May 15, 2008

Grady College panel on PR and social media

Yesterday the Grady College held a second alumni luncheon focusing on public relations and social media (the first was in Washington, D.C. in February -- podcast here) at the UGA Alumni center in Atlanta.

Two alums, Dawn (Miller) Brun of Porter Novelli and Melissa Libby, and spoke about how their agencies are using social media -- Melissa providing a highly quotable plug for Connect '08 -- and I followed up by sharing what's going on here at Grady, including sharing some projects our PR students did last semester. Here's the audio of the session, starting with Dean Cully Clark's introduction (which you can hear if you turn up the volume a bit).

Links to the student projects I mentioned:

Addition: this is the Brand Tags site I mentioned.

May 12, 2008

The Week's Best, 12 May 2008

Social media advocates are always talking about "engagement." Well, this week we're engaged -- in a no-holds-barred discussion about public relations and pitching.

It all started with this: Gina Trapani's creation of the PR Spammers Wiki, which identified agencies (not individuals) by domain name that sent PR pitches/spam to her personal e-mail address.

Here's what a few PR/marketing bloggers have had to say about it -- and they provide links to many others who've discussed the issue:

Of course, that's not all that's going on this week. Check out these posts as well:

May 05, 2008

The Week's Best, 5 May 2008

My daughter's daycare is having a teacher work day (why don't college professors get those?), so the number of entries in this Week's Best will be directly proportional to the length of her nap. Here goes:

Well, look at that -- a long list and she's still sleeping. Now what do I do? (Fear not, there's lots on my to-do list.)

May 01, 2008

When college sports and academics collide -- in a good way

Students enrolled (and some who aren't) in my summer Campaigns class are all a-Twitter* about our client: Countdown to Kickoff, a fundraiser for the Georgia Transplant Foundation, Children's Tumor Foundation, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, and the UGA Pediatric Exercise and Motor Development Clinic. Of course, they're happy to be working for such a good cause, but I'm pretty sure it's the UGA football connection that's got 'em talking. UGA stars turned NFL pros Matt Stinchcomb, Jon Stinchcomb and David Greene are the prime movers behind the two-day event, and a lot of other former and current players participate in Fan Day activities.

Sometimes summer classes are hard to get in gear, but I don't think it'll be hard to motivate this team.

*Note: I'd link to their excited tweets but Twitter's not cooperating this evening. Shocking.

April 28, 2008

The Week's Best, 28 April 2008

Today is the last day of classes for UGA's spring semester, and for many of my students -- EVER. Congratulations, graduates. Here's hoping you'll choose to become lifelong learners. :-)

April 25, 2008

Meet the Teacher: Tiffany Derville

Lately the Oregon Ducks have been making a big move into the PR blogosphere. Robert French noticed and interviewed Kelli Matthews and Lisa Poplawski; I noticed, and I'm interviewing Tiffany Derville. It turns out Tiffany's a big fan of my colleague, Kaye Sweetser -- perhaps the next lucky teacher we meet here on Teaching PR. :-)

Q. Tell us a little about your school and how PR is taught there.

A. The University of Oregon is located in the Willamette Valley. We are two hours south of Portland and an hour away from the beach. Our School of Journalism and Communication has five required public relations classes for undergraduates: Principles of Public Relations, Public Relations Writing, Advanced Public Relations Writing, Public Relations Plans and Problems, and Public Relations Campaigns. Last quarter, we added a research class for public relations and advertising majors, which Dr. Pat Curtin taught last quarter. We plan to make it a requirement. Students can take Communication Law and Mass Media Ethics classes. At least every four years, Dr. Tom Bivins teaches a public relations ethics class. We are experimenting with weekend boot camp classes to give students basic skills in specialized areas, such as video production and investor relations.

We have experiential learning opportunities through Allen Hall Public Relations, our student-run public relations agency; PRSSA; and the Senior Experience. Students who are selected for the Senior Experience program live in Portland for a quarter and take one to two public relations classes at our Turnbull Center. During this time, they work 20 hours a week as paid public relations interns. Some of the organizations that partner with us include Adidas, Columbia Sportswear, Nike, Portland Trailblazers, Edelman, Fleishman-Hillard, and Hill & Knowlton.

