PR Day 2010 finally arrived and was a huge success! I worked on the PR Day 2008 event focusing in on crisis communications, and my role for this event was to create and maintain the event website, set up the online registration for everyone, and monitor and engage in social media strategies in promoting PR Day 2010. I also set up the QR code for PR Day 2010 as well as creating the PR Day 2010 Tumblr site, where I was updating with latest information, posts, and pictures before, during, and now after the PR Day 2010 event. Here is another link of some of the pictures I took during the PR Day 2010 event. If you would like to see what others were saying about the event on Twitter, just search for the hashtag #prday10.
So, the day started off bright and early – right before the University of Tennessee was starting its Homecoming celebrations. We gathered all together at the University Center on campus, and we had a great turnout! I was very impressed with all of the students who attended the event – they were professional, energetic, nice, and eager to learn from the presenters. From the standpoint of a graduate student in public relations, I thought that this event was a wonderful opportunity for everyone in public relations. Everyone was having the opportunity to meet and greet, while meeting up with old friends and making some new ones along the way.
The first session I went to was with Ed Patterson from Edelman, and he presented on the research that Edelman has been doing with the Edelman Trust Barometer as well as the Global Pulse Study. I have to say – this was one of the highlights for me at the PR Day event. Mr. Patterson was energetic, insightful, and willing to share his knowledge and expertise with everyone in the audience. Mr. Patterson made some great points that we all should consider, but two I want to share with you that I thought were really good. He said that we should not just focus on public relations, but public engagement – meaning that we have to not only maintain these relationships, but we have to go beyond what was expected before and go the extra distance. Secondly, we talked about the citizen consumer – where people want to invest in corporations and brands that are not only strong in terms of their presence in the industry, but they are willing to contribute back to society. Instead of looking at return on investment, we should be looking at return on influence. I thought that this was very interesting. We took away with us a long list of resources that will help us out in our future careers – both in practice and in research. Thank you for coming to PR Day and sharing this with all of us! 🙂 The second session I went to was focusing in on employee relations and social media. I thought that this presentation did a good job in providing an overview of some of the issues and considerations public relations professionals need to be aware of when they are using and implementing social media.
Lunch was served as well at PR Day 2010, and our keynote speaker, Merrie Spaeth, was fabulous. She was thoughtful, direct and to the point about message strategies in public relations, and again was very generous in sharing her insights and expertise on what we need to consider today in public relations in terms of credibility and trust among our audiences. This was fascinating and the videos and examples she presented to everyone at the event were great – I particularly liked some of her examples pertaining to social media. 🙂
I really enjoyed talking with other students at the University of Tennessee as well – some of my students in my Principles in PR course attended the event – I thought that this was a great hands-on learning experience for them all in public relations. I also had the pleasure of meeting several wonderful students from Belmont University who attended PR Day, and their great advisor Bonnie Riechert, as well as UGA PRSSA member Carly Nash – it was a pleasure to talk with them at the PR Day event and where they see the field going! Thank you all for coming to PR Day 2010!
Overall, PR Day 2010 was a fabulous event. It was great working on this event and being able to implement some of the social media strategies into hosting a public relations event. I am sure that PR Day 2012 will be a great event – people were already talking about how they are looking forward to it! 🙂 Hope you all are having a wonderful day.
Best Wishes,
Karen
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