Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Checking out some blogs :)

Over the last week I have been dabbling into cyberspace looking at multiple different blogs that were recommended to me. Among my favorites were PR-Squared.com, MPdailyfix.com and sethgodin.typepad.com. All three of these blogs captured me with with their layouts, and easy to read postings. They all managed to maintain readability even though the information being conveyed was strictly professional.

PR-Squared, a blog written by Todd Defren was my favorite, because even though the author is a a global innovator of social media and public relations he managed to keep humor and sarcasm in his writing to make it seem more down to earth. Also, the format was entertaining and he offered pictures to demonstrate what he was talking about.It is very likely that I will continue to use and read this blog, because I found myself highly informed of various marketing techniques which could in turn be useful to me in the professional world.

Another entertaining and interesting concept in a blog was Mpdailyfix.com. Mpdailyfix is a blog ran by marketing professionals and contributors that give actionable how-to's to help anyone better market their product or service. I liked this blog because it ranged widely in information, and is written by many different contributors. The format also was laid out nice, I could easily find where I wanted to go. Also, if anyone likes a particular contributors blog posts more than others, all of the writers have links down the right hand side to navigate to just their posts quickly and easily. This blog would be extremely helpful to me someday to learn how to market a product better.

The third and final blog I found entertaining was Seth Godin's blog. Godin is a best selling author and famous man in the marketing industry. He offers witty blog posts about starting your own business, and he answers questions that most people think about but do not know the correct answer too. Overall his blog is him being him. He does not try to make it sound professional. In any post that I read of his it sounded like I was the one writing it, and I loved that about him. I think I would also like to keep reading his blog just for the knowledge he gives out in his posts. When I saw him post about political tv advertisements I was immediately drawn in. Those ads drive me nuts before elections, but I did not know they were a marketing strategy to get people not to vote until I read his blog.

The reason I chose these three blogs to read over many of the others was because I related to them. If I am going to sit down and read other peoples opinions I want to relate to them most of all. Secondly, they were easy to navigate through. Most of the ones I chose to read were ones that I could scroll down to keep reading, instead of just looking at blogs that had links to other websites every other sentence.

I gained a lot out of the experience of looking at others blogs, and many of them I will continue to periodically check out again.

Monday, October 11, 2010

A New Outlook on Twitter

For the last week, I have spent many random times throughout the day exploring the social media website, Twitter. Before being assigned an assignment in my communications class to do so, I considered Twitter to be a useless imitation of Facebook. From my personal standpoint, I found it a nuisance, wasting my time, signing on and posting my thoughts. I had it in my mind that I did not care about celebrity lives, or what anyone else was doing. This made me think to myself, if i do not care, why would anyone care what I am doing? However, after really getting to know the use and functions of Twitter, I am almost positive that I will continue to network and utilize the various functions of the site.

My first natural thought when I began making a new connection with the site was, "how do i use this?" I began running through all of the settings, and figuring out how to operate the retweets, messaging capabilities, timeline and @mentions. After that, I discovered one of my favorite parts about Twitter that differed from Facebook was the wallpaper and customization options. It fascinated me that I was able to tailor my own personal page to fit my personality. One thing I found annoying was that you cannot upload albums of pictures for people to see. When I see a great place, a new restaurant, or just a good fun time, i love to upload pictures from my camera to show people. Only being able to upload one picture to a post was somewhat frustrating.

In my opinion, Twitter has both good professional and personal values for others and me. Twitter has personal value to me because it gave me the opportunity to share my thoughts and get things off of my mind. It was a good way for me to vent, and a lot of times fellow Tweeter's would relate to it and message me back, or retweet what I had to say. Another good thing it did for me was show commonalities between my classmates and I. Kayla Rose, another student in my communications 634 class tweeted, "Growing up is SCARY. So many big decisions to make. Grad school or job? Ohio or the unknown? I want to know where I'll be in 8 mos!" As soon as I read her post, I thought to myself that I was in the exact same position and was glad to know Im not alone in feeling the same feelings.

