Trish Skram's Visit

                On Tuesday we had the pleasure of listening to guest speaker Trish Skram. Skram is actually a UW-Whitewater alumni, majored in speech communication and marketing with an emphasis in public relations six years ago and now has a variety of occupations. One of her jobs is with Mercy health system as a media specialist. She got started out with them when she had an internship there her junior year of college and was able to continue on with them after she graduated. After her internship she worked as a copy writer and kept moving up from there. For her personal blog she uses the name, “PR gal,’ and for her professional one, www.trishkram .com. owner and brand visionary.

                She also works as a professional blogger for the Janesville Gazette and was able to get the job with them after they read her professional blogging. Where it all started for her was with her social media and blogging strategy. She wanted to help her network grow, help to better her PR/communications industry, and talk just talk about everything she knows and loves. She gave us some informative statistics including: 55% of corporations use social media to seek out job applicants, 58% say they are better known in their industry because of their blog, 77% of internet users read blogs, and there are 95 million tweets per day. That is a lot of connections through social media, by incorporating ourselves in that number we could help ourselves tremendously to stay connected, networked, and hopefully find potential employers or internships.

                So why should we blog? Skram informed us that it generates content, establishes expertise, helps grow your network, offers a place for people to engage (comments), gain valuable knowledge, and gives you information to share via social networks. Having a blog can help us boost our brand, and create connections and build rapport with our customers, stakeholders and future customers. She told us that she had a huge fear of blogging because of what people might think, or she might sound stupid, however, we can overcome that fear by understanding that no one has all the answers and know that social media is a place to start a conversation.

Skram also gave us information on eight ways to build a brand with a blog; what do you want to get out of it? Know your competency, listen and learn about your audience, add a personal touch to it, be positive, encourage engagement, research keywords, and be consistent. She also said that we should create a code of conduct and gave us a list of hot topics that could attract people to read our blog. Kram utilizes twitter, @trishskram, and linkedin.com/om/trishskram professionally to help promote her blog and to update followers on the gazette and Mercy Health Systems. I thought that Skram had a lot of great advice about blogging and utilizing social media in the work place. Before listening to Skram I only considered blogging for class purposes, however, now I would like to start writing as an entrepreneur like she did and hope that it will make me more marketable in the work arena and enhance my writing abilities.