My final project: Personal Website

I’m not going to lie when I say that designing a website is mind numbingly fun for me. I originally went to college to become a web designer, but realized that I had potential in doing so much more than that. I was nice to get back to the roots of my knowledge though. It took some time to brush of all the dust build-up on my scripting for HTML and CSS3, but it started coming back as I went through the website (though I don’t think I am close to what I use to be able to do).

How does a website promote me?

Well the easiest way to answer is that it is a visual illustration of my work and me. It can represent me as a person and then the work that I have done in the past. Unlike social media, the website has to define you, not only by the content, but how visually pleasing it is. You have make people want to come back to your site frequently and to know that this is your work and your abilities. Social media sites are fleeting in natures; one day a site is popular, then another will come along and take over (look at what Facebook did to MySpace).

• There are advantages to social media to your webpage though.
• ·      They can link together, so they can see your website work and then jump to Facebook or Twitter for up to date information on you.
• ·      There is the ability to promote your website with social media
• ·      It is an excellent way to show someone your ability to run a website and social media.
• ·      Really, the possibilities are endless.

How was designing my website?

Like I stated at the beginning; I’ve missed working on web design. There was a mixture of dread, because I was looking forward to make an entire site in two weeks and there was so little creativity left in my brain after this daunting semester. I manage to push through though and used a very basic layout for my website, but simplicity can also be very appealing to many people.

I am thankful for having Dreamweaver on my laptop too. Dreamweaver is a excellent program to use, when it comes to making a website, but it can still be tricky at times. I’ve used Dreamweaver in the passed designing multiple websites, so my background was helpful in making this project as easy as possible.  If I didn’t have the program on my laptop, I feel that I would have be extremely frustrated with the limited about of time that class offered, because this is a time consuming project.

Like I stated earlier, I used a simple design, so to keep things organized and easy tom maneuver through the site. I started with a header, which was a time-laps photo of myself, which is also a link to my home page. Then the menu bar that I made was simple links with the words to what they were. There were four separate pages made for my website: home page, resume page, portfolio page, and contact information page.

Home page is a basic description about myself. I wanted to write something unique and would help me stand out as a individual.

My resume page is an image of my resume, which you can click and it will download a .pdf file of my resume to your computer. It’s a great way to show them your past jobs and also easy for them to get their hands on this way.

The portfolio page took the most time to do. The top is a slide show of a few pieces of work that I did in the field of photography. Below the slide show are 1x1 images of the images of the slideshow, which link to the higher resolution images for people to see. At the bottom of this page, there are a few writing samples that I added from my public relations classes.

The contact information page was simple a site with all of me personal information, incase someone was interested in hiring me.

Over all, the website project was fun for me. I enjoy spending time looking at the complex scripting and coming up with unique ways of solving problems that occur in web design. There is a calming feeling amongst the frustration that I fide to be nice to have. I hope, in the future, to get back into designing webpages. For now, I am quite happy that my final project is finished and my brain isn’t buzzing as much.

The Interview

Here are some questions that have been asked about me for short informal interview. I hope you enjoy reading though them.

How do you plan on self promoting yourself?

Social media and personal webpage, media packages and media alerts. Also portfolio and resume

Name three goals you have between now and graduation.

1.     Travel

2.     Have more personal time

3.     Maintain happiness  

What employment goals do you have after graduation?  Name three of them.

1.     Successfully run xplounges PR campaign

2.     Further improve production studio

3.     Be successful

Name three best case scenario jobs you would like to have and why.

1.     Running own company (PR, Photography and Production)

2.     Be the director of communications for xplounge

3.     Work for an ad agency

Do you prefer to work professionally with a group or on your own and why?

Work alone. Cannot stand people.

What contributions can you make to a group dynamic?  Name three things.

1.     Leadership

2.     Motivation

3.     Helpful

What contributions can you make working independently?  Name three things.

1.     Motivated

2.     Stubborn

3.     Timely/punctual

What are your pet peeves in a work environment?

1.     Stupid people

2.     People who can’t handle work

3.     Lazy

Name three things you feel passionate about professionally - this could be school related, current job related, group or organizationally related - and outline why you feel passionate towards them.