More so than a personal value, Twitter has an enormous amount of professional values that come with it. After beginning on my Twitter journey, I realized there was far more to it than just posting thoughts. Major Forbes 500 companies have been using Twitter recently to post job opportunities, internships and important information about their companies. For example: ColumbusAMA, a premier marketing firm located in the city, posted, "Looking for a job? Our next Job Transition Group meeting is three weeks from today (10/26). RSVP here! http://bit.ly/AMAjt1010." Local businesses are also branching out and following locals to share information and news about the city of Columbus. ColumbusPlaces is a Twitter page completely devoted to retweets of people participating in activities, places, and events to see. I posted during the last week that my boyfriend had surprised me on Sunday by taking me to the Professional Bull Riders Invitational at Nationwide Arena, and ColumbusPlaces picked up my tweet and posted it to their page.

The Twitter pages that I enjoyed following the most, and would recommend to anyone were The Columbus Dispatch, The Lantern and Columbus Internships. The newspapers provided me with attractive and news worthy headlines. I found this to be beneficial, because to me it seemed like a faster way to gain important news fast in just one sentence. Columbus Internships caught my eye because I am a senior, and getting as many internships as possible is one of my goals before graduation. Prior to the Twitter assignment, I had never even heard of Columbus Internships and was thankful to find such a helpful organization through Twitter.

Ultimately what I learned from Twitter is that it is a very good marketing strategy. A place to market yourself, your company and anything your passionate about. If anyone can take the time to sit down and learn how to utilize Twitter, it can become a very powerful and important tool personally and professionally

Monday, May 24, 2010

Does a smile count when I say Im wearing a new accessory in life?

Its funny how life changes in the blink of an eye. One minute you could be down about the world around you, and the next moment flying the sky like a Boeing 747 jet. You never know when someone or something is going to drop into your life, and make you smile from the inside out. I cant say much about my life in the past few months because my world has turned inside out from meeting one person I cannot live without. I was in a place so dark from reality in the beginning of this year, that thinking about how to get back to who I used to be seemed useless. Going to bed at night, I would cry to god, more like surrender myself to him in hopes of becoming the person I once used to be. After bad experiences, I wondered everyday if I would be able to love someone again. Having my heart broken countless times by my dad, and boyfriend after boyfriend, I was hesitant to believe that I would ever be able to let anyone in again. Then Ray came into my life. Suddenly, I didnt feel like it was just me in the world ...

Just saying his name made me smile, but the thought of seeing him everyday was what made me wake up with a smile. I would wake up, and the first thing on my mind would be...when is that silly boy gonna text me? I felt bad because when I met him I was scared of him. It had been since September that I could look a guy and feel excited to get to know him. After going such a long time and feeling nothing, I wondered how I was able to feel that way again, and whether to let him into my life. I played dumb card with him because of this. I was completely crazy about him, but I told him I only wanted his friendship. I told him everything about my life when he thought he was just my friend, and when I realized that he knew mostly everything and was still by my side willing to listen...there was no way I could just be his friend.

Normally, Im scared to tell people where I come from. Like, how wrecked I am for my dads mistakes, how sad I can be sometimes, how much anxiety and fear I have about life, how completely backwards my thoughts on life are, how ignorant I am to the things I say, how I try to have a plan for everything, how I live in the future and not day to day, how much I dream of better days, how I am immature occasionally, and how I laugh at anything serious...the weird thing about all this is...I was never scared to tell him anything, and Im still not. Better yet, he loves me through all of this. To this day I still dont understand, but I am so in love with him.

Usually I don't let myself think for a long time, because I tend to over analyze every little detail in my life. When I over analyze,that generally leads me to pulling myself away from everyone. However, tonight Im just sitting here with him, and I cant help but to look over at him and think to myself just how happy I am. He looks so serious doing his homework, but occasionally he looks over this way and smiles. Probably the best part of my every night is seeing him smile...and knowing in my heart that he makes me feel the very same way.

