Tweet-a-Coffee? Yes, Please!

Online gift giving is nothing new. Facebook encourages users to give digital presents to friends on their birthday and other important occasions, such as getting a new job, becoming engaged or when celebrating an anniversary. Since 2011, users have been able to send Starbucks gift cards to fellow users. Now, the coffee giant is making it easier to enable your friends caffeine addiction through Twitter.

By linking your Twitter account with a credit card, Tweeple can send coffee to friends by tweeting at the user @tweetacoffee, then the Twitter handle of the friend you would like to receive a $5 e-gift card to Starbucks. As an additional incentive, the first 100,000 qualifying Visa card user that uses Tweet-a-Coffee will receive a $5 Starbucks e-gift card for themselves as well through November 6. 

Users are already adopting the technology. A simple search of "tweetacoffee" on Twitter shows that users are send each other coffee and redeeming the gift cards. 

Social media is making is continuously making it easier to manage our offline relationships online and Tweet-a-Coffee is just another example. Personally, I could see myself using Twitter to thank my coffee drinking friends for help, giving them a small pick-me-up when they are having a bad day or as a present for a special occasion where I couldn't be there to celebrate in person. Would you use Tweet-a-Coffee? What would your reaction to receiving a gift card that can be used in the offline world through a digital means? 

The Life and Times of a Chronic Snoozer

I will be the first to admit that I have a problem: I am a chronic snoozer. I am that person who has five alarms set to wake up on time for their 9:00 class, and still manage to sleep through four of them. 

A realistic representation of what my alarm screen looks like

I've tried going to bed early, I've tried placing a real alarm clock on the opposite side of my desk (sleeping Brittany was able to reach it from the bed with no problems), I've tried setting my If This Then That app to call me to wake me up. Nothing I try works. In high school, I could wake up two hours before school started no problem. Unfortunately, college has changed me. I have super human sleeping abilities that let me do cool things like snooze my alarm and sleep on top of books. 

Kinda like this.

But I'm going to beat the alarm clock. Tonight, I downloaded a new alarm clock app, Freaky Alarm, for the whopping price of $1.99. This is a big commitment due to the fact I usually don't download an app unless it has the price of free. This app makes users do puzzles, solve math problems or even take photos of an object before it will be silenced. 

I want to become a functioning member of society before the sunrises. I don't want to be lazy and incapable of getting homework done before classes start or making myself breakfast because I can't drag myself out of bed. Hopefully, Freaky Alarm fixes this. I know I'm not the only one who has a sleeping problem in college, how do you guys make yourself roll out of bed?

Shirley's Gourmet Popcorn Company Competition

Yesterday, I traveled to Bluffton, Ohio with my fellow TrueNorth PR team members, Julie and Jordan. We had agreed to take on a project for Shirley's Gourmet Popcorn Company, a heavenly popcorn shop that is connected to Bluffton's Shannon Theater. 

I have loved Shirley's for some time now, to the point that I travel there the minute they send me a coupon for their always delicious popcorn of the month. This month, when they introduced the special popcorn (S'mores and red hot popcorn anyone?), there was a tiny box in the side bar announcing a Shirley's commercial contest. The contest asked for submissions that were anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds, with the winner receiving $500. Naturally, I wanted in on this and brought it up to Dr. Aggie and Julie. Unfortunately, I didn't think I would be in charge of organizing this.

Before you think I'm whining or acting full of myself, let me explain some. I have never been in charge of any project for our student ran public relations firm. I have no video experience to speak of, besides putting together small video slideshows for mine and my sister's graduation parties. Luckily, Julie was quick to volunteer to help and we recruited Jordan, who has WAY more experience with videos than I could ever imagine having, to help me tackled this project. After a slight freak out on Monday because I had no idea what to do for this project or even how to begin, we picked a day to go and film at the store and then edit the video in to a commercial.

I was super nervous that entire day trying to think of how this project would turn out, but I should have known that was pointless. We're public relations students! We're smart, creative and extremely  good at working well under pressure and deadlines. After a quick brainstorming session in the Freed Center and my car, we were ready to take this project on. The filming for the video did take a while, but we had a lot of fun doing it. We were super lucky to have one of the employees of Shirley's be such a good sport and let us film her as part of some of the videos. While the actual commercials are not finished yet, keep your eye out! We're going to create them tonight and I may upload them on to my blog to show off our comedic and acting genius. 

