Newer to PR? Or maybe you’ve worked in PR for a while but are trying to keep up with the changing landscape. Sure, writing is important. But what other skills and aptitudes are vital for today’s public relations and communications professionals?
As roles become more sophisticated and communication challenges more complex, PR pros must prove value, adapt to new technologies, navigate ethical challenges – and there is so much unknown. And unknowable.
My guest is Steve Ryan, Assistant Professor of Instruction & Program Director of Public Relations at Temple University.
Show summary:
In this episode of PR Explored, host Michelle Garrett welcomes guest Steve Ryan, assistant professor of instruction and program director of public relations at Temple University.
Together, they delve into the evolving landscape of public relations, touching on Steve’s career journey, the critical role of writing, analytics, and measurement in PR, the challenges posed by generative AI, and the importance of continuous education and building a strong professional network.
The conversation also highlights the significance of internships, public speaking skills, and the impact of AI-generated misinformation on PR strategies. Steve offers practical insights and tools like the AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework and Signal.ai for effective measurement and monitoring in PR.
The episode underscores the evolving landscape of PR and the need for adaptive, strategic thinking to navigate its complexities.
00:00 Welcome to PR Explored
00:26 Meet Steve Ryan: From Practice to Academia
02:26 The Evolution of PR Education
04:55 The Importance of Writing in PR
07:11 Measurement and Analytics in PR
09:41 The AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework
21:39 Generative AI in PR: Staying Up to Speed
25:46 Legal Concerns with AI and Confidentiality
26:24 Risks and Misuse of Generative AI
31:33 Addressing AI-Generated Misinformation
33:15 Monitoring Tools and Sentiment Analysis
36:44 Importance of Professional Networks
40:14 Value of Advanced Education and Internships
44:42 Essential Skills for New PR Graduates
45:53 Public Speaking and Communication Skills
48:51 Final Thoughts and Audience Engagement
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Beyond Writing: Essential PR Skills
Michelle: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of PR Explored. I’m so glad to be back today. I have a special guest who I’ll introduce in just a minute. I just want to say that PR Explored is a video podcast where we delve into trends and topics related to public relations. I’m your host, Michelle Garrett.
I’m a public relations consultant and writer. And my guest today is Steve Ryan, who is an assistant professor of instruction and program director of public relations at Temple University. Welcome, Steve.
Steve: Hello. Thank you for thank you for having me, Michelle. Should note that We were really early on mutual followers in the early days of Twitter, like I’m thinking 2008.
Michelle: I can’t remember when I [00:01:00] got on there, but that’s probably about right.
Steve: Yeah, we got on there when it was still, hey, I’m having a sandwich. And now we’ll just not talk about that. Anyway thanks for having me on. I am what is lovingly known as a pracademic. I came from practice.
I started out my career longer ago than I care to admit in the toy business. It is not like the movie Big, if you’ve ever seen that. And I moved from there into not per, not for profit. I got horribly disillusioned by it. And then that led me into into my, the longest startup. Segment of my career in commercial insurance and property casualty insurance, and that was a very rewarding time.
Got to do a lot of cool work, a [00:02:00] lot of a lot of interesting travel problem solving projects as well as a couple of merger and acquisition deals. And it was Thanks a lot. Yeah, it was a good, it was a good period of my career. And then after leading out of the pandemic, finally got to teach full time.
So here I am.
Michelle: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking when we first met. I don’t, I think I knew you were An educator, but I thought that wasn’t your only thing that you were doing. So now that is your primary focus at this.
Steve: Yeah, I was when we first connected. I was teaching as an adjunct. Okay, and I was and I’ve been doing that.
I’ve been doing that since probably about 2007 And now full time. It’s what I always wanted to do.
Michelle: Yeah. And we need, we need you. So that’s great because I feel I always feel like and I don’t want to get off on [00:03:00] a tangent. But as far as universities that have PR specific programs, I feel and maybe this is just me here in Ohio, but I don’t feel like there’s a lot of them because I had a Yeah.
A kiddo who was looking at some of that and it’s just a little few and far between. It’s different than when I went to school. So I feel like those programs are maybe they’re just called other things, or they roll them into other programs. It seems like
Steve: yeah, you’ll find Communication Studies, and Temple has a Communication Studies program OrgComm, CorpComm, although there aren’t very many of those.
