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Market and Consumer Research Analysis

This course met my original objective by providing me with the time to do the bulk of my research regarding my Capstone. I will say that if you’ve ever attended Georgetown University’s Communication’s Planning course, “the gift” will help you out tremendously in this course. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this class other than doing a lot of research. I was surprised to see that there was some fun added to the class like the promotional video. I just wish I wasn’t deployed so I could have created a better video. But, the teacher was more than helpful when needed. More than once I had to figure out how to combat crappy internet, or help with assignments and the instructor was more than happy to help.

Through this course, I learned a lot about my Capstone project, which is fantastic because it was a shot in the dark when I pitched the business. Being deployed, I really don’t have a lot of options in the sandbox for companies I can work with and I couldn’t afford to put off school. So I’m very thankful that this course helped me solidify the business and the research necessary to help it get off of its feet.

I think everything in this course will be applied to my Capstone and any other business I work for in the future. The skills gained will help me narrow down target audiences and how to gather that information quickly and effectively. This class combined with the gift are two tools in my tool box that will probably save me so much time and stress down the road. I know that my job in the Army already uses SWOT analysis a lot, and now I can fight off some of our ridiculous marketing attempts. The research done in this course will allow me to show who we should be marketing to, and the best ways to reach those audiences.

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Social Media Metrics and ROI

 This course was exceedingly helpful. I knew that understanding social media metrics was not my strongest suit, and this class has definitely helped me to better understand and utilize the analytics. I need to make sure to download all of the material before the class closes so I have them on hand in the future as I move forward with my final project.

As with IPR, the instructor is amazing and so easy to work with. I know exactly where I stand with her, and if I run into issues, she is simply an email away. (Which, with my latest work assignment, it’s been a blessing to have.) I am uneasy with the course material, and only time and practicing will make it easier, but our instructor has provided me with every ounce of knowledge she has.

 I’m already applying some of the material to what my office does currently. I would love to apply the Google analytics and analyze our social media campaigns; however, I am now the photographer for our general, so my time is very limited in our office. I’ve shared the information with the people in my office, and they’re slowly incorporating it into our battle rhythm.

 I’m really glad that this class came right after IPR. This class reinforces what IPR taught and provided a practical application for what we learned in the previous class. I feel that I have a better grasp on metrics and returns on investments. Obviously, I have some practicing to do, but overall I have a great basis to go off of now. I’m so excited to see how my next class fuses together with what we just learned, and I may be secretly hoping that the instructor is the same for the remaining classes.

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Innovative Public Relations Tools and Resources

This course went above and beyond my original expectations. I thought I was pretty savvy on social media. This class alone has given me tools that I’ve implemented at work with great success. I’ve gotten our team hooked on Hootsuite, which has been incredibly helpful with scheduling posts across our platforms with a 7-hour time difference to audiences back home. I cannot express enough how great this has been for us.  

 Other aspects of this course that have been simply amazing would include the instructor. She not only knows what she is talking about, but she’s practical in the expectations of the course. She set realistic timelines and provided valuable sources for every single lesson. This information alone was so helpful in learning the different applications she had us use in the class. I didn’t feel lost or confused, despite how I felt logging into the course initially.

 Overall, I thought that this class was going to be a refresher course in social media. However, I have learned how to utilize social media in a whole new way. I understand how the analytics work, where I can use them to my advantage at work to show how a campaign is, or in some cases, isn’t working. This allows me to go to my command and show them with data, how some of their “great ideas” just simply aren’t the right tactics. The information given in this course has given me methods to improve our reach and different strategies to implement when certain campaigns aren’t working the way we want them to.

 I’m so exceedingly happy that this course was more than just a refresher and had so much substance to it.  I can’t wait to see over the next quarter what campaigns I’ve implemented, because of this course, do well. I think that I have more to learn about social media, but our instructor has provided me with a great wealth of sources and information to guide me long after this course ends.

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How app can help educate on importance of vocational learning

A cause that I am very passionate about is the value of trade schools or vocational schools. The app that I would create would provide people with information regarding facts about how the school programming is actually funded, background on the importance of these schools and vignettes of students who have benefited from these types of schools across multiple jobs.

