Businesses See Increasing Value in PR

By Clara Mitcham

According to PR 20/20, a PR/Marketing Blog, consumer-generated content along with other various forms of social media are not longer just a trend in public relations, they are a vital function of the profession. This means that public relations professionals must not only have excellent speaking and writing skills, but they must have a dynamic understanding of how to integrate various forms of marketing into a cohesive campaign. The good news is that businesses are becoming increasingly savvy towards the evolving role of public relations and the increasingly standardized public relations tools for measuring the success of multi-media campaigns.

According to Christine Perkett, founder PerkettPR, an increased ability to measure the effects of a campaign by seeing where consumers are driven on a website allows them to measure success quickly and efficiently. These new forms of electronic evaluation will show if a campaign is unsuccessful immediately, therefore, holding public relations professionals to the highest standard and making them directly accountable for their work.

The Public Relations Society of America said that social metrics technologies are helping PR professionals sort response through social media channels like Twitter and suggests that professions must have a thorough knowledge of blogging culture. According to PRSA, content analysis will continue to be very important role in measuring success. Measurement is becoming increasingly creative as businesses look for new ways to quantify the overall image of their organization, however, managing vast amounts of consumer-generated content continues to present unique challenges to public relations professionals.

In conclusion, the social media have helped legitimize public relations to many members of the business community and being able to continue to quantify the success of those PR tactics will be crucial to relationship between PR and the business field.

Articles Cited:

Perkett, Christine. Public Relations Trends for 2010.
http://bx.businessweek.com/digital-public-relations/public-relations-trends-for-2010/4213942808559917994-ce6ac9a1bf58f0dd9301ed29654242e5/

Roetzer, Paul. 10 Public Relations Trends that will change the Industry forever. PR 20/20 Blog. http://www.pr2020.com/page/10-public-relations-trends-that-will-change-the-industry-forever

Walton, Susan. What You Can expect in the Coming Year. http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/Tactics/Articles/view/8482/1006/What_you_can_expect_in_the_coming_year

Just Facebook Me.

Just Facebook Me.
By: Lynley Kees

Public Relations professionals use social media though out their every day schedule. It is used so much in our daily lives that most of the time people are not even aware they are utilizing social media. PR professionals use social networking to generate awareness, promoting products, to staying in contact with work and their clients with the click of a button. I have seen an enormous amount in trends in social media over the past years. I hate that the words “Facebook me” is amongst my daily vocabulary along with asking myself, “what should I tweet today.” It is amazing to see how much social media has affected our lives in how we proactively communicate with others with a click of a button. I have only been a member of Facebook for three years and I have seen numerous positive changes in ways to communicate with people around the world. Now with the invention of Twitter, Blogger and Delicious and many other social networking services, the ways to communicate is never ending. For instance, take a look at this class. We are using Blooger to post assignments on the web to be viewed by our professors and fellow students. Also this semester my campaigns group and I have been using all different forms of social media for our client Big Brothers Big Sisters as an outlet to reach our targeted publics.

It is weird to think about how the world used to communicate to each other. Today the accesses we have to these types of social media have only made our job easier. I see the use of social media excessively growing in the future. In the past few years alone I have seen a change in how the world is communicating with one another for the better and look forward to seeing what the future brings.

Image Information: Social Media
Web source: Social Media Sites

Give Your Facebook Status a Rest

Give Your Facebook Status a Rest

It seems like every time I hear the words “Public Relations,” “social media” follows them. While social media has become an essential component of public relations practice (and life), another trend is quickly growing. Only one difference; it isn’t anything new at all. In fact, many would refer to it as “old-school.” I am talking about the importance of establishing and building personal relationships.

Social media is splendid because it has the power to reach thousands of people whenever it is convenient. Your message is no longer lost if someone does not make it home for their regular television show. It remains in the Twitter or Facebook timeline whenever they are ready for it. On the flipside, though, this leads to an overload of information. Due to the fact that social media is often free, virtually limitless and incredibly easy, one person might receive tens of messages a week. This is why many companies are reverting back to special services, traditional mail, and personal contact in lieu of Facebook fan pages.

