As I lead my New Media Technology students (at MSSU) down the road toward streaming media, I thought it only appropriate that I start experimenting with movie production software myself. Now, in the past, I’ve captured and imported video, edited, etc., in Adobe Premiere. Let me tell you…that software…not for the faint of heart. But at the same time, I wanted to see what else was out there. I’m teaching my students about iMovie (Apple’s product, built into most iMacs), but at home and work I use PC. Enter Windows Movie Maker. 

 A few nights ago, just for laughs, I spent a good hour putzing around YouTube for videos. I happened across one called “Kitty Cat Dance” and am still laughing uncontrollably. I’m am completely amazed at the content that is out there. While I use quite a few YouTube videos in my teaching (because I believe it adds some visual content to the typical boring lecture), I’m starting to see the entertainment, instructional, and information conveyance uses of streaming video.

Let’s look at the fact that 66% of all learners are visual-spatial. What does that mean? That means most of us want to see something before merely hearing it or reading it. It will stick with us longer if we see it (I’m part of this 66%). Now if I could just get past the distaste I feel when I hear my voice recorded…

 Long-story-short, I took my first foray into streaming video content by posting a video to YouTube called “Age of Chickens.” No, it’s not instructional. It’s supposed to be funny. It could be considered “machinima-lite” (machinima being the capture, manipulation and publishing of original MMORPG/game content, including voice-overs, etc.). I pulled together captured content from the MMORPG Age of Conan (a new favorite game of mine), various sound effects (including “Yakity Sax,” also known as the “Benny Hill” theme). While it’s rough, I’m proud of it. I can’t wait to see my students one-up me with their convergence assignments, though!

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this recently, especially in connection with the PCOS magazine and other information marketing that I do around the syndrome. The first edition of PCOS Today Magazine was a moderate success. I was proud to see my first publication royalties from it. However, it didn’t seem it reached nearly as much of the PCOS niche as I thought it would…hence my question, is this a question of a niche being too small?

With this question in mind, it’s propelling me to think about how to expand the niche. I’ve also been wondering how you position health communication products for such a specific niche like this in the market? What IS the PCOS market, for that matter? IS there a market?

I apparently think too much. I’ve also been trying to learn more about information marketing. There seems to be a strong focus on “tangible” product marketing. However, my expertise, my focus, my capabilities have ALWAYS been focused on providing information (whether it be desktop published, blogged, spoken, etc.). I want to find a way to connect my passions (many, varied, broad though they are…public relations, health communication, polycystic ovarian/ovary syndrome, and many, many more) with this idea of information marketing. I think I have more to learn, but probably already know a lot about it. Just have to connect the dots.

Priscilla Tan makes a rather pointed blog entry about pitching, as a PR professional, to bloggers. Especially useful to PR students who don’t quite understand the importance of using blogs in public relations.

http://priscillatan.com/2007/09/23/blogger-pitches-how-and-who/

No, “widget fever” is not some odd affliction you get from visiting a jungle, nor is it a new Will Smith song.

Through the past few weeks, I’ve been redesigning the Web site for the online (and soon to be hard-copy) magazine I publish. It has been a trying experience which took three different tries with three different software packages to find one that my feeble brain could figure out and SUCCESSFULLY Web publish. When I finally figured out how render HTML packages from outside companies (read: the Amazon book links you can embed in Web sites), it was like I had reached Web nirvana. Through that process, I then tripped over widgets, and now I’m spending my free time looking across the ‘Net for relevant widgets for my site.

I must be calm. I must remain design-minded and not go crazy, posting widgets every which way from Tuesday.

So why am I rattling on about this? Think about it. Widgets are a great PR tool. Take a look at the Kansas Health Foundation’s “Change Something” campaign. To empower participants in their health-focused effort, the KHF provided a widget with a dual purpose: participants could upload their suggestions about changing a health habit, and then download a widget to be placed on their desktops, etc., to be fed (no pun intended) by the KHF with new suggestions daily. It’s interactive. It’s colorful. It’s individualized. It gives the KHF a way to build one-to-one relationships with participants and potential participants without getting in their faces. GENIUS!

In the Google universe, these widgets are actually called “gadgets,” (gadgets, widgets, thigamabobs, whatever) and as a Web publisher (even to your blogs) you can choose from a plethora of gadgets to use: CNN, Mayo Clinic, New York Times…heck, you can even post a language translator to your site. Widgetbox has a lot of fun, though not necessarily relevant to PR, widgets, including the effervescent PacMan game, a cat which responds to your mouse pointer, and a way to integrate YouTube videos (by keyword) to your Web site without complicated coding.

Now I feel compelled to go out and create my own widget (or gadget or whatever I shall call it)…but about what? Who do I want to reach? Why is this relevant, and what’s the demo of my audience?

The couples that surround me…my best friends from my college days, a former K-State grad student (and her hubby) who has gone on to UTAustin…they’re all having babies. Over the summer, strangely enough, a former PR student of mine e-mailed me to let me know what she was doing as part of her new, after-graduation job. Lo-and-behold, part of her responsibilities is to peruse blogs about motherhood, parenting and the what-not, to help her firm’s client determine what new mothers find to be vital, right here and right now.

Then there’s a health advocacy group I’m a part of, and we’re trying to find ways to draw more of those we serve to our Web site’s forum boards. The plus is that we’re new and fresh; the minus is that we have competition, successful competition at that. At the same time, we’ve established virtual offices in Second Life, a virtual community (check it out if you’ve never heard of it (http://www.secondlife.com).  We’re trying to draw people to our virtual presence, so we’re holding a pseudo-event on 9/23 (if you’d like more details, give me a yell). I’M SURROUNDED BY PUBLIC RELATIONS!!!

