Sunday, November 23, 2008

MSU Meets Social Networking

The guest speaker in class was very interesting! I think it was a wonderful opportunity for our class to be able to hear first-hand how the university is working to keep up with the changing times. As Missouri State grows, it will be more and more imperative that we engage in these tools to keep up with other schools who may have more money and better recruiting resources than we do.

I did find it extremely interesting that Mr. Mitchell does not have a background in Public Relations. I guess since we talk about these issues and tools so much in our class, I just assumed that he would have some sort of background in PR. Although he does not have a PR background, I do believe that Mr. Mitchell is doing a great job with social media, especially with the amount of time is he given each week to devote to social media. I believe that to truly take Missouri State's social media network to the next level, Mr. Mitchell needs to be given more time to focus on these aspects. Likewise, I believe it would be fruitful for him to have the aide of someone in the University Communications office who is trained in public relations and creating and maintaining relationships with various publics. I really think that these would be good steps for our university to take.

Would I like to have his job? I don't think his job would be horrible, I just don't think that I would be very good at it! :) I think I would be fine with the social media aspects, but so much of his job is devoted to other aspects, such as creating videos, editing sound clips, etc., and I do not feel that I have the background to do a good job in these areas. However, I think that anyone who had the time to devote to being an assistant to Mr. Mitchell would greatly benefit from the experience.

3 comments:

Natalie said...

I agree that he was a great speaker! I too found it surprising that he did not have a background in pr, since this is such an important part of social networking. Regardless, I think he does a great job! Nice post!

Jameser said...

I agree! I think that when he hires an aid, that he should hire someone who has some training or background in PR/marketing. Additionally, if they have experience with online social media applications that would be a huge bonus! I don't think it is necessary though, because (in my opinion) it would be easier to learn to use those than it would to learn how to be an effective PR practitioner.

AbLoG4U said...

Keshia, I agree that we pr people would be great folks to manage social media like Brad is doing (not to say he isn't doing a great job, b/c he is!). I could come up with a whole list of places I have worked/interned/visited that could utilize social media. Maybe one of us will be lucky enough to get a job doing a similar job for another organization...