Welcome Back

Hi I’m Michaela and welcome to my blog. This blog will be used to document my journey from a student to a public relations professional.

Started during my sophomore year of college for a class project, I had no real inspiration or direction for this outlet. After almost two years of schooling and research I decided to start blogging again. This time with a purpose! My goal for this blog is to create a place for students to find relatable stories and guidance for their personal journey.

So what will you find in this blog? What you’ll find is a collection of post written by me, and maybe a few other students, detailing my journey. It’ll be a mixture of internship updates, how to articles, reviews and general post about public relation, advertising, marketing and more.

I hope you will follow me on my journey and find what I post helpful.

So without further ado I present to you “Thinking’s of a Public Relations Student”

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
– Lao Tzu

Michaela

Updated My Resume

Check out my newly designed and edited resume. I am very proud of it and wanted to show you what I’ve done.

me

This Site is Under Construction

Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono/freedigitalphotos.net

As my senior year approaches I have come to realize a few things — I need to create a personal brand. My first step is to re-design this blog to be a better representation of who I am. Then I will work on my online presence though social media sites especially LinkedIn.

Wondering what my personal brand will look like? Check out the business card I created below or take a glance at my updated resume.

Simple but informative. Created in Adobe InDesign

I hope you will follow me through this journey.

Get ready for some changes 🙂

Michaela

Public Relations Tools

As I reach the end of my first semester of my core PR classes I realized I have learned a lot. There are so many tools and tactics that are used in the public relations world. I  honestly loved learning about them. I love it so much that I wanted to create a new series on my blog all about PR tools. I want to do it for two reasons:

1. By posting what I learned in class, I will have a reference to it where ever I’m at and when I need it. It will be helpful in my future classes and in my future job.
2. More importantly, I want to share what I learned with people. Maybe some freshman in college is trying to pick a major, Googles PR and my blog pops up. Hopefully they read my post and get a better idea of what PR entails. Or maybe a student is writing a press release and wants many different styles.

The series is titled Public Relation Tools and will feature a different tactic/tool each week. Hopefully I stick to this writing schedule. It will touch on traditional tactics (press releases, VNR, letter to the editor), new tactics (social media) and vocab that is important to the industry. If there is anything I learned this semester, it’s that vocabulary (jargon) is what set professionals apart non-professionals.

My biggest goal for this series is to help students, but if that doesn’t happen I am fine with just sharing what I know and getting feedback.

See you in the next post about press releases,

Michaela

Related articles

• What It Takes To Succeed in Public Relations (crenshawcomm.com)
• Has Social Media Fundamentally Changed Public Relations? (rachellchilders.wordpress.com)

I got an Internship!

It’s official. I am now intern at College Lifestyles online magazine. I am a proud member of the social media team! My exact position has not been decided yet. I wanted to wait to post something, but I was just TOO anxious.

College Lifestyles ™ is an online magazine bringing nutrition, etiquette, and lifestyle to the classiest of co-eds. It has a monthly readership of 50,000 and a huge social media following– which will be good for my position 🙂 The magazine has articles on various topics, my favorite are the etiquette and DIY articles.

I’m not sure how much info I can share, but once I find out I’m going to be all on it. I’m so excited. I keep saying that because it true. This is just another step in my journey to becoming a professional! I’m on the right path, Finally!

Check out College Lifestyles

Stay Classy!

Michaela

Thanksgiving Social Media

38,454

What’s this number represent you ask? It’s the amount of people who mentioned stuffing on social media this Thanksgiving. Something even more interesting, turkey was mentioned most on Friday– not Thursday. Very interesting.

If you’re like me, you were wondering what other people ate for Thanksgiving. And if you’re like me, you were also adding social media to your list of things to be thankful for because it answered your question about other people’s dinner.

Check out this awesome infographic about turkey day and social media. (source)

Related articles

• Social media feast: Instagram, Allrecipes break records on Thanksgiving (geekwire.com)

 

My Poor Resume

As you have seen from my last two post, I have become consumed with perfecting my resume. Now I know that it wasn’t the best copy I had, but I thought it was pretty close. Oh how I was wrong.

In my writing class, we discussed resumes and cover letters. The lecture was helpful, but the handouts were more informational. It gave me something to compare my résumé to, something to model my résumé after.

