Just over a month ago, I left Los Angeles and Olmstead Williams Communications to go back to Freiburg, my hometown in Southwest Germany. At the time, I was quite happy to be going back home – back to my friends, my family, my boyfriend, my school, my theater group, my bartending job…back to my everyday life. And yet, coming home always means that the journey is ending, and I knew I’d miss Los Angeles. I often find it hard to point out what exactly it is that I miss about a place, but I already look back on my time in L.A. with a smile on my face. Now it’s the perfect time to reflect on what it is that I miss about California.

During my stay in L.A., I interacted with amazing and incredible people – at the office as well as in my free time. In my experience, you always share the adventures you have with the people who are there with you. Meeting new people was an enrichment, and I will remember these Angelenos for a long time.

The second thing I miss is working at OWC. After four months, I really got used to my job there, and I enjoyed the daily routine. I don’t think it’s a given for everyone to like their colleagues, their boss, their tasks and the general atmosphere in the office. I feel very fortunate for my internship; it was all I’d hoped for – and more.  I came to OWC without any experience in PR, and I left with a feature in the LABJ – what else could you ask for?!

All in all, I miss the excitement and the perks of being in a foreign country: the warm weather, the different food (mexican, for instance, is very hard to come by in Germany), the uncertainty of what awaits you when you travel around. Plus, I had never lived by the ocean before, and I will never forget  the beauty of running in the morning and watching the sunrise over the cliffs of Pacific Palisades.

In general, the Palisades are one of my keenest memories of Los Angeles. I loved the Sunday market and the fact that I could walk to the store and the proximity to the ocean and the canyon trails. What I also miss about Pacific Palisades is the fact that it was my home for four months.

One of the best things about my stay in California was my host family. They took such excellent care of me; and their hospitality made me feel at home right away. One month back, I am already cherishing memories like my host cat Mira, trying to con me into feeding her every time I opened the fridge. All these little things are the reason why I felt nostalgic about leaving America.

Still, I was glad to be back home. First of all, I reunited with my friends and family. I hadn’t seen some of my family members for six months, and I was thrilled to be with my nephews again. I now live in the very center of Freiburg, and my university is literally across the street. On my first weekend back, my friends helped me move into my new apartment, and we went out for drinks later. It was like I never left, and I loved how at ease and carefree I felt.  Again, it’s hard to explain what makes home so special. Maybe it’s the feeling of belonging somewhere, without having to struggle to meet anyone, to understand anything or to get anywhere. Although living abroad is great, the tiniest everyday tasks take more effort than at home.

In the end, I think my stay in California was great the way it was. I left on a high note, and this is part of why I look back on those four months so gladly. Although it makes me sorry that I will never be in that exact place in my life again, my travels are always with me, and they shape who I am. When it comes to traveling, I think there are two kinds of people. There are those who are content with where they are, and there are those with itchy feet, who constantly think of where they could go next. I am one of the latter, and even though I am glad to be home right now, I have a lingering feeling of wanderlust, which always makes me long to travel.

So now, I know what you’re thinking: What does a wedding have to do with public relations? Why should I care about your marriage? How does this apply to your general concept at the Big Mouth Blog?

Well, let me put it to you this way: Social media is changing not just the way we interact but the way we remember, the way we plan for special occasions, the way we document our lives. And seeing my wedding through the lens of social media, surprisingly, taught me something about content public relations.

One of the most remarkable aspects about my wedding was that as soon as we were hitched, as soon as I said my vows and put the ring on my wife’s finger, our friends and family started to share their photographs on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram; you name the social media site, our photos were there. And instantly, right after the wedding, I was able to see photographs of my beautiful wife. Most people have to wait weeks for the wedding photographer to share their photos, but for us, we had a sneak peak into the way we will remember our special day.

But that’s when I started to think about the long-term trajectory of these Facebook photos. Let’s assume that Facebook never dies, and it’s around for the next 100 years: does it become a sort of street-smart census? A primary historical document? When I have grandchildren, will I bring the little whippersnappers over to a social-media platform to reminisce rather than a photo album? And how will these photos age? Even though they’re digital, our technology will (hopefully) advance? Maybe all our future photographs will be holograms?

