Social Media Misconceptions

By: Sarah Jones

Social media has flourished in the past 10 years and it has found its way into the workforce. Companies, schools, nonprofits, and even small businesses have people that work specifically in social media. For people who have been working in the industry awhile, this could be a difficult thing to grasp, which is why a lot of recent graduates are being hired as social media professionals. Since our generation grew up in a very technological world most of us already knew everything about social media before we got to college.

Now, I'm not to saying older generations can't learn. They certainly can and have. However, it seems there's a trend happening with young PR professionals; everyone wants to work in social media. In most of my classes we have to say what field we want to go into after graduation, and many people say they're dream job right out of college is social media.

Source via The Social Media Monthly

Social media for personal use is pretty straightforward and easy to grasp. However, it's different and more difficult when it comes to the business side of social media. I believe it's one of the misconceptions young PR professionals have. They think because they grew up with social media it will be a breeze doing it for a career. However, there's so much more that goes into it.

PR Daily featured an article where a social media manager explained what she did on a typical day at work. I found a few things interesting about what her job entails. One being that she actually never stops doing her job. Even though she knows they have after-hours support for the social media accounts, she still checks them as soon as she wakes up and numerous times throughout the evening. This particular day there was a national tragedy so she postponed all the scheduled posts she had planned for the day. So basically, she's always paying attention to what's going on in the world and planning accordingly for the company's social media accounts. She then has numerous meetings during the day about social media policies for the employees and upcoming campaigns. Something else that I thought was interesting was she mentioned how she is constantly taking pictures of the building and employees to add to its social media accounts.

Those wanting to work in social media have to be individuals that pay attention to everything going on around them, are able to multitask, and has an awesome memory that's able to remember the different terms of use for each social media platform. Being a social media manager is a 24/7 job, and the right person needs to be personable because they're communicating with audiences all day. A company's social media accounts are basically the face of the company so being in charge of the content on those platforms is more stressful than most people think it is. It's a huge responsibility and is a reason why colleges across the world are starting to have classes specifically for social media, as they should.

Explaining PR To Your Peers

By: Sarah Jones

The first question I get when I tell someone what I'm majoring in is, "Well, what exactly is PR?" Often, I struggle to come up with a short enough answer. However, it always turns into a series of "ums" on my end because I'm trying to find the words to explain what it is that I want to do for the rest of my life. It always comes down to me rattling off the various documents I create, and hope they'll lose interest in the question. Sometimes I wish I had this image to pass out to anyone who asks about PR:

Source via Pinterest

Some people have misconceptions about PR and they say, "Oh so you like to talk?" Not every PR professional is a talker or will talk a lot. Yes, there's some aspects that require you to talk but a lot of the time you're one on one with the client and spend the majority of your time creating the documents that are needed. I will admit that I didn't exactly have the right understanding of what public relations is. I saw the glamorous, movie side of it and what I didn't know was all the great things you can do through PR. You can work pretty much anywhere you want to, in any field that interests you. You can work for a nonprofit that you believe in, a hospital, a school district, or in the corporate world. You can even work in the entertainment industry if that's what you're passionate about. The thing I like most about PR is the sky is the limit and you can choose which direction you want to go based on what you're passionate about.

PR Daily explained it pretty well with its article about the subject and it even divided up the most common fields of PR. It explained how PRSA says to use this to define PR, "Public Relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics." Which if you try to use that on non-industry people it will go in one ear and out the other. For something as complex as PR the best thing to do is explain without jargon and with things that people already are aware of. For example, PR Daily suggests people who work in media relations say something like this, "I get my clients on TV, in the papers and featured on blogs to share company news and initiatives." Sounds pretty straight forward and lets people know that you are not strictly a party planner.

So the next time someone asks about PR majors and what its all about, talk to them about all the great things you'll end up doing, the people you want to help, or the things you want to promote. Explain to them the hard work ethic you have gained over the past four plus years of school and all the fun you have had taking the classes that will excel you into the wonderful world of PR. However if all of that fails and they still question why you took an entire class over social media, you can point them into the direction of this humorous article from Buzzfeed!

Society and the Online World

By: Sarah Jones

The question, "Is the online world making society nastier, or is society just taking advantage of the ability to express what it's always felt?" was posed for one of my classes and I think the answer is a little bit of both.

The online world is the perfect place for people to express their opinions no matter how offensive they might be. However, that's not what the purpose of the online world was to begin with. Starting out it was a way to share things with friends and family when you weren't around them. It was a way for long distance friends, family, and significant others to stay in touch. It was an innocent place meant as a way to keep memories around forever. Sadly, that has changed. It's now a place where there are "Twitter wars" and "Facebook fights." Where people share offensive pictures and articles for their friends and families to see. A place where people shove their views down people's throats no matter if they asked to hear it or not. It's where cyber bullying was created.

It seems that the places where you can find the nastiest of society is in news article comment sections and Facebook pages. Just the other day I was reading an article about a woman who was five months pregnant when she got into a car accident and went into a coma. She woke up four months later to find out her baby had been born and was alive and healthy. Great, uplifting story right? Apparently, not to the hundreds of people who commented negative things onto the comment section. What was supposed to be a wonderful story turned in to something ugly because people decided to rage war on one another about religion and the medical field. Why can't people just accept a great story and move on? There's a saying that's used in the online world, "don't feed the trolls." I think society isn't listening to that advice and feeding the trolls like it's no big deal.

