I’d also suggest the obstacle of not having the experience many firms seek when making a hire is eroding. With a little creativity and a demonstrated ability to incorporate social media into strategic planning, students have an opportunity to build a portfolio and their own hands-on experience without necessarily needing a job to do it.

Like Rayanne, I was lucky enough to have a professor– Gary Schlee– who was experienced enough in SM to instill it in his curriculum. I attribute having to create and maintain a blog in his Writing class to the reason why I’m so involved in the space today.

As Bill mentioned, students experience with SM pretty much ends with Facebook and MySpace. Provide them a list of some top PR blogs to visit and start commenting. I learned alot just by browsing the blogrolls of blogs like yours.

You have an open invitation to come to Algonquin, as you know.

This thread has been helpful to me as well in my new role at Algonquin, so thanks everyone for the advice.

Stephen

1. Listen – A lot of PR is about listening, and students can treat their learning process the same way they should treat a communications plan. One can learn a great deal about PR with little more than an RSS reader and a twitter account. I’ve learned as much through blogs as I have through class, and if you want to know what’s really going on in PR outside of your textbook social media is where to find it.

2. Do it – It’s free, easy and fun to try, so why not give it a shot? Also, if you plan on ever giving a client any sort of advice about the online space, you had better walk the walk. This is one type of media that you need to do, not just absorb.

3. Engage – This is really all about dialogue and conversing with real people, so approach it as such. You’ll catch on to the rest.

The bottom line for students: try it out! At the very least it will be a very valuable resource to learn about PR. I won’t pretend that I’m the most active blogger/twitterer out there, but the rewards are tremendous. You will get back as much (or more) than you put in.

You got some great advice here! FWIW, I wrote a post about how to approach mommy bloggers (or, for that matter, any bloggers) with a pitch after we discussed it at Third Tuesday talk last year. It’s here: http://danigirl.ca/blog/2007/10/16/the-best-way-to-appeal-to-a-blogger-is-through-her-ego/

To a dismaying degree, I still find myself trying to bridge the digital natives with those waiting around for the cluetrain. I’m hardly an SM expert, but am viewed as a go-to among some of my peers because they are exceedingly uncomfortable with social media tools. And others use SM for personal reaons, but don’t see the business opportunities.

Some get it, some don’t. And those who think they get it may ask for social media tools for the wrong reasons. Again I think it’s important to let students know these are important skills that may not be viewed as important by everyone — even if they need it.

LORI