In 2008 Starbucks Corporation introduced their Gold Card program, which offered their loyal customers a 10% discount on purchases after paying a $25 annual fee. They also mailed coupons to try new products to these customers. The popularity of this program led them to create a new free rewards program with many of the same benefits. Following the introduction of this program their First Quarter FY2010 store sales grew 4%. They are taking the corporate coffee shop business and making it personal.

J. Crew, Inc. has a similar method of building lasting relationships with their customers through their Personal Shopper service. Personal Shoppers work on building clients for J.Crew stores through complimentary personal shopping appointments and personal communication. Their personal shoppers become friends with their clients resulting in higher sales. The J. Crew clients feel special and unique and treat shopping there as an activity rather than a chore. J. Crew is one of very few box retail stores that offers this service and is setting precedence.

In a research study Kristy Reynolds and Sharon Beatty found that “consumers select services on the basis of benefits they desire,” (Reynolds & Beatty, 13). The benefits could be product information or special services, for example. They also found that a positive and constant interaction with salespeople fulfills their human needs and results in “outcomes such as loyalty, positive word of mouth, and satisfaction,” (Reynolds & Beatty, 13).

I have found that while it is still necessary for companies to tweet, perhaps they should go old school and work on being personal for a while, give Facebook a rest.

New Starbucks Gold. Web source: www.pulpconnection.net

Sources:

Reynolds, K. E. & Beatty, S. E. Customer Benefits and Company Consequences of Customer-Salesperson Relationships in Retailing. www.sciencedirect.com

Starbucks Corporation. Starbucks Reports Record Quarterly Earnings. www.news.starbucks.com

Facebook helps companies seem more personable and easy to reach.

The world is fast changing and developing. As people often say, it is becoming a "global village." Several trends and practices stand out to me in today's worlds especially in the field of marketing, advertising and public relations. One trend that stands out to me especially is social media whether it be Facebook, Twitter, You tube, or blogs.

According the Facebook Web site under "press room," there are more than 400 million active users worldwide. Companies often use Facebook groups to generate friends and a public to target. On a smaller scale, campus organizations use Facebook groups and events to promote an event, and It also helps to estimate the amount of people that will attend the event.

Facebook helps companies seem more personable and easy to reach.

Another social media tool that I think is becoming more and more efficient is Twitter. It is amazing how status updates create awareness about an issue and motivate people to do a certain thing. Just like most social media aspect, status updates are really personable which is an important aspect in getting people to take action.

Another aspect of social media that can help a PR professional with a successful campaign is its flexibility. Social media messages can easily be changed if need be without worry of any confusion or miscommunication. More information can always be added if needed. An example is if a company releases a new product, and announces the wrong date, it can always go back to announce a change in the product release date if needed.

Another trend I am seeing more and more of lately is the videos on You Tube specifically make up and apparel videos. Companies are hiring young and energetic individuals to make videos talking about their products. I think the videos are very effective judging from the feedback and comments that people leave in the "comment section." Its is important for PR professionals to know how to use social media to a specific target public.

Effectively using social media and upcoming trends in public relations

By: Christy Ferguson







Public relations professionals are always looking for new trends to improve the business. According to many articles online that discuss public relations trends of 2010, social media is becoming one of the best vehicles for public relations practitioners to reach their target audiences and/or clients. This semester my campaigns group and I have been using all different forms of social media (Facebook, Twitter and blogging) for our client the Norman Arts Council. Within a few months, the awareness of the NAC has significantly increased just through the usage of social media alone. Along with Facebook and Twitter, the new social media foursquare is a great way to interactively keep in touch with what is going on around you in the city where you live.

Because we now live in a very fast paced world, social media is a nice tool that allows for public relations professionals to stay in touch with work and clients while on the go. Handheld electronics make it even easier for people to access their social media, and I feel that sometimes it has even become a distraction within the working world. Although social media is a great tool for the PR professionals, we don’t want it to distract people to the point where it is the only thing they rely upon.

