The future PROs are digital natives
Tweet Written by Danny Whatmough
As part of my involvement with the PRCA I was invited to give a seminar today at the University of Westminster to students on its PR Masters course.
This is part of a link up between the PRCA and 12 Universities throughout the country. I’ve often wondered whether PR courses at higher education need to have more input from the industry so that students have a clear idea about what working in PR actually feels like and this initiative seems to me to be a fantastic step in this direction.
My slides from the session are below, but might not make too much sense without my accompanying ramblings! The main thrust of what I was saying was that digital PR offers professionals exciting new opportunities to reach audiences and also measure and evaluate what it is that we do for the brands we work for.
Chatting to the lecturers afterwards it was interesting to learn that PR students seem to be very open to using social media in the campaign ideas they put together as part of their course. What they apparently find more difficult is putting the use of social and digital in a more strategic setting and also how to integrate traditional media as well. At a time when many in the industry seem to be struggling with the adoption of social media and digital, I thought this was a fascinating observation and one that bodes well for the future of the industry.
These guys are right at home with social media and it was encouraging to see them using a range of online tools such as Klout and Google Analytics already.