And actually, Temples is the only, put in a little shameless plug here for Temple University. Yeah. We’re the only Certified PR degree program in the state of Pennsylvania.
Michelle: Oh, wow One of
Steve: in one or fewer than 50 in the world.
Michelle: Okay Yeah, no that feels you know, that feels accurate because I just like I said [00:04:00] now they call it strategic communications they roll it into other things that When I studied it was journal under a journalism degree but yeah it’s just different than it used to be.
But anyway, I’m so glad you took time to spend this hour with us and tell us, what we need to know because let’s be honest. Things are PR is ever evolving, right? It’s, changes are nothing new to the profession, but I feel like right now we are really in a period of tremendous change on a number of fronts.
And so we’re going to talk about a few of these things today that we think would be helpful for those newer to PR or maybe if folks have been in PR for a while but want to know, what should they focus on moving forward and I know we, we decided to title this Beyond Writing.
I think writing is foundational, fundamental to a career in PR. Always, [00:05:00] I’ve always thought that. I still think that. But beyond that, what can we, what do we focus on? So that’s what we’re going to do.
Steve: And studies back you up too, by the way. That’s There’s a fair bit of research that’s been done not least of which by by our accrediting body, that asks asks employers what they’re looking for.
What skills they value. And always up at the top is writing.
Michelle: And it’s hard to find people who are good at writing, skilled writers because I, I, I don’t know. I’ve. Been around a few, younger pros. Some of them are fantastic, but I do think the people that I know that are teachers, even at a lower, like a high school level would say that, the skill set is it’s not the same because if you don’t read it.
You’re, the writing suffers and then the critical thinking and all, so it’s just, it’s we’re getting away from reading and writing because we’re on screens, I always,
Steve: but I always tell my students. [00:06:00] And when I kick off my PO writing class, which is, it’s a 3000 level, so it’s mostly juniors who are taking that course.
And I always start off the semester telling them, look, by this point in your educational trajectory, you need, you should be aware that writing is critical. to be successful in PR. Now you don’t have to be an award winning writer, and most of you never will be, but you must be a competent writer.
And that means you, you have to write grammatically correctly for the with proper diction for the vehicle and the audience and the industry that you’re working for. You have to be able to do it quickly.
Michelle: Yeah, I’ve spoken to a few college classes here, and I just, that’s something that I focus on is the writing piece, [00:07:00] and I do think some are now saying we have AI, so why do we need to write, but we’re going to talk about AI, but the first thing that we’re going to talk about that, when we were preparing for this today,
Steve: the
Michelle: first thing on the list that I think that you wanted to talk about was measurement.
Steve: You darn skippy, I do. The, it’s, and I’ll preface this by saying one of my, one of my colleagues is doing some research on the fact that PR folks are not math people, or they chose PR because they’re not math people. And I teach analytics. And yeah there’s some math. But the focus is more strategic.
It’s more about understanding the necessity of having our communication tactics and strategies [00:08:00] that support having those in alignment. With organizational objectives, the big mission, vision, values, kinds of things that organizations spend a lot of time focusing on the things that the reason they exist.
And then the measurable organizational impacts increases in reputation. Increased number of leads, sales reaching sales targets, things that they measure, that they care about, because spoiler alert, they don’t care about likes. They don’t care.
Michelle: Aren’t likes vanity? It’s just a vanity thing, right?
Steve: Yeah, vanity metrics and don’t even get me started on AVEs.
Michelle: And I’m going to say, and I hate, I’m sorry to say, that I am still [00:09:00] sometimes asked about that. I
Steve: am not, I’m not surprised.
Michelle: It’s so hard because I feel like even if you work, on a, on the client side, if you have a client that understands that those are not necessarily AVs are not the way the upper management is like, there’s something about that.
There’s a disconnect there because they don’t understand. And I don’t know if they just don’t want to educate them or they can’t educate. I don’t understand where the disconnect is, but that’s where I feel like the need or the pressure or the request or whatever, that’s where that’s coming from. Instead of just trusting that, PR knows what they’re doing, and here’s how we’re measuring, and here’s, what matters.
I don’t know.
Steve: That’s, and that’s a perfect segue to what I have started structuring this analytics course around. And that is the amic integrated evaluation framework. So if nobody’s heard of the integrated evaluation framework and gosh, I’ve [00:10:00] moved around so much. I’ve gone out of focus.