In the article Public Relations Trends 2010 by Christine Perkett, she says, “It’s an exciting time to see PR going back to people and relationships. Successful PR executives know how to build and maintain quality relationships – today, social media is a core part of making that happen.” I completely agree with this but at the same time I think PR professionals have forgotten how important it is to create mutually beneficial relationships and to actually meet face to face with a client rather than over the Internet. If you please your client or employers by doing good work for them, then you have benefitted from this relationship because you know that can do your job to the upmost ability. Don’t get me wrong, social media and the Internet are great, but we need to make sure that we are still creating strong relationships and keeping clients in the forefront of our minds at all times.

CR Ransom’s article 2010 Five Smartest PR Moves and Trends to Start Now, gives great advice to those who are already in the PR field or who will be in the near future. These PR moves included everything from value awareness and branded exposure to event effects and social engagement. I think event effect is interesting because it is basically creating events “that leave lasting effects to influence brand loyalty.” We so often promote events whether there is a “wow” factor or not. It’s time that PR professionals go out and promote events that they know will be successful and stand out among other events.

I look back 10 years ago and wonder how people communicated without the social media we have today. Social media has made our job as PR practitioners more efficient and it is easier to stay in contact with those who are important to us. Another great thing about social media is that it is constantly growing and with that, the communication vehicles seem to be getting better and better. For instance, we started out with MySpace followed by Facebook, Twitter and now foursquare. What will the future bring?

Image courtesy of http://www.dirjournal.com/guides/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/social-media.jpg

140 Characters & a back-stage pass to the world-wide industry of Fashion.

By: Jillian Manon Chopin
April 12, 2010
Public Relations and the Future

When I first began with courses such as Intro to PR, Writing for Mass Media, and News Gathering, I was being taught the basics of PR ... and even traditional PR at that. As I have progressed through all required classes however, and as I am now in my final semester of campaigns with Dr. Carstarphen here at OU, I can say that I’ve learned much more about PR. I’ve learned about how I can use PR in countless ways ... simply because it can be molded to fit so many different needs and desires within all industries. For example - upon graduation, I plan to move back to my home city of Dallas, Texas and begin my search for a job in the fashion industry. Similar to what has been explored in several blogs for this assignment, I've found that social media has given notable rise to several industries around the world. The modern advancement of the fashion industry has exponentially expounded on a World Wide Web basis thanks to the possibilities within the social media sphere. Whereas a "back-stage pass" used to be just that, backstage – people from all different corners of the earth are becoming more and more exposed to the fashion industry via fashion blogging, through this sort of "back-stage pass."

Nowadays, if you are interested in going into the public relations field of the fashion industry, you must, and I emphasize must, be willing and able to navigate your way around social media websites such as Twitter and blogger in order to effectively promote your brand, reach your target publics, and basically – keep from being 'fashionably late' to what everyone else may already deem as 'last season.' Fashion, at its core, is a phenomena forever searching for the ‘up and coming’ so to speak. What is trendy right now - versus - what was trendy five minutes ago are things one must know when aspiring to strut upon the runway amidst other public relations fashionistas. Using my own personal Twitter account to follow fashion designers, bloggers, and so forth, I am quickly learning the ins-and-outs of how to be a public relations fashionista via social media. I now follow 74 Twitter pages, roughly 85% of which are related strictly to fashion. I follow designers such as Lanvin, Louis Vuitton, and Yves Saint Laurent and I am also following several fashion magazines and fashion blogger Twitters.

