I’m graduating next week! I was dreaming about this moment so many times and finally it’s going to happen. Well..to be honest I’m not so excited as I was thinking I would be while working hard on my assignments. Now I have another aim which seems to be more important and challenging. I need to find an interesting and well paid job where I can start developing as a professional. I’ve been to interviews with recruitment agencies, visited job fairs, subscribed to job alerts, but couldn’t find anything worthwhile yet. My main selling points are that I’m fluent in two languages, have a BA degree in PR from English university and working experience. I’ve noticed that there is no demand for PR practitioners speaking Russian in the UK. After looking through many job adverts and visiting online forums for Russian speaking professionals I came to conclusion that there are more opportunities for me in other sectors. I explored what was available and found an area that interests me: conference production. It looks like a challenging and rewarding area and there are vacancies for Russian speakers! The Russian economy is confidently growing and many conference production companies are rapidly expanding into this market.
To be successful a conference producer must have good communication, writing, research and networking skills. Knowledge of the trade media, industry reports and building relationships with opinion leaders are essential too. Sounds familiar? It reminds me the range of skills that any PR graduate should have and develop. I searched for blogs of conference producers and found only a few American bloggers. Hopefully, I will get a chance to become more familiar with this industry and start blogging about my experience from London very soon!

After finishing my studies a few weeks ago I got into looking -for -a -proper -job process which involved writing lots of covering letters, visiting recruitment web-sites and investigating various opportunities for Russian/English speaking graduates. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything related to the social media where Russian language is required. Probably, social media and online PR are still successfully practiced mostly by innovative and adventurous consultancies working mostly with Western European and American clients. Hopefully, one day the situation will change and I will get a chance to run social media campaigns in both languages. I’m glad that in England PROs understand the importance of the digital PR.

I’ve just read an article ‘When Daljit met David’ in careers section of this month’s PR Week issue which proved this tendency once again. Daljit Bhurji, the managing director of the Diffusion PR, a digital PR agency had a conversation with extremely experienced David Wynne-Morgan, the presedent of Pelham PR, who has been in the industry for more than half a century. The latter underlined the growing importance of the online media and the Internet in the PR activities. I learnt quite a few things from reading this article and  liked a lot Daljit’s approach to hiring graduates when he said that good training is essential, specifically in the things they would specifically need for a particular role. Considering the fact that he is the MD at the age of 29 I believe that there are plenty of things that he can teach This article reminded me about the importance of the social media and made me more confident in what kind of PR I want to do in future.

My dissertation supervisor Richard Bailey told me last week that he liked my work and was pleased with findings of my research. I’m glad I did well and all this time was not wasted. Here are a few paragraphs from my dissertation describing risks of PR consultancies blogs which were identified through literature review and interviews with social media experts.

The following factors were discovered as potential risks: these include the legal liability of bloggers in relation to confidential data. PR practitioners who are not familiar with copywriting laws are at risk of losing their jobs and opening themselves up to litigation if there is no clear blogging policy in the company. Blogging can also damage relationships with consultancy stakeholders if they find the content of the blog offensive. At the same time the negative consequences of blogging could be avoided by using common sense and following blogging policies.

Blogging is time-consuming and requires a lot of effort. This can be problematic for busy PR practitioners. Abandoned blogs have a negative impact on the reputation of consultancies showing lack of commitment and consistency. In general, having a blog can increase the chance for potential attacks on consultancy reputation.

In my opinion, PR practitioners should take risks; otherwise the space for creativity would be too limited. Blogging is a good way of demonstration the ability to handle negative comments. This is so important for any PR practitioner. Anyway, I’m going to talk about benefits of blogging in the next post.

