Trish Skram's Blogging Presentation

            On Tuesday afternoon our tactics II class had an opportunity to listen to a presentation by Trish Skram. Trish is a UW-Whitewater alum and she currently works for Mercy Medical in Janesville as a Media Specialist and Public Relations manager. Trish graduated from UW-Whitewater seven years ago with a double major in Public Relations and Organizational Speech. She’s originally from Madison.

Not only does she work for Mercy Medical, but she is also a professional blogger for the Janesville Gazette and Wisconsin Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing Society. Blogging was the main focal point of her presentation. She informed us that she actually gets paid for some of her blogging for work.

            Trish had a lot of great advice for our class. She said it’s important to use social media including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. She also discussed why she began blogging. She told us that her personal media blogging strategy consisted of three general areas: growing her network, helping better the PR/Communication industry, and to talk about what she knows and loves. She is very passionate about writing, public relations, and communication.

            Trish also shared some very interesting statistics within her presentation; 55% of corporations use social media to seek job applicants, 60- 80% of blogs are abandoned within one month of their start, 77% of internet users read blogs, and lastly, more than 133 million blogs were indexed by Technorati since 2002. I found the statistics very interesting. The statistic stating that 77% of internet users read blogs, shows how important blogging can be for people in the communications field.

            She also told us why we should blog. She listed several reasons why we should continue blogging for class and more importantly outside of the mandatory class blogs. Blogging can have a number of different rewarding elements. Some of these elements are: it can help generate content, establishes an expertise for the blogger, helps grow the bloggers networks, offer a place for people to engage and communicate, gain valuable knowledge, and it can help ones keyword search ranking.

            She also noted that many people have a lot of common fears when it comes to blogging. Many people decide not to blog because they are worried they will look stupid, don’t have all the right information or they simply do not have enough time. I can understand these fears because I had I felt the same way when I first started blogging. But Trish believes we have to overcome these fears. She said we have to just “get over it” and move on. She says to just do it.

            Trish also gave us some very specific blogging tips. First she said we need to figure out what we want to get out of it. We have to define our goals and objectives. And we need to be specific with our goals. She also said we need to know our competency, listen and learn about our audience, add a personal touch, be positive, encourage engagement, and be consistent. Personally, being consistent is probably the most important tip for me. To be honest, I did not blog at all over the summer. I had gone roughly four months without blogging until the semester started. But I plan to continue blogging because I can see how beneficial it can be.

            Trish left us with some lasting advice. She said we should share our passion, share our knowledge, participate and don’t be afraid. I believe this is advice that all of us can use in ANY of our future endeavors.