One

Here goes my first actual post -- on topic.

Today, being March 23rd, is my mom's birthday.

The reason I mention this: in class today, my professor mentioned that today marks one year since her mother passed away. I think she said she was 91 years old. She said that one of the things that made her mother so extraordinary (as we all think our own mothers are) was the fact that she enjoyed touching people. Physically touching someone. She liked to make people feel special and important and she liked communicating that physically.

Mrs. Rosenberg then posed this question: How do we make touchpoints with people in today's society? So much of the way we live is so impersonal. We email instead of writing letters. We text message instead of calling someone. Things have gotten so fast-paced and convenient that we often forget how to make connections with other people.

For a public relations practitioner, this causes some problems. VERY simply put, public relations is relating to the public. It can become hard to relate to others when you've never met them in person or rarely even hear the sound of their voice.

So what do we do?
The rise in popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn helps to close the gap a bit. You can form a professional relationship with someone and then friend or follow or add them to your profile and you can both get a glimpse of what the actual person is like. Favorite movies, books, music. Where they went to college. You can even see what they're doing within seconds of them posting their status.

No, this doesn't help develop physical touchpoints. However, with the nature of the business world these days, clients and even coworkers may be half a world away from you, making it difficult to send a letter or even make a phone call with the change in time. But we can use these tools to learn more about each other and see what we all have in common with one another.

So with today's class discussion, we now have Hannah's TouchPoints