What I am learning from following these pages is that, first off – nearly everybody who is anybody is participating. There is so much to gain from relating to the public through social media that ultimately, you do not want to miss out on the countless opportunities that can be gained. The difficulty comes when deciding what to tweet about and how to format your tweets. Obviously, when you are given only 140 characters to convey your message, you must be concise, clear and catchy. Fashion goers tweet about everything from up-coming events to who is wearing what and where did they purchase it. For example, VogueParisLive constantly tweets about fashion shows, and provides links of pictures to engage their Twitter followers even more. WhoWhatWear posts tweets daily with a certain celebrity’s name and then a link to the most recent paparazzi photo flashed, while then attempting to identify each piece of fashion that person is wearing. This sort of thing is good for a brand because when a celebrity gains enough clout within the industry, they become an influential – especially within the fashion and pop culture society. These are the people who create fads, who introduce news trends, and who deem what is cool for the times. Therefore, a tweet as simple as a picture of Kim Kardashian can turn into drastic increase in sales for designers and brands that she frequently wears such as Bebe and Hermes. People who are interested in influential’s want to know what they are wearing and where they got their items. It is at that time when a public relations fashionista must come in and take advantage of the opportunities available through social media to increase their brand recognition and success.

There are also Twitter pages devoted specifically to fashion PR such as PR_Couture, ShineMediaPR, LolaPR,, and FashionBlogNews. These Twitter pages are dedicated to tweeting about public relations within the fashion industry. Provided below is a direct link to a interview that was held with the Creative Director of Nine West. Now, as this video does not directly address public relations and fashion together, it shows how modern day practitioners have a great opportunity to reach fashion craved obsessors worldwide and deliver truly valuable know-how, insight, and back-stage knowledge about using social media to project fashion onwards. PR_Couture is the Twitter for a fashion blog entitled “PR Couture – Fashion PR’s Haute Spot.” If you go to their actual website, abundant information is provided for the interested and aspiring public relations fashionista.

In conclusion, this new public relations trend within the fashion industry of using social media to strategically and creatively provide an all-access pass to those interested is only going to become more and more advanced and involved. Nowadays, you can live-stream fashion shows, you can follow fashion blogger web sites, discover frankly who anybody is wearing, and you can become a fashion icon within your own right simply through blogging, tweeting, and most definitely – posting pictures of your most proud moments walking down the catwalk of life in what ever ensemble you see fit, pun intended. What is marvelous about this advancement of social media with fashion public relations is that is delivers to the customer, delivers to the supplier, and creates a cycle of never ending expression, innovation, and modernization. Also, everything is so visual, and with fashion being visual at its very nature, all things collaborate so chic-ly when combining fashion, public relations, and social media.

Picture from: http://hautpr.com/fashionpr

Interview with Nine West Creative Director: http://www.prcouture.com/2010/04/12/fashion-pr-interview-nine-west-creative-director-and-sr-marketing-director-in-san-diego/

Is There Something New?

Is There Something New?

By: Matthew Wilson

Oh, life in the world of public relations. We are always searching for that new communication tool to draw the public towards your client. Whether it be your client’s website, Facebook or Twitter account or using new social media like Foursquare (hmm…Dr. C), there is never a lack of trying something new.

But why do organizations try to find the next thing to catch the attention of the consumer? It is trying to catch that next popular communication tool and tap into the rush of usage in relation with your client.

The next three sections are trends that could be on the horizon for the PR community, if not already.

1. Social Media: According to a Brigham Young University PRSSA newsletter, one of the top trends in the PR profession is social media. The development of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter will drive out some of the old techniques.

“The importance of print media and classic channels of public relations are soon at an end,” says Stephanie Hunt, a writer for the BYU newsletter.1

2. Searching for PR: According to the ProActive Report, the Google search for public relations has been declining for years now. In 2009, the searches for social media and networking surpassed searches for public relations on Google.

“It will become an integral part of PR programs in 2010. And PR people have to master social media and use it strategically to be effective,” says Sally Falkow, a contributing writer for the ProActive Report.2

3. Transparency: One of the knocks on PR is that there is a lot of trash that goes into the communications to the public. According to Small Business Trends, “With the advent of transparency, open communication and the integration of social media into everything that we do, our industry can’t help but weed out the good from the bad.”3

The new way to reach the public is through short and sweet messages that will not try and waist the public’s time. With the new trend of being open and transparent, a PR organization should not try and sugar coat their messages.

