Four-Square Time! (and not the game you played in middle school)

My new favorite application for my Blackberry: Four Square. I am hesitant yet intrigued by Four Square. How much more connected can we all be? I don't think these techie gurus are ever going to draw a line and pretty soon everyone will have like personal cameras on each other where they can watch the person at anytime they want. I think people use Four Square because they want other people to know they are out and about. And I can't really complain because I just joined :)

It can also be beneficial for businesses, and that's something I want to look more into. It's word-of-mouth at it's techiest. This social media case study does a great job explaining the business benefits of such an application.

All I want now is to be a mayor!

Talk Is Cheap.

I don't know about you, but when I need to know anything about anyone, a pure Google will let you know what there is to know about the person. These days people claim to be these social media gurus yet have nothing to prove for it. How can you honestly lie about your social media experience when all anyone has to do is Google you? You have Twitter? You have Facebook? Four-square? Linked-In? That's funny I guess Google can't find you. You must be the exception. Oh really? You manage 20 social media networks? Links, please. And guess what. If you don't give me the links - that's fine. I will find them myself. Oh funny, you claimed to have 20,000 followers. A couple extra zeroes must have accidentally slipped in. I bet Google is to blame.

Two Lives, Same Goal

This song is kind of grotesque, but catchy :)



Sometimes I feel like I have a double-life, and I enjoy every minute of it. During the day, I work in marketing, primarily utilizing social media in a multitude of different ways from blog posts, Facebook, Twitter, Hoot Suite, Four-Square, Linked-In, Google Analytics, Google Adwords, get the picture(or the Flicker, if you will)? But at night I do what I call "turning up the marketing switch" and become a brand ambassador to quite a few different liquors. I go from being behind the scenes, to in-your-face-look-into-my-eyes-and-drink-what-I-say-because-I'm-pretty-and-it-will-make-you-just-like-me attitude. And let's just say the outfits aren't acceptable while corporate America is awake.

I love marketing, and the difference in the marketing I do is night and day, and why I feel like I live in two worlds and have the best of each.

I Don't Have Beef With People. I Have Tofu.

“We all love animals. Why do we call some ‘pets’ and others ‘dinner’?"

I stopped eating fish after I saw The Little Mermaid when I was ten.

No, seriously. How can you eat Flounder after he helped Ariel find the love of her life? Or eat crab after getting to know Sebastian on a personal level? So I quick, cold-tofu.

I stopped eating all types of meat when I was in high school. I am not one to judge people if they decide to eat meat, I just know it's not for me. And never will be.

So what do I eat do you ask? Tofu. Vegetables. Fruits. Cheese. Hummus (yum). You can still go the bad route and stock up on the fried food, but given my new journey as of yesterday I don't think that's a good idea :)

I (currently) live in South Florida, and there are actually quite a few great locations to grab some vegetarian-friendly food. This blog has a great variety for us vegetarians (my absolute favorite is Sub-Lime, no questions asked):
http://www.meatlessmiami.com/search/label/Ft.%20Lauderdale

I am not preaching here, just try something new! And who knows, tofu may end up becoming your next favorite food!

Blog this.

our prime purpose in this life is to help others. and if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them. -dalai lama

I have been working on everyone's social media but my own. My company has over 15 social networks, and an entire blogger community that I post for, and I have yet to post to this blog for an extremely long time!

So let the blogs ensue. But tonights will be short. Like my run. I decided to run the ING Marathon in Miami, FL in January. Today was day #1 of training. Didn't get very far. My goal is to run the marathon at a 8:30 pace. AKA Boston Marathon pace. That's what I am known for. Take a goal, and make it a journey.

Welcome to my life. Again.

Last blog!

This was definitely my hardest course this semester for the sole reason of GoLive. Most courses I start with some previous knowledge I can bring into my new classes, but not with GoLive. I knew nothing. As well as building a website my knowledge was very little. This caused major frustrations but at the end I am glad I had the opportunity to learn more about html, GoLive, and web page building. I would love to be able to work on another site and use my knowledge I gained from this class and program to the next one so I can make my next one better. I have concluded that a website is harder than it looks, especially when one decides to start from scratch. But I have learned a lot in this course alone because everything was so new and now I have something to build from.

I will be using my website in the real world. Before I upload it to my other server and take it off of the bridgeport one there are still adjustments I would like to make. I understand I still have more before it is perfected. I downloaded the trial version of this program and am now interested in purchasing it so I can maintain GoLive and continue to learn more and further enhance my site. I am not concerned with how many "hits" I get from my website as long as the right people I am targeting go to it!

I have read previous articles about PR portfolios being the next wave to hit the computer in that industry so I am glad I am a step ahead right now. I had difficulty finding sites similar to mine and I think that can be a great thing because I can be ahead of other people in my profession.

I enjoyed this course. I am glad it's over because GoLive gave me so many frustrations but in the end I am happy I learned and look forward to enhancing my knowledge in the new media age.

Competition.

I googled for similar websites related to mine, and I may not be the best "googler" because for some reason I found it difficult to find individuals public relations profiles that directly matched my goal as well. However, I was able to find similar websites so I figured I would analyze those.

The first "competitor" website I came across was 'S&C Advertising and Public Relations" which is basically an online portfolio for a company, and not one individual which is what I am doing. This was a professional website, however I was not very impressed with it. The navigation and template were pretty simple, which was fine with the goal of the website. However, I felt the images used were pretty generic and reminded me of free clip art from a word processor. This made me think twice about the images I am using/going to use for my website. The font and how the words were all formatted created a clutter effect to me as well. After looking up the source codes it gave me a couple ideas about my keywords. Something I have not added yet is specific locations where I would like to work and this is something they did and I am going to add. Here is the list of keywords for the website: "San Antonio Advertising, Public Relations, Hispanic Marketing, Web Design, Transcreation, Public Outreach, Branding, Media Relations, 508 Compliance, GSA,WBE MWBE MBE, Translation, Spanish, Multicultural agency, Public Affairs, SBA certified small & disadvantaged business, san antonio, Texas."

The second "competitor" website I researched was Swanson Russel Marketing Communications. I felt this website was a little more professional than the other one I analyzed. I appreciate the whole 'less is more effect' and felt it worked well with this company's website. I liked the actual wording used within the website and how this website wrote less yet still said more than the other one. One thing I felt could have been changed is the navigation bar font; it just bothered me for some reason because it was so plain and everything else seemed more sophisticated and the effect kind of clashed to me. The font could have at least been bold or something! This was a website that I feel I could generate ideas from in terms of the feel of it. I looked at the source code for this website, and could not find the META NAME. I looked throughout the whole source code but nothing was labeled 'keywords' like the other website was. I looked throughout other public relations websites and they had them but this website did not. Here is an example of one of them: "publicity, pr, media, advertising, marketing."