The biggest thing about this project is that movie goers the weekend of November 1 and 2 will be voting on the winners. Help TrueNorth PR win $500 by going vote on our project and enjoy some delicious Shirley's Gourmet Popcorn while your at it. 

Homecoming 2013

Within most high schools and colleges throughout the United States, the grand tradition of voting on a homecoming court has lived on as a major part of the festivities. For Ohio Northern University, we have supported this tradition through yearly voting of different representatives from student organizations that we eliminated in a Survivor style voting to five men and women in a popularity contest decided by the entire student body. 

Over the weekend, Ohio Northern celebrated Homecoming in the usual fashion with parades, tailgates, football games and more even though the weather did not want to cooperate. After announcing the parade and visiting the Alpha Xi Delta Teddy Bear Tea with some sisters, we journeyed to the football stadium to watch the Polar Bears dominate Marietta and witness the crowning of our 2013 Homecoming Court. If you weren't there to witness this historic moment, have no fear! I was kind enough to live tweet the entire event as part of an assignment for this class. Is the suspense killing you? More than likely. 

While I was able to tweet exactly what is going on with the Homecoming Court, Ohio Northern University did not. This is completely understandable, considering the crowning was during the football game. ONUSports did a fabulous job of updating the game, as well as some of my classmates. Most of the promotion for the Homecoming Court was through students that were on the Court and their friends. In the future, I believe that the ONU Homecoming Twitter should be used to promote things the crowning of the court, even though this was not used at all over the Homecoming festivities. 

Don't waste any more time! Discover the results of the 2013 Homecoming Court through my Storify. 

Do Us A Flavor

In Real-Time Marketing & PR, David Meerham Scott discusses a concept that many of us are extremely familiar with: crowdsourcing. Many of us use it at least weekly in the form of Wikipedia, the ultimate crowdsourced online encyclopedia. In chapter nine, Scott discusses how crowdsourcing is used in television like American Idol or, in it's most common form, "to make decisions based on massively collective wisdom".

 In June 2012, Lay's decided to take advantage of this concept by introducing the "Do Us A Flavor" competition. Through this competition, fans of Lay's Facebook page were able to create their own flavor of potato chips that would eventually make it to the final three. Nearly 3.8 million chip flavors were submitted and more than one million people voted on Facebook and Twitter. The winner of the competition was picked from three flavors: Garlic Cheesy Bread, Chicken & Waffles and Sriracha. Karen Weber-Mendham, a mother from Wisconsin, was the winner of the $1 million dollar prize and bragging rights to having the winning flavor. 

Scott organized some steps for "Finding The Right Crowd", which includes soliciting suggestions from supporters for things such as new product names, encouraging people to vote on or rank a list of items or generating submissions to a contest-- all of which Lay's did. Lay's took a big leap of faith in how involved its target audiences would become in this high-stakes competition and experienced some amazing results.

Did you participate in the "Do Us A Flavor" competition? Did you try the flavors? I personally tried all three, Cheesy Garlic Bread was my favorite by far! 

Almost Reunited and It Feels So Good

There comes a time in every sorority woman's life that she finds her perfect match. No, not a boy. Her little. 

Our first photo together!

When I was going through recruitment last year, I met plenty of fabulous young women. However, Kaylee May introduced me to a girl that was the same year as us who was really looking in to becoming more involved with her pageant platform, Autism Speaks, on campus. Kaylee had known Becca for a while and I had taken anatomy with her the previous semester. Kaylee suggested I talk to her some because we both had a mutual interest in pageants. 

Kaylee and I cheering Becca on during the Miss America finals!

The moment she found out I was her big.

We started talking and I fell in love with this girl. She received a bid from Alpha Xi Delta and I became her Rose Buddy for the next week. We talked constantly, had lunch dates, studied organic chemistry and ate chips and salsa together constantly. When it came time to make our little lists, I had no doubt who would be at the top of my list. The entire sorority knew. When I finally got my call telling me who fate (or the sisters in charge of big/little pairing) had paired me with, I knew in my heart who I was paired with as soon as I answered that call. I was officially Becca Yeh's big. 
Even though I haven't been able to spend much time with her since she's became Miss Minnesota, I'm there for her whenever she needs me and she's there for me when I need her too. She became more than a sorority sister or a classmate, she's honestly one of my best friends. Just like I can't imagine going through college without my twin, Courtney, I can't imagine not having Becca there either. While we may not have been able to go through with all of the plans we had for this summer, like me traveling to Minnesota to visit and her visiting Ohio so I can drag her to Cedar Point, I have been looking forward to the moment I get to see her again. Finally, I get to see her this Friday!
I'm not sure how much time we'll be able to spend together, but I do know that no matter how much it is we'll have a blast. How can it not be when we get to spend time together? 

