Not lost, just undiscovered.

Last week, I attended the 7th annual 360 Degrees: All Things Connected, an event hosted by the Toronto chapter of the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS).   The event was organized by the student steering committee for students and junior PR practitioners and was well worth the ticket price.

They split us into groups based on the preferences we indicated on our registration form and we rotated through three sessions on three different sectors of public relations and corporate communications.

I ended up in Group C: Crisis Communications, Agency and Corporate/Internal Communications.

A lot was said in the three hours but here are the points that stuck out for me:

Agency:

• In an agency, you’re surrounded by people who do communications too.  This can be a valuable experience and may bring a sense of community that you may not feel in a small communications department for a corporation.
• Tasks as an entry level practitioner may include: creating media lists, doing media calls and pitches, organizing meetings and staff events, doing research and doing media and online monitoring.
• 25% of your tasks will involve researching about the client and anything related to that organization or project.
• One of your other main tasks will be media monitoring,  so know the media and love the news.

Internal Communications:

• Most people believe that internal communications is just about writing the newsletter, but it can more than that.  You can be the coach who mobilizes and engages employees.
• You can work with upper management to develop plans that will engage employees and ensure that they are aware of, understand and believe in the organization’s brand.
• People spend most of their lives at work and you get to make them love it.  You help employees feel pride in where they work and feel a greater sense of accomplishment.

Crisis Communications:

• Every plan is just a plan. It needs to be flexible and adaptable in any situation.
• There are early warnings for crises – they don’t just drop from the sky, so plan ahead and pay attention.
• Take time to look at how your organization or other similar ones dealt with crises in the past.  Learn from these examples.

I left the event with a lot of notes and was impressed with how things rolled out.  The only negative thing was that I would have loved to participate in all the other groups too, such as Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Media, Media Relations, Non-profit and Financial.

Either way, it was a well-organized event. Thank you to all the speakers and the student steering committee for doing a great job.

Photo credit: oooh.oooh – Creative Commons Licence (BY-NC-SA)

I have been quiet for a while now on this blog but there is a reason.

I’ve been spending lot of time reading and listening to the PR and social media community. I have been doing this for months now but this time it’s different because not only am I’m learning from the online community (through blogs, podcasts and even tweets), but I’m also learning from school (with classes, readings and guest speakers).

All of this listening has made me so much more sure and excited about where I am going.  So I think it’s time that I start writing and talking as I continue to read.

And so here I am with this post.

It is very early in my course and there are many other aspects of PR that I will experience and learn about, but I find myself currently intrigued by employee engagement.  And with that, I am intrigued with how social media can be used in this process.

I feel that coming from a company like IBM, I’ve already been spoiled by social media in the workplace.

IBM uses social media both internally and externally to engage its employees.  Internally, employees create podcasts, share bookmarks (through Dogear), connect on an internal social network (Beehive), collaborate using wikis, and converse through blogs.

Using social media, IBM is empowering employees to build and use these online communities to be creative, to collaborate and to innovate.  In other words, by allowing the employees to connect, communicate and participate in new ways, IBM is giving each employee a voice and an opportunity to share their value.

I will not pretend to be an expert on this topic just yet, especially since I know some of IBM’s great social media evangelists who can speak at length on the importance of social media.

Over time though, I plan to discuss how IBM and other companies use social media to engage their employees and how social media can be used internally by communicators with their work.

For the time being, I will point you towards the following social media study on Scribd:  The Corporate Newsletter Goes Social: IBM and Employee-Centered Social Media.

Photo Credit: Kris Hoet – Creative Commons License (BY)