There are quite a few options to choose now in this day in age but a company need to watch out for over-stimulation of the public. In the search for something new a company could alienate someone who likes the old ways.

1Hunt, Stephanie, The Professional, http://www.byuprssa.org/uploads/1/4/7/0/1470586/december_newsletter_final.pdf

2 Falkow, Sally, The ProActive Report, http://www.proactivereport.com/

3 Perkett, Christine, Small Buisness Trends, http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/01/public-relations-trends- for-2010.html

Busy All the Time but It's Fun

March 8, 2010

Busy All the Time but It's Fun

By: Matthew Wilson

When I came to the University of Oklahoma I didn’t know what major I wanted to choose. It was suggested to me that I check out Public Relations and when I saw the opportunities, it looked like a good idea.

When I saw that there were different fields to the PR profession and that one of those was sports PR, I got excited because Norman has one of the best sports PR offices in the nation.

Craig Moran is the assistant director contact for are women’s soccer, baseball of the OU Athletics Communications office.

Craig has been in the sports PR field for eight years and graduated for Bowling Green State University with a bachelor’s degree in sports information and a minor in journalism. He started his career as an intern for the University of Detroit-Mercy and with the Toledo Storm hockey team.

Craig started work at OU as the contact for the men’s and women’s gymnastics team and then was hired fulltime as the contact for women’s soccer and baseball.

“I was very excited to land my first full-time position at a large Division I university,” said Moran. “After working a few years at smaller schools and in minor league hockey, I felt like all of the hard work had finally paid off.”

When observing what he does for a brief period of time, it is clear that Craig works very hard with the day-to-day operations of the communications professional. SoonerSports.com is the key tool to get information out to the public for the OU Athletics Communications office.

According to Craig, “A lot of the old school methods continue to get weeded out. Instead of solely providing information for the media, we are becoming our own news source and trying to drive more and more traffic to our web site.”

For any future professional out there, Craig says that a sports PR professional always must be on the search for new ways to reach the public, like OU Athletics on Twitter and Facebook.

“I knew working as an intern at Oklahoma would lead to good things. That is exactly why I took the job in the first place,” added Moran. “But I didn’t see myself staying longer than a year or two, and never would have expected seven years now working in not only one of best communication offices in the nation, but one of the best athletics departments.”

Watching Craig I realized that each day Craig wakes up and gets to work around sports. Growing up in Norman, this is a job that could be a dream come true for me. If you are looking for a job that you could love, this would definitely be it.

The image of OU is courtesy of the University of Oklahoma Athletic Department

Jackie Johnson Explians It All

Jackie Johnson Explains It All

by Erin Jackson

I had the pleasure of sitting down to talk with one of my favorite relatives to talk about one of my favorite subjects: public relations, and more importantly, how to get a job after graduating!

Jackie Johnson has been in the Public Relations industry for almost 20 years. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations from Texas Women’s University in 1995 and has since been a practicing PR professional. While in college, she made sure she completed internships every summer. She knew how it important it was to have experience before graduating from college. She currently works for one of the places where she did one of her internships, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and has the title of “Public Relations Specialist.”

When asked what are the most pertinent tools needed by a PR Professional, Jackie says “Excellent writing skills are essential. I don’t know anyone in this business that is not excessively critical about correct grammar and punctuation. Time management is also very important. You will have to work under strict deadlines almost all of the time. There is no room for procrastination.”

I also asked Jackie what she believes is important for upcoming PR professionals to be knowledgeable about. “Students should most definitely take advantage of all classes geared toward technology that their program offers. Employers want to know that you are knowledgeable about modern software programs and new kinds of media.” I thought about how true this is in our era. There seems to be a new kind of software or social media outlet appearing everyday. When our Campaigns class was told to register on Twitter I did not understand, but now I realize it is to make us hip to new types of media.

