Copyright © 2019.
PRSA Silicon Valley. All Rights Reserved.
PRSA Silicon Valley. All Rights Reserved.
Students learning hands-on strategic development
Cross-departmental learning
A modular and scalable approach
Direct Cost: $3,600
Indirect Cost: $750
Twelve weeks of personalized training
The curriculum was designed on what our intern would likely work on in their first positions, such as writing agendas, recap reports, status reports, implementing presentations, and managing their projects
“My internship with PRSA-SV has taught me lessons I will carry with me into my next internship and future career once I graduate college. I now consider these lessons useful tools I might not have gained in a classroom setting.”
We are proud of our PRSA-Silicon Valley intern, Raina Stroescu. She is currently a student at the University of Oklahoma, studying Public Relations. Read about Raina’s key takeaways during her internship below.
Within the past month, my supervisor Mega S. Jewell and I have been able to work together on developing a public relations strategy for PRSA-SV’s (Public Relations Society of America – Silicon Valley) Friday Forum. Friday Forum is PRSA-SV’s weekly educational and informational production where guest speakers are brought in to discuss important topics for viewers. We created this strategy to gain media coverage and increase brand awareness, because we know Friday Forum is one of our greatest assets here at PRSA-SV and is beneficial to a variety of audiences.
Before beginning the public relations strategy I was not familiar with what I was getting into. I assumed it would be similar to a marketing strategy; however, the public relations strategy is more geared towards “how can we attract the media to our product/service” and “prove the relevancy of Friday Forum to the public” rather than promoting strictly to a consumer. Some aspects of our implementation required us to focus on social media followers, but ultimately an increase in following, engagement, or shares will increase the attention we could potentially gain from the media as well.
The public relations strategy included various media relationship-building tools such as press releases, media pitches, coverage trackers, and media training. As a public relations student, I was aware of these methods; however, did not fully understand the detail that went into planning and organization. This project allowed me to think outside the box and challenged me to always be one step ahead. It is important to be prepared in the public relations field, and creating this strategy for Friday Forum helped me anticipate the outcomes of potentially executing a public relations strategy.
At the beginning of my internship with PRSA-SV, I set some goals for myself of things I wanted to learn and accomplish during my time here. Several of them being learning how to read/analyze social analytics and developing leadership skills such as project management and communication. During the creation of this public relations strategy I gathered statistics for Twitter and Linkedin and learned how to analyze the trends and changes facing PRSA-SV currently and compared to previous months. We needed this information to produce end goals after carrying out the public relations strategy. Additionally, I became familiar with project management while working with Mega. I have gained organizational and planning skills while balancing projects with other coworkers. This is an important ability to obtain, because it allows me to become more efficient in my schooling and career; we all work together on a variety of projects simultaneously and must be able to work systematically with each other. Asking questions, voicing concerns, and communicating what task I was taking on that day was crucial to the success of the public relations strategy. I developed these project management skills also through reaching out to other coworkers if Mega or I did not have the information we needed. Through this, I have learned and been fully able to understand the importance of using all of my assets to be successful and create efficient and effective work.