There it is. Look at that. There’s the link right up there. Thank you for that. They I’m gonna have to fix this. Oh, don’t worry. There we go, because otherwise I look like I’m in a movie scene or something. Anyway I use, I introduce the students to the Amec framework, which if you’re not familiar with it, it forces you as the communicator to think about organizational objectives.
Why is your client, why is your company in business? Why do they exist? And then making sure that you have the discipline of walking through, gathering the necessary inputs, the information, the research, identifying and defining clearly who your audience is, developing the activities, the things that we love so much.
Those the fun stuff, the tactics and making sure that we know [00:11:00] how we’re going to measure the effectiveness of those. And, oh, by the way, If those tactics are then yielding the outcomes in our audiences, the changing thing, changes in thinking and feeling and behavior in them, that will help to drive the organizational impacts that our bosses do care about,
Michelle: the
Steve: leads, the sales, the reputation enhancement, any of those kinds of things.
Michelle: And I don’t know if it all can be measured. That’s always been my question or concern because when Johnna Burke was here, who is the, I believe the president of AMEC, she would say, PR ladders up, it’s not like we’re going to measure it. And it’s some little bubble over here, which is, I think what some people try to do.
And I just don’t think that’s possible. And I don’t even think it’s possible to measure always the. Impact that what you’re doing, no,
Steve: and I know, [00:12:00] and I agree with you. It’s not always possible. But if we don’t put the pieces in place, we will never know. Yeah. Because if we continue to focus on the vanity measures of likes and shares and even reach, which everybody obsesses about if we focus only on those things,
Michelle: We’re
Steve: not going to get where we’re not going to be able to establish the bigger picture.
Michelle: Yeah, at least
Steve: this way, if we’re thinking through it holistically. Knowing what changes we need to have happen in the audience for them to do what we want them to do when they cross our message, then we can start to maybe do some more research, more digging that will help. us then understand, okay did they do that because of our messenger?
[00:13:00] Was it completely coincidental?
Michelle: Yeah. I think just like asking more questions, what do we want to measure? What are we, and then benchmarking, of course is another part of it. Where are we starting from? And I just, I, sometimes I don’t think those questions are asked and which immediately then I don’t, you’re doomed to failure or, you’re not really going to maybe be able to provide any.
True, measurement about what is moving the needle, or if the needle has moved or, whatever.
Steve: Yeah, there’s a lot. There is a lot. But again, the reason I like the framework is that it’s. It’s comprehensive which is also, frankly, it’s a bit of a downside because it is so comprehensive.
You can get a little bit overwhelmed by it, especially when you’re first starting to become acquainted with it. I know that’s an experience that I have with students is that, do we have to do this all the time? No, you [00:14:00] don’t. But you need to, at the very least. Stop and think is what we’re doing.
Is this really cool, new, shiny, whatever in alignment with an organizational objective. And just as an aside, when the, one of the ways that I teach this is we look at a campaign called the Whopper Detour that was run by Burger King using geofencing. Yeah, it was, and it was a really cool campaign.
And so they watched that after they’ve learned about the Amec framework. Okay. Now. This is probably how it came about. Somebody came into a meeting and said, Hey, you know what? Have you heard about geofencing? It’s this really cool technology. This is how it works. I bet we could do something really cool with it.
Now, you have Burger King’s budget, you can afford to, you can afford to, waste a little bit of money here and there. But [00:15:00] even even still, it’s a fairly large investment. So then I challenge the students, okay, now, if they had the benefit of using the Amec framework, how do you think they might have gone about looking to see if this might, in fact, be a good measurable tactic?
And then they go through they fill it out and they wind up coming up with a pretty close to a hundred percent success rate determining what the. What the appropriate measurement points would be.
Michelle: That’s, and that’s something that we didn’t really have years ago, was that framework to even refer to.
But I think you’re right that it can be overwhelming, so I’m so glad that you’re walking them through, a campaign and example
Steve: that We spend a lot of time Going through it. I even developed a board game. Oh. [00:16:00] Yeah. And if you find me on, if you find me on LinkedIn I’ll be happy to share the information with you about the game.
There’s a post in my feed about about it. There’s some photographs of what it looks like but I created the board game to help them better understand it.
Michelle: That’s really cool. That’s that would, that makes it fun, right?
Steve: Try to.
Michelle: I don’t know. I never thought of measurement as being fun.
I think it’s necessary, but
Steve: they definitely don’t think of it as fun.