1.     Possibilities of clients I can choose from for my jobs

2.     Creative freedom

3.     Leadership positions

How do you handle stress and pressure?

Deep Breaths

Name the last three jobs you had, and the best success and the worst failure you experienced at each of these jobs.

1.     Bartending – made $50 tip out of a person who only tips $1, Hate for people caused major problems

2.     Photography Company - able to build steady clientele, haven’t been able to get the amount of money I would like

3.     PR director for xplounge – help make building blocks for their communication with their key public , able to fully communicate with owners even with distance

How do you handle criticism?

Except it for what it is and grow off of what I heard

Outline three strengths you have in school.

1.     Timely with projects

2.     Studious

3.     Great tutor

Outline three strengths you have in your workplace.

1.     Strong communication

2.     Committed to completing all jobs

3.     Helpful to others

How has creating a WikiPage strengthened your communication skills? Name and elaborate on three things:

It has not. It has only succeeded in making me chose one less medium to use. It is insufficient and irrelevant. No valuable information was aquired

How will Facebook be used to promote yourself?

Name and elaborate on three things:

1.     Fan page – 2 way communication

2.     Produce timeline

3.     Promote skills and abilities

How would you promote an organization on Facebook?

Name and elaborate on three things:

1.     Two way communication with public

2.     Open discussion about the organization

3.     Share upcoming events

Twitter with an extra "tweet"

Whenever I think of twitter, the first thing that pops into my mind is, “well a little bird tweeted me today.” I know my jokes are lame, but then again I have the mindset of a 60-year-old man. Yes, I know that I just said that and I apologize for my inability to make a good joke.

Twitter is a marketing dream site. It is a way for them to get retime information of what consumers feel are good and bad for just about any subject you can think of. The ability to socialize with your publics in a 2-way conversation has made for a very connected public and business. Creating themed “hashed tags” (it is used in tweets to communicate the keywords in a message) to make people to bounce back opinions is an excellent way to stay connected and probe your audiences mind.

So how can these techniques effectively help a business?

Well honestly there is what I am currently formulating for a public relations campaign I am writing. For starters, I am using Hash tags to create a source of connection with publics I want to reach. In my case my publics are people who are interested in video games, so I would use hash tags like: #games, #gaming, #halo4, #BlackOps2, and others.

Then next step that I will be taking to create a success plan for getting a mass amount of followers is to start following gaming console twitter counts, game developers, and gaming pros.  The point of this is to create a 2-way communication with them to show that I am knowledgeable about what they are discussing and to hopefully create a decent following by people liking a re-tweeting my post.

There are other steps that I plan to take to create a stronger Twitter feed, but those are secrets that I can openly reveal to you, but I can say that I quite proud of a few.

Topics and subjects I followed on Twitter?

Well because most of the people I followed I have association with in one form or another. To me they are important and I like to read their messages on what they are up to and or thinking about.

Jon Jones and Channing Jones are hometown heroes who I have know through sports and other people. They are both major figures in the athletic world and I think that they are interesting people to know in life. Following them just seemed like a need.

Lila Ignite I followed, because I’ve done quite a few thousand images for them and I will hopefully be doing a music video for them this summer as well. A lot of stuff is happening with them and they seem to be making a name for themselves. It’s great to see how far they are going and maybe get some updates on what they are doing as a band. Who know, they might tweet some of their new song lyrics!

Photoshop was a needed follow. I have been using Photoshop since I was a junior in high school. If I didn’t follow them I’d be down right dumb.  Honestly though, I felt that they share a lot of information on new updates to the software and give great links to check out for possible Photoshop tutorials, brushes, packages, and other stuff that I might be interested in knowing about Photoshop.

What is the difference from blogging to tweeting?

Well for one, blogging is a daunting task that I feel takes too much time to do and very few people actually care to read what I have to say (Partly because I am about as interesting a watching paint dry). As for twitter, it is short blurbs with a set amount of characters that allowed to be used per tweet. I can write 250 and make them have more feeling than I can in 1000 worlds.