I’ve just returned from Tallinn, Estonia where I stayed for a while and worked on the digital and interactive marketing essay. This is the last piece of coursework of my BA degree! I had to conduct an environmental analysis of factors influencing the Internet usage in the UK. I went through a few marketing reports, statistics web sites, and online news articles in and found out that the UK is one of the leading countries in Western Europe in the consumer and business adoption level of the Internet. Also it is the top country in terms of the legal environment for Internet users and broadband adoption.
However, in Tallinn free Wi-Fi spots are almost everywhere. In shopping centers, parks, petrol stations, cafes, bars, restaurants. Broadband speed is satisfying and connection is smooth. The most enjoyable part of this experience is that the access to the majority of Wi-Fi spots is completely free. This is why I always carried my laptop with me and worked on my essay whenever I felt like it. This is much more fun than spending all day in the library or at home.

I wish Leeds students will be able to experience the same in future. Sadly, my ubiquitous web browsing came to an end at the airport.

I’ve just realised that I haven’t written anything in a month. I remember when I started blogging I was very determined to be consistent and write a new post at least once a week. Obviously, I didn’t manage to walk my talk very well.  There were a few reasons why I stopped blogging regularly and lost motivation.
Firstly, I was very busy with my dissertation and portfolio of achievement which I had to hand in the beginning of April. Hopefully, my marks will justify the amount of time and efforts spent and I will continue feeling proud when I receive my results.
Secondly, I’ve changed my daily routine when I left Leeds and came to Tallinn, Estonia to do some work on the flat I’ve got here. May be that was not the best thing to do just before my final exam and an essay deadline, but I had to do it and I needed a break from my student schedule in Leeds. It was very easy to forget about the blogosphere and get involved into local affairs. However, wi-fi in Tallinn is almost everywhere, so there is no excuse to say that I didn’t have an access to the internet.
Thirdly, I decided not to look for a job before I finish my exams and this made me much less active online user. However, today I got this feeling that I miss social media and I’m ready to be back on track again.
Now, I’m going to re-read my dissertation and choose the most interesting findings for my next post. It will be too sad to abandon this blog as well as my dream to become a social media expert. 
I’m back from Estonian relaxation break. 

Today I’ve decided to have a break from writing my dissertation and to stay away from a laptop for a while. I decided to read something not academic and not in English. I found a book ’The Witch of Portobello ‘by Paolo Coelho that I bought some time ago in Russia, but I didn’t have a chance to read. I used to read a lot Coelho books a few years ago. I really like his approach to life and his narrative style. After reading this book for some time I decided to find more information about it and went to Google. How surprised I was when I found out that Coelho became a social media activist! He’s got a profile on a Facebook, Youtube, My Space, Flicker and his own blog. There is an interesting competition going for his readers who would like to contribute into the film based on ‘The Witch of Portobello’. I found the trailer for the competition very inspiring.

Well, instead of reading the book I ended up reading Coelho’s blog and watching Youtube videos about him. Social media got me again!

I’ve spoken on the phone with Stephen Davies recently about my research on social media. I asked him why did he start blogging. He told me that he followed an example of his tutor Philip Young when he was a second year student at the University of Sunderland. He had been always interested in Internet and was curious to experience blogging.  Now he’s got around 1500 RSS subscribers and his blog became popular among PR practitioners. Stephen didn’t expect this popularity when he started blogging. Actually, his tutor was concerned that Stephen could post something embarrassing about himself or the university. Obviously, Stephen is a very intelligent guy and he used blogging to become visible in the PR industry. He has made lots of friends all over the world and had a few great job offers.

Stephen’s example is very inspiring, but how did he manage to reach the status of the credible blogger and become the social media expert in two years after graduation? He told me that to be successful a blogger should be dedicated, regular and to post news relevant to the industry. It’s essential to be passionate about social media and enjoy reading other blogs.

In the last few years social media has become hot topic not only in business, but among academics too. For example Leeds Metropolitan University Masters Students in Marketing have to blog to get assessed. My tutor Richard Bailey has been to The Euprera EuroBlog2008 Symposium where academics were discussing approaches to teaching social media to students.

