South of the Border at the Boston PRSA Event

I was delighted to leave the Granite State Monday evening to attend the Boston PRSA panel discussion on social media, featuring moderator John Cass and expert panelists Todd Deferen, Paul Gillin and Todd Van Hoosear. 

The event was extremely well attended, proving—as Gillin noted in his post on the panel—that learning about social media has truly become a top priority for PR practitioners.  Indeed, several of the attendees at my table (a mixed bag of in-house communications aides and agency folks) were entirely new to social media, but realized learning as much as possible about it was becoming essential to their careers.

The panelists covered the full range of topics, from the importance of updating the press release to implementing tricks of the trade for search engine optimization.  The most interesting question, and the only one that even came close to stumping the panel, involved finding resources on the technology of blogging, podcasting and other social media.  For example, how would someone new to podcasting go about setting one up?

This is something I haven’t seen a lot of in PR blogs (although I’m sure tech blogs contain plenty of resources on the topic). There is information abound regarding the particulars of applying social media to public relations strategy, but the discussion rarely turns to the technological aspects for the “non-geeks” among us. 

Is this is a topic the social media experts out there could delve into in the future?  Perhaps as a companion piece to all the PR 2.0 primers out there, such Kami Huyse’s excellent Corporate Blogging 101 post.

Thanks to everyone at PRSA Boston for a terrific, informative event.

Comments

[Kami Huyse]

You make an excellent point. Some of us have been around awhile and think that the topic of "how" is all used up, but forget new folks are coming in every day. I used to have an occasional "cool tools" feature. Perhaps it is time to resurrect it.

[John Cass]

Thanks for attending, great post. You focused on a question that still has a lot of relevancy, the basics of blogging and social media. The new pr wiki has a lot of links to articles that discuss the basics.

[Sarah]

Kami - Great idea. I know the resources are out there, but I often wonder if PR folks know where to look for them...

John -- Great to meet you at the event, and thanks for the tip!

[John Cass]

You are welcome!