Cancer Paient Moves On

Cancer Patient Moves On

By Aaron Vossen

Cancer Blogger moves with changing times

Drew Olanoff, twitter user @drew, is auctioning off his user name then giving the proceeds to the LiveStrong Foundation. Who do you ask would ever want to purchase this user name; none other than comedian, television host Drew Carey who bid $100,000 and if he has 1,000,000 followers on December 31, he will donate $1 million. Where ever the follower count stops so will the cash, so we can all hope that Drew will get a large following to help this young man and cancer research.

Twitter as we all know is a very famous status update website and while some may believe this sort of thing to be silly, or childish others will be using this medium to help others who will come after them much like Olanoff.

Just like from the book Who Moved My Cheese, Drew Olanoff could have been stuck to his ways and not done a thing much like Hem. Instead, he acted like Haw, thought of something clever, and helpful, to benefit research and went with it. Who would have ever imagined that Drew Carey would have seen this tweet and begin with a $25,000 bid, moved it to $100,000 and offered to take it all the way to $1 million if enough people became his followers?

This is just one example of how twitter can be used to help people and more things like this can and should be done. I think that both Olanoff and Carey should be proud of what they are doing to help cancer, and I know I will became a follower of Drew, @DrewFromTV, and I hope you will to.

Photo taken by Mike Carano

PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences

by Nick Holmes

PR 2.0: New Media, New Tools, New Audiences by Deirdre Breakenridge highlights the “new” Public Relations. Public relations has become a “Two-Way Highway” in the past few years. No longer does one send a press release and hope it gets published, then hope someone actually reads it. In the modern day, publics feel the need to interact with their lives.

Social Media is the face of this changing medium. Web sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have forever changed the way Public Relations practitioners interact with the publics. Using these new tools, PR professionals can place messages in places not traditionally known for news.

These new tools are developing around us. PR Practitioners needs to realize that this new medium is the way of the future and to embrace it rather than fight it.

PR Practitioners need to remember in this digital age to monitor what they send out, and the frequency in which information is released. The fastest way to lose followers is to pollute their streams with useless information. Publics are willing to share their social networking time with outside organizations, but this privilege should not be abused. As a twitter user, I have “unfollowed” many celebrities or companies when they pollute my Twitter feed. If I am doing this as a Public Relations student who understand and supports their efforts, what is this causing your average society member to do?

Social Media will continue to evolve and eventually be replaced by the next “big thing.” But until PR 3.0, this is the world we’re living in.

Twitter and ESPN

By Dara Hollingsworth

We can all agree that Twitter now plays a role in public relations as is evident from the recent guest speaker in our class, Barbara Gibson, a Twitter expert. I guess I have been slightly slow to accept the whole Twitter thing, I have an account but it was updated once, nine months ago when I created an account for Public Relations Writing. But I became convinced Twitter was here to stay while watching the OU Women’s Basketball team’s recent run to the Final Four on ESPN. The commentators and analysts mentioned Twitter numerous times because ESPN has a Twitter account. The account is used primarily for feeding followers story headlines from ESPN. Additionally, Rebecca Lobo, a women’s basketball commentator, urged viewers to follow her on Twitter to get an insider’s look into the tournament.

As of now ESPN has over 63,000 followers while it is following over 69,000. So what is ESPN’s purpose of all that twittering? Maybe it has something to do with an attempt to humanize the brand. It can allow ESPN to make a personal connection with its many admirers. It can be used to measure the perception of the network. The list of the positives goes on and on.

So will other networks follow ESPN? It appears they already have. All the major networks have some sort of Twitter account and CNN Breaking News has over 792,000 followers. Which just further proves that, like it or not, Twitter is here to stay.

Get out from behind your computer screens!

By Kristin Biery

Today's lecture about Twittering really made me think about the transition the communication field is making. We are moving out of the boardrooms, off of conference calls and are instead sitting behind a computer screen. Although I am someone who loves text messaging and getting online—there is a time and a place for it. Websites like twitter, facebook, myspace, craigslist and other popular blog sites are becoming the norm for social networking and advancing careers.

