Auburn University’s Robert French Develops New Process for Social Media Press Releases
September 10, 2006 by Brian Solis
Social Media Club is about sharing new information and highlighting advancements and best practices in our industry. I wanted to take a moment to recognize the efforts made by Robert French recently around the Social Media Press Release (SMPR) movement.
Robert French runs InfoOpinons?, a blog that was created to help him, and his PR students at Auburn University, learn together. He says in his bio, “None of us pretends to know everything and we’ll likely learn from you. We blog in our classes. It is all about becoming familiar with Word-of-Mouth (WOM) or WOMM, Word-of-Mouth Marketing.”
Recently, French introduced a process through which students may practice creating versions of Todd Defren’s social media press release template.
For their Fall classes, French has created a new site: The Loveliest Village Newsroom. This is part of a larger site where students will be posting news and feature stories they will write and produce (audio and video) during the semester. The Loveliest Village utilizes blogs, a wiki, Flickr, del.icio.us and is intended to provide experiential learning.
In June, I wrote a post, “Colleges Send Marketing/PR Graduates to Workforce Ill-Prepared,” which basically discussed exactly what the headline implies. I’ve hired far too many PR graduates who were not adequately prepared for the day-to-day regiment of a PR career. French is one of many educators looking to change that…
We at Social Media Club applaud Robert French. His actions here will echo far beyond the SMPR. His students will achieve greater success after graduation because of his dedication to education and his passion for embracing new technologies as part of the PR craft.
Thank you for the kind comments, Brian.
We’ll be watching the work of the Social Media Club and listening to the NMRCast in class, too. We want our students to have a broad view of current trends in PR and marketing.
Thank you for checking in on our project. I encourage all to visit and comment providing support and constructive criticism to all of us.
I’m still seeking a coder/developer to assist in further adaptation of the Structured Blogging plugin. Even willing to pay, if I can afford it.
Thank you.
[...] Robert French’s incorporation of social media in the classroom has not only been noted by Edelman. Recently, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) published an article about his unique curriculum titled “Blog U” in the summer issue of its magazine, The Strategist. French’s work with the students has also been praised on a number of blogs including Lee Hopkins’ Better Communication Results and the Social Media Club. [...]