Introduction to PR
By Collin Willardson, Intern (@cwillardson)
My internship at Fusion PR has been both very exciting and very hard for me. Going into it, I honestly had no clue what to expect. My only knowledge of PR work prior to this internship was “Introduction to PR,” a course I took at my college. I have to say that this internship is the best introduction of PR that anyone could ask for.
My duties as an intern differ day to day; from doing research charts to drafting press releases. In actuality, I have only done two press releases for two different clients, and learned a lot from both of them. Sometimes I work on monthly reports, which aren’t as bad as they sound. A monthly report is a detailed document on all the work we have done for a client in that particular month. It includes things such as what publications picked up a press release, what reporters we have contacted and describes the research we have done.
My favorite thing, of course, is any writing assignment, like this blog, or press releases and bios.This week we had a great “Brown Bag” meeting with our VP Steve Andrews. A Brown Bag is when we bring our lunches into the conference room and a Fusion executive teaches us about an aspect of PR. Steve delivered a very good session on the importance of PR planning. It was very informative and noteworthy. The main thing that stuck with me was that, in a sense, a PR plan can make or break a company. It should be the backbone of a company, and it is very important to follow. If companies don’t have goals and or set a plan for PR, the less successful they’ll be. The brown bag meetings are one of my favorite things about this internship.
My goal for this internship is to learn all that I can about public relations. I want to be able to go back to school and teach my professor something new about PR. I want to become more familiar with AP style, and be able to catch my grammar mistakes before others do. I want to make contacts so that in the future I can use them for referrals, recommendations and to find other jobs. I want to get out what I put in and hopefully more.
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