PR Studies

#commschat: the role of learning

I'm leading a #commschat Twitter discussion later on the theme of learning. What can academics learn from practitioners? What can practitioners learn from academics? How do we all keep up, let alone try to keep ahead?

Let's start by addressing two stereotypes.

Professor Ivor Y Tower

Professor Tower is intellectually impressive (a towering force?) and proud to be known on the international sociology circuit. Though he has made his name as a public relations scholar, he's disdainful of the practice because it's too compromised by money and by imbalanced power relationships. So he prefers to create perfect models of how public relations should be practised.

Though easy to mock, there is an argument in favour of pure academic research. If nothing else, academics should be free to 'think the unthinkable'. In this regard, they are similar to monks. Though their thoughts are impractical, it's better for us all that some people are dedicated to an otherworldly pursuit of perfection.

Alan Bluff-Practitioner

Alan has traded off his deputy editorship of the local newspaper and still has a good list of local clients for whom he provides media relations and crisis management services. He's recently become a fan of social media, but is proud to say that he's never had a day's training let alone pursued a qualification in public relations. Why would he need to when it's all just common sense? He has similar views of the CIPR and other professional bodies. And as for PR degrees, don't get him started. He left school at 16, began as a runner on the local newspaper and worked his way up from there.

Alan is a characteristic figure. He's not unintellectual, but rather anti-intellectual: one of life's perpetual outsiders. The challenge he faces is to update his twentieth-century business model, which he's trying to do by becoming a social media advocate. He certainly represents the past, but does he have a future?

Hopefully our discussion will go beyond stereotypes and reveal that curiosity and a desire to learn are a requirement of all successful PR practitioners.

Lies, damn lies and league tables

Scores matter. At university, we grade assignments as a percentage, and bracket degrees to indicate levels of attainment. In sport, matches are decided by scores and league tables are used to rank achievement. In work, salaries are a numerical indication of the value put on a person's role.

I'd been considering ways of recognising the out-of-class achievement of PR students, but did not want to create an alternative set of blogging awards. Besides, the existing awards were based on the subjective assessment of a panel of judges, and did not seem to me to reflect the wider picture.

With these two goals in mind - the value of a league table showing out-of-class progress and the need for objective measures - I have introduced the #socialstudent ranking at Behind the Spin.

The numbers are objective to the extent that they are independent and publicly available. All I'm doing is selecting UK PR students on full-time undergraduate or postgraduate courses and averaging their Klout and PeerIndex scores. The methodology is simple and transparent - and that is the only justification I'll make for it. (There's also no coaching involved: no current students knew of this league table before its launch, and my students are not required to blog and use Twitter as part of their course - though I do encourage them to.)

Klout in particular has been receiving much negative commentary based on its methods of calculating numbers and for its business model - but I don't seem much that's different from the contract we make with other players in the free world (Google, Facebook, WordPress etc). We allow them to learn much about us in return for a free service that's useful to us.

The attempt to measure influence is an important one to PR practitioners (it's the theme of Philip Sheldrake's new book). The #socialstudent ranking aims to encourage students to become aware of online reputation and influence and to showcase some outstanding talent (employers are continually asking me to recommend graduates).

It's a work in progress and we're still in the first half of the season, but the league table looks to me to be a promising concept and - let me be honest - a good way to draw attention to our online publication.

Face to face or Facebook?

Does our cornucopia of communications channels lead to restricted personal relationships?

We're all on email, most use Facebook, many have blogs, and some are merrily twittering away. So the temptation is to communicate through screen-and-keyboard. I'm worse than most at this, being something of a social media maven and a natural introvert.

I was impressed by two students who knocked at my door yesterday. I know them both and had noted how they prefer face-to-face contact and are both quick to pick up the phone if they can't speak to me in person. I'm searching for a pattern in this, but since one of these students is Greek and male, and the other is British and female, I don't have enough data to go on.

But I do know that personal is best and that everyone must have preferred channels for personal communications. Mine would go something like this:

1. Face-to-face
2. Hand-written card or letter
3. Phone
4. Text message
5. Blog comment (though not for private conversations)
6. Facebook message
7. Personal email
8. Work email

I'm guilty of not doing enough personal communicating myself (I don't look forward to writing Christmas cards). But I do recognise its value. And I'm looking forward to meeting two 'friends' for the first time at next week's Don't Panic Guide to Social Media in Manchester. I've known of Tom Murphy since 2002 when we both started blogging about PR, but we've never met in the flesh. And I've been impressed enough with Simon Wakeman to entrust him with the technical aspects of Behind the Spin magazine, again without ever having shaken hands.

Andy Green, who I have met at several public forums over the years, has written a book on this: Effective Communication Skills for Public Relations.

Students: here's how to join the CIPR

As Carys Samuel (one of our CIPR student reps) said at last night's guest lecture, you should consider joining the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. The student application form is here (in pdf format) and the annual membership fee is £35. This runs to the end of September 2009 so don't delay if you're to gain a full year's benefits.