Today in class we had a guest speaker who had over 15,000 followers on her twitter page. That’s ridiculous to me. I understand that by using the internet you can reach a broader group of individuals, but how genuine and sincere can the relationships be? There is only so much information I am willing to give out online and I am not very trusting to people who I meet on the internet.

We all watch the stories on Dateline and 20/20 about internet predators and unfortunately it has tainted my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I have a facebook and today in class I signed up for a twitter page, however I hope that that is not the life line of my social network.

Viral Marketing and Public Relations

By: Leslie Koch

With the internet seemingly taking over the world, it is no surprise that most public relations practitioners are turning to the “world wide web” for campaign strategies. Websites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the popularity of blogs have helped PR campaigns all over the world reach an entirely new spectrum of target audiences. These new campaign tactics are commonly referred to as viral marketing.

YouTube, a website that features millions of different videos from as many users all over the world, was created by employees of PayPal and bought out by Google in 2006. The website was originally launched in 2005 and the website’s popularity took off in the next few years. The website has been successful because users can create, upload, view and respond to different videos. YouTube has created thousands of “YouTube celebrities” and even caused controversies because of its high-paced messaging. Because of this, YouTube is a great way to use for messaging and to spread messages easily. Even one of our current class clients, Big Brothers Big Sisters, utilizes YouTube in its current PR campaign. An Oklahoma public relations firm recently used YouTube to publicize a job opening with the firm, the agency is looking for a new social media director. The video currently has 884 hits and it has been up for around five weeks.

Another new fad in viral marketing is the website Twitter. Twitter has gained lots of popularity in the past few months and especially in early 2009. Numerous celebrities use twitter and now it has become a great way for companies to send short messages to their followers. The University of Wisconsin has started utilizing a Twitter account to promote the university’s different sports teams and athletics events.

I think it is extremely important for PR agencies and teams to utilize these various types of viral marketing, because it reaches a wide range of people and is extremely time efficient. However, I think campaigns should mix these “modern” strategies with more “traditional” strategies, because it could be difficult to reach a specific target audience through the internet.

This is... Miguel Gonzalez

by Matthew Burris

Summer.

Most people spend it on vacation or in front of the TV. Not me. I spent the whole summer in Washington, D.C. performing intern duties (filing, collating, sifting through data, etc.) for the National Education Association. For all the pain of walking 30 minutes to work in Mid-Atlantic summer heat, I got to work with some great people. Miguel Gonzalez definitely fits into that category.

On top of having earned his Master's in Public Policy from American University, Miguel has also been working in the PR field for 15 years. He has worked in areas ranging from non-profit to government, and now he excels as a spokesperson and Senior Press Officer, Public Relations for the National Education Association. He leads the Association’s national communications efforts on major advocacy and public engagement campaigns such as the re-authorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, the 2008 presidential campaign, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Miguel says he enjoys his job because it combines his three passions, "policy, politics, and public relations."

This kind of experience means that Miguel has a lot of knowledge to pass on to the next generation of PR professionals.

Some people want to deny the slow death that the print media is suffering through, but those people are probably going to be left behind. Miguel is not one of them. He realizes that it is time for PR professionals to embrace the new technology or perish.

"As the media landscape changes (more and more newspapers are shutting down, others are curtailing coverage beats, etc.,) public relations professionals in the 21st century have to be flexible and adaptable and look for creative ways to contribute to the mission of the organization and to the bottom line," he says.

"A public relations professional in the 21^st century needs to have a solid mastery of basic skills like writing, proofing, editing; coupled with the strategic vision to look around the corner and assess emerging issues; and understand how to utilize social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, and others to do your job well."

As for career advice, Miguel reminds us all that we should never settle.

"Diversify—work in politics, campaigns, Capitol Hill, private sector, understand how other disciplines work. This will enhance your experience and bring value-added to the organization."

True words of wisdom.