Forever and Always, Danielle

Monday, March 8, 2010

the common fallacy

Why is it ingrained into every girls head to rush into getting married? I was just listening to a conversation I walked in on strolling through my sorority house. It started off like this, "i just want to get married." I was casually walking, heard that, and then came to a dead stop. WTFFFF is the obsession? I walk over there and my friend who I love dearly is sitting on the couch...covered in wedding magazines!? "Danielle, I just want to get married," she says. It took all I had not to laugh at her. She goes on to tell me about her perfect guy, the perfect wedding, and how she wants a $50,000 wedding ring before she is graduated from college. Holy shit balls! That is a fuck ton of money, is she insane? No guy in their right mind(at least I hope) would ever spend that much...unless your Mariah Carey. In that case, with that name and voice, you get what you want I guess. Haha. It just took me by surprise that she would be talking about this when she is a junior in college. I mean, yeah come on...we were all little girls looking at our parents wedding pictures, and then scoping men on tv to be our husbands. Technically, by now I believe I have over 50 husbands. I played the marriage game with every little neighbor boy I could find back in the day...I was a lil trollop in my prime childhood, my mom probably thought I was a mormon practicing polygamy. She looked out the window everyday to me picking dandelions, having my baby brother walk me down the sidewalk, and marry a different boy. Hahaha. It must have been grand.

Somewhere along the line though, I gained my consciousness with life. GETTING MARRIED IS NO JOKE. Nowadays, most people might see marriage as being synonamous with the phrase, "Game over." I do sometimes, not gonna lie. Its not that Im a slutty, its just that Im not gonna be another statistic added to the divorce rate. Divorce in my book is synonmous with, "you suck at life, or the person you married does." I just know that when I get married, Im gonna do it right, no bullshit. If it takes me 10 more years or 2 years, i'll do it. Time shouldnt be an issue with a decision that is going to affect the rest of your life. It seems to me that a lot of my sorority sisters are dead set with meeting someone before they graduate college. I dont think they understand how hard it is though. You cant just date the first guy who looks at you the right way...and who even says the person you're gonna marry is even at this college? There are 498749863 colleges across the world, and he may be cruising those stomping grounds instead. Maybe i have a distorted view of marriage, because my parents went through a really rough divorce...but I still have a great perception of it all. I still think marriage is a great thing, and that it CAN be wonderful. Girls and guys dont realize how much WORK(yes i said, work) it is though. Its like a second job. You have to constantly be working at it, or it will fall apart. When someone gets married, they have to understand that...yes they may have a daytime job, but as soon as they come home they have a PM shift in marriage. The person you marry shouldnt make it seem like work, but once you exchange "I do's" it is that way subconsciously.

A second common misconception of the whole marriage idea with girls is...THERE IS NO PERFECT GUY OUT THERE. I dont care how much anyone tries to talk their man up, its complete and utter bullshit. Every guy you will find has little habits that make you want to cringe after you endure them for so long. Examples: Chewing with their mouth open, burping, farting, peeing with the bathroom door open for the world to see, smoking way too much pot, biting their nails, spitting like a baseball player on the pitchers mound, acting immature with guy friends, lighting stuff on fire, being lazy, working out excessively, or being insensitive...you get the idea. Im not tryin to demoralize men, because women have habits too. After any guy dates a girl for a long enough time he will find something she does occasionally to be annoying. Examples: Taking a generous amount of time to get ready to go anywhere, spraying purfume excessively, stealing the covers in bed at night, wanting to cuddle after sex when a guy just wants to sleep, being moody, buying shit loads of stuff she doesnt need...etc. No one person is perfect, so nobody can search for someone with every quality they want. I posted a blog earlier in the week with the qualities I look for in a man, but thats a ridiculous dream/wish and I know it. I could find a guy with every quality I asked for, but even he is gonna have a flaw. I wish my sorority girls understood this. No "jesus" is gonna pop out of the woodwork.

My sorority sisters need to chill out with the marriage talk, and focus on school. Searching for the "man nirvana" is a huge distraction, and will only delay a true relationship from forming. The way boys and girls should approach the subject from my standpoint is...Dont look for the perfect person to marry, the situation will find you. There is a complete difference between lust and love, and you want to be sure what you have is real. Your life partner could be your best friend, an acquintance, or a stranger. You also want to be established with your own life enough, to let someone else in. Someone else cant bring you joy, you have to be content with yourself first. Dont expect lavish things(i.e. $50,000 ring) because those kinds of luxuries wont bring you true happiness, finding love that will remain until you're old and pass away will bring you happiness. Everyone has to keep that in mind.

