St. Edwards University Web Video

At the Presidents, meeting my groupmates and I, learned about the 10 year strategic plan that begun being implemented in 2000, and ended this year, in 2010. From the President’s meeting and from our webvideo, you will see that the goals set in place in 2000 were:

-to offer the St.Edwards experience to more students, to increase faculty in order to ensure a personalized experience and academic excellence, and to innovate and enhance our faculties, academics, and technology.

From the meeting, we learned that St. Edwards has increased its enrollment from 3,700 to 5,300. And even though our enrollment rates have increased, St.Edwards has still kept up with its personalized education, currently, our student teacher ratio is 14:1. Another beneficial improvement made which is available to all students is the improvement of facilities and technology on campus. With an investment of $147 million dollars in facilities, the University has constructed a new set of dorms and has made a completely wireless campus. They have also added 88 'smart' classrooms, and increased the number of public computers from 271 to 729. The university has also completed its mission by raising more than $81 million in only 10 years, exceeded annual giving of $1 million, created 79 scholarships.

On our video, you will find a quote by Mischelle R. Diaz that I think really captures the essence of the enhancements made at St. Edwards. “These improvements indicate that the quality of a St. Edward's education continues to improve and we have made great strides in becoming one of the best small universities in the country.” I agree, and believe that the ten year strategic plan greatly benefited everyone from students, to parents, to faculty and staff. I can only expect even greater things for the future of St.Edwards.

Here's our Video, Enjoy!

The NEW Rules of PR

For the entire semester my communication classes have been informing us of new ways technology, mainly social media, is shaping our lives. This week in Social Media class, we learned the specific ways that social media is changing Public Relations in particular.We have all seen examples of how social media and the internet in general is now allowing for organizations to communicate directly with its consumers. Whether or not you think this is a good thing is up to you, but no one can deny that this is happening and will probably only increase in time. Just like my other post for this week, the new rules for PR bring to mind the use of viral or word of mouth marketing. Because we are able to comment on pretty much anything online, people are relying more on word of mouth advertising. To quote Tuesday’s lecture, “people want authenticity, not spin.” Well, what better way to guarantee authenticity than to read the comments of users who have already purchased the product/have done business with the company you are unsure about? Although our lecture featured various other ways in which social media is influencing PR, I think the most interesting and relevant to me is the use of viral marketing. It’s everywhere!


Another interesting note- i wasnt aware that there was a Word of Mouth Marketing Assosciation. check it out here.

TOMS Shoes Campaign

For my Public Relations class, I had to do a case study analysis on a recent PR campaign. Immediately, I thought of TOMS shoes. Before starting this assignmentI didn’t know much about the company besides the fact that when you purchase a pair of shoes, a pair also gets donated to a child in need. Well, that’s actually all there is to it. And like most people who know about TOMS shoes, I didn’t learn about this through a commercial or an advertisement, but I heard it from someone wearing the shoes. This is what makes TOMS shoes so unique and so innovative- there viral marketing. Their approach has sparked a “consumer evangelist” approach because not only do they purchase something for themselves, but by doing so, they are also providing a necessity to a child. Consumers are filled with a sense of pride when wearing their shoes, and they are compelled to tell everyone they meet about the significance of the shoes and the background of the company.

From “The Power of Word of Mouth Marketing”:


It’s real and immediate- real, live people telling other people in real time
It’s personal- not a pitch. The person knows you and is trying to be helpful
It’s honest. Three’s no commission, no connection. You’re more likely to believe
Its catching. People love to share a good idea or experience and other people like to listen. ( The only thing people like to share more than a good experience is a bad experience.)
it’s customer driven. The customer decides when he/she will talk/listen. It is not imposed”

YouTube is down!

YouTube, the popular video sharing site we all know and love, was apparently not working yesterday. I wasn’t aware of when this happened, or how long it went on, but everyone seems to know that it is back up. Now, how do so many people know the approximate time YouTube started running again? Social media, of course! The mashable article “We Interrupt Our Regular Programming: YouTube Is Down [UPDATE: It's Back]” includes these three updates:

Update: Interestingly enough, the videos on YouTube seem to work, only the front page seems to be affected.

*Update #2: We’ve received the following short message from Google: “YouTube is temporarily unavailable. Our engineers are currently working to restore the site.”

*Update #3: It’s back. The downtime lasted approximately one hour.

I think this shows a great example of how social media offers a fast and efficient way of connecting people around the world. Whether or not you think YouTube is significant is up to you, but you cannot deny the fact that tweets definitely help spread the word.

I’d also like to point out that even the article itself included various posts within the hour offering updates regarding the status of YouTube.

Viral Videos

The term “viral” isn’t one I would normally associate with the Internet, but as of late, it is pretty standard Internet lingo. So, what does going viral mean? Today in class we discussed just that. When a video goes viral, it means that someone has been exposed and “infected” with the message of a video and then passes on this infection to someone else. If one person passes this message onto 5 people, and those 5 people pass the same message to 5 people, the message has then gone viral. Sounds pretty easy right? Not! As of March 2008, youtube receives over 150,000 videos daily which means that this is what you’d have to compete with.

A recent example of a viral video is the New “Meet iPad” video. According to this article, The “Meet iPad” Apple commercial which debuted during the Oscars has went viral this week, raking in 2.5 million views in just seven days.

Take a look!

Meet Ipad

125 Anniversary Podcast

President's Meeting Podcast- click here to listen

For our podcasting assignment Michelle, Christiana and I decided to attend the Presidents Meeting to get a better idea of what the 125^th Anniversary Celebration was all about. From the meeting, we got some great information about how far St. Edwards has come and where they started. We got to interview the President and get some information on the new 5 year plan being implemented for 2015. So if you’re interested in that, go ahead and tune in!

show notes:

Introduction- 00:35

History of St Edwards- 00:55

Information from Presidents Meeting- 1:35

Inside Scoop into 2015/ President’s Interview-4:10

Globalization of St. Edwards/Study Abroad programs -5:00

Last words- 7:20

Non-Profit Challenges You to Ditch the iPhone for a Day

Yes, that’s right. The non profot organization Reboot is challenging you to turn off your iphone for a FULL 24 hours. An entire day without it!

“The National Day of Unplugging” has been criticized for disapproving of their own point by advertising on twitter and facebook. But we all know that these technologies help promote human interaction and when you want a piece of information shared quickly and efficiently, a facebook status update or tweet will probably do the trick. The article also states that this idea is spreading, and that other people and companies want to have their own kind of “unplugging” events. I think this type of idea has been a long time coming, but I don’t think its purpose is to void our lives of all social media. Rather, I think it is merely to raise awareness of the fact that some aspects of our face to face lives are being more and more replaced by interface. For the people that disagree, going a day without their iphone for a day would definitely test this.

I personally think that social media is a great source for communication. However, it can have negative effects for those who use hide behind technology. Young people who have grown up with social media might also be too accustomed to the technological driven society and not be as involved in face to face communication. But I don’t think we as a society are anywhere near getting completely rid of face to face communication just yet. This event though, does seem like a really good idea to raise awareness of this issue.

So, what do you think. Could you go a day without your iphone? )or whatever your phone of choice may be)