Michelle: Yeah,
Steve: they until we get to the end and they, and yeah, and I read their final reflections at the end of, at the end of the semester, and for the most part, they, they get it, they understand the importance, they understand why we go through the effort and realize that it’s not it’s not something that’s going to break your brain.
Michelle: Yeah that’s I think that’s part of it, [00:17:00] too. I think there’s been maybe a little bit of fear around it because we don’t understand. So what we don’t understand sometimes we can fear and therefore we avoid it or we get overwhelmed and just throw up our hands and run away. And yeah, I think that those are Just trying to get over that even is okay this is nothing to be afraid of.
We need to just look and, just take the time to at least, examine and I would suggest that people go to the to the resource page and take a look at those because the framework is there and it is free to just pull
Steve: and honestly, the other thing that it’s good for it’s good as a teaching tool.
Okay. With your clients or with your bosses. to take, when you have an assignment, show them that you’re thinking at this strategic level, that you’re not thinking at a purely tactical level. And that’s the kind of thing that, that, that helps to separate. Really excellent PR practitioners from really good ones.
Michelle: [00:18:00] I think, I think a lot of us speaking as a PR practitioner would like to, I’m constantly educating and trying to educate prospective clients and existing clients. But it’s sometimes they don’t want to hear it. Sometimes I feel like they, it’s just, they just want to get the job done.
They’re just trying to get the budget, just trying to survive and get through another month or whatever. It’s just, it’s, I think it’s a challenge, but I do think it’s incumbent upon us to continue to try and do what we can as far as educating them why these things matter and why this is something to look at versus what we maybe looked at in the past, like a V.
So
Steve: Exactly. Because I’m from Philadelphia, the there’s, this quote has been attributed to John Wanamaker, but I’m not 100 percent sure that it’s accurate. I know I’m wasting my, half of my ad budget, I just don’t know which half. And I remember when I started out in the business, that, that was the go to.
That was what we said, I know I’m wasting half of [00:19:00] the budget, I just don’t know, we don’t know which half. And so you just threw stuff against the wall. Yeah. And those days are
Michelle: very
Steve: long gone.
Michelle: I wish they were long gone, but I can tell you that they’re so long gone.
Steve: Days when we should be allowing that or normalizing it. Yeah,
Michelle: I’m going to, we’re directing this for younger, newer not necessarily younger, but new people newer to PR or those who are trying to level up their skill set. And I’m just going to say that I think sometimes you have to have the confidence, which takes time to build to be able to have those conversations, because it sounds like you’re pushing back sometimes and i, I am confident in my ability to do that. Once I’ve established a relationship with a client, I can have that discussion, at least introduce the idea of it. But sometimes I feel like that’s not fair to expect with somebody who’s like brand new to their role or, just, they just don’t maybe have that.
Because I’m [00:20:00] always saying, gosh, why don’t we ask more questions? And I think I remember what I was like. When I started out, I wouldn’t have even maybe known what to ask or how to ask or had the hooks, but it really get in there and have that conversation. So I would just say I would encourage people to try to find to build a trusting relationship with their manager or, someone that they can actually.
Have that discussion with if their organization is looking at these outdated metrics way to measure their campaigns.
Steve: And I truly do believe that by even if you don’t use the framework for fully for measurement, if you are using it for planning purposes and to demonstrate to your bosses that this is how you think.
I think that’s in the long run a very good thing.
Michelle: Yeah. You would again, you would think so. And if your organization doesn’t [00:21:00] value that that’s always something to consider too. Yes,
Steve: it is.
Michelle: I just was talking to a PR student. He wanted to interview me for one of his classes.
And I was saying, like when you’re starting out in your career, you may change jobs and you’re always going to learn things that you love to do and things that you don’t love so much to do. So it’s a journey and you should always be, looking at, what do you want in your next.
role, maybe, like just evaluate that. So this is another point. I think if your organization values strategic thinking, which hopefully they do that’s a good sign. I think so. Let’s, I think we’ve got that covered. Let’s go on, talk about everyone’s favorite topic, which is how can PR pros stay up to speed on generative AI?
What are your You
Steve: can’t,
you can’t, I’m being facetious, of [00:22:00] course. Actually, am I?
Michelle: That’s what I mean, there’s some truth there, I don’t know.
Steve: There is, and it’s, I read an article a number of years ago. The quote that I remember from it was that we’re living in the age of accelerations. And I found that quote to be rather powerful.
