College | Caffeinated

“Priorities!” is officially my rallying cry of the semester. As numerous people have pointed out, I haven’t slept much recently. This can be tracked by three things; the redness of my eyes, the unkept facial hair, or my tweet stream (seriously, a few people have used Twitter as their evidence). I’m really testing my limits this semester, and it’s entirely intentional. I have a full class load. I have a job with deadlines (weird, huh?). I am the New Media Director for AAF Mizzou, Assistant Director of Rocket Science Student Advertising Agency, Public Relations Manager for Operation Smile, on Mizzou For Malawi’s Steering Committee, and active in Alpha Kappa Psi. Those who have known me for awhile, especially in high school, know that this is new for me. If I typed that four years ago, I’d be all, “WTF Mate?!?!”

Now? I’m friggin’ stoked. I found a passion and I am grateful to have an employer and awesome organizations that allow me to work with and teach my passion.

This is new to me though. After talking to some of the busiest people I know, I learned it comes to one thing – prioritizing.

So here they are, in front of anyone wanting to read it. I figure there’s no better way to make myself accountable than to be transparent with what I’m doing, right?

My Priorities for Spring ‘10

1. Job – I’m extrememly lucky to be in the position I am in. I have a job that allows me to do what I love. I have a boss and clients that expect excellent and timely work from me. I won’t eff this opportunity up.

2. Organizations – Being on executive boards and steering committees for organizations and events put an entirely new spin on things. No longer are you just “a part of ____ organization.” Now, other people rely on you to get your shit done. Not only that, but if you’re lucky, you get to use your talent and passion to help others – others in the group and others you have never met. Cool, huh?

3. Classwork – Going back to the “if you knew me in high school” thing, well, I’ve never been the 4.0 type. I’m still not. I put in to my schoolwork what I expect to get out of it. In test preparations, if I feel I know something, I feel fine. If I get a B on that test? Big deal, I still have the knowledge I need to succeed.

4. Reading – This is where the majority of my education comes from, anyways. Books and Google Reader are my curriculum. Even though I’m more active now than I ever was, that doesn’t mean I’m done sponging up as much information as possible. Reading, outside of class, is probably the best way to do that.

5. Blogging - I’m still figuring this whole ‘blogging’ thing out, in case you haven’t noticed. Someday, I hope to be a well-oiled blogging machine like Matt Cheuvront, Lauren Fernandez, or Danny Brown. Until then, you’ll have to live with my inconsistent ramblings and questions, which are hopefully improving as time goes on.

Before you post your sentimental comment about how family and friends should be one and two, don’t worry – they always are. This list prioritizes my production output. To that end, I’m constantly revisiting Lauren’s post on time management. I highly recommend it.

What else is new? Well I’m trying to work with Mizzou Alumni Association on a video blog idea to recognize awesome students and promote our great university. Slowly but surely, I’m learning how to use my Nikon D80. I’ll be speaking to The Best of Missouri Hands, a Missouri Artisan Assocation, in March. Adobe InDesign and Illustrator are becoming easier to use. Finally, I’m working on a few projects for college students, centered around social media (contact me if you might be interested in helping).

Sorry for the off-the-beaten-path rant. This is my study break! I have two tests tomorrow and I need to start studying books and whatnot. On Thursday, I’m leaving for an epic weekend in Chicago and AKPsi’s PBLI conference (hey Michael Conley and Zack Zaban, I’m thinking a video post or two are in store?).

Obviously, I’m kind of excited right now.

Because ‘they’ say you should always end blog posts with questions, here are some: What are YOU excited about? If you choose to spurt awesomeness on your own blog, let me know so I can read it, get excited for you, and link it up. ALSO, What is your #1 time management trick? If you could catch one Pokémon, which one would it be and why?

The other evening, I attended a presentation from David Selby, President of Chicago’s Schafer | Condon | Carter. I’m usually very wary of attending events put on for Mizzou Journalism’s Strategic Communication students – they tend to be traditional advertising heavy and repetitive to the point that repetitive to the point that repetitive to the point that.

Sorry, fell into a daze there.

Anyways, Selby’s presentation was a very welcome deviation from the norm. He was honest, discussed everything from advertising to social media, PR to company culture, and left me with some awesome quotes and advice.

One takeaway from his speech was the focus on two key traits: curiosity and humility.

Selby believes they are two of the most underrated qualities in the business world. Now, I don’t have the years of experience he has, so I don’t know whether they are underrated or not.

What I can tell you is this – any student in advertising/PR/social media/marketing/etc that isn’t curious will not make it.

The way we live, the way the industry is going, today’s students have to be seeking more. More information. More opportunities. More knowledge. More everything.

Unless you’re willing to settle for mediocrity. In that case, curiosity won’t kill you – the lack of curiosity will.

