On the final day of the PRSA 2009 International Conference, dozens of industry vets and new media experts provided tips and support for mid-career or senior professionals. Meet the Experts was a forum for exchanging ideas and perhaps drawing conclusions from exciting PRSA programming.
Katie Paine talked about measurement, assisting both a public relations executive who had just moved over to public relations from the St. Petersburg Times to a religious organization, and a hospital public relations manager. The Lutheran Church wants to be careful about social media. The Baptist hospital has several constituencies, including doctors who want to provide online counsel without a formal diagnosis.
At the social media table, Kami Watson Huyse lead a discussion following-on to her very well-attended session on social media. She provided details on online services like Ning, where communities may be built. Muckraker is a site where one can find journalists. Flickr is a forum for posting pictures of events or corporate executives.
At the Meet the Experts, we learned that Twitter is now the number one sourcing arena for journalists and has surpassed other blogs. According to Middleburg research, journalists can also post queries using their own tweets.
Tom Gable, a San Diego based sole practitioner and PRSA Fellow said that, “the biggest issue of agency concern is, of course, mastering social media. The second issue remains proving ROI. PRSA conducted a formal survey over six months to look at trends. Gable worked the “Agency issues” table and shared some of the results along with his career experiences.
By Mike Smith, Washington insider and beltway native. Mike has deep political connections and national campaign and convention experience working for a key Iowa (caucus) newspaper. He also worked for a Gannett newspaper in upstate New York. Smith has a master’s degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. At the Denver convention, he covered tech policy platform issues along with his friend Craig Newmark of Craigslist. Smith also worked as a volunteer on national traveling press and advance for the Obama for President Campaign in Iowa, Texas and Virginia. Follow Mike Smith Public Affairs on Twitter at @smittypa.
For coverage of the PRSA 2009 International Conference: Delivering Value, visit our Conference blog or follow the conversation on Twitter at hashtag #prsa09.
No Comment Received