Teaching PR

The (two) Week's Best, 27 May 2008

For the first time since I started my Monday roundup of the Week's Best reading for PR students, I missed a week while my family enjoyed the beach at Gulf Shores, Alabama -- then for good measure, I skipped yesterday (a U.S. holiday). I'm not apologizing, though: the time off was very refreshing. :-P

Here are my picks for the last two weeks.

• Destroy Enemies Using Social Media Tools, Marty Weintraub (via Marinel Mones)
• 5 Great Marketing Blog Lists and What You Can Learn from Each One, Rohit Bhargava
• Ariel Waldman vs. Twitter, When TOS Doesn't Apply to You, Brian Solis
• Using Social Media Ethically, Lady Coastie
• What College Students Can't Get from Blogging, Corvida (via Kelli Matthews)
• Fifth Annual Public Relations Generally Accepted Practices Study, USC Annenberg
• Every Client Should Have a Video Content Strategy, John Bell
• How to Write a Good Communications Plan, Part 5, Dave Fleet
• How to Supercharge Your Content with Concrete Details, Sonia Simone
• Social Media U: Take a Class in Social Media, Sarah Perez

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:

• UGA Connect
• Edelman Digital Bootcamp
• Go Green Alliance video
• Safe Kids Buckle Up video

Addition: this is the Brand Tags site I mentioned.

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:

• Bad Pitch Pissing Match, Kevin Dugan
• Open Letter to Gina Trapani of Lifehacker and Maybe It Was All a Big Misunderstanding?, Todd Defren
• PR Pitching and Blacklists, Jeremy Pepper
• Black Lists Don't Work and Black Lists Don't Work, Part Two, Susan Getgood
• Dear Nasty Reporter/Blogger, Geoff Livingston
• PR Bludgeons Itself :: Again, Robert French
• PR Spam Victims Bite Back... And the Response, Tom Murphy
• Update: story in PR Week

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

• Survey of Young PR Agency Professionals, Tiffany Derville and Kelli Matthews
• What Makes a Successful Communication/PR/IMC Professional, Les Potter
• How to Write a Good Communications Plan (continued from last week), Part 2, Part 3, Dave Fleet
• What's Important in PR, Greg Smith

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:

• Don't Try to Change the World, Ike Pigott
• Blogging Gets a Second Wind, Mitch Joel
• How to Write a Good Communications Plan, Part 1, Dave Fleet
• BusinessWeek Ordains Online Reputation Management as an "Industry," Andy Beal
• IABC's Natasha Nicholson Advises Towson PR Millenial Students on Entering the Workforce, Les Potter
• Guide to SEO-Friendly News Releases: Download It Today, Todd Defren
• Who Do People Trust? (It Ain't Bloggers), Jeremiah Owyang
• Ten Ideas on Conversation, Valeria Maltoni
• Grammar Girl's Strunk & Twite: An Unofficial Twitter Style Guide, Mignon Fogerty (via Judy Gombita)

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.)

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.