Deirdre Breakenridge

There’s a little song I learned back in Girl Scouts (yes, I was a girl scout… rocked the cookie sales, horrid when it came to crafts!). Make new friends, but keep the old. One is sliver and the other gold.

This must be the week of great PR announcements. Here is another special announcement about our very first #PRStudChat Tweetup. I’m happy to announcement that #PRStudchat is hosting a casual/informal event on Wednesday, March 10th at Gary Vaynerchuk’s (@garyvee) Wine Library (@winelibrary) in Springfield, New Jersey from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was sitting on a Brand Hackers panel in New York City debating who owns social media. It was the public relations professionals vs. the digital creatives. Unfortunately, the conversation was off to an ugly start and the debate became heated. Now, for those who know me, you must have heard me say on Twitter, Facebook, on my blog or at one of my speaking events that “no one really owns social media, but we all play an extremely important role.”

I was really happy when Valerie Simon (@valeriesimon) and Arik Hanson (@arikhanson) approached me to participate in Help a PR Person Out (#HAPPO). What a wonderful way to share information and to help PR professionals with the job search by organizing an upcoming Twitter event. The goal: to help PR job seekers locate the numerous PR jobs that are finally becoming available.

I’ve been working on my presentation to the graduates of Syracuse University’s Masters of Science and Communications Management program. The University is holding it’s reunion this coming weekend and I’ll be presenting on PR 2.0 and the state of the industry. Part of my presentation discusses the results of the Vocus survey, “PR Planning in 2010.” I participated in a Vocus Webinar in November 2009 and wrote about some of the findings just after the event. I wanted to share with you a few more of the thoughts from the 1,800 PR and marketing professionals (who participated in the survey and who perform PR functions), with respect to their roles in 2010.

I traveled to Holland last week to present at the Coopr PR 2.0 launch event in Rotterdam.  It was an incredible trip and I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Ruud Bijl, the owner of Bijl PR and his PR team, and also spent time with @jodykoehler and @josgovaart who are driving force behind [...]

I have to admit I got caught up in the conversations on Twitter regarding Kim Kardashian and her new reality show about the world of public relations. The comments on Twitter ranged from “This is tragic for PR” to “Publicity does not equal public relations.” My immediate concern was that public relations would be portrayed the wrong way. Kim even stated in the People Magazine article, “It’s going to be really fun. It’ll show how there’s lots of drama and crisis in the PR world.” Crisis…yes, but we’d prefer to minimize the drama.

Valerie Simon (@valeriesimon) and I just announced that #PRStudChat will be a monthly event. I was thrilled by the enthusiasm and incredible response we received by students and PR professionals on August 19th when we held our first discussion. Our Twitter chat was a success and we’re preparing for the next one.