How do you keep curious? Or if you don’t, why not?

Ah Seinfeld. A show about nothing and everything at the same time. It’s a timeless classic, as social awkwardness will never go out of fashion.

Now we have The Office, Community, Parks and Recreation, and soon, Parenthood. When you think about it, these are modern-day Seinfeld’s. These shows are about absolutely nothing, but in various, broad social contexts. The thing is, everyone loves them (well, we don’t know about Parenthood, but it looks pretty funny).

Know what I’m excited for? University. I just made it up, but I think it would be hilarious. I’m sick of the college shows and movies with fratty keggers and seemingly no classes. Sure, college has those moments, but the best parts are in the everyday life. The random, the silly, the ridiculous, the embarrassing (oh the embarrassing), the awkward, and so much more.

What’s your Seinfeld? What would your TV show be called, who would be in it, would it really be about nothing, or everything?

photo via flickr user nesster

In the midst of creating a killer new resumé for a class assignment, I realized I had an hour left to get my daily post, errmm, posted. Which is convenient, because I have beef with the assignment I’m working on.

In the handout we received, we are strongly urged to stay traditional. Even students that will be using this resumé to apply for creative positions are instructed that to “keep your resumé straightforward and traditional… is the safest approach.” We are told that creative resumés are a “risky attempt”, and “certainly do not attempt it if you are not applying for creative jobs…”

Well, now that we have established that taking risks is a bad thing, I can get on with my life.

Wait, come again?

Naw, scratch that. My resumé is going to reflect me. I guess if an employer is looking for a “safe” and “traditional” employee, I won’t be hired. Then again, if an employer is looking for a “safe” and “traditional” employee, well, I’ll be honest – that probably isn’t an employer I want to work for.

Get off my back for a second, I’m not trying to position myself as a risky hire. I’m trying to position myself as myself. My theory for resumés, assuming one makes their own, is to put their personality into it. If that comes through in creative use of white space, great. If your personality shows in your writing style and use of action verbs, awesome. If you use some off-the-beaten-path fonts to encompass your spirit, more power to ya. Whatever works for you - because it’s your resumé.

Now I know the headhunters and HR people might tell me I’m wrong, and I respect that. They’re the pros at this and I always put a lot of weight behind their advice. I just want to try something new with this assignment. I would rather lose an ‘A’ because my theory sucks than lose a potentially awesome employer down the line.

But again, this is my theory. Now, to everyone else - professors, headhunters, and HR people be damned (but please comment ) - what would you like to do with your resumé?

photo via flickr use see-ming lee

Beginning March 20, 2010 at 6 p.m. and ending March 21, 2010 at 6 a.m., my teammates, representing AAF Mizzou, and I will be participating in Mizzou’s Relay For Life. Relay For Life is an event by The American Cancer Society to raise awareness of cancer, celebrate the survivors and fighters, remember, and fight back.

My Reason to Relay

For the early part of my life, I was blessed to not be affected by cancer – through myself, my family, or my friends. It was something I knew about, and that I knew was bad, but as a young child never experiencing it I never had a grasp for the seriousness of it. I was lucky. Cancer never had a face to me. It never held a personal connection.

In the recent years, that has changed. Slowly, cancer has made itself real to me. I’ve felt the impact. Thankfully not personally, but through family and close friends who have been diagnosed.

It’s scary. Watching my friends and family go through this has been terrifying to me. For myself, it’s made cancer real. It’s no longer a faceless ailment.

Cancer has many faces. It’s my grandpa. It’s my best friend’s brother. It’s another best friend’s mother. It could be in the mirror. It could be me. It could be you.

Please support my efforts by making a donation or by joining my Relay For Life team. Together, we can beat cancer. We can make cancer faceless, so no one has to face it ever again.

You can donate by clicking the box that the arrow points to, or just click here. Everything helps and any amount is appreciated. Thank you for your support.

Good news. Well, depending on your point of view, I guess. I’m hopping back on the 28-day blogging challenge. After waving the white flag yesterday, Tyler Hurst tweeted at me, “down or out? dude, step up and catch up.”

Point taken. I’m not one to quit things. I may have failed last weekend, but I’ve got the juices and the fingers to crank out the posts. Time to get cracking.

There are 19 days left in the challenge. That means 21 posts by February 28 – if I want to “catch up” to Tyler, Scott, and all the other great bloggers doing this. What do you guys and gals want to read about? I’m willing to take suggestions and/or cookies.

Shameless plug: at the end of every post this month, I’m putting a call to action to vote for Pepsi Refresh projects. Specifically mine, obviously. You can vote for an idea once every day and have 10 votes each day. That means you can vote for my idea, or others, but preferably mine, up to 28 times.

