Welcome new students!
Looking over your comments to Josh’s post, many of you were both excited and apprehensive about blogging. I was particularly encouraged by the commenter who was worried that by stressing social media and blogging experience in the job and internship hunt, you students might be thrown into projects for which you were sort of, but not quite, ready. Why encouraged? Because knowing what you don’t know is the first step to finding out. I think it highly unlikely that any of you will be caught by this particular dilemma, especially with Robert as your teacher.
Another common question was how would/could blogging enhance your professional skill set? In lots of ways, all of which I am certain we will touch on over the coming months. In my opinion, however, the single most important benefit you will get from blogging – indeed that we all get from blogging – is that you can become a better writer.
The way to become a better writer is to write. A lot. We all know that. And we have the best of intentions. Really. But then we’re tired, or really busy, or whatever the excuse du jour. So we don’t do it. Blogging imposes a discipline that makes us do it. Which is a very good thing.
It’s also just about the single most important benefit for the field of public relations and communications. I’m sure you are aware of the latest flare up of the "press release is dead" meme. Well, I’m not going to talk about that in this post, because I do not think the the existence, or not, of news releases in any format, new or old, is the most important issue facing PR practitioners.
The biggest problem PR has, and the one that bolsters the negative image of "the flack," is the quality of writing and pitching. There are far too many crappy press releases and bad pitches. Tags, links and microformats don’t solve this problem. The only way to fix that problem is better writing.
So use your blog to become a better writer. It will be the biggest and longest lasting value you will get from blogging.
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