Minutes 3/7/2012

Minutes for Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Prepared by: Casey

Present: Carmen, Casey, Brooke, Robert, Jordan, Leah, Jacqueline

Suzanne announces a syllabus change that Robert posts on the blog. Class will no longer meet on 3/19 and in lieu the twitter press release assignment will be due, printed out, at the beginning of class on March 21.

Topic:

Press releases. Suzanne explains press releases are a part of business communication that has morphed over time. Formal press releases have been replaces by the use of social media which has changed their appearance, use, and distribution. Despite this change, press releases remain as a standard use of communication with a standard format for a standard purpose.

Standard Press Release Format:

-Headline

-Dateline (city in caps and date)

-Intro

-Body Paragraphs (short and tight paragraphs so hopefully journalists will take your verbatim and recast it)

-Boilerplate

-Close

-Contact Information (name. e-mail, phone, etc. for further information)

-3 hashtags (means no more information in the release)

Press release purpose to announce 1 thing an organization has done/plans to do to help journalists know about this certain event/breakthrough and help these journalists a) cover the newsworthy information and b) give them contact information for follow up. Sometimes press releases are called news releases.

Don’t issue press releases just because, goal is to create buzz for your organization in a positive way. The 1st go-to place to put your press release would be on your organization’s website. Example is Tom’s website. Go to webpage, clock blog and press, and then go to toms in the press to find posts where toms is showing up in the media.

Distributing paper press releases doesn’t happen anymore so now organizations are posting information to their site and if they want it to reach elsewhere they turn to social media.

Topic:

Assignment due March 21. Write 10 tweets based on Obama’s state of the union address. Convert the main subjects he covered in his speech.

A good tweet from Obama’s press secretary would be a coherent and scintillating short message. Themes from his speech include fighting for the middle class by changing the tax structure and creating manufacturing jobs.

Ex. Obama vows to fight for middle class by creating manufacturing jobs & keeping taxes low (maybe link to warren buffet’s policy).

Do not need to use hashtag but must write 10 tweets of 10 distinct ideas in 140 characters each.

Things to remember for a good press release tweet:

Still a press release, so no cute language like a tweet.

Real statistics good in tweet as number speak.

Put marker that it is a press release to give audience an indication there is more information behind this.

Remember the audience is the media.

Suzanne recommends having an outline (this doesn’t need to be submitted) about the subject and what you want to get across in each tweet.