Huba Talks

I was so impressed with the discussion/lecture with Jackie Huba, author of Citizen Marketers. She was comfortable with her PowerPoint, Billy Earnest would have been proud, and she allowed us to discuss openly our ideas and examples for PR.

The whole time she was talking, ideas were running through my mind about how to be successful with PR for my dad's new business Fire-Pro USA. After graduating in May I'll be working for him with the marketing and PR components. I talked to my dad the following evening about how important and essential blogging is for a company. Especially in our case because the business is currently running by word of mouth. I also had the idea to set up pod casts for live feeds of fire updates and customer information for the company.

I'm so glad we had the opportunity to meet and talk to her about PR. The book makes so much sense to me and I fully understand citizen marketers. Without the publics and help from citizens PR wouldn't exist.

Wikis as a PR tool

As a PR tool, wikis can be used to enhance a company's image, share information about a company, and allow consumers to be connected to the company. On the other hand, besides enhancing a company image, wikis can be edited and used unethically as a PR tool.

For example, as talked about in class, Wal-Mart can be found on Wikipedia. They used a wiki to as a PR tool, but they changed or edited the information found on the Wikipedia webpage. The Wal-Mart Wikipedia page includes the history, subsidiaries, corporate affairs, advocacy groups, etc. It can be useful but at the same time unethical. For example, a lot of people were upset that Wal-Mart employees were changing the wiki page.