Experience

I have been working with Relay For Life since last August as there Public Relations Chair. Now this Friday, the big event will be here. I am excited to see the success of my hard work come to life. At times the job was extremely difficult because of communication issues, but overall Relay has given me my first real experience with public relations. I could not be more thankful to have worked for the fight against cancer. Especially now that my grandmother is dying of pancreatic cancer.

My experience with Relay has taught me the basics of public relations. Probably, the most important thing I learned how to do was to communicate with the local media. The city of Milledgeville is a great place to build a relationship with the media because it is a small town with limited media outlets. The main outlet I communicated with was the local newspapers. I had to understand their deadlines and formatting. They helped me get vital information out to the public about Relay with efficiency.

Among other skills, I can crack out a press release in no time thanks to Relay. I have gotten extremely comfortable with writing them and obtaining quotes. This basic skill is necessary in the PR world, and now I have lots of experience with writing press releases.

I have also learned to understand the dynamics of a committee. I had to find out the hard way who was the best to get information from and who was not the best communicator. Luckily, the committee was willing to help me with anything and everything. I know this experience will help me with future employers.

Relay For Life was a great starting point in my public relations career. I was able to build my portfolio with press releases, newsletters and published work. The experience I received with Relay will benefit me for years to come. I am hoping my internship this summer will add onto my experiences; so, I can better market myself for a job when I graduate. After being denied from an internship, I truly know the importance of experience!

PR and Hollywood

Today I am going to write about a recent article I read in "Public Relations Tactics." The article is called "Event planning intersection:where brands meet celebrities." This article stood out to me because I have also been fascinated with celebrity endorsements. Probably because I am a huge fan of movies and Hollywood in general.

The article by Dana Marciniak explains how to work with celebrity accounts and how to pitch your event or product to the media. A celebrity name can instantaneously draw attention to an event and get coverage. Hopefully, the coverage will be positive, and that is why who you chose to be the representative is crucial.

When I see celebrities on television being a spokesperson for a certain product, I stop and think if they are really using it. Especially, when a 30 year old actress is promoting wrinkle cream! Sometimes, I get frustrated when I see Tiger Woods endorsing Gillette when he already makes millions upon millions of dollars with many other endorsement deals and winning gold tournaments. Why do celebrates make so much money just for saying they use a certain product? This was my opinion pre-public relations student.

Now being on the public relations side, I understand why companies would want celebrity endorsements. It is because they are one of the best ways to get your product's name recognized. What professional does not want their product to be synonymous with Tiger Woods? It is all about maximum coverage for an event or product, and one huge way to get that attention can be through a celebrity endorsement.

The Tipping Point

In “The Tipping Point,” Malcolm Gladwell describes how epidemics can be explained by three rules: the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Context. These rules are also the rules for the Tipping Point. A Tipping point refers to a mysterious change or point in a company or trend that usually results in something positive. My favorite example in the book is when Malcolm writes about the Hush Puppies trend because being in college, I have seen a lot of old trends come back. Wolverine, the makers of Hush Puppies, had nothing to do with its rebirth in 1994. One group of kids in New York starting wearing them, and suddenly they became cool again, just like that. Some examples of trends reappearing that I have noticed are Ray Ban sunglasses and Jellies.

For our own class project, the Athletic Auction, there are some possible ways we could make it tip. For the first suggestion, we would use the Law of the Few. Mavens, connectors and salesmen are people who spread or contain a message. “Mavens are data banks. They provide the message. Connectors are social glue: they spread it,” said Gladwell. In the auction’s case, our PR Administration class are mavens. Therefore, we need to find the connectors of Milledgeville and of athletics to broadcast our message even further.

Another idea for the Athletic Auction to tip is to make the event sticky. Hopefully, our theme will play a big role in the stickiness factor because people will enjoy it and be drawn to the event. As a class, we need find out what has not stuck in years past and find ways to present the information to obtain stickiness.

As previously stated, there are three types of peopling according to Gladwell and they are mavens, connectors and salesmen. It is hard to categorize myself in any of these. The one I am definitely not is a salesman. With more time in the public relations field, I hope to become a connector. Networking will play a huge part on my path to becoming a connector, but I feel I already possess a few qualities of a connector. They are a passion for getting to know people and an interest in multiple groups. I doubt I will ever get to the level of obsession like Roger Horchow, but I feel everyone in public relations should be somewhat of a connector.

Through using social media, I have already become more of a connector. Social media opens up opportunities for word-of-mouth epidemics and many others. Now having used Twitter and my blog for a couple of months, I can say I have definitely experienced a tipping point with social media. It can open so many opportunities, and to think I found out about Twitter through a maven and connector!

Networking

Throughout my time as a public relations student, the importance of one word has been drilled into me: networking. A dictionary defines networking as "a supportive system of sharing information and services among individuals and groups having a common interest."

