Nine o'clock on a Friday morning is not the best time to lecture students on the impact of social media on PR practice (especially not those students for whom the weekend starts on Thursday evening). Happily, most of them seem reasonably interested in my Introduction to Weblogs module, but you can certainly tell when they become engaged. This happened twice, when I used case studies prompted by Delivering the New PR colleagues Stuart Bruce and Elizabeth Albrycht. They were captivated by the contribution of consumer generated content around IRobot's Roomba vacuum cleaner (and the marvellous Roomba wiki, but even more so by the Innocent smoothies Daily Thoughts blog.
This is how social media works as a promotional tool. My students were hugely amused by the idea of making hats for Innocent smoothies, and were soon exploring the Flickr pages, and quick to seize on the chance to win an Innocent hoodie. But the thing that would have delighted the team behind the blog was the conversation, where Innocent enthusiasts (and there were quite a few) set about convincing others of the merits of the drink - vibrant, completely spontaneous endorsements that would have sounded hollow and artificial if written by a PR person...
Students taking Introduction to Weblogs have to write their own blog - and some of them are pretty good. Only one engages directly with public relations - Sam Wilcox's Believe the Spin, which she set up before the course began. In a recent post (Breaking news.. I don't want to be a journalist) she questioned whether PR students should, as they do in Sunderland, have to study journalism, and she sparked a lively debate. It would be interesting to see more people contribute...
Thanks for the mention Phil, your cheque's in the post! Seriously I think it's an interesting issue and just shows the power of blogs in order to gauge other peoples opinions on subjects.
Posted by: Sam wilcox | November 29, 2006 at 10:05 AM