I don’t like to do this, but I have to wave the white flag on my participation in Scott Bishop’s 28-day blogging challenge. Starting the challenge, I knew it would be, well, a challenge to make it the full month. Regardless, I’m pretty disappointed in myself for only making it one week. Lamesauce on me.

In the grand scheme of things, I learned a lot about blogging and blog strategy, specifically for personal blogs, in the past week. Here are some key takeaways for me-

I felt like I was being a little bit annoying. Seriously. You people must have been thinking, “Again? Again? Didn’t he just post something, like, yesterday? What the hell is this?” I was confident in the content I was putting out there, but by the end, it just felt weird to be peddling my content every day – and that was just five posts. My question for others who are participating, or blog at this frequency regularly, is how do you do it? How do you put your content out there without feeling like you might be annoying?

Being a college student sucks. You know what I’m talking about. Everyday, a college student’s schedule ranges somewhere between hectic and ‘what the fµ¢√!’. One post would come at 11 p.m., then the next day’s post would be at 9 a.m. I haven’t asked it, but I bet that first blog post feels jilted. It only got about 10 hours of primo air time. When your day-to-day schedule is constantly changing, it’s hard to publish consistently. Yes, I suppose I could have written them ahead of time, but that brings me to my next point…

Write. Read. Publish. That was my basic strategy. Write the post. Read it over to make sure there are not any horrendous grammatical errors (and probably miss half of them). Hit ‘Publish’. Part of me likes that strategy – thoughts to paper, err, keyboard and put them out there. The Strunk and White part of me would read a post after it’s been published and think, “doh!”

I ended on a hot streak. My last two posts of the week, “You Don’t Need A Community Manager” and “Five Reasons Students Should Use Social Media“, were the most popular – and it wasn’t close. The former was a bit overblown because, although I believe some brands can benefit from a CM, not everyone needs one or, more specifically, the one they have right now. The last paragraph of this comment is my mea culpa of sorts. I’m just extremely happy with the conversation that it started, and very proud of my readers for never personally attacking anyone (specifically me. I don’t like rocks or tomatoes).

What’s next? Well, set benchmarks and stick to ‘em. I entered this challenge to improve the consistency in my post frequency. It worked… for five days. For now, I’m setting the bar at three posts a week. Hold me to it. Also, I’m going to integrate the write-read-publish in me with the Strunk and White in me by writing, letting it sit for awhile, editing and then publishing. That one’s fudgeable though, as current events mandate swift posts. At least I have a go-to strategy now, whereas I didn’t before.

That’s about it. White flag in the air, but some lessons learned. For those still participating in the challenge, have you faced any of these challenges or other challenges? How did you overcome them? Other bloggers and generally smart people – have any advice for the above? Any personal experiences? More cowbell?

Shameless plug: at the end of every post this month, I’m putting a call to action to vote for Pepsi Refresh projects. Specifically mine, obviously. You can vote for an idea once every day and have 10 votes each day. That means you can vote for my idea, or others, but preferably mine, up to 28 times.

photo credit Flickr user peasap

Title edit: Five Reasons Students Should Use Social Media OTHER THAN FACEBOOK.

To be honest, this post is going to ring truer for students of advertising, PR, marketing, communications, journalism, human resources, and the like, than dental students (what up, roommate). But everyone can learn something from it.

5. Own Your Online Name

Statistics show that about 80% of employers admit to searching potential employees on the Internet. Smart people in HR and recruiting, like Paul DeBettignies, says the other 20% are lying. Let’s face it, you don’t want that Xanga or LiveJournal from your, errmm, ‘rebellious’ pre-teens coming back to screw you when you’re 22.

What to do? Get a profile on some social networks. Think LinkedIn, Twitter, Brazen Careerist, Flickr (send your mobile photos from your phone. Hell, there’s probably an app for that), YouTube, and more. Get yourself a domain name for a few bucks (or a few- I have this and colbygergen.com). Still worried? Do a free Pipl.com for yourself, your usernames, etc. Paul taught me that and I discovered a few profiles I didn’t know were out there. Nor did I want them out there.

4. Meet Awesome Students From… Anywhere

We’re lucky to be growing up in an increasingly location-independent culture. I can Skype with future PR All-Star Mikinzie Stuart in Western Michigan while Google Waving with fashion guru Kion Sanders wherever he happens to be at the moment, Facebook chat super-connector Evan Roberts, all while at lunch in Columbia with Samantha Ogborn, Zack Luye and Justin Scott. Hold on a sec… allow me to pick those names up off the ground.

What to do? Put yourself out there. You’re never going to be friends with everyone, but focus on becoming good friends with some awesome people. There are people out there that share your passions. Find them.