Teach Me How To Foursquare?

I consider myself to be pretty technologically savvy. I belong to one of the best public relations programs in the nation with super cool professors that encourage us to use the latest and greatest in technology and classmates that are quick to share when they find a super useful tool (this is where I insert my shameless plug for If This Then That, which I blogged about last week and am already in love with!). However, I ran across an app that to this day I have never tried while doing some reading today: Foursquare.

In chapter 11, David Meerman Scott discusses some ways to use Foursquare as a marketing and PR tool:

• Participate yourself by checking in and becoming the "mayor" of your establishment
• Cultivate evangelist by letting other people become mayor, which people tend to brag about, and give them special offers as a perk of being mayor
• Pitch special offers to people that pass your business by advertising that you have specials for Foursquare users only
• And finally, get fans' opinions by involving them in decisions

These all sounded like fantastic ideas to me. Unfortunately, I had no clue what he meant by any of it. The only contact I have had with Foursquare is the commercial from a couple of years ago where the guy says he's the mayor of the water cooler.

After a little bit of research, I discovered that Foursquare is a social tool that allows you to check in at places, leave tips for other people in the area, tailor your recommendations based on previous places you have visited and compete with others to earn points based on your check ins. A user can become the mayor by being the person to check in the most in a place in the last 60 days or compete to earn badges based on the amount or places you check in at. 

Making brand engagement a competition is a great way to make consumers more involved. While I don't see the point of using Foursquare in the metropolis of Ada, I would definitely use this in a larger city or on a vacation to find the best local options available.

Have you used Foursquare? What was your experience with it? Did you discover any great restaurants or venues through the app?

Scott, D. M. (2011). Real-time marketing & PR: how to instantly engage your market, connect with customers, and create products that grow your business now. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.

#Justice4Daisy

In many cases of things gone viral, it's things that put smiles to our faces. Like this video of a guy singing Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball" with a Gollum Voice. 

Unfortunately, not everything that spreads like online wildfire can be humorous. Sometimes, the thing that is going viral on social media makes your heart want to break in two. Daisy Coleman, a teen from Missouri, has one of these viral stories. On October 12, "The Kansas City Star" published an article online about how after her family moved to Maryville to move on from the death of her father, she was allegedly raped by a high school football star named Matt Barnett and left outside intoxicated in January. However, many people are not content to settle for Daisy to continue living her life without justice, including the internet hacker group Anonymous.

Anonymous has created a call to action in getting justice for Daisy Coleman, just as they had in a similar case in Steubenville, Ohio. A women's rights activist by the name of Courtney Cole has organized a peaceful protest that has gained the support of Anonymous that currently has over 1,000 people meeting at the Nodaway County Courthouse in Maryville, daisies in hand. This young girl is receiving outpouring support from strangers, but was met a horrendous victim-blaming culture in the place that was supposed to help her heal from the loss of her father.

But it seems that Daisy will soon have her chance at justice. Due to the negative response to Maryville's actions as a result of a CNN news report and multiple articles, cyber threats, social media posts and campaigns, Nodaway County has decided to bring in a special prosecutor to finally give Daisy's case a day in court (click to 3:30 in the video stream).  Social media, while often used for pleasure, can be used to make major changes. It is a powerful tool that can bring awareness to issues and bring results and justice to those who would not see it otherwise. 

Do you believe that extreme uses of social media are appropriate for cases such as Daisy Coleman? Do you think that groups such as Anonymous are a positive or a negative force for bringing attention to the issue? 

If This Then That

If This Then That is a smart phone app that allows you to create recipes for based on pre-existing apps on your phone. Through IFTTT, you can automatically upload any photos you Instagram or take on your regular cell phone camera to Dropbox, create reminders for each month, be sent push notifications when specific users upload photos or get text message alerts based on weather.

Besides being entirely useful in every day life (getting weather texted to your phone every morning is the ULTIMATE convenience), IFTTT can be great for professional lives. Updates on competitors or on products your company promotes can be sent to your phone automatically, any time someone hashtags a product on Instagram or Facebook you can be sent an email. The possibilities of recipes are endless. 