And I always talk about it when we discuss communication technology and. It’s
it’s the probably the biggest challenge that we have at the moment, only because the changes are coming so fast and furious. At this point. I remember in 2018 when I first started talking about chat GPT in my classes. It was, yeah, this is on the horizon, and it’s going to be impactful, but we don’t know how much yet.
And that was because it was, at the time, it was GPT 2. It wasn’t, didn’t even have the name CHAP [00:23:00] GPT. It was GPT 2. And then fast forward to its release. two years ago, a little over two years ago now. And boom, it, the, it has catapulted. And the important thing for everybody to remember is there’s nobody who has more than two years of experience in this because that’s, as long as it’s been around in its current popular accessible form.
So nobody’s got this massive amount of. Of deep background on it. Yes. There are people who Spend a lot of time. Studying it and very carefully analyzing it there’s a professor at penn. His name is ethan mollick. I definitely recommend Following him on linkedin.
He has he’s always keeping up to date with the new models what it can do he’s sharing research [00:24:00] practical applications He’s a he’s Really good follow. That will help you to keep up with it. But at this point, it’s you truly you need to practice with it if you haven’t already done so.
You need to understand what its strengths are, what its limitations are. You need to experiment with it. But more, but even more so be comfortable with. when not to use it. And the PRSS the PRSA, excuse me, has a nice set of guidelines available for artificial intelligence, generative artificial intelligence use.
And they’ve aligned the professional practices with the various facets of the, of their code of [00:25:00] ethics. And I think it’s, And I think that’s as good a set of guidelines as you can have as, as far as, practical approach, a practical schema for for using it in an ethical way.
I dived in the first, started using it, requiring it in my PR writing class very early on because I knew it was going to be. a reality. So better to have the students learn a little bit, have some opportunity to try these tools out than to get into the workforce and not have a single clue.
Michelle: Yeah. We also I want to touch this for a minute on legal leak around when that when it first, when all this first started a couple years ago, I was, that’s what I was one of the things I was most worried about was [00:26:00] just if I sign an NDA and I have. Confidential client, data, and I’m feeding it into the chat bot to spit out a press release, which is what some people were doing that could get me into trouble in addition to just, there’s a number of other issues with that, that I see, but but yeah, no, I wonder where we’re at.
I was following lawsuits and then it became hard to keep up. So I’d love to hear, Yeah,
Steve: And the your hesitancy to put content into these training models is well, I think, reasoned. And in fact, they an indiscriminate, shall we say, use of generative AI at Samsung about maybe a year and a half ago, I want to say.
Resulted in a ban of using the open model [00:27:00] at the company, as well as A couple of firings because people took proprietary information from a meeting and it into chat GPT to summarize the notes. And now I have colleagues in it who study how these models work and the risk, they have a different view on the risk.
Than I do. They insist that the models can’t use information that way,
but they’ve already been proven to plagiarize. Through a piece of fan fiction I won’t go into the details because it’s not safe for podcasts, but this particular fan fiction had a nomenclature around [00:28:00] various behaviors
Michelle: that
Steve: were not used anywhere else. It was a lingua franca that was truly unique and it was plagiarizing So it, it can.
Yeah. How much the models are changing, again that’s a little harder to keep up with. And honestly, the programmers who work on these systems confess that they don’t even know exactly how they work inside these black boxes that they’ve created. Yeah.
Michelle: No it’s concerning.
I, I understand it’s here.
Steve: There was, yeah, I was gonna say there was one, I just saw an article today that the headline read that chatbots [00:29:00] will change their behavior when they’re being studied.
Which is freaky. And I need to go back and read that, read the article and see exactly what that.
what that means.
Michelle: Yeah.
Steve: But they are quite adaptable.
Michelle: Yes. We have a question, so I’m going to put this on the screen.
Steve: Okay.
Michelle: For those established PR practitioners, how do we counter those who feel our writing style is AI based versus how we’ve been trained, exposed in the corporate world?
Steve: So if I’m understanding the question correctly, Sometimes. We, sometimes we start to rely heavily on business speak.
Which could sound like generative artificial intelligence because [00:30:00] there’s frankly quite a lot of business speak that’s out there that it’s been trained on. And because that’s what it’s trained on, that’s what it puts, that’s what it puts back.
And I’m not sure if that’s what the question is referring to. Yeah,
Michelle: I’m not sure myself, I read it as if you’re, I don’t know, if someone is questioning your writing style, if you’re an established PR pro, so I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I don’t
Steve: know.
