Social Media + Public Relations, learning the skills of this fast growing sector

Social media has changed the face of the way we communicate.  More specifically, it has changed the public relations/communications industry.  One of our classes within our Public Relations program at Mohawk College is about Communications Technologies and using it to our advantage within the PR industry.  We have learned many ways in which one can communicate with an audience by using social media. 

Two of our lectures required that we tweet lecture content from our twitter account to the PR@Mohawk twitter account.  I found this extremely useful, as previous to this, I was not very comfortable with using twitter as a forum for communication, due to unfamiliarity with this social media application.  Once I figured out how to use the reply method in order to send a tweet to a specific twitter account, I was off and running (or tweeting...?)!  I also enjoyed following the tweets from my fellow classmates during these lectures.  It is always interesting to see how other people interpret and lend their thoughts and explanations to a topic. 

Another one of our classes required us to create a LinkedIn account.  Although I had heard of LinkedIn before, I didn't really know how to use it, or what the benefit to using it was.  In this particular class, we learned how to create a profile, and how to begin networking.  I find classes like this especially valuable; our professor Tim Tuck explained that LinkedIn is not to be used as a Facebook account, and should strictly be limited to professional communications.  As I soon found out, LinkedIn is vital for networking and communicating in the professional world.  Professor Tuck was explaining the uses for LinkedIn and was showing us his homepage when an article popped up at the top.  Incidentally, it was a media release, written in part by six of my classmates for their internship!  What had happened was this:  six of my classmates are doing their internship at Trivaris, which is a commercialization company that mentors small businesses and helps them with their communications efforts.  Trivaris, was working in conjunction with Civiside, a non-profit organization that helps veterans returning from tours of duty reassimilate into the working community.  The director of marketing at Trivaris had sent this media release, which my classmates participated in writing, to all of her contacts on LinkedIn.  As my professor is also connected via LinkedIn to the director of marketing at Trivaris, the media release appeared at the top of his home page.  It was a really cool example of how connected one can be to other industry professionals with the use of LinkedIn.

 
These learning experiences and exercises are very beneficial.  I am quite interested in continuing to find ways to apply social media to a communications/public relations environment, and what is becoming more apparent, is the absolute necessity to use social media within a public relations forum.  I am of the opinion, with the development and influence of social media, that the communications/public relations industry will take on a whole new aspect by using social media to get messages out to, and communicate with, the public.  Even internally within an organization, the lines of communications have changed due to the emergence of social media.  


Social media has been, and will continue to change, the way we communicate in all aspects of our life...  but I'm sure most of you already knew that.  Finding ways to apply it successfully...?  Now that is the challenge!