I have only heard positive things about networking: that you can gain a potential employer, obtain contacts with media, gain vital information and the list goes on and on. To me networking is intimidating exactly for those reasons. I want to be myself when I meet a new person, but knowing I have to impress that person scares me a little. What if I say the wrong thing or do not meet their standards?

Having gone to Real World PR, I got great experiences with being myself while talking to potential employers. Talking to the first organization representative was extremely intimidating, but after awhile it seemed I was just talking like I would to anyone else. As the afternoon went on, I did not hesitate to speak to public relations professionals and ask them my questions.

First impressions are an extremely important part of networking. One does not want to seem uninterested or disrespectful. Great eye contact and a firm handshake is a great start to a conversation. Networking opens doors and windows, which would otherwise be closed if you did not make that connection. Just as important as making that first connection is keeping a relationship with that person because that connection may not payoff until five years down the line.

Real World PR prepared me for a lot of things, and networking was definitely on the top of that list.

Answers

Since the beginning of my Public Relations "career," I have had a multiple of unanswered questions. Some have been posted on previous blogs. I am happy to report after attending Real World PR on Friday, some of those lingering questions have been answered
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Let's start with my most recent question: corporate or agency? In career path track of session 2, a panel discussed the pros and cons of both worlds. They explained that an agency is more likely to hire right after graduation. Also an agency has a more fast paced atmosphere, juggles multiple clients and offers a broad experience. On the other had, corporate public relations is more structured, conservative and one can build an identity with a certain brand. I'm still open to both but agency seems in my direction.

I also heard a panel speak about internships. This session was extremely usefully because I am on the hunt for a summer internship. The panel's advice ranged from do research on the company to how to organize a portfolio. They said to bring portfolio, resume, letters of recommendation and any graphic designs to an interview. Their best advice is to start small then go big. It is all about one step and at time ... oh ya and networking!

During the afternoon, I went to have my resume critique. I picked a person who I knew would hold nothing back, and boy he did not. He gave great pointers how to arrange my resume, and how to reword some descriptions I had. I am more confident in my resume now, which is a must.

The final panel discussion I went to was Travel, Tourism and Hospitality PR. I was extremely impressed by two of the speakers who were from Melissa Libby & Associates and the Georgia Aquarium. Both of these companies involve something I love (cooking and animals). I found great potential in future internships because you have to love you job.

Real World PR brought me many opportunities to network and find internship opportunities. This event was definitely worth wild because I got to hear advice from real public relations professionals.

Baby steps

The other day I got a chance to talk with someone, Charles, who has had experience with job hunting in the world of public relations. He told me about an intense job interview he had with a big time public relations firm. Before he had the real interview, he had to pass a writing test. The firm gave him a scenario and he had an hour to write a press release on the subject. I had no idea job interviews could be like this.
Charles explained to me there are three types of public relations jobs: a firm, corporate or nonprofit. Since the time is coming for me to find an internship this information was very important to me.
I always thought I would like a public relations firm atmosphere better because you are dealing with multiple projects, and to me that seems more interesting. But would I want my internship to be at a firm? It seems those internships would be more coffee fetching and paper copying, and those are the last things I want my internship to be about. I want to learn from my internship, to be pushed and potentially get a job from that company in the future.
On the other side of the spectrum we have nonprofit organizations. In these job situations, the organization would probably have only one public relations person, which has its pros and cons. The con for me is that I like working with a team, and the pro is having creative freedom.
Finally, there is the corporate side of public relations. I honestly do not know much about, but it seems to be the best of the firm and nonprofit worlds.
I am hoping my internship, which I'm still looking for, will open up some doors for me. The internship will be the baby step into the real world, which I dread with anticipation each day. Hopefully this summer will provide some much needed clarity. There are so many options out there, and I do not know which one is for me until I dive in.

Interviews

While on Twitter, I came across a tweet by Heather Huhman about creating great interview conversation. Usually I just glance by her tweets because she has tons, but this one caught my eye. To get a great job one has to have a killer portfolio, great recommendations and an amazing interview. Out of all of those criteria the latter scares me the most. A public relations person is supposed to come with great communication skills, and I have that. But when in a small, confined room with potential coworkers and bosses I get extremely nervous and often do not do my best. This is obviously an area that needs improvement. 

Heather posts ten ways to nail an interview according to Rick Probstein, founder of TopJobLeads, on this site: http://tinyurl.com/dnlt5p.  These tips taught me a lot of important skills I will be needing in the near future. 

The most unexpected tip I read was number five. I assume the interview would be in a professional setting and complementing outside of the job topic would be inappropriate. I understand complementing on the interviewers past work but not on other matters. 

Numbers one, two and seven I have heard before this article, but the others were relatively new to me. After reading this article, I understand you should be confident, welcoming, professional and agreeable. For myself, I think a mock interview would be a useful tool to better prepare. So, I am not completely taken back by an interviewers question.

Interviews are a scary, uncharted territory that hopefully with practice and experience will not seem so bad.