Here's why I think you should join (most important reasons first, though you may disagree with my priorities):

1. Public relations, like any other management discipline, is currently at best only semi-professional in its status. This will only change as professional standards and professional membership becomes expected. Education, qualifications, continuous professional development are all drivers of professionalisation. You can take charge of the wheel!
2. A member database of close to 10,000 members - complete with contact details - is a vital resource as you seek placement experience and contacts in order to develop your experience. You'll be listed in this, too.
3. You can add membership status to your CV. You're already paying much more to be a full-time student, so why not take this extra step and gain much more credibility?
4. You will receive the much-improved PR Week for free as well as the CIPR member magazine, Profile.

I've been a member for ten years and will gladly answer your questions and sign your application forms.

If Twitter's the key, what does it unlock?

I can't quibble with this (except over the capital letters, perhaps):

In the Social Media era, getting better at Public Relations means getting better at the Relationships, not the Publicity.

Todd Defren's conclusion is more challenging though: Get Into Twitter or Get Outta Public Relations?

But his point is well made. It's not about the tools (a few years ago it was blogging; then podcasting; last year it was Facebook; this year Twitter); it's about engaging in the conversations and gaining a licence to join in or to comment.

Reasons to love PROPenMic

He's done it again. Robert French, the educator who offered the world PR Blogs, has now gone further with PROpenMic. Someone has described it aptly as 'Facebook for the PR community'.

Here's why I like it already.

• There's something fun and anarchic (lords of misrule, world turned upside down) about the speed at which the tradional model of education is being reinvented. In the old world, old people knew more than young people, so young people tried hard to become old(er) people. See where I'm going with this?
• You never know what you'll learn. One lesson for me came from Robert French, responding to my teacher's angst with this: 'I try to motivate every day. I fail every day.'

That's worth the entry fee alone, except that this is another Web 2.0 site with no fee and no ads. There's no catch, but like any social network, its value grows as people gather and conversations develop. Please come and join us.

Guest lecture programme - you're welcome

Our new guest lecture series opens next week. These are open events to which students and practitioners are welcome.

Let me pick out one event (because it was cancelled last year) - we have Google's head of corporate communications for UK, Ireland and Benelux talking on How the Internet Changes Everything ... and that includes PR. D-J Collins is speaking on Monday 15 October at 6.30pm. Parking is free at our Headingley Campus after 4.30pm.

Let me know if you can make any of these events. Or perhaps you'd like to speak...

Let's face it

I must have registered for facebook a year ago and left it at that. I'd not even uploaded my photo and was in danger of forgetting my login details.

This week a growing number of 'friend' requests shamed me into returning and I've been impressed. Facebook seems to have reached critical mass. Among university students certainly, but also among the usual avid social networkers and including some seasoned professionals too.

As a networking site, it has the immediacy of IM and Twitter; as a content site it's less valuable though most people have posted extensive photo albums. If the currency of MySpace is music; and of blogging is ideas; then facebook's speciality is photos.

Why is it more attractive to students than blogging? Facebook resembles a pyjama party (it may feel daring but it's really very safe). Blogging's more like a nudist beach. You (and your lumps) are exposed to the stares or indifference of strangers. Not for everyone.

Travellers' tales

For me, this was no geek dinner (though I don't know what Stuart, Paull and Simon - half hidden here - were talking about).

The common theme was travel. There was a murmur of approval when I said that Gail's a travel writer. The night before I'd watched Tim (who I've known since we were 10) present the first in his travel series on BBC4. (If you thought the sheep's brains and ram's testicles looked indigestible, he tells me there's worse to come when he reaches China.)

It's strange, then, that I'm no longer much of a traveller - at least in the first of its dimensions:

1. Distance. (Time zones, borders, geography, weather etc.)
2. Time. (My stone farmhouse isn't that old, but 1771 is prehistoric in the context of modern Australia or America).
3. Empathy/imagination. (Even the simplest form of communication - such as a lecture - involves surmounting barriers of age, gender, language, interest, culture. Travellers are forced to build bridges and make connections, even to improvise communication.)

Ghetto busting

It's important for a university teaching public relations to be connected with the world in which public relations is practised.

It's also useful to break out of the silo/ghetto of scheduled teaching delivered on discrete modules. So we're opening our doors for a public lecture series and welcoming any of our students, and those from neighbouring universities, CIPR regional members and other PR practitioners. Let me know (via the comments feature) if you'd like to attend and I'll make sure you're welcomed; also let me know if you'd like to speak at a future event (we have autumn and spring series).

All these talks take place at our Headingley Campus in Leeds from 6.30-7.30pm on Monday evenings.

• Monday 5 February: Laura Mahon, Freud Communications
• Monday 19 February: D-J Collins, Google
• Monday 5 March: Tony Harcup, author of The Ethical Journalist
• Monday 19 March: Rob Cohen and Claire Eldridge: healthcare PR