It looks like in a couple of years all PR and Marketing students will be blogging as part of their courses. The blogosphere will expand; hopefully there will be more interesting and credible blogs. Another thing I’ve noticed is that all PR bloggers I’ve interviewed recently were males. Why there are not as many good female bloggers ? Is it because of unwillingness to learn about blogging softwares or something else?

I have been having issues with university group work practice since I started studying in UK.  I didn’t like the idea of sharing the mark with other students because it reminded me communistic approach which I had to experience myself growing up is USSR. This week has proved once again that university group work doesn’t mean anything like team work in business. In reality it can become a big obstacle on someone’s way to get good marks and earn a good reputation among tutors and other students.

I’m older  than majority of students in my course, so  I didn’t spend much time socialising with others on my first year. I was learning English culture while working part-time, doing short-term placements and exploring media. I didn’t know much people from my course and I found it difficult to get into groups for assignments with people who wanted to work hard. Sometimes I ended up being in groups with random students. I realised that people have different motivations, learning abilities etc.  I had to do some projects with students who didn’t care and I was the one who did the work. That was hard considering the fact that English is not my first language. 

I learned about the real team work when I was on a year placement in Chameleon PR. There is such a huge difference when professionals work on a business project comparing to students! The main difference is that everyone is motivated by money and there is always a senior colleague who’s monitoring the work progress. Another point is that people working in the office have been selected to do the job, so they are capable to deliver the results.

 On the third year I didn’t expect that I will have to work with people who you have to baby-sit and ask them not to reference www.goldenessays.com in their reports. I was hoping that final year students have changed their attitudes and became more responsible and knowledgeable. After such a frustrating experience I really doubt arguments of our tutors that group work is the way to learn how to work in a team. I wonder if employers are buying this skill on graduates CVs. Also I am very interested if similar things could happen in PR consultancies.  

I’m proud of myself and enjoy the fact that PR practitioners I’ve met so far while exploring social media are very nice, knowleadgeable and full of fresh and interesting ideas.

The reason for my optimistic mood in a last day of rainy winter is that I’ve done already three interviews for my dissertation about risks and benefits of PR consultancy blogs.

The first person I spoke to was Stuart Bruce MD of the Wolfstar Consultancy in Leeds. They are based in the most spacious office I’ve ever seen ; The Half Roundhouse Business Park which have been restored from the former locomotive engineering buildings. I think it’s a great idea to locate offices in such an unusual place. It must be very stimulating for creative thinking.

I came to London this morning to meet with more social media activists. I had a nice coffee and very informative conversation with Stephen Waddington and Tim Hoang from The Rainier PR. At this point I noticed that some gaps in the theoretical part of my research are filling by the answers of my interviewees. That’s great! I always preferred ‘ the real world PR approach’ to academic theories. Don’t get me wrong I get a lot from my degree, but reading academic articles makes me sleepy and I have to eat a lot of chocolate to cheer up.

The last person I met today was Brendan Cooper from Porter Novelli. I am going to use his The PR Friendly Index model while analysing effectiveness of some tech PR consultancy blogs in my research. I really enjoyed talking to him and loved his passionate approach to social media. Our conversation helped me to understand some very important issues on blogging policies.

I want to say a big thank you to you all for your time and help!

I am very happy today, because of some nice PR practitioners who agreed to meet me regarding my research. Today I’ve managed to arrange a few interviews which will enable me to get essential information for my dissertation project. The research objective is to identify ways of evaluating the effectiveness of business blogs in PR consultancies. I have to find answers to the following questions in order to produce a decent work.

• What kind of criteria should be used for assessing the effectiveness of PR Consultancy blogs?
• What are the benefits of running a PR consultancy blog?
• What are the risks of running a PR consultancy blog?

Despite the fact that I am guided by experienced and helpful supervisor Richard Bailey this work requires a high degree of self- motivation and determination. That’s why I need to get inspiration on a regularly basis. I got very inspired when Stuart Bruce from Wolfstar PR, Brendan Cooper from Porter Novelli and Stephen Waddington from Rainier PR agreed to meet me and to spend their expensive time with a student!