By Kathleen Keish '10
In this quarter’s [college] Gate newsletter, the main feature was a story on how your Ohio University Alumni Association is utilizing social media to better stay connected with you and to allow you to stay better connected with us.
No one knows social media like Ohio University alumna and public relations expert Jackie Reau '92. At a recent seminar on campus, she advised public relations and communications officials within the University on how to utilize social media as a communication tool. OHIO is getting even more social with social media, having various presences on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.
Once considered for those in high school, social media is now a truly social experience, connecting you with people from all over the world, and all demographics.
In the interview, Jackie Reau discusses social media as a tool with which to socialize, mediate and promote.
If social media is a game, which is an accurate comparison considering that it is equal parts strenuous and rewarding, then 1992 Ohio University Alumna and communications expert Jackie Reau is the coach.
Reau, who is the co-founder and CEO of Game Day Communications, a sports and entertainment public relations and marketing firm based in Cincinnati, recently revisited her alma mater to help train other players in the way of efficient social media usage.
Reau emphasizes the use of social media to find teammates—people who share similar interests and can serve as either or both personal and business connections.
“What I love about it is just making the connections, sharing information, sharing tips on a new restaurant, a new movie,” she said during a phone interview. “The social media community I’ve found is very friendly and positive in most cases. Its an opportunity to find information that is relevant to you.”
Though Reau has of course utilized social media for social purposes, she has found that it also serves her best interest as a professional communicator to use social media as an alternative information outlet.
“As a communicator, as a publicist, as a public relations practitioner, my news hole is shrinking,” she said. “Newspapers don’t have as much space as they once did… There are fewer and fewer opportunities to pitch stories or share stories in regular media.”
She also said that new media outlets, such as social media, have made her less reliant on traditional media outlets, and is advising her trainees to utilize social media in the same manner.
“I’m talking to a lot of clients about creation social media networks,” she said. “Certainly we’ll always have traditional media and that’s very important, but I’m not reliant now on a newspaper editor to take my press release and run it.”
Reau also promotes the use of social media as a means to monitor locker room gossip and information sharing, whether positive or negative.
“Social media offers tremendous opportunities for large and small organizations, for profit, non-profit, and its really important I think to take advantage of social media right now because I guarantee you, if you’re not talking about yourself or if you’re not monitoring the conversation about yourself, somebody is talking about you and its important for you to monitor that conversation online,” she said.
And of course, like many coaches, Reau advises that playing the game that is social media is about one thing more than anything else.
“It’s not just size [of the media] that matters, its not age that matters,” she said. “Its your attitude that matters.”
Visit Jackie Reau on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, or at the Game Day Communications Web site.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jackiereau
http://www.facebook.com/JackieReau
http://twitter.com/gamedayjreau
http://gamedaypr.com/