The digital divide plays a huge part in this lack of information. Huffington Post reports that “education level remains a key determinant of Internet use in the home…” (Bailey, 2014). This shows that not only are people lacking key information, but the amount of technology directly correlates to how people learn these days. Vocational education understands this concept and has for years now. This type of education blends emerging technology and offers the knowledge base to students no matter their family’s income or way of life.

Vocational education bridges the digital divide in a way that is feasible to attain. Most schools that include vocational education are county-wide schools that rely on county taxes that barely ever get raised. (Which is an entire issue onto itself). For example, in Sussex County in 2014, Sussex Technical School District raised their county tax from 2.1 percent to a modest 2.3 percent, and people flipped out because they didn’t understand how the funding process worked, nor did they understand how the .2 percent increase would allow the school to continue operation costs. This is the first time in over 20 years that the school received a tax rate increase, but due to the lack of information in the public and a gross propaganda/smear campaign from neighboring school districts, the school will not see another tax increase or increase in funding for a good period of time.  

The app I hope to create would provide people with the information that educates them on the importance of this type of education, but more specifically to launch a counter public relations campaign to dispel the rumors and levy support of county constituents to bring this issue up to their state senators. The app would provide them with a link to contact the appropriate people, a live feedback center, and a section of “Education through our eye”, which will examine various student’s education experiences through this type of education

References:

Bailey, L. F. (2014, February 06). Washington Watch: “Bridging the Internet Gap”. Retrieved March 21, 2017, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linnie-frank-bailey/washington-watch-bridging_b_4741579.html

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Go to Meeting review

Go To Meeting

Have you ever missed an important meeting due to travel issues? Or miss an impromptu meeting because you were away on vacation or business that costed you that big sale? The Go to Meeting application allows you to conduct all your meetings virtually anywhere with several device options.

Don’t have your laptop? That’s okay, you can use your phone. Only have access to your tablet? You’re still able to use the app as long as you have an apple or android operating system.  

Convenience

This app is amazing and allows me to work virtually anywhere. I have been able to attend, teach and conduct important meetings from my home office, the airport and here in Kuwait. It’s perfect for smaller teams that are spread out to meet for a quick meeting. The setup is fairly easy to share and host a meeting within 5 minutes.

The positive side

The app makes it really easy and seamless to share your entire desktop or screen to other members on your team who are on the meeting with you.  Another interesting feature of the application is that you can modify the conference appearance and add your company’s logo. It gives a professional feel for your meetings, which can help to impress potential clients.

The downside

As with all products there are some not so nice feature with this app. The biggest pain is creating your own reminders for the meetings. You can’t simply set up the meeting and let the app create the reminders for you. Other smaller things that could annoy a bigger company would include limited feedback for when you attend a meeting and you can’t store the shared files.

Costs

The app provides a range of pricing based on the number of participants and how many video feeds. The free plan works best for companies that are really small… as in one to three people small or one to three locations with one shared monitor/audio set up since that is the free plan. Their pro-plan ranges from $39-$49 for 25 people and up to 6 simultaneous video feeds. Then the top tier plan maxes out participants at 100 and costs $56-$69 dollars.

Wish App

For my “Wish App” that would make PR professional’s lives a lot easier would be an app that was

FREE

and easy to use on any platform. I understand that app developers are out to make money, but many of the apps that allow PR professionals to do their jobs efficiently allow only a certain amount before they start charging. Some of us who are savvy have figured out how to use and manage multiple email accounts to optimize the “freebies” provided by sites like Hootsuite. But it would be so nice to have one app, which works seamlessly on computers, tablets and cell phones. I would love an app that allows me to monitor, analyze and schedule posts for

ALL

of my social media accounts, as well as have the capability to do meetings with my co-workers within the same app. Other really cool feature to have would be a mini photo editor built into the scheduling feature. That way content can be put out a lot faster without having to move it from an SD card, to a computer to a phone.