It’s hard to know exactly what is going to happen with the way we remember, but social media is certainly changing the tools we use to connect to those distant time periods — or relatively close ones. Take for instance this Vine created by my friend Clayton Dean. How will my grandchildren interact with this six-second video? Will it last? Is it capable of being archived?

Great vine of Heron and I getting married RT @cdeanseo: Bianca and Joe officially married vine.co/v/brvJK1ePbzd”

— Joseph A. Lapin (@JosephALapin) February 15, 2013

Clearly Facebook, Twitter and Vine had an influence on my wedding, but there was another social-media platform that had an equally substantial role: Google+. For me, Google+ clearly has the best upside out of all the social-media platforms, and you can read a great post by our former intern, Marie Ebenezer, which outlines the benefits of Google+. Now let me tell you how it impacted our wedding.

For must of my life, I have been a musician, and I started a band in Miami. Our bass player was married almost a year earlier, and we surprised his wife by playing on their big day. I knew my wife was expecting something similar. So I came up with a plan to play “Stand By Me” at the wedding with my band, but here’s the problem: I live in California; my band is scattered throughout Miami and Massachusetts. How in the world was I going to pull this off?

Google+ became the problem solver. In a way, Google+ has handpicked all the elements from other social-media sites they liked and put them into one place. For example, you can follow people similar to Twitter; you can watch a news feed and “Like” a post; and you can share links and stories with friends (except you have circles you can create to pick who you want to share certain documents with). So for the band, I used one of their features — Google Hangouts — which allows users to connect through live video feeds. It was strange, but our band eventually ended up practicing through Google Hangouts, and we pulled off something close to cool. Check out the video below.

In the end, social media isn’t just an important tool to sell our products or build our brand; it’s a tool that is influencing the way I remember. And knowing that as a professional PR person helps me understand that our social-media presence isn’t just a bunch of tweets and posts that mean nothing; it’s a creation of our companies memory, our characters, our archive of the days and hours we spend working that may be forgotten but potentially never lost.

Marie Ebenezer has been interning at OWC, writing about social media and cultural differences.

I, on the other hand, only use Facebook for private purposes. I have about 150 Facebook friends, and these are the people I actually see or communicate with on a regular basis. Seeing private photos of someone I barely know, for instance, seems odd to me. I guess keeping my Facebook profile quite private is just a personal preference, and I might be an exception. I would feel violated if someone, who I don’t really know, looked at my private pictures and knew where I was spending my holidays, and I, therefore, do not want to have as many Facebook friends as possible. This does not mean that I’m unfriendly or reluctant to make new acquaintances – I am actually very opened and extroverted.

This conversation I had with Joseph is just part of a much larger trend I have noticed while working in public relations. I have talked about Facebook with a lot of different people, and I have found that almost everybody uses it differently: some wish to have thousands of friends and interact with new people constantly, whereas others use it very passively, just to stay in the loop (e.g. know about upcoming events). Facebook alone has many different uses, and I started wondering what people used all the other social networks for. Do each of them have a specific purpose? Well, here are my thoughts on this as a meme.

My approach to Facebook is just one of many ways to use it.

Facebook is the largest social-media platform, and it is the one I use most…by far. I use Facebook to write messages, to chat, to share photos, videos and articles and to stay connected with my friends. I also have a LinkedIn profile, which I created for professional purposes. It is useful for networking, even though I still have two years of university ahead of me before I can start looking for a job.

I do not have my own Twitter account or blog, but I have tweeted and blogged for OWC lately – and really started to like it! Twitter is great for getting your thoughts out there quickly and having them seen by a large audience. If you tweet well, your number of followers increase, and Twitter becomes very effective. Blogs are a good tool for creating a voice and elaborating interesting topics. Another emerging platform is Pinterest, an online pin board where you can collect and share items such as recipes, ideas and designs. Pinterest has a predominantly female demographic (80%), and it is expected to gain more and more influence on the social media market.