Jeez...all this time, I thought I came to a college where smart and educated people surrounded me. I didnt know I had all these people who are so obsessed with something that they have a false perception of. Haha.

Forever and Always, Danielle

Sweet summer lover

Today was a relatively warm day in the heart of Ohio. Waking up this morning the only thing I could think of was sweet summertime! Oh how I cant wait to be raising hell on Lake Erie in 3 months. I miss the smell of the lake, the wind that blows a perfect tan onto any pasty person, and boating(safely of course! r.i.p. ben). Let the shit show of summer come back into my life. RIGHT NOW!

Besides being overly amped for summer to start, one thing is on my mind since last night...and will be every day until then...FLOWRIDER COMPETITIONNNNNNNNNNN time is here!!! Thats right, look out bitches because Im coming to strut my shit and take my ticket to semi's. I might have been a dumb ass the previous year and walked through a construction zone in flip flops and put a rod through my foot before qualifying round...but no more! I am back in black(pink, really.) and ready to rage. Flatspins, 360's, barrels...I got that shit. Stand-up? Oh fuck yes...1080's, stall's = im all over it. Its gonna be fantastic.

Better yet...boss man is getting me some rooms for my friends, anddd Im gonna be doll and take them to Kalahari to play in the waterpark andddd Cedar Point because I can get tix:) I dare for someone to tell me that its gonna be a bad weekend.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

your moves are sick girl!

Now before I say this…I want everyone to know that I am NOT SUICIDAL. I am perfectly happy with my life, I just sometimes find myself thinking deeper than the people that surround me day to day. Have you ever thought to yourself...what would the world be like if you werent here? Would anyone miss you? Would you miss life? Would some people smile when they heard the news? Would people break down in misery? What perception do people have of you in their heads? I constantly find myself over analyzing my life, thinking philosophically about my existence. Who am I? Do people perceive me the same way I perceive myself? First of all...if everyone perceived me how I perceive myself I feel bad for them, because thats not a good way to think about someone. Haha. But seriously though, what I am doing in life?

I feel like most days I drag myself out of my bed, looking for something to tell me that I belong where I am. It’s like Im constantly looking for evidence to prove that the choices and attitudes I have assumed have actually gotten me somewhere. Today I had the best conversation with my boss from Kalahari. It made me realize, my life has a purpose. I have people who miss me when Im gone, even if I don’t always think of them directly in my head. My boss told me how much he misses my character in life. That I always had the ability to talk to children who have lost their parents and are scared shitless, put a smile on anyones face in general, and help people learn to surf. That made my day. I like being that girl that can turn anyones day around. I would bend over backwards for anyone at any given time, and I guess sometimes its just nice to know that someone thinks of me that very same way.



Carving the wave

Rocking it sideways. Banana ride.

My boss Chad and I. Hes amazing, im not gonna lie.

Friday, March 5, 2010

This life is a mirage...

Its funny how sometimes you float through life like its a dream, and the next minute you're laying in your bed feeling every emotion you wondered if you had the capability to feel in the first place. The friends you thought were there for the long run are all gone, and the only person you have to rely on is yourself. Sometimes all you need is yourself, but most often we find ourselves drifting anywhere we can to feel that someone else out there in the world feels the same way we do about it. This morning I woke up feeling so displaced about my life. I laid in bed for about an hour staring at the ceiling thinking to myself...if there was one place where I could be right now where would it be? This is when I drifted back off to sleep and suddenly I was dreaming of the place where I feel most like me in the world.

For me...the place where I feel most like me is sitting on a rock in the middle of lake erie off of the pier. You might be thinking...out of all the places in the world I choose one right by my home. Being there is my sanctity. Sitting there I just think of all the beautiful things in life. I walk out there at night, and I watch the water crash around me and I can breathe because no one is watching me. I sing and dance, laugh and cry, write lyrics, and just feel what I want too. This spot that nobody knows of has been my secret for years. If I could go there anytime I felt my insecure about life, I would never be down. Since I was a sophomore in high school I have been visiting my place. Sometimes I feel like the spot where I sit knows more about me in life than anyone else.