PR Students and Social Media Communications

Picture by LumaxartOver the last month I gave a series of guest lectures at the Erasmus Hogeschool to last year Public Relations students in Brussels.

The school integrated my old school where I used to study PR (a very, very long time ago) and I was really honored to be asked to teach there.

The students were great; an interactive, motivated bunch with pertinent questions and remarks about social media and PR.

In fact, I learned a lot of things about what I consider my profession thanks to their thoughts and reflections on the subject.

Here are some of the points that struck me:

• The sessions confirmed to me that it is not because most of them are active users of social media that they also "automatically" see the possible connection with business communications. 
• About 90% of the students didn't have a LinkedIn account although they are currently looking for an internship and will be looking for a job next year.
• Almost all of them were very much aware of their privacy on Facebook and didn't keep the default settings.
• None of them were looking to do an internship in agency. Some of them have tried but received no response or were still waiting for one after months...!

These sessions with the students and conversations with Liliane Priem, the teacher responsible for the curriculum made it clear that there is a need to integrate social media education in business communications studies and that we, experienced professionals have a role to play here.

This is a point I also made to my peers at the EACD and I do hope we'll be discussing this topic soon and find ways to help the next generation PR professionals in this area.

If you would know of schools or universities who have successfully integrated the broad topic of social media communications into their PR curriculum, please let me know. We can only learn from each other.

Thanks !