I honestly don’t know how to answer that. Other than. Other than to say, continuing to make sure that what we write Is focused on our audiences. First and foremost, under doing the important human work, understanding the audience, understanding what their motivations are, what their [00:31:00] resistant points are, what their needs are.
And then crafting our messages so that we are trying to achieve the desired outcomes in their thinking and feeling and behavior. Again, going back to the conversation. Going back to that Amec model, that will help to drive the impacts that we want. So that’s, I hope that’s a helpful, at least partial response there.
Michelle: Yes. Here is a another topic. That’s related to AI. I think now we’re into an age of AI generated misinformation. So what about how do we how can those NPR manage their organization’s reputation and heaven forbid, we get into some kind of a crisis situation based on [00:32:00] misinformation that’s been generated about our, Organization.
So let’s talk about that a little bit.
Steve: Yeah. The we’ve seen already weaponized uses of misinformation that rely on the or that are launched using the capabilities of generative AI. And as the adage goes, and again, it’s been misattributed, but the lies will, lies get halfway around the world before the truth puts its pants on.
And that is, that remains a fact. And especially in our digital connected world. We already know that algorithms favor outrage. This was testified to before Congress back two, three years ago with with Facebook. They [00:33:00] Use outrage to drive engagement. So when there is something bad that happens, it’s going to move a lot faster.
Unfortunately and frankly, the best. The best advice I would give is investing in monitors, like having a good, solid system, set of systems in place to ensure that you are staying on top of everything that’s being said about your organization.
Michelle: Do you, I don’t want to put you on the spot. Do you have tools or anything that you recommend? Or is that not something you want to get into?
Steve: I personally love Signal. ai. Yeah, that it’s a good, it’s a really good solid monitoring system. And it is built on artificial intelligence.
Predictive artificial intelligence has a good solid model behind [00:34:00] it. And there are many others. And, you might find that you need a combination of tools. You might need. Brandwatch and Iconosquare, and you might need Meltwater. You might there’s, you might need TDIs. Broadcast there, there are all these monitoring tools that will work better for one organization or sector than they will for another.
Budgets.
Michelle: Yeah, I’m not a tool happy person. However, I work with a lot of smaller companies that don’t have the huge budgets and things for, a big agency and a lot of tools. But I think that there’s no way that you can. No, unless you have some tool in place to, to listen and yeah, I feel yeah, everybody can see how many likes a post gets, but they’re not really, that’s not the same as like listening on social for, any potential issues or, it’s better to [00:35:00] know right away because like you said, sometimes these things balloon and And just run rampant really pretty quickly.
So you have to know as soon as something starts to percolate before you. So you can address it. Yeah.
Steve: And having a tool that has sentiment analysis capability is really important. They’re not perfect, but having something in place is better than not having anything in place.
Something, a system that can try to suss out whether or not you’re getting a lot of negative coverage or a lot of neutral coverage.
Michelle: Let’s see. Oh we have another question. Oh, cool. Trisha. Thank you, Trisha. What percentage of likes or engagement do you attribute to bots?
Steve: All of it. No. I don’t know. I don’t have, I [00:36:00] honestly don’t know the answer to that question. Bots are definitely a problem, and they’re a bigger problem on, on, certain platforms.
I’m looking at Facebook and Twitter. I won’t use the new name. Sorry. But less I think, on spaces like blue sky. So I, I don’t have, I don’t have an accurate and accurate assessment of that off the top of my head.
Michelle: Let’s let’s think about, okay, moving on here. There were a couple other points thinking about, those newer to the PR profession that you feel are important.
And one was your network. So let’s talk about that.
Steve: Networks are oh so [00:37:00] critical. When you’re thinking about how do I stay on top of new new innovations in generative artificial intelligence? It can be hard to even start digging around. On your own.
Whereas if you have folks in your professional network who can, inspire you and point you in the point you in the right direction, then you know that I think that’s incredibly valuable following somebody like Greg Matusky with with Gregory FCA, who is he is a big proponent of generative AI in our space.
And there’s a wealth of information. So surrounding yourself with people who are in touch with these, with especially with the technology and issues around it is definitely a good way to keep yourself informed if nothing else. [00:38:00]
Michelle: Yeah, I would say Jonna Burke is another person. Jonna Burke, absolutely.
