Social Media and Fishing?!?!

             November 3-6 I will be in Bloomington, Indiana on Lake Monroe representing WKU in the 2010 FLW National Guard Collegiate Bass Fishing Central Regional Championship. Wow what a title! Try saying that fast 10 times! Only 20 schools have earned the invitation to compete in this event by placing in the top 5 in one of the 4 qualifying tournaments this past spring. I was fortunate enough to qualify for this tournament this year and last year as well.

            Thanks to social media, family and fans that are unable to attend the event are able to follow the tournament action by Twitter and Facebook and they also are able to watch the anglers weigh-in their catches at the end of the day through live streaming video.  At the event there are a dozen or so photographers and videographers that capture the event through their camera lens.

            Before we take-off in the boats each morning of the tournament, people walking around with video cameras interviewing the anglers about how they think the day is going unravel. These videos are then uploaded on website and Facebook for viewing. Also, each competing team has an observer in the boat with them to regulate the anglers and make sure they are follow the rules of the tournament. The observers also communicate with the tournament officials back at the boat ramp about the team’s status and success throughout the day. They use Twitter and text messaging to share our catches and how we are doing. This also helps the tournament officials determine who the videographers need to follow around to capture the best action of the day. At the end of the day, we return to the boat ramp and we will weigh our catches. Live video of the weigh-in is streamed online on the Facebook page and also on the www. collegefishing.com website. This allows family and fans unable to make it the ability to follow their favorite team.

            I know a lot of you might be thinking what is he talking about?  But explaining the basics of competitive bass fishing can go on for days. With that in mind, I still wanted to blog about this because I think it gives another example of how social media is utilized by people. In this particular case it is used to share the standings and news of a collegiate bass tournament. I personally love that they do this because I compete in tournaments all over country in states like Texas, Arkansas, Iowa, Michigan, and Missouri. My family is not able to travel to all of my tournaments because of the travel expense, work, and other obligations. But when it is streamed on the internet they are able to watch me weigh-in my catch at the end of the day and can instantly know what place I took in the tournament.

            Last August, I won $10,000 in a college tournament in Iowa and since it was streamed over the internet my family was able to watch me on stage weighing in my fish and  then being told I was the winner and the presentation of the trophy and check, even though they were not present. It was great because as soon as I called them, they were able to share the excitement with me because they watched it take place live. It was the biggest win of my fishing career at that point and it meant a lot to me that my family was able to share that moment with me.

            This is exactly what the sport of fishing needs for it to be brought into recognition from the public. Television shows, live streaming videos of weigh-ins, tournament updates on Facebook and on the water tweets of angler catch updates all are making it easier for people to follow a fishing tournament without having to pay the overwhelming expense of traveling to the event. This leads me to wonder, what are some other lesser known sports that are receiving more exposure due to social media?

P.s.  You can watch me and see what I am blogging about Nov. 4-6 at 3pm Central time at www.collegefishing.com. Then click on watch the weigh-in live.

Applying my bachelors degree in a social media ran business world

            Communication in the workplace is becoming a necessity rather than plus.  To be successful in today’s society, businesses must learn to utilize current media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogs and websites.  To put it simply, the field of business is evolving.  With social media booming, businesses are putting emphasis on flooding media streams with as much information about their company as possible.  College graduates can reap the benefits by seizing job positions companies are creating to stay on top of their social media. 

            In my opinion, communication bachelor degrees such as corporate and organizational communication are prime candidates for newly developed job positions such as Digital Director, Director of Search Engine Marketing, Interactive Media Coordinator, Social Media Analyst, and Social Media Consultant.  Corporate communication is a great fit for these positions because class courses cover all of the basic business principles; marketing, sales, public relations, advertising, economics, finance, human resources, management, training and development.  Corporate communication uses all of these courses to apply business principles in an organizational structure, with an emphasis on how to communicate effectively to the public and within the organization.

Social Media Manager

I have to admit, it has been a while since I have taken the time to read the blogs I follow. I’m sorry! I realized how many I have missed in such a short period of time. With so many interesting blogs and current news and events it is becoming increasingly difficult to remain up to date. Not to mention it is becoming a chore keeping up with Tweets and Facebook updates. That’s not including the blogs, websites, Tweets and Facebook account of companies I like to stay current with. Overwhelmed, I then forgot where I saw a particular story I wanted to reread. Was it in my Facebook account? In a Blog? In a Tweet? Or was it in my email? Who knows?!?! When will I be able to utilize a service to keep up with all of this for me? One that will make it easy for me to sort through the boring and keep the good stuff?

This service might be here sooner than I thought. While reading through TechCrunch blogs, I stumbled upon a blog about a personal search engine still in private beta. Introspectr, part of a new class of startups trying to tackle the developing problem many individuals are now facing; keeping up with all of your media streams. Once you give Introspectr access to your Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail account, it indexes them for you. Introspectr allows you to search for any term and it will bring up all the Tweets, emails and Facebook messages where the keyword is found.

I also read that Greplin is another startup in this class that has been released. As for right now there seems to be flaws with both startups, but they are heading in the right direction and most importantly they are trying to position themselves in the market before their competitors. It won’t be long until we will all  be using these personal search engines to manage all of our media streams. I can hold my own when it comes to staying current with social media and technology but it is becoming more and more difficult for me to manage all of the available information. With new social media streams developing and gaining popularity daily, we will all start searching for help from a service like this.

LinkedIn's New Feature for Recent College Grads

LinkedIn will be soon be releasing the launch of Career Explorer, a new job finding feature that is aimed toward newly college grads.

Career Explorer gives you the ability to surf a variety of career paths based on your level of education, location, and even your dream industry. Career Explorer is set to initially launch featuring a total of 60 universities in the US. It is assumed that LinkedIn already has plans for more to follow shortly. LinkedIn says that this new job finding tool will be helpful for the following:

• To map out career paths. Based on your work interests and take into account the paths of established professionals. You can also create and save multiple paths.
• Find relevant connections.
• Learn about your desired job. The site will give you stats like average age of individuals that hold the position you want, as well as geographic distribution.
• Find job openings.
• Recommend people in your network for jobs.
• Suggest companies to follow.