Stop the (Word)Press revived

After a brief haitus, I’ve decided to revive Stop the (Word)Press.

I started this blog as an assignment for my Advanced Public Relations writing class, but I believe that this blog has created a niche for itself in the realm of social media for public relations. By reading social media website blogs, finding out what other people had to say about social media and by applying my own (limited) experience as a public relations practitioner, I’ve been able to comment on different social media tools, trends, and methods of use in the world of public relations.

While this method worked for my class, I always felt as if my posts were similar to research papers containing only third party research. Through engaging in social media and talking one-on-one with prominent social media users, I’m better prepared to bring original thoughts and comments on social media.

I’m also planning on expanding the scope of Stop The (Word)Press. This site used to be devoted solely to social media, but I also want to make posts based on my (again, limited) experiences managing public relations campaigns.

Keep checking back for updates.

What I’ve learned

I’ll be honest: I never thought that I would be able to learn anything new about social media just by maintaining a blog. Having read the previous 12 posts, however, I discovered that before I started this little project, there was a lot I did not know.

I never knew that there were advantages and disadvantages to using Facebook pages over Facebook groups until my blog forced me to think critically about the issue. I would have never thought about the problem that news feed sites such as Digg and Reddit presented in terms of broken conversations, and I would have never guessed that services such as Yacktrack existed to fix this problem. I would have never included blogs such as ReadWriteWeb or ProBlogger in my RSS feeds.

Most importantly, I would have never thought about the impact that social media has and will continue to have on Internet users, and I certainly would have never thought about how social media and the Internet relates to my future career.

In light of this, I believe that I will continue to blog about social media in hopes of learning more about how the Internet relates to us as public relations practitioners and Internet users in general.

First Post

Hello! My name is Bryan Saxton. I am a third year public relations student at the University of Oregon and the public relations officer for the University of Oregon’s International Student Association (ISA).

I am a self-proclaimed social media addict, and I’m interested in how PR practitioners can use social media sites, such as WordPress and Facebook to communicate to large audiences. As part of my duties for ISA, I’ve set up a blog that tries to keep people up-to-date with our group. It’s been an excellent medium for communication with people interested in ISA.

Most of the posts on this blog will be about trends in social media and how to make social media work for public relations. Hopefully, students of public relations and experienced public relations practitioners who are just getting started with social media will find this site helpful.

Photo taken by Sean Jin.