Again, she’s with AMEC and shares a lot of helpful, sometimes they do free, webinars or have, they publish, papers or whatever that might be helpful to,
Steve: to stay. Jonna Steph Bridgman is another another name that comes to mind. Oh gosh, there’s my mind’s going blank, but there are lots of good folks to follow out there.
Like I said, Ethan Mollick at Penn is really.
Michelle: Yep, I did put his LinkedIn in there.
Steve: Martin Waxman up in Canada, he’s great.
Michelle: Yep, I was just thinking about a conversation he and I had some time ago about crisis comms, and I was, we were talking about community and I was thinking about that, those tips still apply, because if somebody goes after your organization, if you have a strong community they’re going to come to your aid, they’re going to be there and good times and bad.
So that I feel like community is something that is coming [00:39:00] back and that’s not necessarily always under a PR, umbrella, but I do feel like
Steve: It’s, but we have we have an influence. on that. And that’s actually something we talk about in my analytics class. I hate the marketing phone, anybody that, because it’s inaccurate.
It’s a mountain. And the, the summit. Where we’re trying to get people is advocacy, but they’re not going to remain advocates Indefinitely. There’s a nurturing process. It takes place all along the way and most importantly is when we’ve invested so much Time and effort in getting them to the top of that mountain keeping them there so that they will be that Community that will help defend you when things go sideways When the bad news takes off And even with your monitoring systems in place, you’re struggling to keep up with it?
Michelle: Yeah, because they’ll just do it. They’ll just be there and just speak on your behalf. And, that [00:40:00] can and can’t be. Now it was great, but like in that situation, I think, we would welcome somebody who was out there seeing our praises or coming to our defense if we we’re having trouble trying to put out all the fires.
Yeah. What else? We, you talked about beyond getting a bachelor’s degree, maybe going on and getting going on for more education, getting a master’s. Yeah.
Steve: Yeah. And they’re there. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you briefly my situation with a master’s degree. I was very much a non traditional master’s student.
I earned my degree in 2007. I started. into communication practice in 1989. So let somebody else do the math on that. So I was very much a non traditional student. My bachelor’s degree was in French. So go figure. I had learned a lot along the way, [00:41:00] but I had gotten to a point in my career where I really needed something that said, yeah, this guy knows what he’s talking about.
I needed the proof point and a master’s degree seemed to be the way to do that. And it was probably the best professional decision I’ve made. It truly did open doors. And not only that, my company paid for it, which was very nice. But there are also certificate programs.
Again, shameless plug, Temple University. We have a post a post bachelor’s certificate program that also then applies to a graduate program. And I think ours happens to be one of the best in the country and it’s fully online, asynchronous and asynchronous online.
So you can, you can study it as you will. And of course there are other programs. I will acknowledge that. They’re not as [00:42:00]
Michelle: good as ours.
Steve: I think
Michelle: it was so it can be remote. It can be remote learning. Oh, that’s awesome.
Steve: Okay, that’s important. Yeah, it wasn’t. It wasn’t when I got my, my, my degree, but this particular program is. That’s opens it up a lot. Yep. Yep, it does. And we have a really good. We have a really good faculty of both full time as well as adjunct faculty that teach that program.
Michelle: That’s so important.
Steve: It really is it and honestly, regardless of where you get a graduate degree from I think it’s, I think it can be incredibly helpful. It’s less about learning those immediate skills and more about building the strategic base that’s so essential for applying those immediate tactical skills.
Michelle: Yeah. And I’m going to ask you another question in a minute, but first I want [00:43:00] to ask about internships because you mentioned that as important. Yes.
Steve: Flipping, just flipping the script around. Yeah. Our students desperately. Want internships and they are they first of all, it’s required to graduate.
They have to have at least 11 internship and most get multiple internships because for them it’s a it’s a valuable way. Not only to learn more directly from a from an organization, From a manager, but to put into practice what they’ve been learning in the classroom.
And and frankly, it works very nicely too, as almost like a reverse mentorship kind of arrangement with with the students sharing what they. are learning in their classes with the organizations that that take them on. And just as [00:44:00] a, just to air my own personal and professional feelings, pay your interns.
Michelle: And the other thing is just again, as a parent, I have seen that some internships are better than others. Some are very like, go sit in the corner and clean out the closet kind of things. Whereas others actually try to like, get them involved in real work, real activities that they’d be doing if they were on the job.