And then there is Google+. Did you know that Google+ is the second largest social network? I was surprised when I read this statistic, but as I looked more closely at this site, I became more and more convinced that Google+ has some very successful years to come. I have only ever used Google+ for hangouts, and in my opinion this tool was cleverly marketed.  It’s definitely the most prominent feature, and not only can you hang out in private (like you would on a Skype video call); but you can also join public hangouts, which are being held quite frequently. Barack Obama, for instance, has used this feature just last week for connecting with the public. (The hangout was entitled “Barack Obama answers your questions,” and it was publicized on the Google homepage).

The advantages of Google+ are not restricted to hangouts though. Another great trait is that you can use this network like Twitter by writing short posts with a hash tag (“Google+ trends”). You also have the option of chatting with your connections like you would on Facebook chat, for instance. Connections on Google+ are divided into different ”circles.” These are great, because you can choose which items you share will be visible for which circles (friends, family, colleagues, etc.). You can also join a Google+ community (e.g. “Breaking Bad”, “NFL” or “Baking”) , which is similar to liking a public page on Facebook. Finally, you can create or join a Google+ event, where all the invitees can contribute to a shared photo collection and where you can share photos instantly with the so-called Party Mode.

Google+ trends, hangouts, events and chat are just a few of its great features.

These are just a few of the features I discovered on Google+, and I’m sure Google is working on elaborating this network even further. If you are looking to have your presence known on the web, then this social media site is great, because your profile will show up on Google searches and lead people directly to you. Google+ borrowed some great aspects from existing sites and services (Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Instagram) and made them work together. This social media site looks quite promising to me, and I’m curious to see how it will evolve and how big of an influence it will garner. And let’s not forget Pinterest, which is also on the rise – some very exciting social media trends ahead!

Marie Ebenezer has spent seven months in Togo, teaching English in grade 6.

Adjusting to the life in Togo was a much bigger challenge than coming to Los Angeles, because Togo’s culture was so radically different than what I was used to. This was, if nothing else, because I had to completely rethink the way I communicated – the German or European way that I had been practicing all my life was no longer appropriate.  The challenge was not that I had to speak French (which is my second native language), but that I had to adapt to a new culture and therefore to a new way of communicating. The entire dynamic — idioms, gestures, conversational patterns — was different. From my experiences in these three continents, I have noticed the following major differences in the way people communicate.

LANGUAGE

Language is the most obvious tool of communication, and every culture has its own — or many. (While people in England obviously speak English, it is undeniably different than  the way Americans speak). If you don’t speak the language of a culture, you have to rely on gestures, pictures and facial expressions. Since I speak English very well, language has not been a barrier for me in Los Angeles. In Togo, however, language was a big obstacle — Togo has French as an official language, but many people only speak the tribal language “Ewe.” I didn’t understand anything people were saying to me – or, a lot of the time, about me. This can be frustrating. If you are so different from everyone else, then you need to explain why you are different, and what your own culture is like, to experience mutual understanding. Expressing myself became a real hurdle. I quickly learned the basics of the local language, and many people did speak French, but it was never enough to engage in a meaningful conversation. So, during my time in Togo, I never really felt like I connected with anyone in a substantial way. Certainly, language is only a small part of culture, and you also have to face differences in values, religion, education, customs, etc.

MEDIA AND THE DIGITAL AGE

It’s a fact that media and communication go hand in hand. I have, however, seen a big discrepancy in how much of our communication goes through the media and digital devices. In Los Angeles, everybody has access to the internet, print media and broadcast, and everyone owns a cell phone and a computer. You can hardly escape this wave of communication, and we almost always use our cell phones or computers if we want to reach someone.

In theory, you could get all of these things in Togo. The big issue, however, is that  accessibility to the media is expensive. Televisions are fairly widespread and so are cell phones (but hardly any of them are charged with sufficient money). Newspapers are rare. The internet is available in internet cafes, but – as you can imagine – it is very, very slow. It is almost impossible to watch a video online, and I can remember waiting for several minutes for a picture to upload on Facebook.

New York City is a great example of the ubiquity of digital media.

