A Balancing Act

Being a student is more than a job. It really is a balancing act. In order to be prepared for the future, students not only have to do well in classes, but they need to be involved in extracurriculars and PR kids have to have a social media prescence. And this year, as a student getting ready to graduate, add to the list "applying for jobs." How the heck am I supposed to balance all of these things!? I currently am the president of Ohio Northern University's PRSSA, an active member of the on campus student-run firm, a dedicated sister of Delta Zeta, a member of a Realy for Life team and a future professional looking for a job. Add on top of that trying to stay active in social media, this has seemed impossible.

While attempting to balancing all of this, something had to give. In my case, I let my social media presence dwindle down. Instead, for the past three months, I have really kept involved on campus while maintaining good grades and constantly looking/applying for jobs. Although I am aware of my issue, I have yet to do anything about slacking off online. But today, I have come up with a list of ways to keep my balancing act, well, balanced!

1. Keep lists, post-its or mental notes on what you need to do
I know parents, superiors, professors and professionals always encourage us to do this, but I really support this. My mom tells me to include everything on my list from cleaning my room to heading to a meeting. She always said that the more you can cross off, the better you feel about your list. Surprisingly enough, I have started doing this. I keep "Sticky Notes" on my desktop [thanks to the new microsoft] and delete items off my list. I love watching the list get shorter and shorter!

2. Include social media on these lists, make it a commitment or priority, not a last-minute deal
This is my biggest problem. I never look at social media as a necessity, just an add-on. With my new outlook though, I have decided it is mandatory. Not only to have a presence for myself, but to keep up on other young professionals opinions. In addition, social media helps keep me in the loop of whats going on right now! By making social media a priority, with my homework and other responsibilities, I am able to make time in my daily schedule for it! My list now includes any Blog topics I want to write about to encourage me to post!

3. Say something because you think is valuable, not just to say something
Although I am going to make social media a priority, this does not mean I need to blog every day or re-tweet something just to be active. Social media is all about giving your genuine opinion and branding yourself. If you just simply write or post just to get your name out there, that's not benefiting your followers or even yourself. So only post when you think it is something other people would be interested in or if it is important to you.

4. Don't stress if you miss a day of tweeting or blogging
This may be my biggest downfall! I freak out when I don't get on my social media accounts when I wanted to and then I just let my social media involvemtn all slip away! As opposed to doing this, just post the next day. What you had to say will still be just as important! Some weeks you may blog every other day because so much is going on and you have lots of time. Then, the following week, you may post once. This is okay! The same goes for Twitter. You can tweet six times on day and only once another. Both are totally acceptable as long as what you are saying is valuable, as said in number three.

5. Wake up and go to bed at consistent times
I'm sure you are all laughing at this one, but I'm starting to learn this is true. By getting on a regular schedule, you are more able to balance things. As a college student, some days I wake up at 7, others at 10! At night, I may stay up until 2 doing homework or get into bed as early as 11. This varying schedule makes it hard to me to keep in check what I have to do. If I could keep on a consistent schedule, I think I would be able to better work social media into my normal daily routine!

Now, let's see if these five ways to keep life as a PR student balanced really work! Feel free to comment with any other suggestions on how to balance social media on top of everything else!

Creeping Made Easy

First, there was the news feed on Facebook. Where you could find out what all of your friends were up to. Then there was Twitter. Where users update their statuses everytime they start something new. Now, there is FriendFeed. In this week's PR Tactics, writer Claire Celsi discussed this "one-stop social networking" site. She even quoted some avid social networking users when claiming this site is "Twitter on steroids." The whole idea of FriendFeed is to have one site that will update you on all of your social networking accounts. All of the updates on Twitter can be seen through this site along with Facebook and even blogs.

I decided to check out the site since it was sounded like the next big thing. And much like Twitter, it seemed overwhelming. I quickly closed out of the sign up page and tried to look around the site some more. Celsi did say that it took time to get used to and that you needed to weed out what you didn't want to read, but I am still apprehensive about signing up. I feel like this might be another site I won't use and will curse at. There are just so many social networking sites that I am signing up for, I'm afraid I won't keep up with most of them. Yet, this site claims to link them all together, like a data base. So part of me thinks I should give it a chance, cause I can always delete my account. Like many of our speakers have said at PRSSA, you need to be on the cutting edge with this stuff to appeal to potential employers. I guess I should stop thinking so much and give it a try.

VisionCommunications

Thursday night was amazing. I haven't felt that motivated in awhile. First, we had our first meeting with Donate for Life Do It Now College Challenge. The presenters really impacted our firm. There are some key points that make this challenge a real life experience. I can't wait for our next meeting to start getting our plan together and begin implementation. And even though this is a competition and there is a prize, it all means nothing compared to the action we are taking. Just by signing people up to be donors, we are helping save lives of people young and old. There were a lot of things I didn't know about organ and tissue donations. I feel as though this campaign will do more than just get people to sign up to donate, but they will learn from our campaign, which is important.

And if that was not enough to motivate, we had PRSSA afterwards. Billy Fischer came to speak to us and it was inspiring. He spoke about social media [surprise, i think agozzino is planning this]. And it was the first time I left PRSSA wanting and needing to get on my computer. He was so chill in his presentation, that I wasn't stressed about being behind with social media, but instead, motivated. It really was a great feeling and my new goal is to get onto my social media sites a minimum of once a day. As for blogging, I am determined to write in it at least every other day.

Social Media Replaces Porn

The past few days, I've really been trying to remember to visit multiple social media sites. A lot of the information and links are really interesting, but my schedule is pretty busy. But when I get a chance, I love looking around on http://www.digg.com/ or checking out other people's blogs for quirky links. While looking around digg, this Web site, http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/is-facebook-distracting-us-from-porn-no, caught my eye. Apparently the number of people visiting porn sites has dropped with the trend of social media sites such as Myspace and Facebook. Some people think it's because people can more easily access these sites at work and in public, unlike porn. Another theory is that people spend so much time on those Web sites, they don't have time for porn. Others think the drop is due to the fact that porn is more accessible through downloading movies has a better quality through other outlets. Personally, and this may be a little blunt, but I feel a lot of people use social media sites for sexual purposes. Aside from the fact that there are sites such as Adult Friend Finder and YouPorn, which is similar to YouTube, people connect through things such as Facebook and MySpace. Girls, and some guys, post scandalous photos in minimal clothing. On Facebook, you can say what you are looking for which ranges from "friends" to "a relationship." And I know when MySpace first got popular, lots of younger users would use the Web site to meet members of the opposite sex. And, as if that isn't bad enough, sites such as Eharmony or Match.com are letting people find partners online. I feel as though these social media sites enable people to use other Web sites to fufill their sexual needs in a more modern way.

Too Many Tweets

While sitting in class just now, I tried to log on and utilize the social media site Twitter. To my surprise, it was "over capacity" and there were "too many tweets." Looks like twitter is getting popular!