Blogs are such a central part of today’s news and it would be absurd to just ignore them as platform for receiving news. They allow a journalist to look for new sources and find stories that have not been made large. They are a good source to use not only to gather information, but also to posts stories. As a PR professional you want your story to reach as many people as possible. The best way to do that use to be through news outlets, but that is no longer the case. Sure news outlets are big and will reach millions, but taking the time to convince people to put your story takes time. It is way easier to just make a blog post on your blog and share it on your social media platforms. No need to wait for the media to maybe pick your story up, you can just make it happen all on your own.

            In the seochat article “blogs as an excellent public relations tool” it goes in-depth about the various advantages of using blogs in PR. It is hard to deny how useful they are and what they can truly accomplish. The article does a good job of examine the benefits from various angels. They discuss how it is not only a good way to spread news, but to gather potential clients. Clients will see the work you do and can determine if you are what they need. The works stay there forever and can be accessed at any time for people to look at. Not only are you doing your job you using this blog you are building a portfolio at the same time. Blogs just accomplish so many things a PR person wants get clients, have their stories be seen by millions, and get the story out fast. This tool provides PR people with such an upside that it becomes detrimental to not use.

            ProBlogger’s “7 ways to build your bran in the blogosphere” is a great article about how to make your brand be the best it can within blogs. Perhaps the most important point is to allow feedback. People want to say things about what you have posted and in order to build connections you need to let them. The more people talk to you the more you learn so that you can improve or answer questions they may have. PR is all about communications and blogs are an amazing way to do it. http://www.seochat.com/c/a/website-promotion-help/blogs-as-excellent-public-relations-tools/

https://problogger.com/7-ways-to-build-your-brand-in-the-blogosphere/ https://publicrelationssydney.com.au/blogging-and-pr/

            Seton Hall has a large student body with people who share many different interests. One of these interests is gaming and everything that it entails. At Seton Hall there is a gaming club that covers everything from board games to video games. They have a sector for every type of club you might need and attendance has never been higher according to Matt McDevvit the sector leader of the Dungeons and Dragons club. “We have had so many people that we are actually running out of space to accommodate everyone at meetings” says McDevvit. The club grows with every meeting and they have resorted to having people take shifts which weeks they get to play. Dungeons and Dragons is a role playing game in which players customize characters and play with a group of paper. This game is kind of like a board game so the more people that show up the more space is needed. McDevvit said that due to the high velocity of people he has needed to recruit extra help to assist in running the biweekly games. “It was just getting to be too much I could not keep track of everything and everyone” says McDevvit. He had to not only split apart the groups to play twice a week he also needed an extra set of hands to run these biweekly meetings.

Due to the number of people playing he also needed to bring extra supplies which meant that his budget increased from the club. “Yeah our budget is usually like five dollars, but since we got so popular they have increased it to 100” says McDevvit. This growth in the gaming club is due to how many interested students are coming to Seton Hall who want to expand their interests. The more people who attend the better it is for the club because they can create more events based on attendance. Matt is already planning several gaming events like a board game night in order to try and get even more people to come. With this his new found numbers Matt wants to do thing he could not do before and says he is already “cooking up” some stuff for everyone to be a part of. Seton Hall has a great community that is interested in a lot and the gaming club just goes to show how wide and diverse these interests are. Anyone who comes to Seton Hall is sure to find a place somewhere among the great students.

Social Media is the newest form of communication to be introduced to people. It has given people the power to communicate with people around the entire world and in a matter of seconds. In an article by the Economist titled “The people formerly known as the audience” it discusses how people are no longer just audience to the news they can help spread it by using places like twitter and Facebook. People can share news updates on platforms and they become the source of the news. With this type of fast paced news it becomes hard for newspapers to keep up. In a post titled Last Call the idea of ads in papers is brought up and how important they are t the survival of a paper. Yet papers are getting less and less ads because it becomes less worth the money to publish them. Why would they go to print when they can pay to have ads online and have people everywhere view them? This has proved problematic for papers because they live off ads while online papers and news sources are essentially making double just by being online. Obviously the internet is the next new news source however companies cannot compete with random people blogging and posting about what has happened because these people where there the second it went down. Journalists have to be much quicker now provide more info then before. They need facts normally people cannot provide and they need them fast. With this type of news people are just less willing to pay for the things they can get for free. PR is on a different side of the coin because PR work has become much easier. People can simply post about their PR updates rather than have to go through news organizations to update the public. In the Forbes article it talks about how 19 year old interns can be paid to make posts about clients and there is no need to go to a paper or news source. They can just posts what they need to get out or use social media as a way for clients to communicate with the public. Social media has changed PR and journalism so much and forced to evolve. This evolved version of news and PR is fast and extremely competitive, in order to stay ahead journalists and PR people have to be fast and ready to act.