Think of how many texts and e-mails you write, of how many videos you watch online, of how many tweets and Facebook posts you read. How far away is the next screen or newspaper? In Togo, hardly any communication goes through print, digital, or social media. Most of it is oral communication, and if you want to talk to someone, well, you go over to their house and talk to them.

Surely, there has been an evolution of how we communicate. Not too long ago, we did not have digital media at our disposal. In Togo, however, media as such is hardly available. Oral communication is a long lasting tradition in many African countries, and this tradition is definitely threatened by the changes in communication that are going on globally.

CULTURE

It’s clear that different cultures use different means of communication. In our society, digital and written communication has replaced oral communication to a certain extent. The media is, however, only a small portion of how we communicate. One of the biggest challenges in intercultural communication is the subtle aspects of a culture, which can throw you off if you are not used to them. These become clear in daily interactions between people.

Written communication has been establishing itself slowly in Togo.

In Togo, for instance, it is a sign of respect not to look the person you’re talking to in the eyes. I found this rather odd, especially because I did not know about this custom, and it changes the dynamic of a conversation. Imagine talking to a student who does not look you in the eyes when you are asking them a question – wouldn’t it seem like that student is insecure or evasive?

As a German, I was also bewildered by how common the phrase “I love you” is used in America. In Los Angeles, a mother says it to her child and best friends say it to each other. I hear it all the time. When I heard it for the first time, it made me extremely uncomfortable, because in Germany, this expression is only used among lovers. Germans assume that their parents and friends love them, but we don’t explicitly say it.

Our way of communicating is riddled with these small features. Most natives won’t even notice them, because they are embedded in our culture, and culture is not something you consciously carry out. This is why, a lot of the times, when you immerse yourself in a foreign culture, you learn more about yourself than you might expect. If you are faced with a different culture, you are bound to reflect on your own – and I can only encourage everyone to do this, because it is truly enriching.

Joseph Lapin at the OWC office trying to figure out Vine, a new Twitter service

In theory, this app is indeed fun and simple, and we loved some of the videos posted by other users. So, we were eager to make a clip of our own, and to our surprise, we ran into quite some difficulties.

Problem number one: This app is currently only available for iPhones and iPods. This may not be a deal breaker for many of you – I have only met two people in LA so far who do not have an iPhone – but for me, it is. In Europe, the iPhone is not nearly as widespread as here, and I find it surprising that a social media giant like Twitter would develop an app exclusive to iPhones, leaving android devices behind. (I’m sure Twitter is working on fixing this, but it is nonetheless disappointing.)

Having said that, the app itself is easy to understand: take a video of whatever you like and share it. You are not restricted to recording the six seconds in one piece. Just keep your finger pressed to record and lift to pause and press again to resume recording. This way you can take different shots in one short video, and it allows for the clip to tell a story – very clever and creative!

We had the idea of filming the view from our office window at different times of the day, in order to show the change in light. Well, yesterday at 5 p.m., the sky had a beautiful shade of pink, and we were excited to continue the video we had started earlier, but alas, you can’t save drafts on Vine, so our previous snippet had vanished. This major flaw does not allow you to leave the app and come back to your video later, and we were quite bewildered to realize that our great idea would not work out.

This morning we were ready for a fresh start and gave Vine another try. This time, filming three short frames without leaving the app. After two failed attempts – I had not kept my finger pressed to record - we finally managed to make a good video. However, we were unable to watch the clip we had made before proceeding to the next step – posting the video.

This is another factor that needs to be changed. In my opinion, you cannot be expected to upload something without having a look at it first. And yet, we were not discouraged - we really wanted to post our video – and uploaded the clip to Joseph’s twitter profile. Well, that did not work either. We started over repeatedly, each time making a new video. Remember: Vine does not save drafts. And, after three failed uploads, we finally gave up.

It may very well be that we were too technologically inept for Vine, and we just couldn’t figure it out (other users obviously did). However, if there is one rule of thumb about social media,  it is that social media should be able to be used by everybody. This is especially true for Twitter.

All in all, Vine is a great concept, and this app has lots of potential. It does need some fine tuning though, and when it is available for my android, I’ll be glad to give it another try.

