I just returned from guest lecturing for Chris Boesen at American University’s School of Communication’s Public Communication department. The class was full of seniors who aspire to join the PR workforce. I didn’t talk gloom or doom because I told them a secret. I told all of the fresh-faced smarties the secret that will make them competitive if they’re smart: become social media producers instead of being just social media consumers: start blogging yourself into Edelman, Ogilvy, Burson, Ketchum, Fleishman, and Qorvis.
So, hopefully they’ll write themselves right into an entry-level position in 9 months when they all graduate — if they’re smart (and they seemed like they were — a bunch of them already blogged and Twittered, some of them on their own and some of them because of a class — who cares how!). I also told them that I would be happy to help them in any way they can now and in the future — with one condition: they they send me the link to their blog. If they can provide me with a link to a blog that is about digital PR, new PR, PR, communications, marketing, or social media, I am at their service. Otherwise, fuck ‘em! (it’s for their own good).
So, if you want to learn more about my experience guest lecturing around Washington, check out Chelsea Reviews My Comm350 Guest Lecture. I will plan on blogging about my experience at American University again; however, I am going to first see if anyone there has has much chutzpah as the lovely Miss Chelsea Clark did over at UMD.
Is it sort of like a Schrödinger’s cat situation: if Chris Boesen’s students reach out to me via a blog post, a tweet, via email, or via phone, I will follow-up with a very positive and adoring post (a total of two for American) but if it ends up being a dud (sorry Chris), then I will have to be more lukewarm in my follow-up review.
Oh, and if you’re curious as to what I went on about for 90-minutes, you can page through the below presentation at your leisure:
I love when we have guest lecturers in my COMM 437 class because my teacher is a colorful man so the guests we have tend to have that same colorful personality; Chris didn’t disappoint. Besides being funny and talking to us like we are adults, he was informative. Many of my fellow students and I had no idea there was even a division of our soon to be (let’s hope) PR profession that was dedicated to bloggers and online activity.
Chris’s blunt statement of, “I’ll help you in any way I can, but if you aren’t blogging, then I’ll just delete your email” definitely made a few of us think twice about our lack of blogging.
Honestly, I don’t blog because I don’t think I have anything interesting to write about…but after seeing Chris’s long, long, LONG list of blog posts, I’m sure I can come up with something!
Since so many of us are blogging virgins I wouldn’t mind having Chris come back to our class and going a little more in depth into the intricacies of blogging and digital PR. It was so much information to absorb in that one class.
Chris, I might be emailing you with some questions!