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Legal Aspects of Media

My favorite assignments honestly were the discussion boards for once. I loved how creative they were in applying the readings and video lectures. This was the first time I was actually excited to see what the posts needed to be about. Blending my personal opinions with the case facts made it that more interesting to me.

 All of the topics covered in this course are detrimental for my work in my career field. It was great to get a better grasp on these concepts since my undergrad definitely did not focus on any of these. I have a great set of tools to pass along to my Soldiers since these are areas of concern for some of the people we tend to work with.

The knowledge acquired this month will help me handle potential legal issues in my industry by allowing me to know what my rights are as a journalist or as a public relations specialist. I have downloaded all the materials from each week and I’ve already begun sharing the copyright information and the defamation information out to the rest of my print section. These are the small things that can get us in trouble, but now we have a better grasp on what we need to pay attention to while covering stories and dealing with our higher ups.

I personally was very excited for this course. I didn’t have the best teacher for media law in undergrad, despite my teacher being a noted journalist on capitol hill back in the day. The course was basically him ranting about the good old days and left the rest of our class wondering when we would ever open our book or learn something. So, this class went above and beyond my expectations, even though it was only for four weeks. I would have loved to be in this class a lot longer since I feel that I would obtain a lot of valuable information.

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Happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy. There's going to be stress in life, but it's your choice whether you let it affect you or not. Valerie Bertinelli

So as I had drill this weekend. I found that the majority of my Soldiers are bored and make excuses for everything. I found myself beginning to stress out over a difficult class that I needed to teach, and fearing that these Soldiers weren’t going to take it seriously. I stressed so much that my patch of gray hair peeked through, I’ve affectionately named it my Rouge streak. Then someone close to me told me that if I’m prepared to teach, because I know the material, then they will follow. He told me that it would be all about my attitude and that would set the presence for the day. So I tried that. I started off positively, had some great training, with some minor hiccups in time crunches and my expectations were exceeded. These brand new, non-qualified in their jobs, Soldiers, created three PSA’s within a day. They were not technically proficient, but they had no prior training and the main idea of the training was to teach them the importance of a message. The quote above speaks to me in a way that I know that I’m the one who should dictate my stress. If I’m happy about things, and let those things beyond my control alone and allow for whatever, then I allow myself to be happier all around. I’m going to post my favorite video from this weekend, just because of how proud I am of these Soldiers. Please don’t be too harsh if you decide to comment on it. They just learned how to use a video camera that day.

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Here is my mastery journey prezi for class.

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So attached are three of my assignments for this week. If anyone has additional feeds to follow for graphic design work or strategic communication planning, feel free to leave the link below. I’m currently trying to create my own logo for my home business, I’m not going to use the Star Wars one, but I thought it was cute for now. Also, here is my LinkedIn profile link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethany-huff-little-0bb57177. My inspirational post was posted earlier today.

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Inspirational Quote

“Leadership is not about the next election, it's about the next generation.” Simon Sinek

     Throughout this election, I have kept my opinions to myself with the concern for how vastly different my circle of friends is. I have those who are crying hysterically that Hillary didn’t win, while I also have those who are defending their decision to vote for Trump. I have sat by idly for months, with only a handful of people knowing of whom I was voting for. I feel that this is the best way to maintain friendships of people who are ignorant about how our political system works. I vote in every election that I can, to make my community for my children better with each passing year. I made sure to know who is running for what, and what they support. I see the value of education and experience in our candidates and try to pick the best person that is in line with my values and beliefs. How can I teach my daughters their right to vote is only valid every four years? In schools they will participate in the election process every year. They will vote on whom becomes class president, club president, and something as trivial as homecoming king and queen. They will learn that there will always be winners and losers, as it should be. The quote from Simon Sinek speaks volumes to me. The next four years will bring change, but hopefully it will spark that sense of democracy that this country was founded on. Instead of whining and complaining about who the president is now, start looking at your local offices. Look at who you’re putting into the House of Representatives and the Senate. Are you voting for the person who falls in line with your values and belief system? If not, are you going to a) find someone who will, or b) step up and be that person of change? At the end of the day the Pledge of Allegiance states “… to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all…” We have a responsibility as Americans to vote, regardless of how we feel about each other. This is how a war can erupt. We lose sight of how valuable human life is. The constitution created checks and balances, it’s our duty as Americans to vote non-corrupt individuals into those positions of power. There’s a reason why there are three branches; let’s teach our future generations the power of a single vote and change our own political climate in our backyard.

