Posts and Press Releases

Sadly, my plan of becoming the next Miley Cyrus because of my innovative breakthrough last week (The Gem Spin), has turned out to be a flop.

Alas.

So, I've decided to return to my old dream of working in marketing and advertising.

After informing Nikki that my dream of making it big in the performance industry failed, she welcomed me back with open arms and invited me to stay longer until the end of next week. (Just kidding -- but I will be staying an extra week so look forward to two extra blog posts :D)

Today was the polar opposite from last week -- Nikki first had me write my first press release (Mom -- aren't you proud? You can put it next to the picture of me on my first day of school!).

For those of you who don't know - so basically anyone reading this - my mother does PR for a living, and has worked for chains such as 7-Eleven and Blockbuster and currently works for Dunkin Brands (Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robins).

Well, just because my mother and I eat the same, write the same, and even talk the same, does not mean that we write the same or that I have some inherent knowledge of how to write press releases.

It proved to be more challenging than I had expected, and had Nikki not supplied me with templates on how-to write press releases, I have no idea what I would have done.

Probably just tap danced the Gem Spin right out of the office.

Anyway, it required hard work and some imagination. Nikki was kind enough to sit with me and explain my errors and although it wasn't perfect, I learned a lot and can now join my entire family tree of PR people. (too premature?)

After this, I sat (for a surprisingly long time...) writing various posting options for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google + (three possible posts for each one). Usually I would need to sit and think about them more, but we'll see how they turn out. I found the Facebook and Twitter (typically more casual platforms) to be much easier and more fun because it felt like there was more freedom with what I could write.

I've come to realize that the biggest thing I have struggled with here thus far is knowing the boundary between being overly casual and writing formally. In high school, I seemed to be the only one who could get away with being extremely creative in a research paper, and during my first year of college, two out of three writing classes I took were creative writing classes in which I didn't write formally or in prose.

While that perpetual gray line between the two still continues to hover above, I will be following as many social media/marketing blogs as possible this year to learn more. More on that next week though, seeing as I still have a few days of learning to do here!