I've downloaded the app for myself and have created some recipes of my own, and I completely believe that this app will change how people use their cell phones. Would you be willing to try IFTTT?

Real Time Media and Public Relations

Not every company is as lucky as Oreo. This summer when they posted a photo of a rainbow stuffed Oreo cookie on their Facebook in honor of Gay Pride Month, the company stirred quite a bit of buzz. Surprisingly, the buzz was not completely negative. 

Oreo Sentiment Graph, Credit SalesForce Marketing Cloud

On social media, fans of the cookie and their stance on gay rights stuck up for the brand in comments, posts, blogs and tweets. The company did not have to handle the controversial issue on their own, their fans helped them respond to their crisis directly. 

But, due to some of the responses on the Facebook page, the post and comments that followed the post were deleted. Obviously, Oreo has not experienced any backlash. It's 2013 and the Oreo brand is still in full effect. However, Oreo's response to the post came in a timely manner to the issue when many news sources and consumers were commenting on the post. 

“We are excited to illustrate what is making history today in a fun and playful way,” the company rep said in an email to ABC News. “As a company, Kraft Foods has a proud history of celebrating diversity and inclusiveness. We feel the OREO ad is a fun reflection of our values.”

While this situation is no where near the situation United Airlines faced in the case introduced in Chapter One of "Real-Time Marketing & PR", Oreo handled the situation considerably better than United. They did not ignore the situation or make light of it, and while there were still negative responses that were highly publicized (I'm looking at you, Buzzfeed), that was not the majority of responses. 

I could not find any articles measuring a change in the brand after this post. But, Bangor Daily News perfectly summed up the best case scenario for the company: the company, which is over a century old, looks cutting edge. I believe that Oreo did what the United Airline's of the world would not because they stand firmly behind their consumers, whether they agree with their personal opinions or not. Responding firmly and quickly while being sensitive to the opinions of others cemented Oreo as a company that does not idly throw out support about issues, but a company that has beliefs it fully supports that played it smart on social media, had fans that supported them as well and prevented a larger crisis as a result. 

Scott, D. M. (2011). Real-time marketing & PR: how to instantly engage your market, connect with customers, and create products that grow your business now. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.

Healthy Eating Is NOT As Easy

See that face? That's the face that I usually make when thinking about vegetables. I don't "love" vegetables. I didn't grow up being forced to eat vegetables. Until I got to college, there were few vegetables I would willingly eat, including but not limited to okra (fried only), green beans and potatoes in their french fry and hash brown form. 

However, when I started school I learned that I could not survive on the food I had been eating. After a lovely freshman year of gaining the infamous "freshman 15" (which was more like the freshman 10 plus all of my muscle turning into fat) due to a year of stress eating, I realized I had to change something. Sophomore year, I occasionally went to the gym and tried to watch what I ate but I was never consistent. Junior year, I have decided to get my butt in gear.

I joined PolarFit, Ohio Northern's CrossFit club. I do Pilates on my own at home and run when we don't in class. But, most importantly, I'm changing the way I eat. I'm forcing myself to eat carrot sticks and salads, which I'm beginning to tolerate. I'm trying to eat more protein instead of carbohydrates and not let myself eat out so much. If I do eat carbohydrates, I try to eat good ones instead of nasty processed ones. This week I made the decision to actually eat as clean as I possibly can. I'm on day three of my eating change and I have already faced temptations in the form of the smell of french fries and the Oreo's in my cabinet at home. But, I've also started to like carrots. Small victories, right?

The biggest thing I've come to realize is that I have to make small changes. Substituting low carbohydrate, wheat tortillas for white corn flour tortillas, eating chicken and turkey instead of red meat and trading chips for carrots is a start. Even though I may not be perfect when it comes to eating, I try my best, and that's better than everyone else who isn't trying at all.

Greek Leadership Day

Last Thursday night, I volunteered to help our lovely PRSSA President Kelsi Rupersburg with the public relations presentation for Greek Leadership Day. She was absolutely amazing and wrote out notes and created slides for me, all Lauren Hector and I had to do was get up on stage and present. Easy, right? 

Not quite.

It was intimidating being in a room full of my peers, many of which I went through recruitment with or occasionally see out and about. Lots of the girls in the room were pharmacy with me before I changed my major. Right in the middle of the room were two Alpha Xi Delta's, Tessa and my lovely niece Macey, and a Sigma Phi Epsilon brother I went to high school in the corner that gave me a focal point for when I got nervous.

