Learning new tricks: how social media is revolutionising the role of the PR professional in Higher Education

Yesterday I delivered two workshops to a number of delegates at the EUPRIO annual conference in Averio, Portugal. My session was one of seven on the progamme, all running twice that morning. Across the two workshops I seem to have been joined by more than half the conference delegation. This staggered me but just goes to show that European university PR professionals are beginning to take social media more seriously and are keen to learn more.

One of the things I mentioned in the workshop was slideshare. In my usual style I have uploaded the slides to slideshare, and embedded them here for you to view at your leisure.

Learning new tricks: how social media is revolutionising the role of the PR professional

View more documents from Tracy Playle.

Please note that the images used in these slides are not for reproduction, but many are available for you to purchase and download inexpensively on istockphoto, another resource that I mentioned to the delegates.

How is social media changing the role of the PR professional?

I'm leading a workshop in Portugal next week at the EUPRIO annual conference on the theme of how social media is impacting on the role of the PR professional. The fact that I'm going to be using the conference facebook group to ask this question of delegates before the conference, and using twitter to ask the community there the same question goes some way to answering this question for me (or at least shows how I personally use social media to benefit me and my work).

I know my own thoughts on the question, and will share them along with some case studies at the conference. However, in the spirit of good preparation and sharing some useful insights, I'm keen to gather others' thoughts on:

• how social and digital media has impacted on priorities of the PR professional


• has it impacted on the working hours or demands on your time?


• have you had to change your approach to press and media relations because of social media?


• has social media opened new opportunities for press and media relations?


• are you increasingly cutting the journalist out and communicating directly via online spaces?


• have you had to develop any new skills as a consequence of the rise in online and social media?

Look forward to hearing your contributions.

Top 100 websites students visit

In response to an enquiry by London Business School, Hitwise has produced a list of the top 100 websites visited by students in May 2009. Quite a useful list for those of us working in Higher Education communications. It's available to view here.