An innovation that has worked well for us is pairing our Public Relations Writing class with our Reporting class for news conferences and pitches.

Q. How and when did you first get interested in blogging? What is the purpose of your blog? Are you using any other social media?

A. I first learned about social media through PRSA's publications, Tactics and The Strategist. I started collecting clippings (this is before del.icio.us entered my world). Then I went to an AEJMC conference, where I met Dr. Brigitta Brunner and received a copy of her blogging assignment. At that point, I knew I wanted to integrate social media into my teaching, but I still needed a shove into the pool, so to speak.

That push came when I joined the University of Oregon's faculty last fall. I was thrilled to receive the course assignment of Advanced Public Relations Writing. I had wanted to dive into social media, and this was the opportunity for which I had been waiting. Kelli Matthews regularly teaches the course, so she brought me up to speed.

I experimented with blogging in the fall and launched my blog, The PR Post, in the winter. I found that having my own blog, reading others' blogs, and commenting on them made a world of difference in teaching the subject. I also use Twitter, del.icio.us, and social networking sites, including PR Open Mic, Facebook, and MySpace.

Q. Your blog is tied to your writing class. Do you teach social media in other classes?

A. I only teach Advanced Public Relations Writing now. I think it would be a great idea though for other classes, such as the principles class. Joining the blogosphere is a way to learn fresh case studies and join contemporary discussions that public relations educators and practitioners are having. The blogosphere is a bridge between education and practice.

Q. In what ways do you incorporate social media into the classroom? What would  you most like to do that you aren't already doing?

A. My students create public relations blogs and post comments to others' blogs throughout the quarter. They set up accounts with Feedburner and Technorati to track their subscribers and "authority." In addition, they set up Google Alerts for themselves to get familiar with this application. I require them to set up a feed reader with at least 20 public relations blogs for monitoring. Your blog is always on the list of recommended blogs to follow.

Students listen to guests share case studies about using social networking sites for public relations and then set up profiles on PR Open Mic, Facebook and LinkedIn. I ask them to join a Facebook group or fan page to experience how others are using this tool. I like Dr. Kaye Sweetser's idea about using Facebook to send gifts to volunteers. Students also engage in the 48 hours of Twitter assignment, which I learned about on your blog. In addition, they create a podcast about a public relations topic of their choice. My students also build del.icio.us pages, and we discuss purpose-built del.icio.us pages. They also produce a social media press release and an ePortfolio. They post their ePortfolios on their blogs and use Google Docs for hosting their ePortfolio tactics.

Online video is the next frontier for me! I am inspired by the conversations from Edelman's Digital Bootcamp, which you hosted. Even though I didn't attend the conference, I learned a lot from following the social media coverage of it. Thank you for being so inclusive! I enjoyed the discussions about video by Dr. Kaye Sweetser, Robert French, and Phil Gomes.

Kelli and I are considering having our students experiment with social media resumes.

Q. Do you have any advice for other PR educators who are considering starting a blog or getting involved in social media?

A. Yes! Visit Dr. Kaye Sweetser's blog. Her assignments include descriptions, directions for students, learning objectives, recommendations, and grading rubrics. Also, join PR Open Mic to meet new people and engage in discussions with public relations students, faculty, and practitioners. In addition, set up an aggregator through Google Reader or Bloglines to monitor your students' blogs, practitioners' blogs, and educators' blogs. Set up an alert for yourself in Google Alert, so you can reply when others mention you on their blogs. Commenting on others' blogs is also a great initial step.

Tiffany was kind enough to interview me back, so look for her post, published simultaneously with mine, at the PR Post.

April 22, 2008

OneAthens client presentation

My campaigns class experiment -- 20 people on a single major project, teams that regrouped midsemester, work coordinated on a wiki (thanks to Robert French!) -- culminated today in a fantastic presentation for the client.

