PRowl's Crash Course

What’s great about PRowl Public Relations is that every semester we are able to recruit and add new student members who are interested in gaining more hands-on experience in the PR industry. What’s bad is that sometimes we at PRowl forget that our young members have not all been trained in pitching the media, engaging the public through social media, etc. and we immediately begin getting them involved in a project.

At our PRowl Public Relations’ staff and board meetings yesterday, we discussed how important it is to slow down at the beginning of every semester and do a training/reminder crash course on all things PR. This will be beneficial for new members who may have little to no experience, as well as serve as a reminder for our established members on all the different aspects involved when completing our campaign successfully.

Some different things we’d like to go over at the beginning of every semester:
-How to create a "fan page" and other varieties of profiles on Facebook
-How to begin discussions on Facebook
-How to create an event on Facebook
-How to strategically add "friends" who add value (not just random people to superficially bulk up the numbers)
-Little things to remember on Facebook, such as: accepting friend requests, and then writing messages to new "friends" when relevant; writing back to comments on the Facebook page; responding to new messages; and posting daily.
-How to strategically "follow" the right people on Twitter so you know trending topics relative to the client's industry
-Relevant topics to post about on Twitter regarding the client
-Ways to get others to "follow" you
-How to synch Twitter and Facebook so each is updated when you post a message or a "tweet"
-How to create press material, such as a press release, media alert, pitch letter, PSA, etc.
-When and how to follow-up with the media
-Things to do before you ever pitch (for example - know the journalist's beat and make sure they haven't covered your story already...)

These are just some preliminary ideas! We want your feedback! Do you have any additional tips you think would be important to discuss every semester to make sure PRowl is able to offer the highest-level of service to our clients?