My Experience at Real World PR

This past weekend I went to PRSA's  Real World PR in Atlanta. It was such a neat experience. 

Our day started really early, the PR girls and I left Milledgeville at 5:15 a.m. I hadn't been up that early in quite awhile! We made it to the conference center and it began with the breakfast and a panel of 3 employees from CNN answering questions about social media. Overall every PR professional stressed the importance of social media. There were many discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and others. 

During the day there were 4 sessions, each time there were 3 to choose from and PR professionals were the panel that spoke and answered questions. Every session was about an hour.

After the panel I went to our first session. I attended "Make yourself Marketable." We discussed interviews, resumes, and how to land an internship or job. Once again they stressed networking and using social media and improving your resume. 

The second session I attended was "Non-Profit in PR." I really enjoyed this session because I am interested in having a career in non-profit. The panel were all professionals working with different non-profits and it was really neat to hear the pros and cons and their experiences in the profession. Non-Profit is appealing to me because it requires so many skills different skills and for the PR professional to wear many hats, not to mention it's for a good cause!

"What your Professors didn't tell you about your first job" was the third session I attended.  This was quite the eye opener. The PR panel was really blunt how different college life and real world life is. It will be quite the transition. They talked a lot about working your way up and not being afraid to ask questions when you first start your job. The panel also stressed being on time and asking your boss for weekly or monthly reports. Although it was a bit intimidating realizing I am just a couple years away from entering the job market, I thought it was a great session.

The last session was one of my favorites because it was on event planning. I love planning events, I really feel like I could make a career out of it. I really enjoyed hearing the 3 PR professionals talk about their job and how it is something different everyday. They all said you have to be organized and able to delegate well. I see myself as an organized person but could learn to delegate more. They stressed getting experience to build your resume and form a strong network of people to help with events.

Overall my experience at Real World was great, the only negative was we got lost in Atlanta on the way home. I got a few business cards from professionals and gave out some of my not so professional business cards. I will go back next year and network more. I am glad I was given the opportunity to go and get great advice from people who are in the field.

my sample platter internship....hopefully!

I am in the process of applying for my internship for this summer. I getting my packet together, with recommendations, transcripts, and resume and feel like I am applying for a real job.

The Internship I am applying for is at WSB-TV in Atlanta. I really like the way this internship is set up because it requires at least 25 hours a week, 2 intern newscast, and the weekly assignments of script and desk duties, but after you finish your assigned tasks you can follow anyone in the station. I am excited about getting a taste of everything like P.R, advertising, reporters, anchors, marketing, event planning and etc. Considering I am not 100% sure what I want to do for a living this internship is great for me because it is like a sampler platter of jobs in mass communication.

I am hopeful first off that I am going to get this internship and hopeful that secondly that I will learn a lot about what I find most interesting and if this mass media thing is really for me. 

Here is the website for more information incase you are interested in interning with me this summer, the application is due March 1st FYI.

 As a Mass Communication student I am really glad an internship is required to graduate because I think an internship is just as important as taking classes, in fact I would say that the real world experience teaches you more than any book can.  

The one downfall of the internship is it pays $25 a week, but I suppose you can't put a price on knowledge and experience. One day that will pay off.   

When I was on Twitter today, I noticed how many internships are posted. There are so many opportunities for us college students to go out there and soak up real world experience!

Greek Life and PR

I was browsing the PRSSA website and I came across an article "Event Unites Greek Community and Teaches Importance of Public Relations."

Here is the article click here and take a look.

I think our school's greek life would definitely benefit from a Public Relations training conference. Being in a sorority I have planned and promoted many events and have used my public relation skills. I know other greek students who would benefit from a PR training session to learn the basics of event planning, press release writing, and dealing with other greek organization.

PR skills are so useful in so many aspects of life! I am so glad I am learning skills in my PR classes that I am able to use outside the classroom in my other organizations, especially with my sorority since I was special events planner. Having the knowledge of press release writing is really beneficial because I am able to send in releases to The Colonnade and other local newspapers about our upcming events. Greek relations is something our school needs to work on. Press release writing is a skill greeks could use to publicize events. Half the time events aren't properly publicized because students don't have the PR skills to put together a press release or how to get it to newspapers or other media outlets.

I think our PRSSA chapter at GCSU should consider doing this for our greek community. I know we could come up with a great board to speak and Lord knows our school could use some greek unity too. We have the potential to plan greek socials and philanthropy events if we could just work together. Perhaps we could figure out a way to turn the media training event into a fundraiser and charge chapters to come and provide lunch. Just an idea, I think it would be fun to train at least the executive board of each sorority or fraternity basic PR skills. 

This article caught my eye because it involved PR and greek life; two organizations I am involved in!

Twitterology

 I am officially a Twitter Junkie. (thanks to you Dr. Carter Miller for introducing me to this wonderful  distraction!) 

I am really catching on now to the whole Twitter concept, at first I was real confused with the whole @ sign deal. It is so easy to get on real quick and check your @ replies and see what everyone is doing and catch up on news. Now that I have so many new friends/ organizations I am following there are constantly new updates.

For my future career I really feel called into Women's ministry. I would love to plan women's conferences or events, be a guest speaker, and most of all just serve the Lord while doing it. Since that is my interest I have specifically searched for ministry or non-profit organizations to follow. So far I have found some really cool sites like @theholybible they post daily bible verses, what an encouragement to log on and see a bible verse waiting on you.

@CharityTweets is a cool site that has updates on different charities. 

Recently I had a couple people who are involved in different ministries start following me because I had joined so many different Christian based/ Charity sites. What a cool way of networking. I am still a little skeptical of following random people, call me over cautious but I am just not that bold on Twitter yet. Right now I have been following more organizations and friends of other friends. Maybe my Twitter confidence will start to grow.

I have been telling my non-P.R friends about it and they just don't get it, I suppose us P.R people really appreciate another mean of networking!  I have more to learn like how to design my own cool background and jazz it up, but now I am focusing on following more people. I love it that our P.R Admin class is on there, what a cool way to communicate and keep up with everyone.

Well tomorrow is a full day of classes, so I must be fully rested.

 Until then, keep tweeting fellow tweeters!

Lauren

here is my first blog.....

As I was reading my PRSA periodical, Public Relations Tatics, I came across an article that got me thinking. The Article "PR in 2009- dark clouds, but pros see a silver lining" is written by John Guiniven. A point mentioned in the article is companies are taking less risks this year becasue of the state of the economy. 

Guiniven makes a good point when he says, "The cautious approach taken by organizations could benefit public relations. While PR budgets may suffer cutbacks, advertising budgets will likely take much bigger hits."

After reading this I was thankful to be a PR major. I realized companies will look to public relations more this year becasue it is more cost effective than big, flashy, risky advertising campagins. 

No matter the situation of the economy, institutions will do what it takes to earn and keep the trust of the public, which ensures public relation professional they are still needed. PR is so much more credible and affordable than advertising.

So PR poeple of 2009 do not get down in the dumps about this year, becasue we are still needed and will survive!!!!