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

Dine in the Dark

Currently, I am the Marketing Manager of the Try New Things Club at USF. It’s this new club on campus with the sole purpose of planning events for students to participate in that they would not normally do. So far, the club has taken a behind scene tour of the Florida Aquarium and has done splatter paint shirts. Because the club is practically a newborn (in the sense of age) we haven’t done many activities.

I am excited to say that we are planning something big. We are hosting, in conjunction with the Rotaract Club and the Pre-Veterinary Society, a blindfolded dinner called “Dine in the Dark” to raise money for the Southeastern Guide Dogs. This organizations provides service dogs to veterans suffering from PTSD and the visually impaired. through this dinner, we hope that guest will gain a new appreciation for guide dogs and the services they provide. We also want them to see the challenges people experience when they lose a sense.

Along with the dinner, we will have a demonstration from Southeastern Guide Dogs and a silent auction to raise more money. Which brings me to my part in the planning. As of now I am part of the fundraising committee, with the responsibility of getting items for the auction and sponsors.

This is something new for me, something I think will be very exciting. The president of the club has written a letter stating what DITD is and what we are asking for, has prepared a form with the tax information, and I got a letter from the school stating we were a legit club. Now all I have to do is hit the payment and start getting donations.

Wish me luck, next week I start pursuing some donations.

Michaela

Related articles

• Blind woman’s service dog not allowed in Ann Taylor City Creek (abc4.com)
• Service dogs help Wash. soldiers battling PTSD (thenewstribune.com)

Summer Job as a Bus Driver

This summer while most of my friends and peers are spending their time completing internships, my summer job will be driving a bus. Which as you may expect is not my dream summer job, but it does pay the bills and gives me something else to add to my résumé.

Now if you are thinking what I was thinking, “How can I paint a being a bus driver in such a way that wold seem appealing to my future employers?” After thinking it over I have come up with an answer.

Driving a bus is not as easy as you think, you have to constantly be aware of your surroundings, remember that you have about 30 feet of metal behind you, and you have to be aware of the condition of the bus. It’s a lot of pressure! So when my future employer ask me how driving a bus will help me function in a public relations field I can say, “Driving a bus has refined my skills at working under pressure, I have to protect myself, my passengers, and the vehicles around me.”

You also have to cater to the passengers. When people enter and leave the bus, as a driver, you great them. Sometimes they ask you which stop they should get off on, and if conditions on the bus are not to their liking, if you can change them you should.

Driving a bus is also giving me customer service experience.

And lastly, when you are driving a bus with more than one vehicle on route, you have to react and follow the other drivers so that you keep a good distance from each other. This involves communication and following skills. You have to communicate with the other drivers when they are going too fast or slow, and if you advised to change you speed you have to follow it.

In summary, the next time I apply for a job and they ask me about my experience as a bus driver I will have the perfect answer.

“Driving a bus helped me work under pressure better, refine my customer service skills, and the communication skills.”

Until next time,

Michaela

 

What Happens to Our Social Media Accounts When We Die?

I have never thought of this question until I saw this video.

In today’s society, where everything is online from our personal emails, to our tweets and post on Twitter and Facebook. We no longer live in one world, we now live in at least two different worlds.

Like people do with their physical assets, people are placing sections in their will about their digital assets. “11 percent of Britons say they have  included, or plan to include, their internet passwords in their wills” [source]

So Why Would We Want To Delete Out Online Lives?

Well, digital assets could be used ‘in an inappropriate and unexpected way’ if they were not looked after. Your Facebook account could be used to taunt family members, or your bank account could be drained before being settled by the state.

To guard against this happening “Always check site terms and conditions for details of how your content will be used and don’t wait for the state to introduce protective legislation,” said Sarah Needham, media and data protection lawyer at law firm Taylor Wessing. ‘Legislation will always be the tortoise to technology’s hare.’

Legislation is attempting to catch up, though. In the US, Nebraska state senator John Wightman wants to introduce a law that would allow the executor of a will to use the deceased’s social media accounts to either close them or leave them as a memorial.

A similar law was introduced in the state of Oklahoma in 2010. Mr Wightman said: ‘The law must keep up with technology. At this point, it has not.’ And Ms Needham acknowledged the issue was not going to go away. ‘Dealing with death in a digital world is an important issue that all countries are going to have to legislate for eventually,’ she said.

For Further protection check the Terms and Conditions 

Twitter: They will delete an account after receiving the death certificate from a family member.

Facebook: Will memorialize the profile, this means the user’s privacy settings are altered to allow only their friends to see the profile. Facebook will remove the account if the family request it and provides a death certificate. 

Yahoo!: Will permanently delete all your accounts and their contents, preventing access by anyone other than you, upon receipt of a copy of your death certificate.

Google: Automatically deletes any account that has been inactive for more than nine months––including e-mail accounts––but does not take this action specifically because a user has died.

YouTube: Allow heirs with legal power of attorney to gain control of a user’s account and its content.

There are even website like, Legacy Locker, DataInHerit, and Entrustet , that will keep all of your passwords and online information for you and only give that information to a ‘guardian’ when you pass.

Social media has such an impact on out lives today, it’s crazy. It’s interesting to me to see how much social media has effected our lives. To the point where we have to include a section about it in our wills. This just solidifies the idea of my working with social media. It’s becoming the way of life, if you aren’t online then you are behind.

Side Note: Encyclopedia Britannica will no longer be in print.

Just food for thought,

Michaela

Sources

http://www.techlicious.com/how-to/what-happens-to-your-online-accounts-when-you-die/

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/newsfocus/892795-what-happens-to-your-online-life-after-you-die

Hello world!

Hey There!

I’m Michaela, a public relations student at the University of South Florida. \It’s nice to meet you!

Thanks for stopping by my blog, Becoming a Public Relations Professional. This blog is going to document my last two years at the University of South Florida and my journey to becoming a PR practitioner and a women in the professional world.

So what can you find on this blog?

• Class assignments that I believe relate to PR somehow
• Post about PR things in general (talking about social media, analyzing a new campaign, tools etc.)
• My time during internships (when I get one)
• Post about being a professional (Information I found helpful about presenting myself professionally)
• Personal information and post that I feel relate to PR or being a women in the professional world.

Ultimately, this blog will be a way for me to explore many of my interest related to PR and share it with the world. The internet and social media is such a big part of public relations, and the world in general, I just want to become more familiar with it.

To learn more about me check out my about me page

I hope you join me for this journey,

Enjoy!

Michaela 🙂