semester has ended

Our class is over, but for many of the students in fall 2007 Social Media class the journey in understanding social media has just begun!

In this class, we spent most of the semester creating student-selected social media projects then worked to make those projects a success. From marketing via Facebook to making good ole fashioned business cards & hitting the pavement, each student worked to increase viewership of his or her project.

Another major project involved students coming up with a proposal for an organization to integrate social media. The best of the best were covered on the blog so if you're ever looking for inspiration then check them out.

We provided extensive live coverage of the social media conference UGA Connect. Live blogging, twitter'ing, flickr'ing, podcasts & interviews. We did the same for the college's PRSSA chapter event, Professional Connection. Was there anything the students didn't do in sharing the on-site experience with the out-of-town observers?

And then there was the 48 hours of Twitter assignment that everyone loved! What fun!

Thanks to everyone who followed & interacted with this class - especially the professionals who did a "digital drop-in" for our "social media spotlite" series.

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For more information about UGA's Grady College, please visit http://www.grady.uga.edu .

To contact Dr. Kaye Sweetser, please visit her blog or faculty page.

We Are Your Solution

Here we are class, we are the answer to the growing fear that the new breed of PR practitioners will not be ready for the constantly changing PR industry.

The PR Squared blog has placed our plight on its "Best of PR Squared" list. We, as PR undergraduates, are one of the most talked about concerns for the industry. In this post from the PR Squared blog in April of 2006 Todd Defren asks this question:

Wouldn't it be great if new PR graduates were on the cutting edge of technology innovations impacting the mediasphere?---Colleges are supposed to be the training ground for our future leaders in all fields; the place where the cutting-edge is honed... so why do most college comms programs focus on press releases (dying!?)and PR plans? When was the last time anyone asked a new college grad to draft a strategic PR plan, anyway? I'd rather that THEY are to equipped to teach ME about cool new ideas like, how Search Engine Optimization, wikis and RSS might impact the PR realm.

I think that this class in particular, Social Media: ADPR 5990, is the answer to this question. I have been in this class since August and I have learned more in the last three months than I have in the past couple years. Seriously, I never thought that I would be blogging, twittering and podcasting all at the same time. This is great!

There are many other great questions that Todd Defren asks on this post. He talks about how PR people interact with journalists and how undergraduate PR majors should be interacting with journalism majors. This rings a serious bell for me, since I am taking a News Writing and Reporting class with about 50 journalism majors. I can actually see how they work and what they look for!

So cheers to you class and cheers to the Grady College here at UGA for being ahead of the game in today's fast pace PR world.