3 posts, I actually reviewed several more than that and have book marked the site for use in the future.

 I have always understood the value of Twitter but have not been very skilled at using it and have begun to take steps to remedy that based on this week’s lessons and tutorials.  I am hoping as I become more Twitter “literate” I will be able to incorporate it into my daily tool box of favorites.  

 Most importantly, I learned how important it is to fully research and now your topic.  I always strive to see a new client or service from the eyes of those unfamiliar with what they do or sell, but I believe in writing my promotional report this week that I have learned to even look deeper.  It’s important to never assume your audience knows what you are talking about, you always have to include all the facts. Better to provide too much information versus not enough.  I also really enjoyed making my promotional video.  I have been a radio advertising bureau Certified Commercial Professional Copywriter forever, but never had the opportunity to actually video my work.  It was both exciting and educational.  

I have this on my wall at work and it inspires me daily to keep going, keep learning and most of all, do what I love!