What was wrong with my résumé (and maybe yours too)

1. Too many words: I thought I cut the words down significantly, but there was still too many
2. Lacked action words: I tried using complete sentences (see first point). Action words are used when describing work experience.
3. Format was ALL wrong: Well it wasn’t completely wrong, it just need some cleaning up. Too much white space in some areas, and not enough in other areas. I should have combined sections.
4. Not enough of my identity: My professor’s says having some type of style will make you stand out. I’m still working on this, but I hope my QR code and new heading will help.

Tell me what you think of my old resume and my new resume. I think it’s an improvement, but what do you think?

Old Resume: Michaela Williams Resume

New Resume: Michaela Williams Resume

Related articles

• Revamping My Resume: QR Code (michaela1123.wordpress.com)
• Top 5 Most Common Resume Mistakes (masteringmanagementcommunication.wordpress.com)
• That prospective employer wants you to communicate your qualifications (danarmishaw.com)

Revamping My Resume: Tips

Writing the post on QR codes inspired me to look up some more way to make my (and your) resume stand out. Using my favorite search engine I found some great tips. Let the fun editing begin!

1. Tailor it to the job. To save time people create a “generic” resume and use it for every job they apply to. Instead of doing this, edit your resume to fit the personality traits needed to fulfill the job and use your real world experience to back it up. (source)
2. Make it easy to read. You hate writing and I’m sure employers are tired of reading long, wordy resumes. Make important headlines stand out by bolding or underlining. Use bullets not paragraphs for job descriptions. Use standard font. If they can’t read it, they won’t hire you. (source)
3. Use extracurricular activities if you lack experiences. Had to choose a paying job over an unpaid internship this summer? Don’t fret. Try listing things you did for school or in clubs to fill that gap. I did not have an internship this summer, but I did help plan and market a big event for a club.
4. Grab attention. Resume’s do not have to be a white sheet of paper. For a job interview, it’s important that the interviewer remembers who you are. Get creative with it by formatting it differently or printing it on fabric. Prezi Resume anyone! (be careful with this one, some employers may not appreciate how creative you are).

Hope these tips helped and inspired you to look at your résumé again. First impressions are important and when applying for a job your first impression is you resume. Are you making a good first impression?

This is only the beginning!

❤ Michaela

Related articles

• How a Rock-Solid Resume Strengthens Your Job Search (money.usnews.com)
• What is a Resume? I’ll Tell You What It’s NOT… (kimberlyjmyers.wordpress.com)

Revamping My Resume: QR Code

I am at that stage in my college career where internships become more important than my diploma. Yes an education is important, but in today’s economy an education can only get you so far. It’s all about experience. To get that experience you must have an internship.

So I’m currently applying and I was looking at my résumé and it just looked average. I said to myself, “Everyone who is applying for this internship will have a résumé, what will make ME stand out.”  unfortunately, I did not have an answer. After thinking about it for a few days, it kept me up all night, it dawned on me. I could add a QR code to my résumé linking my potential boss to my portfolio, or my LinkedIn account, of my blog.

What’s a QR code you ask? It’s those boxy bar codes you see everywhere like on posters or products. A person can download an app on his phone, scan the code, and automatically be sent to a webpage or receive contact information.

Right away I got on Google, found me a QR generator, and created my personal code. Right now it’s only connects to my portfolio, but it opens a world of possibilities.  I hope this and a few other things I do to my résumé will help is stick out in a crowd. 

I wonder what else I could use a QR code for? Got any ideas, let me know!

Until next time,

Michaela

Related articles

• What is a Resume? I’ll Tell You What It’s NOT… (kimberlyjmyers.wordpress.com)
• QR Codes Explained and How to Use Them (simplehelp.net)

 

A Cooler Myspace? Yes, Please

This is icon for social networking website. This is part of Open Icon Library’s webpage icon package. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today, I was on my favorite website, buzzfeed.com, and I saw this article about Myspace. I don’t know about anyone else, but Myspace was my first social network and I really loved it. and then Facebook came along and I moved on from Myspace, but I may be returning to Myspace. Watch this video and tell me you are not intrigued and I will show you a liar.

The New Myspace

So it looks like a combination of many things. It has the music that Myspace is really know for now. The layout reminds me of Pinterest, it looks like streaming music will be easier than before, more like Spotify. It also looks like you can watch music videos on Myspace.

All I know is I am visiting new.myspace.com and signing up to be notified when it releases. Hopefully this relaunch will be successful!

Much love,

Michaela