Comments on Blogs

This week I commented on Vanessa’s blog. Her blog focuses on Public Relations in France. This week specifically the blog discussed a place in Paris where focus groups can be held. This blog was very interesting because like Vanessa, I did not know that there were buildings designated just for focus groups. I visited the website that discusses the facility and noticed that the building looked very nice and would be a wonderful place to conduct a focus group. Vanessa’s blog also got me wondering if there are focus group facilities in the United States.

I also chose to comment on Jame's blog. His blog this week focused on qualitative research. He summarized a focus group that he saw on YouTube about Nike shin guards for soccer players. When describing the focus group it seemed that the moderator followed many of the proper procedures. He tried to elicit discussion between the participants and also asked questions to get the people speaking. James did a good job of providing an example of a focus group. He also clearly explained how the focus group was conducted and what he believed the outcome was.  Overall James blog helped me to gain a better understanding of what occurs during a focus group.

Qualitative Research

Research is very important in any field of public relations but especially in nonprofit public relations.  This is because nonprofits rely on research to help them see who is donating and why people are donating. In addition research is helpful in assessing what groups of people need the most amounts of help from the nonprofit, in what areas help is needed and the reasons for the help. The importance of research in nonprofits is essential in maintaining that the nonprofit is helping the community and their target audience. It was shocking to find an article that discussed that although nonprofits do research that they do not use their research. In addition the article stated that nonprofits are not collecting data that is helpful to the community. This stems from the fact that many people in nonprofit public relations do not know how to properly conduct research. One of the areas of research that can be helpful in nonprofits and that nonprofit employees need to work on is qualitative research.

Qualitative research involves collecting data on people and finding common themes and relationships between small groups of people. An example of qualitative research is a focus group. A focus group would be extremely helpful for nonprofits. They could for example organize a group of about eight to ten people (the normal size of a focus group) discussing donating to nonprofits. The focus group would be led by a moderator and later his or her notes would be transcribed and themes and relationships would hopefully emerge from the data. This research could be very helpful in finding who donates and why. It would aid nonprofits when they need help finding donors.

Thus research, especially qualitative is extremely helpful to nonprofits. It is very important that non profits learn how to research correctly and use their data to benefit their community.

Comments on Blogs

 This week I chose to comment on Kevin Mahoney’s blog. His blog focuses on social media. This week his blog discussed an upcoming event at Quinnipiac. The event is a media breakfast, which will feature speakers discussing the important role of social media in public relations. The blog was very interesting to read and clearly expressed the importance of social media and the details of the media breakfast.  It listed explicitly when the event would be held and where it would be.  It made me see the value of social media and helped me to see how I could learn more about social media.  I also commented on Kayla’s blog. Kayla’s blog is about fashion public relations. The blogs main focus this week was on how fashion experts determine what styles are in for the fall and winter season. It was fascinating to learn that fashion experts use unobtrusive research to find out the season’s trends. Kayla’s article was very informative in providing a real life example of how unobtrusive research is used. It was also clearly written and showed the value of unobtrusive research in everyday matters such as choosing what to wear to class.

Unobtrusive Research

A main component of nonprofit public relations is looking at who is donating and how much they are donating. Nonprofits need to make sure they know who are their donors and make sure that they become annual donors. In order to see who is donating or why people are not donating, a nonprofit could perform unobtrusive research. Unobtrusive research is a form of secondary research, which involves no interference with the subject being studied. By analyzing past records of people and corporations who donated over a period of years, researchers could see who stable donors are. If the same people have donated the past 5 years it is likely that they will continue to donate.  It is very important to see who is an annual donor because it saves 20% of money that it would cost to find new members. An article on donators explains the importance of donators, how to increase donors and the importance of keeping existing members. By using the unobtrusive methods it will be easier to come up with an estimate of who donates annually. It is less bothersome, then calling up past donors and seeing if they will donate again. Phoning people may be seen as hassling which could lead to fewer donations. By looking at the tables of donors, one would also be able to see how much they usually donate without actually speaking to people. Once again this could be more accurate than say surveying people and seeing how much they usually donate. This is because people may not remember how much they donated or they may feel pressured to put a higher number than they actually donated. This could then lead to skewed results. Unobtrusive research could then be helpful in estimating who is consistent donors and how much they are likely to donate.