Monica Lynn is a senior public relations student at the USF School of Mass Communications. She is currently an intern at French West Vaughan in Tampa. She is a member of USF PRSSA and is the marketing chair for the non profit organization, Hooked on Hope.

Learning about public relations inside and outside the classroom has been a winding river full of lots and lots of rapids this semester. I felt like I was up a stream without a paddle most of the way.

I am a first semester senior studying mass communications at the University of South Florida. I began taking mass communications classes a year ago, yet I feel like it has been a thousand light years since then. I have come full circle from thinking I picked a sort of easy major because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, to wanting to be the head of a PR agency in t-minus 10 years. Whoa, how did that happen?

If I have ever had a moment where I felt like I was the most ill-prepared person on the face of the Earth for a specific task or goal, it was the first day of this semester. I can not even recall the amount of times I heard the three terms ‘social media’, ‘Twitter’ and ‘blog’ that first day and every day after for that matter. Before this semester I thought Twitter was a complete joke and basically for people that had nothing better to do than to tell all of their followers when they were going to the gym. Blogs, I figured, were for people that had way too much to say and just wanted an outlet to vent. I considered social media in general to be a fairly big deal, but I didn’t see why that mattered in public relations.

Needless to say, my thinking was quite flawed. Literally, the first night of this semester, I was completely overwhelmed. I went home dazed and confused, but I still created a blog, Twitter and LinkedIn account. My professors kept reiterating the fact that students are the young ones and majority of the time they are the ones who are expected to know how to do social media for whatever agency or company they work for. So, basically if we weren’t already engaged in social media, as in more than just having a Facebook account, we needed to quickly do just that. Over the course of this semester I have come to the realization that social media isn’t kind of a big deal, it is THE deal in a lot of instances. It has, and still is, single-handedly changing the way businesses do business. It is as simple as that.

Today, I can’t be more grateful that even though USF doesn’t offer any social media classes, my professors still gave us a huge dose of social media every day in class. This braced me for my internship experiences.

A few weeks into my internship, my company started moving forward with an aggressive social media strategy to build the agency’s presence on the Web. I have had the opportunity to be a part of it, and make suggestions a long the way. It has been an enlightening semester, and has opened my eyes to the opportunities social media presents within public relations.

At my office, I was actually called the “social media guru” the other day. I truly had a moment when I read those words in an e-mail sent by one of the account coordinators. I think I realized more quickly that social media was the “it” topic right now, and I seized the occasion. Now, social media has, in a way, set me apart from all the other interns.

I fully plan on continuing my knowledge of the “groundswell” that social media has been termed. It needs to be an integral part of pr campaigns from here on out, and I want to be ahead of that curve and not trying to paddle up stream again with no paddle

This week I had the privilege of being the moderator for #soloPR, a weekly chat with independent public relations professionals and consultants. The chat happens every Wednesday from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. EST. (I want to thank Kellye Crane for the opportunity to fill in her shoes while she was traveling. Thank you!) I have been participating in this chat for a little while now, and I can not tell you how much I learn from this group of pr professionals each week. I always say it is the fastest hour of my week.

I wanted to take the opportunity to share with my blog readers some of the things we talked about this week.

First question was about building media list on a pr solo’s budget. Let me just tell you, I go about it the old fashion way. I make and keep my own of media contacts. I found this question interesting because I just taught my PR Writing students how to create media lists. A great tip that came out of the conversation, and seemed to be an occurring theme, was teaming up with other solo professionals to share accounts with Cision or Vocus. I love that as public relations professional we count ourselves as a member of a community. We are willing to share resources and contribute to each others success.

We also talked about mentors, do we have them and how did you approach and build a relationship. I was inspired by this dialogue. First, it made me realize that social media has opened up a world of mentors for me. They may not know it, but I follow, watch and keep track of what they are up to through Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Second, I reminded my students yesterday that they never know who is standing in front of them teaching their class. Class work is just as important as any internship or network that they have. Kelli Mathews, a professor at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communications, wrote a great guest blog post yesterday on Lindsay Olson’s blog. Don’t forget your professors!

I am not sure why I think I never have anything to blog about. This chat gives me tons of topics every week. I encourage you to join us. You don’t have to be a pr pro, you can just be interested in what we do. Stay tuned next week. I am writing two new blog posts. One on our third question this week on how much pr do we really do, and another on the fourth question on all the resources that we use.

By the way, Happy Halloween!

I have been trying to decide for a couple of weeks on an email marketing service. I had it narrowed down to three: Constant Contact, iContact, and Aweber. They seemed to be the services most of the people I network with use.

You may be asking yourself, “why does she need an email marketing service?” Well, the answer is simple. I want to be able to share as many resources as possible with my audience. I am so amazed by everything I have learned about social media. My heart is to share everything I have learned through as many platforms as possible.

So, how did I decide? First, I looked at emails I got to see which service the people I consider successful use. Second, I went to each site and did some research on what they had to offer. Three, I asked my colleagues who they were using. It was important to me that I could use one account to create various email lists for different organizations.

I finally decided to go with Aweber. I was amazed that Aweber’s use for social media is what made them stand out from the rest. Here is what they offered me before I made the commitment with them:

1) I could use the service for the first month for only $1.

2) I participated in a webinar, which taught me how to use their system and answered all my questions. (By the way, the only service that let me know ahead of time I could create multiple list for multiple businesses.)

3) Online chat customer service

4) I can follow Aweber on Twitter

5) They have a fan page on Facebook.

The goal of this blog post is not to advertise Aweber, but only to define what makes a business stand out from the rest. This is an organization who is using social media successfully to gain new clients.

Now, see that little box on the right hand side of my my page underneath the subscribe guy…yep, that’s the one! Sign up for my email updates and newsletter. It will be like getting a classroom in your email box from time to time.