So, the online world might egg people on and make it seem like what they're doing isn't wrong, that it's just freedom of speech, but that doesn't make it okay for society to turn and make it into something that people are now ashamed of being associated with. It's society's job to be the mature people I know they can be, and know when to say enough is enough. We need to teach younger generations how to behave on the Internet. They need to think twice before posting something that can be found years after it's been posted. It's society's job to make the online world a safe, fun place, and so far we're doing a really bad job.

Brand Struggles to Battle Listeria Outbreak

By: Sarah Jones


In the past few weeks Blue Bell Ice Cream and Sabra has had to recall its products due to it being contaminated by Listeria monoctyogenes. Blue Bell, who is popular in the southern U.S., started having problems with Listeria back in March when some of its popsicle items began to test positive for the bacteria. Sabra just announced its recall this week with a number of its hummus products testing positive for Listeria as well.

Source via The Record

At first Blue Bell only recalled the products that had been positively contaminated for Listeria, but didn't recall the numerous amounts of other products the ice cream giant produces. Retail stores began to take it upon themselves to remove all the Blue Bell products from its shelves. Kroger, Wal-Mart and SAMs club to name a few. First it began with the little things like popsicles and then grew to the small cups of ice cream, then when it hit the pints Blue Bell really had to start damage control and figure out what it was going to do. Blue Bell and the U.S. Food and Drug administration were able to trace the contaminated products to its plant in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and recalled all the products that had been made there, although not all of its products are made at that location. Blue Bell also has a plant in Bonham, Texas, which has not been tied to the Listeria outbreak, but retail stores are still removing all Blue Bell products no matter what.


Blue Bell handled the situation in good and bad ways. A good way being it offered consumers a way to tell if the ice cream products they had purchased had been made at the Broken Arrow plant. Another good call from Blue Bell was recalling all of its products. However, that could also be a bad way considering it waited until more and more of its products became contaminated, and even then Blue Bell only recalled from one of its plants. The thing about this situation is people have died from it. So now Blue Bell needs to be thinking about its consumers safety and not its profits. Blue Bell should have removed all of its products from the shelves after the first sign of Listeria in its plant. The company shouldn't have waited as long as it did, not with something as serious as Listeria. Blue Bell, is a popular company in the south. It has many followers, and many big companies use the product. One being the Texas Rangers who are not going to be having Blue Bell served at its Ice Cream Sunday promotion during Opening Weekend.


This situation has injured Blue Bell's brand, but it hasn't destroyed it. The company will probably face lawsuits from the family of the people who passed away, and might lose long time consumers. Blue Bell still has some loyal followers out there who will probably still eat its ice cream when it goes back on shelves, however, it's going to need to do serious damage control. Blue Bell will probably have to rebrand and regain the trust of its consumers, reassuring them that its products no longer run the risk of Listeria. So although this is a huge deal, I believe Blue Bell has been around too long for this to make them go under. A lot of other companies have been through situations like this one and all it took was time, trust, and a good PR/Marketing/Advertising team to get the company back on its feet.

The Selfie Epidemic

By: Sarah Jones

There are right ways to take a selfie and there are completely wrong ways to take a selfie. In today's age everything can be shared and found online. Any time something happens to a person or in a person's surroundings, the first place they share it is on social media platforms. Which isn't a bad thing if it's being used correctly. However, the sad thing is many people don't have the skills to use it in the right way. Being socially aware is as important online as it is in person. Maybe even more important because it's such a big platform that reaches millions of people.

The thing I think most people are confused about is when is the appropriate time to take and post a selfie. Sadly, there have been way too many stories in the news recently of people taking selfies in places they probably shouldn't. First there was the Funeral Selfie where people were taking selfies at loved ones funerals. Now, this isn't the worst one but I still don't see this as the appropriate place to be taking selfies. At least if people are going to take selfies at funerals, don't advertise that it's where that selfie is taking place and please try not to accidentally get the deceased in the background.  The next inappropriately timed selfie are the ones taken at places that have a sad historical significance like Auschwitz in Germany and the World Trade Center Memorial in New York City. There was one instance of a girl who take a selfie in the Auschwitz concentration camp that went viral, and most recently an explosion in New York City caused many to be injured and two missing was another source of places that people thought would be an okay place to take a selfie.

Source via Mashable

Of course, every story has another side and I'm sure many of the people in these examples didn't have a malicious intent when they posted the selfies. They probably just didn't think it through as well as they should have. In situations like those people need to learn to not act so hastily and take a beat to think about the repercussions of posting a questionable selfie. Also something that is important is how we treat the people who post these kinds of selfies. The girl who posted the Auschwitz selfie received death threats, which is unacceptable. I think many people forget that we're all human and sometimes make mistakes. If any of those people can say they've never made a mistake then they can go ahead, but I find that highly unlikely. However, most importantly people need to remember to think of more than just themselves when posting something on a social media platform, especially when posting these kinds of selfies. When posting a selfie at a place that people died, were injured, or tortured they need to remember that the people who went through that have loved ones that may find it disrespectful to see people smiling in front of the tragedy they faced. I think it's absolutely fine to take pictures of the building or fire because it's newsworthy and lets other people know what's going on, just don't stick your face in there with it. Be mindful of other people's stories, respect the situation that happened there and really think it through before you post. Not only will your friends and family see it but coworkers, future employers and a whole lot of other people will too.