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Mastery Journal 1

In the coming months, I plan to complete my Mastery Journey with my degree and a job with the State Department. This journal will hopefully be used as a reminder to me of my goals as I travel down this path.

I will use this degree to leverage my experience with the military in addition to my education in a way to flourish creatively. Recently, I have found that when I’m on a job interview and I tell them that I am a public affairs specialist for the Army and I’m presented with one of two responses. I will either get the generic “thank you for your service” and then no follow through with a job. Then the second response is accusing me of promoting propaganda, spreading lies of the war(s) and how dare I work for such a trashy agency. Hopefully, with this degree, I will be taken seriously as a professional and have less focus on my military background without degrading my experience in my craft.

The upcoming months will be challenging, especially when I have recently been re-accepted into my dream school. I have to decide whether or not to finish with Full Sail or to go back. I’m at a point where I have to see what will be the most feasible.

To me this degree is more than a validation that I can perform my craft effortlessly and become a master. This degree symbolizes hope to me. This symbolizes the hope that I have to finishing what I’ve started and going after what I want despite being held back and getting handed the crap end of the stick. What lets me know that I’m on the right path was an experience I had on a deployment to Afghanistan. I was given the opportunity to work with a team to help develop strategic communication plans. That was then I realized that I needed to finish my bachelor’s degree and so I would be able to follow this niche into the civilian world. I loved the entire process of creating a message, developing and massaging the message and then distributing it out into the world. I loved watching those message grow legs and flood all over the world. This experience made me fall in love with my job all over again.

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PR in the Digital World

This month I attended the Public Relations in a Digital World class. I honestly didn’t have any expectations for this course other than to brush up on somethings that I’ve learned previously. Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised. I learned a lot of new updates that the Army surely doesn’t follow (as of yet). I believe that I learned that I need to be diligent about staying updated with practices and tools within my career field. I’ve been going off of what I learned in Advance Individual Training back in 2008. Things have changed greatly since then, and I need to remember to stay nimble in my craft. I’m so very thankful for this course and I wish I hadn’t written it off early on.

I also gathered some interesting materials to use in my own classes to help develop my Soldiers when I go to drill. For example, the PSA guidelines are a wonderful tool to help my Soldiers learn how to use a camera and quickly turn a product around that would help us promote our unit in our community. Another thing that this course has provided me with is materials to help evolve my Soldier’s capabilities as public affairs specialists. The videos, the press release materials, and all the other tips are great tools for my Soldiers to use before they go to the school house. (Which may or may not get them into trouble there.) Ideally, the material will allow me to teach my craft at a level that hasn’t been seen at our unit, thus far. This makes me so excited to go to drill and share what I’ve recently learned. It’s really hard for our smaller units to stay current on our actual job in the Army for various reasons. One of the biggest reasons is not having the right material to teach. This course has made it possible to be passionate again about why I got into the career field to begin with and I’m so excited to share that with my Soldiers.

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Passion

“Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, never follow someone else’s path unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path then by all means you should follow that.” – Ellen DeGeneres

For my inspirational post for this week I’ve chosen this quote by Ellen DeGeneres. I feel that many people have passions that they follow, but as the road gets bumpy and crazy, they loose their way. They look for the easy way to what they want because they’re tired; broken down; and exhausted. If life were meant to be easy, then we would all be happy. I believe that while I travel down this road, or my mastery journey, I need to remember to stay true to my path. It may look better to go down someone eles’s, but in the end how I experience their road won’t benefit me in the long run.

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This is my feed for now. I’ve chosen a few different feeds to follow. As I explore the site more, I’m sure I’ll add more feeds to follow. I feel like it’s another Tumblr account though.

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I’m trying to figure out what exactly this site is. Help is encouraged and greatly appreciated.