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 !

About Girl Geeks & Serbian PR

It has been way too long since I posted an update here...

I guess some of us bloggers spend too much time on Twitter sending short updates all day and then feel completely "empty" when it comes down to real writing...

In this blogpost I wanted to share some experiences from the last month. One is the Brussels Girl Geek Dinner we hosted at my employer's new information center called Big Blue. The other is a trip I made to Serbia for a conference on social media and public relations.

Let's start with Serbia.

View from the Beograd FortressI was invited by Andrea Brbaklić, the regional coordinator of the EACD for the area. She's Director of Communications at Erste Bank and organised a great gathering of PR professionals and social media people in Beograd.

The evening before the event I was invited for dinner with some of the most influential Serbian social media professionals.

I met with Milan Obradovic,  Marko Jevtic, Dragan Varagic, Jelena Jovanovic, Nebojsa Radovic, Dejan Bizinger and Nikola Jovanovic... (@Miss_Cybernaut @eniac @bizinger @varagic @milanobradovic @markojevtic @peckopivo on Twitter).

We spoke about social media, the web and many other topics but what was rather obvious from the start is that we're all struggling with the same issues; transparency, ROI, measurement, ethics and the decline of the mainstream press.

The day after I had 2 interviews with reporters from the Serbian media and foudn that there was a rather big focus on social networks, mainly Facebook. I had the impression that social media for the enterprise was a very new story for them.

Again I found similarities with typical Belgian reporter questions; talking and asking questions much more about the tools than about the principles that guide them.

During the conference later that day I spoke about how Van Marcke Group approaches social media and how we try to integrate both the principles and the tools in out normal, day to day business operations.

The people I met during those 3 days were all very nice and enthousiast. There is a real buzz in Beograd and social live is booming. I saw some of the best designed restaurants and bars there. Really would love to go back one day.

And then the Brussels Girl Geek Dinner.

Girl Geeks at the Big Blue Information CenterFor those of you who do not know the concept, Girl Geeks define these evening as such: "Girl Geek Dinners are events for females who class themselves as girly and geeky. The events have a technical focus and are light hearted and fun."

Clo Willaerts who organises these evenings and I got in touch. I suggested we do one in Big Blue, our new CO2 neutral building in Zaventem.

I knew the topic of ecology and CO2 reduction could interest the Girl Geeks and that they could be interested in meeting up with my boss Caroline Van Marcke, administrator of the Van Marcke Group (@carodou on Twitter) and our guest speaker Serge de Gheldere, ambassador for Al Gore on Climate Change.

The feedback from the crowd was great. It was out first offline "social media outreach" but I do think that by bringing people together and having a transparent and direct talk about our industry we showed that ecology and business can (and should) go hand in hand without going the "green washing" way.

The most important thing about these events is the feedback you get and the feeling that social media, if used in a transparent way, can really create long-term relationships. Check out some of the pictures slideshows and the video I made.

That's it for this time... Hope I can find the time to be more regular over the next weeks. Have fun in the meantime, and don't forget to comment.

Audio & Video Round Up of the European Communications Summit 2009

The 2 days of the European Communications Summit 2009 have come and gone.

Great speakers, a strong program, well organised (bravo Grit & team) and as always a great conference to network and meet people "IRL" like we say.

Below some flavors of the conference in the form of 2 audio extracts and video from the conference.

Médard Schoenmaeckers who blogs over at Shoes Talk & who is Head of Media Relations at Syngenta interviewed me about my new role of Chief Social Media Officer. You can listen to the interview here.

Here is the Audioboo I recorded on the last day with the thoughts about the conference still fresh on my mind. You can play the audio right below.

There is also the video stream which you can watch here.

Most of the keynotes and the presentations held in the same room where taped and life streamed from there. If you want to see my presentation; it is the 3rd chapter in the video stream menu ;-)

Let me know what you think.