But getting up on stage and discussing public relations made me feel like I was proving myself right for changing my major. Believe me, I was scared to death once I saw some of the people in the audience. Some of the people (and I'm not naming names) were people that I felt uncomfortable around and not good enough when we had classes together. But as I looked around the room during my presentation, these were the exact same people that were taking notes and asking questions. They were interested. They cared about the things Lauren and I had to say and didn't discredit or write off our presentation as nonsense that didn't work. 

One of the things that excited me most was that there was discussion. There were representatives from almost every Panhellenic or IFC organization on campus and they helped each other. We came up with ways to creatively advertise on campus and even cornered Lauren into finding out what would bring more unaffiliated people to campus. 

Seeing people looking like they were taking something away from the presentation made me extremely happy. I was happier yet when I had a few people that weren't in the room for the presentation come up to me and say that they heard I had "killed it". As nervous as I was, I think that the presentation was a success and look forward to see how it changes how events are promoted on our campus. 

TimeShaker

Recently, I looked at a new social media platform called TimeShaker. Essentially, TimeShaker lets users arrange their photos in a timeline, or TimeView that they can share with friends or use to see where it fits in with history on the provided TimeViews. 

After looking at the website and clicking through some of the TimeViews provided, I started to get a feel for the app. While the idea behind TimeShaker seems to be well intended, the actual execution of it is confusing. The website is simple and to the point, but doesn't explain much about how TimeShare actually works or the people that created it. The option to switch from social use to business use is a nice feature, but the business site has many of the same problems as the social version of the site.

Ultimately, I don't really see TimeShare as something that I would use on a regular basis. It's inconvenient because it doesn't seem user friendly or interactive. When I want to share pictures, I'll usually upload them to Facebook and organize by albums. While they're may be a use for it in the future, I can't think of one now. 

Snapchat Just Got Snazzier

I am a college student. I live a college lifestyle with unpredictable sleeping hours, waking hours and nights where it is possible that I don't sleep at all. During the night, it's possible that myself and my friends (who are also college students) send these entertaining little pieces of technology called Snapchats. My classmate Julie Eley wrote a blog last week discussing some problems she had with Snapchat, including the anticipation of opening a purple box with a video and a limited character count to send photo messages. But when I opened a strange blue box this morning that had the video above in it, I knew that the Snapchat game had changed. 

According to the official Snapchat blog, the strange blue box is a new addition to Snapchat called Snapchat Stories. Users can add snaps together to a story that includes photos and videos, merging the two mediums that snaps can be created from. But the most shocking part of this new update, other than the fact that iOS and Android were updated together for the first time ever? Snapchat Stories can be viewed for 24 hours.

Yes, you read that correctly. 24 hours. 

Photo Credit: TechCrunch

After taking a video or picture on the app, you can chose to click an icon shaped like a layered box with a star on it to add a snap to your story, or tap "My Story" in the friends list. Friends can access your story as many times as they like until the story is gone.

Snapchat demonstrated itself how this new technology revolutionizes the smart phone app. By teaming with different bands to announce the release of Snapchat Stories, Snapchat has officially introduced the concept of direct marketing to its users and changed how corporations and businesses will use the technology. 

According to TechCrunch, businesses have used Snapchat to send coupons to users, but the 10 second view that Snapchat limited pictures to made the idea a little difficult to deal with. Now, businesses will be able to add their Snapchat Story to the timeline and customers will be able to access the coupon until the 24 hour time period is up. But will the use end there? Snapchat is now becoming competitive against Vine and Instagram, creating a timeline that is more than empty boxes that can never be accessed again. Businesses have adopted Vine and Instagram to communicate with consumers. The St. Louis Cardinals have created their own Instagram video series while Dunkin' Donuts and Trident Gum have used Vine to create entire commercials. Taco Bell and e-retailer Karmaloop have already been using Snapchat to interact with fans of their brands, sending videos and pictures of products to their ever-growing young adult fan base. 

How long until other larger businesses adopt Snapchat as part of their strategy of accessing the 18 to 24-year-old demographic? Will this change how public relations professionals view Snapchat? If you are a Snapchat user, what do you think of this new technology? 

Now, excuse me while I play with Snapchat Stories the rest of the day. Want to see my story? Add me on Snapchat, my username is bholland93.