Power to the People

Yesterday’s blog post spoke about what I wanted to gain from the opportunity to be a faculty fellow. But as I mentioned, it is a give and take relationship.  Here is my paragraph from my application regarding what I could share.

            How I can add to the sponsoring company

One area of expertise, I could provide to practitioners is in social media. As you can gather from my enclosed CV, I have done numerous research projects involving social media and have attended and presented at conferences, both large and small, on this emerging topic. Additionally I recently implemented a social media minor here at ONU and teach the three main courses regarding the subject including: Social Media Principles, Social Media Campaigns and Digital Branding.

I have also developed an expertise in writing. I have a love-hate relationship with my AP manual. My students also affectionately know me as the red pen queen. This skill set has served me well in teaching our public relations writing courses.  I enjoy editing and would delight in helping write or edit any pieces for the sponsoring organization.

In return for all the things FPL has done for me to help in my continued learning, I agreed to present a workshop on the mechanics of social media to share some of my expertise. I was supplying power through shared knowledge!

During meetings throughout the fellowship I would ask those who I met what they wanted to learn from the workshop. What was something that he or she wanted me to include in the presentation?

The answers ranged from one end of the spectrum to the other. Some answered very specific such as, how to measure ROI on a particular video.  Others stayed very general asking for best practices to keep corporate jargon out of all writing pieces.

I compiled a list and began to create a Prezi presentation. I decided to structure my workshop by lecturing first. After 40 minutes of listening to me, attendees were broken into groups and given a press release. Each group was then asked to collaborate and develop a mini-promotion strategy (if needed) to present to all attendees.   

I was pleasantly surprised how engaged attendees were in the group activity.  Scheduled to be completed at a certain time, most stayed and wanted to participate in the lively discussion that took place after the allotted time.

I’ve included screen shots of the infograph below. My hope is that the next time attendees from the workshop begin to put together their campaign plan they will remember the lessons from the workshop. Implementing just one lesson learned will make their social media tactics even more powerful!