While my life is as crazy as the next academic’s, I do try to take time and check out Steve Rubel’s MicroPersuasion blog. In a recent post, he points to a colleague’s post (power of recommendation!) about becoming a better blogger. In Media Landscaping, there is a robust debate about taking advertising within a blog. The best advice I found in the Landscaping post is remembering to find a niche and stick to it. This will define you and your message.

I’ve spent nearly three years teaching in the School of Journalism here at K-State. Every time I bring up the topics related to e-communication, whether it be blogging (weblogs), e-newsletters, Web design, you name it, I’m a rather bit amazed at the blank stares I receive. When I first taught a media relations class about blogging, the reaction to the subject matter was negative. The students, all upper-level public relations or mass communications students, all felt that blogging was merely trendy, a fad, something that would pass. The gist I felt from the students was that there was no place for e-communication in traditional mass communications and that as long as we focused on the big three — newspapers, radio and television — that it would pass.

Two years later, I’m actively teaching students about blogging, about e-newsletters, about Web design. I’ve also heard from alumni that have told both myself and colleagues that if we don’t get riding (and steering) on the e-communication bandwagon that we’re going to start losing students. Employers are expecting, more and more, at least a basic understanding of e-communication tactics…though I can guarantee you there are an incredible few classes and textbooks out there to use as resources to teach mass comm students (especially those in PR) how to USE the tactics of e-communication.

This post is probably going to sound like a ramble. A few things have crossed my mind as I’ve read my PR student’s blogs, as I’ve started working on my Ph.D., as I’ve just sat here reading e-mail.

Po Bronson is an author I ALWAYS love to read. He wrote a book sometime in the past five years about professions…who loves what, who hates what, who does something truly unique to put food on the table. On his Web site is a rant about the Gen X generation, a cohort I belong to and am firmly esconced within, since the day I was born.  His rant almost takes on a 1960s Ginsberg-esque quality to it, in the “I’ve seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…” sort of way. Except Po’s bent is that Gen X has replaced integrity with money and stature, and we are focused on culture consumption instead of good ol’, honest-to-goodness political, economic and societal values. I don’t know. In some ways I think he’s right. He says we don’t vote. We don’t read the newspapers. We walk around like a bunch of birds with our chests puffed out in a proverbial “who’s better” contest. And, being a professor teaching classes in public relations, it got me to thinking…does my generation have an image problem? Or, perhaps, do all generations following the one in current establishment have image problems? I think if this in the “I had to walk to school, uphill both ways, barefoot in the snow” talks our elders have always given us. Anyone younger than the person speaking is considered irresponsible. I joke with my mom about this. I’m in my mid-30s….but I could be 80 and she’d still be “mom.”

Regarding getting my Ph.D., I have to admit I’m tired. I’ve been tired for a while. But I’m very much enjoying what I’m learning. My biggest struggle is that I feel as if I’m meeting myself coming and going. I expected this, so I cannot complain. I’m just ready to be completely done with school and permanently on the OTHER side of the lecturn.

I’ll continue on later, as more thoughts come to mind.

I threw my PR Techniques students into the deep end of the visual communication pool this week by having them dive right in to create a brochure for an organization connected with the School of JMC in which I teach (how many swimming cliches can I cram into one sentence?). Although I’m sure a few of them are cursing my name right now, and most likely digging out voodoo dolls in effigy of me, I really do think this is the best way for them to learn how to create the materials they will be responsible for producing once out in the harsh world of public relations and mass communication post-college.

The production of these designed visual communication tools for use in public relations, I think, is one of the most fun challenges of communications. Why? Because the designer is thrown into the tug-of-war of fitting all the necessary copy into a rather defined amount of space, coupled with the knowledge that it must be visually appealing and grab attention so it will be ultimately read. The great thing about creating brochures and flyers, at least in their purest and most simple forms, is that the guidelines are fairly “cut-and-dry.” You can only set forth so many rules about a brochure until the creativity of the design and the message become rote, dry, and you’ve essentially wasted time and money to produce something that isn’t going to read.

The other reason I provide my students to basic guidelines and ask them to dig into a project like this is because it gets them out into the world of visual communication and looking around. I hope they’ll start keeping their eyes open for other brochures that really seem to “work” and will try to emulate the designs they think meet the challenge. This also gives me the opportunity to work a little more one-on-one with them during classtime, as to provide them a bit of facilitation on this journey through visual communication.

So, for my students who might be reading this, BREATHE! I trust in your ability, your creativity, and your enthusiasm to create something that will be great. You have a fun opportunity here to help out an organization that can use it for great benefit. I truly look forward to seeing what you produce, and remember, THIS IS A PROCESS! I’m not expecting Picasso (or Monet) to come flying out of our design software. I expect you to learn and grow as the great public relations practitioners you are and will be.

Even though I really hate the term “buzz” to describe some of the stuff we do in public relations, I have to admit I recently tripped over a few decent resources about blogging as a trend (which unfortunately refer to PR as “buzz”). While I’ll be introducing some of my students (the ones farther ahead in their sequence) to more depth about blogging, I’m also generally introducing my introductory (“Fundamentals”) students to the concepts of it.

That said, The Washington Post featured a great article in March of this year about how the food company, ConAgra, circumvented the potential of waning sales after the low-carb craze started to sputter out by monitoring what they called “blog buzz,” or the chatter being generated on blogs all over the world.

At the same time, this article also turned me on to something called Nielsen Buzzmetrics. You remember Nielsen…the company that puts those little devices in only-so-many homes to measure who is watching what and when, etc.? They now have an entire division devoted to quantifying (essentially, through content analysis…I’m assuming) the chatter being generated about various companies and topics on blogs and other individual communications mediums. Mouthpiece is the blog written by Nielsen Buzzmetrics CEO, as he constantly discusses how consumer-driven media is evolving.