And I think that’s just crucial. If you’re a parent looking at colleges, Make sure to ask and look into that because it’s it’s important. That’s not what we’re here to talk about, but
Steve: It definitely is important.
Michelle: What is, so on this kind of dovetails right into this. What do employers want to see from new PR grads?
How do you have a sense of that?
Steve: Definitely, there, there are, again, there are a number of studies and The CPRE has done it does a regular study it was an article by one of our colleagues and her colleagues at Boston [00:45:00] University on this topic consistently right up there, writing very close behind it analytics and measurement.
They also are looking for creativity. They are looking for leadership skills. Those are all consistently among the top for new grads.
Michelle: And on that note, what about Oh,
Steve: and, oh, and problem solving. Oh, okay. Problem solving and related to higher level thinking, higher order thinking problem solving.
Critical thinking skills. Those are also,
Michelle: That’s that’s dying, isn’t it?
Steve: No not if I can help it.
Michelle: It just, I have to laugh because I’m, I just see that I’m seeing that like I said, it’s not funny, but okay. So on the, on this note, what about the ability to speak and present?
Steve: Is that? Oh yes. [00:46:00] Oh yeah. Yep. For sure. Yeah, communication skills, public speaking skills. Yes.
Michelle: Okay. Yeah, because I feel like that was something when I went to school that we didn’t really get too much experience in and I felt like that would have benefited me because I, if you’re a little bit more introverted, it can be very hard for you to stand up at a meeting even and just ask a question or like we were talking about earlier, just having the confidence to have those conversations.
So when you have that, yeah. Ability to have that presence. I think it’s really important. And of course, we’re not here to talk about personal branding, but of course, if they want to build their their career and continue to develop professionally, they will be probably wanting to do speaking engagements and things like that.
So I just think that’s something that’s really impressive when they have a presence and are able to present themselves professionally.
Steve: No, there is no question about it. No question at all. In fact, that was the public speaking was the first course I ever taught as an adjunct [00:47:00] and the university where I taught it.
It was not temple. It was a university called Arcadia here in suburban Philadelphia. They required it for every student graduate. Not just comp students, every student, because they play such a high value, as you were just saying, about how important it is to be able to express your ideas in a public forum, if that, whether that public forum is in front of 5, 000 people or five people.
Michelle: Yeah, I would say just get as much experience as you can. And no, it’s not always easy. Yes, you get nervous. It gets better the more you do it. Speaking from experience as somebody who’s not really, I’m more behind the scenes, getting the client ready to go in the spotlight, but the more you do it even if you’re a little uncomfortable at first, it does get a little bit easier.
I think you get used to it anyway. So
Steve: you do. And by starting out, if [00:48:00] I had students who would truly have preferred Unnecessary dental work to getting up and giving a speech. They were terrified. And by degrees, you can get more confident by starting with smaller groups that are friendly to you where the stakes are not high.
You have the freedom. To fail, quite frankly, to stumble over your words to completely forget what you’re doing. And that be okay. But continuing to practice. And refine it and hone those skills.
Michelle: We’re gonna be, is there anything else as we close out? If anyone has a question that’s listening or watching right now, please feel free to ask, but we’re getting [00:49:00] ready to wind down here a little bit. What else, what did we miss that you think is important?
Steve: So I’d like to flip it around too. If any, if anyone’s watching, listening, connect with me on LinkedIn. Are there things that you think our graduates should be learning that they’re not? Whatever that might be, hard skills, soft skills, let us know. I’m always interested to, to hear what needs and perceptions are out in the field.
Michelle: Yeah. I’ll put your LinkedIn up again.
Steve: Yeah, please.
Michelle: Yeah. And yeah, I, like I said, I, you and I go way back and I’m just so glad you were here today. And I I am really into credible sources and I feel that you are a very credible source. And I’m just I
Steve: appreciate that. I am yeah, again, happy to connect with anybody on LinkedIn.
And in real life if [00:50:00] anybody’s going to be at the IPR bridge conference in DC next month Stop by introduce yourself. I will be there.
Michelle: Yeah, that’d be great I want to thank everybody for being here. Of course. I thank steve very much in on march 19th at noon i’ll be back with peter himmler the founder of flatiron communications We’ll be talking about how to stay on top of the evolving mediaverse as things are changing there, too, so I hope that we will see you again then, and I just want to thank everyone so much.
Have a great day.
Steve: Thanks very much.