Tracy Williams, founder and CEO of Olmstead Williams Communications.

Tracy Williams, founder and CEO of Olmstead Williams Communications, hosted a webinar today titled “The Impact of Social Media on Public Relations” for George Washington University’s Alumni Association. Almost 100 people tuned in to hear Williams discuss how social media has changed the practice of public relations.

She assessed the challenges of social media and describes the best way to make use of these new platforms in public relations and business. The full webinar is available online.

Last week, I wrote about my time here in Los Angeles and the intercultural challenges I’ve faced so far. Olmstead Williams Communications received a lot of positive feedback about my post, and it encouraged me to keep writing.

One of the responses I got for my blog posts was: “That’s very nice, but what does this have to do with public relations?” My father – who is always very interested in what I do – was a little bit puzzled by the fact that I’m basically writing a travel blog, instead of doing what I should be doing at OWC, namely, public relations.

Many people who do not work in this industry find it hard to understand what PR really is. Well, here is what I’ve learned so far:

DEFINITION OF PR

The term “public relations” is tricky to pinpoint. Especially in recent years with the rise of social media, the practice of PR has undergone a tremendous change. The aim of PR is to influence public opinion by managing the flow of information between an organization and the public. PR is a mutually beneficial communication. For example, when a reporter is writing a story, we want to feature our client in their story– ideally, both the reporter and our client benefit from this exchange.

Data is the key to a successful pitch. It is important to know the targeted audience and the current attitudes about the issue.

PROCESS

This communication between our client and the public has to be planned ahead and thoughtfully executed.  At OWC, I’ve learned that data is the key to a successful pitch. It is important to know the targeted audience and the current attitudes about the issue. You have to ask yourself several questions: Who do we want to reach? Are people talking about this? What is the position of the product/organization/person on the market? Once we know this, we can successfully communicate information about the client to the public through the media. Finally, we monitor what we’ve communicated to see if coverage has been successful.

TASKS

Now, all this jargon does not yet tell you what we actually do – Germans like to know the concrete facts – so I should get to the point. Much of our time is spent writing. Press releases are probably the most well-known tactic, but we also write speeches, pamphlets, reports, etc. And, lots of e-mails! In order to get the data we need, we also spend a lot of time researching attitudes and opinions. Social media is a crucial interface between our clients and the public, and part of our job is to monitor our clients’ websites and blogs. Finally, a big part of working in PR is getting business. Very often, several PR firms compete for the same client, and whoever has the best pitch – and sometimes the lowest bid – wins. This also means that you always have to be networking, shaking hands, and meeting people, because who knows – your next client could be the next hand you shake.

These are just a few of the tasks PR professionals have, but from what I’ve experienced at Olmstead Williams Communications so far, they are crucial.  I’m excited to find out more. And maybe the most important lesson that I’ve learned about public relations – like in many other professions – is that one is never done learning.

Unlike most PR and advertising, XapNews “narrowcasts” messages to the right people. “You get personal attention from a full-service PR firm for less than services that simply post press releases through auto-feeds that are buried in the search engines,” said Trent Freeman, who heads up XapNews. “XapNews focuses on getting the attention of reporters with third-party credibility that generates real buzz.”

Unlike some of my friends’ internships, filled with coffee runs and paper filing, my summer internship with Olmstead Williams Communications has involved client meetings, brainstorming sessions, media pitching and learning the true art of public relations.

Having done prior PR internships in the fields of entertainment and fashion, my time at OWC introduced me to an entirely new world of PR. From technology to professional services, OWC understands the importance of representing a company with the utmost professionalism and sophistication. Interning at OWC has offered me a window into the day-to-day workings of a boutique business-to-business PR firm, from monitoring major headlines and researching potential clients, to developing targeted media lists and drafting press releases – even securing my first media articles for clients.

As an incoming senior at UCLA, this summer experience extended beyond just an eight-week internship.  Interning at OWC has been one of the starting steps for my career and given me a glimpse into an exciting future in public relations. Although it has come to an end, it is only the tip of the iceberg for what lies ahead.