The next major thing that I can say is different is that you can send as many tweets and your hands will let you and never get bored, but to write a long blog post on something that is dry (even if it is interesting to you, still might be horrible to have to write) is so much more difficult.

Though the advantage to blogging is that you can have a more informed and detailed statement, instead of the short message you’re allowed.  There is a lot of work to write a good blog post, but when it comes to telling people something, sometimes that minimal character amount in a tweet can be pesky. I mean some times a bird doesn’t want the just, “tweet,” but might want to, “tweet tweet tweet,” to the world (might be a long winded bird).

I conclude

Twitter is an interesting tool to use and many people have be participating in making it one of the most powerful sources of communication in the modern world we live in. Since I started tweeting (outside of class), I can say that I have become a fan of the quick messages, though at times it can be confusing to follow a conversation between people.

I believe there are defiantly a lot of positive that can come from twitter and I would put my money on this social media form to grow to even vaster extents than they already are at. There is a lot that person can do with such a interesting tool, whether it be for personal use or business use.

I won’t lie though when I say that there are negatives to the use of Twitter and some might never go away, but honestly you have to take the good with the bad, otherwise you’re just going to sit there and sulk.

Finally, I can say that I will be looking foreward to how Twitter will be used in the future and how I will personal gain for this social media. The two-way communication is so much nicer for me and my marketing plan than if I were to just blindly go off of instinct.

500 words for YouTube vs Vimeo

Videos on the Internet; it’s pretty simple to realize the importance, but there are currently two video sharing website which have the top rating. The first is the well-known YouTube.  It is easily over powering it’s new opponent, Vimeo. Today, there is Vimeo, which may still be far behind YouTube, but is still in the race to surpass the beast, which Google has primed to become the dominating force on the Internet. 

Web 2.0 has helped out with the ability to not only share with one another in written word, but in visual and vocal.  We can stream videos on the Internet, which has opened up the possibilities to produce highly structured site and social media platforms.

Back the major discussion today, which are the differences between YouTube and Vimeo.  It can easily be said that the upper hand will go to the top dog YouTube, which alone is because of it’s shear numbers of views per month. This isn’t including the fact that you can upload as many videos as you want and that includes HD videos up to 1 gigabyte in size.  This titan is something to marvel over, especially with the backing of the most powerful search engine, Google, but there are the downfalls to the site, which make its competitor, shine a little bit in the eyes of the few. 

The first thing that is seen is that the quality of a Vimeo video is just a bit better than what you can find on YouTube.  It isn’t a lot, but enough for people to recognize that there is a difference between the two.  The next thing that YouTube unfortunately has is the mass amount of videos, which have to content or relevance to anything other than to clog up the Internet with more useless stuff. Seriously, I don’t want to deal with people bitching about the dumbest things. 

And now for the lightweight competitor, Vimeo, to the heavyweight champion of the world, YouTube. First the quality has to be noted again. There is a slight difference in it and Vimeo wins this category.  The next thing that hast to be brought up is the fact that it is customizable for your video streaming needs, which means unlike YouTube, you don’t need the pesky logo of the site in the corner.  Unfortunately those are it’s shining qualities.

Vimeo is still young and it seems the creators are a tad bit greedy to make some money.  They first charge a yearly fee for the Pro Vimeo, which for most is not going to happen.  Then come the fact you can only upload one HD video per week.  In my opinion this kind of sucks, because I want the ability to upload more than that. Then next problem is that they don’t have the viewer mass of YouTube. This is important when it come to wanting to show everyone what you’ve made, though that might not be the case entirely.  My final point is that hipsters rule the site.  Yes, those annoying idiot that sit in the coffee shop that is lame, because it’s “ironic.”  It is because the site is less popular than YouTube that they use it and I would like to say you are all idiots and I hope that you realize you’re not cool.

In my opinion, YouTube is winning, thought Vimeo still has some possibility to it and I could find myself using it for my own videos soon.  I hope to seem some major competition soon between the two, but the super titan might win this battle in the end.  Who honestly knows thought.