I know most people aren't familiar with OneAthens; it's a local nonprofit coalition that combines local government, the university, nonprofits and churches, business leaders, individual citizens and almost anyone else you can imagine to focus on the same issue. You see, we have a great little college town with a great big problem: poverty. If you want to understand the two Athens, and OneAthens, just watch this promotional video prepared by one of the student teams:

080331 Other students created a new logo and slogan -- "One Community. One Vision. OneAthens" -- made fliers and brochures, and pitched the local news media, and they all worked together on an awareness weekend that informed thousands of citizens about the poverty problem and the solutions OneAthens has recommended.

2378465159_6ba0ef9c6aThey had no budget, but they secured donations and discounts, and Grady College paid out a couple hundred dollars to cover some expenses. And more than one student just paid for small items out of pocket. They collected more than 400 signatures on "the big One," and more than 400 people came to the big meeting on March 31. 

What do you say to a group like this? Of course there are things they (and I) could've done better. We had an entire section of the campaign planned but the client didn't approve it, so midsemester the plan had to be reworked. They didn't complain... much. They just redoubled their efforts on the parts of the plan that were approved. I think we all tried to keep focus on the larger goal: working to solve the poverty problem.

So, what do you say? I told them the truth: They are so ready to graduate and start working in real jobs.

And I'm so proud of every ONE of them. (Oh, come on, we all get a bit sappy at graduation time.)

April 21, 2008

Meet the Teacher: Toni Muzi Falconi

For my first "meet the teacher" post on the new Teaching PR, I interviewed Toni Muzi Falconi, founder of PR Conversations and an educator at both Italian and American universities, to explain how he uses social media. Toni has lots of upper-level public relations experience, and he's not afraid to be corny -- or to speak his mind -- when the moment is right. Read for yourself:

Q. How and when did you first get interested in blogging? Are you using any other social media?

A. I have been intrigued by digital communication processes since the early eighties without having yet understood (because of my shameful disinterest...) the technicalities.

My public relations agency of the time (SCR Associati, then market leader in Italy) was the first consultancy to install a 20 unit word processing network for its employees so they could better work together. Too bad that our supplier (Xerox) abandoned that market a year later at a tremendous loss for us…We quickly switched to a Mac network and subsequently to Windows in order to be compatible with all our then clients and not only Apple.

At the end of the eighties I was an early adopter of Agorà, Italy's first ever social network (a term which wasn’t used then)….Then came the increasing use of the Internet as a tool for information and communication.

In the second part of the nineties, when I also started teaching public relations in Universities, I began to explore the Internet as a virtual relationship environment and assisted clients (mostly financial) in developing extranets with selected stakeholders, creating private environments in traditional organizational websites to stimulate relevant conversations.

When blogs first arrived and instantly exploded I confess I was sceptical and snobbed them thinking they amounted to little more than navel gazing. How wrong I was!

I began to blog personally only in July 2006 with Toni's Blog which then turned into PR Conversations in April 2007, as some ten other co-bloggers from around the world agreed to collaborate.

As for other social media, the only one with which I have some familiarity is wiki, but not as much as I would like.

Q. You've taught at several different schools. What is your approach to teaching public relations?

A. In my view the pervasiveness of public relators in shaping attitudes, opinions, decisions and behaviours of others is at the same time so relevant and so unknown in today’s society, that my primary objective is to help create awareness of this amongst others.

Students who, for some reason have decided to learn about pr, should first of all be fully aware of the social impact they will be making when they practice, and therefore fully appreciate and understand their responsibilities… not only to their clients or employers, but most of all to their interlocutors and society at large.

Only after they realize this, do I proceed to explain and discuss with them the various approaches to public relations practice, the history, the principal paradigms, the roles, the methodologies, the specific practices.

I take an organizational, systemic and relationship based perspective, while focussing on the identity of the global professional community (you cannot effectively work for a grocer in milwakee if you do not have a global perspective…), and engaging students in refining the generic principles and specific applications framework towards a new global approach… a full discontinuity from the traditional ethnocentric US based 20th 'century of self' one, which is no longer either desirable nor effective.