3. Learn About Whatever You Want

Honestly, my college program needs to catch up. I want to focus on new media in my Strategic Communication studies, but Mizzou just doesn’t have the curriculum or faculty to support that. They’re great in other areas, so it’s awesome I get to learn that stuff, but I had to turn elsewhere for my education.

What to do? Start with Alltop.com. Find the area(s) you’re interested in and make your own online magazine rack. Start using Google Reader. Talk to people you meet that are doing or studying the same thing and ask them. People love sharing great content.

2. Get Ahead of the Curve

The social media space is still pretty barren when it comes to students. Start learning how to use it properly now, and that’s one thing you’ll do better than 90% of your competition when you graduate. Pepsi decided to drop their Super Bowl spending ($33 mil last year) and focus it on social media. Follow the money.

What to do? Make a plan and dive in. The water is fine. Be yourself- there are going to be people that like you and will show you the ropes.

1. Network Your Face, Arm, Torso, and Leg Off

It’s been preached to us for the past five, maybe ten years – “Network your ass off!” Well, social media is one REALLY FRIGGIN’ HUGE NETWORK. Your network is no longer confined to who your friends’ parents know, or your ex-babysitter’s uncle who knows a guy. Your network is unlimited. How’s that for a service plan, AT&T? Yeah, suck it Luke Wilson. You’re getting annoying.

What to do? Take advantage of the opportunity you have right now. Network. Build relationships. Find mentors that fit you like a glove, because it doesn’t matter if they’re in Timbuktu or Peru (thanks, 2nd grade).

So there are the top five reasons students should use social media. Obviously there are more than five, but I want to go to bed. Did I leave anything off the list? Is there something you would add, take away, or change? Students that are using social media- what’s the number 1 reason you tell other students to use it?

If you’re a student (or anybody, actually) reading this and have questions or wonder what’s the next step, leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail and I’d be glad to help or connect you with someone that can.

Shameless plug: at the end of every post this month, I’m putting a call to action to vote for Pepsi Refresh projects. Specifically mine, obviously. You can vote for an idea once every day and have 10 votes each day. That means you can vote for my idea, or others, but preferably mine, up to 28 times.

Quick note: This is something I’ve thought about for awhile. I know some Community Managers, they’re my friends and I look up to them. They’re intelligent people. Hell, I’d be a Community Manager. To be cliché, I’m not trying to hate the player. I’m hating the game.

It annoys me that more and more brands are adding a Community Manager to their payroll. They shouldn’t need one. Instead, they should be investing in new product development, improved customer service, or *gasp* a better marketing scheme that encourages a community to manage itself. Yes, that means giving up control. You’re foolish if you think you have that much control in the new media landscape, anyways.

Products and services don’t need to hire Community Managers. They already have them. Use your brand evangelists- the unpaid fans of yours that like you for you (I use “you” in the sense of product/service/brand). They are the best people to lead your community. They already are leading your community. For free.

Agencies and firms don’t need to hire Community Managers. They already have them. Actually, they usually have tons of them. Look at Fast Horse. Nobody is their ‘Community Manager’, but Mike Keliher, George Fiddler, and others have done an excellent job at managing their community. Same goes for the people over at Brains on Fire. People that love working in a strong community will take it upon themselves to manage that community. You’re already paying them. They’re already a part of your community.

Take away the Community Manager. The community will still exist. The community will take care of itself, because that’s what a community does.

Focus on building a community strong enough to manage itself. Don’t focus on hiring a community hitman – an outsider. That dilutes the word “community”.

You don’t need a community manager. You need a strong community. A strong community is it’s own community manager.

Shameless plug: at the end of every post this month, I’m putting a call to action to vote for Pepsi Refresh projects. Specifically mine, obviously. You can vote for an idea once every day and have 10 votes each day. That means you can vote for my idea, or others, but preferably mine, up to 28 times.

photo credit Flickr user eva101

I love Cheerios.

Just thinking about Cheerios conjures up the most positive thoughts in my head. Eating them, well, forget about it. It’s pure bliss. Take your kajillion dollar chocolate. I’ll take my $3 box of awesome.

For me, Cheerios represent goodness, happiness, justice, glee (not the TV show, you gleeks), coming together, sharing, peace, love, and a host of other inspiring thoughts.

A granular tube-shaped food represents all of that. Think about it.

That’s insane.

That’s the power of branding.

The simplest of ideas created one of the most positively viewed brands. Ever.

Think about Paul Rand’s famous quote about design. “Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it’s so complicated.”

Branding can be art. Branding can be aesthetics. Branding is so simple, that’s why it’s so complicated.

Shameless plug: at the end of every post this month, I’m putting a call to action to vote for Pepsi Refresh projects. Specifically mine, obviously. You can vote for an idea once every day and have 10 votes each day. That means you can vote for my idea, or others, but preferably mine, up to 28 times.

photo credit Flickr user mil8