*This is a guest post by Meg Roberts.
Last week, David pointed out that senior professionals might be setting up young PR pros for failure because they are being asked to handle elements of social media campaigns without the proper experiences necessary for successful communications programs.
The post made me wonder about the other side of this issue: are young PR professionals being set up for failure because they aren’t being given enough opportunities to investigate and learn traditional tactics and strategies?
As companies continue to look at younger staff members for social media expertise, senior employees, recent graduates, and interns should work together to ensure young professionals have well-rounded task lists that include a variety of skills necessary for communication campaigns - both online and offline.
Recently, I’ve learned several of my friends have been tasked with heading up corporate Facebook pages and/or Twitter handles. While this is great and necessary experience, it can lead to an unbalance in recent graduates’ skill set. For example, a young woman I graduated with said her small agency asked her to handle its Twitter account, so she began researching the ins-and-outs of the popular service to help her stand out as a junior staffer.
“I’d leave the office and devour articles on Twitter and the various applications available,” she said. “Pretty soon, senior executives were calling me a Twitter expert and tapping me for a variety of client projects involving social media.”
My friend also admitted, however, that she began focusing more on researching Twitter, Facebook, and other social platforms than more traditional, offline PR tactics.
I had a similar experience at one of my internships while I was still a student. Because of my age and online presence, the majority of my daily tasks focused on digital PR practices rather than pitching the media, planning or attending events, creating press kits, or writing press releases.
It’s no secret that social media is changing marketing and PR. If companies are going to ask younger PR employees to handle digital communication efforts, they need to ensure these staff members are still learning about other PR tactics and how both sets of tools play a role in a much larger, overall strategy.
As long as senior PR professionals encourage their young employees to experience offline and online campaigns, the synergy of the two can be educational and beneficial. If this doesn’t happen, then, yes, young PR pros are being set up for failure because we won’t have the skills and experiences necessary for successful PR campaigns that take place off the Internet.
What do you think? Are young PR professionals being set up for failure because they aren’t being given enough opportunities to investigate and learn traditional tactics and strategies?
Meg Roberts is a PR professional working at a digital PR and marketing agency in the Washington, D.C. metro area. She graduated with a degree in public relations in 2008. You can connect with her on Twitter at @megmroberts or on her blog, PR Interactive.
*Tunnel Vision image by Paul Seegars.
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The future of our industry is full of bright-eyed, energetic, smart new graduates. Some were lucky enough to start their first job in the past few weeks, while the rest are still looking for their big break. They’re eager, optimistic, ready to conquer the world. And we’re setting them up for failure.
David spends his days focused on marketing communications strategies and execution. He blogs here regularly about integrated communications, PR and social media.