Q. In what ways have you incorporated social media into the classroom?

A. Well, not half as much as I would like to.

At a recent Euroblog conference in Bruxelles I was astonished (and jealous… but eager to catch up) to see how many other colleagues are much more advanced..

This takes one hell of a lot of time and effort, although of course the impact is amazing.

With my Italian undergraduate students (I teach public relations at the Vatican's LUMSA University in Rome) I practically do nothing in this area and I am ashamed.

With my post graduate NYU students (I teach Global Relations and Intercultural Communication at NYU’s executive master in public relations and corporate communication), I engage students in a highly intense use of what we call our virtual blackboard, including of course group conversations on selected issues and dilemmas, week by week, session by session.

I find this extremely gratifying (as well as time-consuming), mostly because by monitoring on line relevant threads of conversations between students, I am much more capable of understanding how their individual mind works, rather than in frontal classroom setting where you experience the usual divide between those few who are eager to attract your attention (not necessarily the brightest), those few who do not follow at all (not necessarily the least gifted), and the great majority which the professor tends to overlook because disturbed by the first and worried by the second.

I learned about this by experimenting last year for the first time a fully on line class. Great experience and full of many pleasant (and a few unpleasant) surprises.

Q. About a year ago, you changed your blog into a group blog, PR Conversations, which includes both educators and practitioners as contributors. What do you see as the purpose of this blog, and how does it contribute to the global PR conversation?

A. As we hold this dialogue, the group of active collaborators around the pr conversations blog is debating its purpose and about bringing this discussion on line, so anything could happen in the next few weeks.

We certainly did not go through a collective envisioning process (mission, vision, guiding values, strategy) before going on line.

Maybe we should have, but as experience shows, in many occasions, it is better to decide to through the troubling effort of an envisioning process only when you are confident that it is worth while.

In my view, the global professional public relations community (formed by professionals, academics and students) is, as mentioned earlier, insufficiently aware of its social and economic impact and identity; and the actual practice perceived by society is largely unacceptable in terms of responsibility and sustainability.

The issue is not, mind you, ethical.

The issue is that public relations, if professionally conducted, is incredibly effective (this is usually a surprise even for us professionals!!!) and that much more than 50% of our collective time and financial efforts are inexcusably wasted.

This is intolerable.

So if prconversations (this, of course, is only my personal view) is effective in making our global pr community more aware of this and capable of indicating threads of reflection, tools and experiences from all over the world by mixing contributions of educators, students, scholars and professionals into a ‘melting pot’ fully respective of the infinite diversities, then it serves a purpose.

Otherwise…I have always preferred merry funerals to boring parties….Also I strongly object to self preserving initiatives.

Q. Do you have any advice for other PR educators who are considering starting a blog or getting involved in social media?

A. I very much benefit from the advice of others and believe that nothing is as it was only a few hours ago, not even opinions one has just finished arguing.

Yes, I am an unabashed relativist, always eager to adapt and change but sufficiently aware that to do this I need to be convinced.

Curiosity and passion are the two drivers. Certainties and time constraints are the two killers.

Finally (and this is probably the most banal of my thoughts today), as much as I am fully emphatic to the dire need of frameworks, conceptualizations, theories and paradigms, I find it fragile to teach public relations in void of actual practice….credibility with one’s students is the real turning point of the learning process… (wow! That sounds corny…).

The Week's Best, 21 April 2008

April 16, 2008

PR portfolios mini-lecture

One of the most popular posts on the old Teaching PR was on constructing a public relations portfolio. A Canadian student recently contacted me asking for more information (I won't name her because I didn't think to ask permission). Rather than writing another post, I promised her a podcast of my mini-lecture in my PR Campaigns class. Here it is -- and, as I spoke, I referred to the slide numbers of this slideshow, so you can follow along. I have to confess that I was not in peak form, and there are some weird pauses when I stopped to let students finish writing, but hopefully the information will be helpful.