BY HANNAH FRICK
At the start of this semester, I was in South Africa with Dr. Osei-Hwere on the Communication Study Abroad trip. I didn’t get back into the United States until a few days after the semester had started, which meant that I woke up exhausted for my first meeting with the firm. I was 30 minutes late—remember how exhausted I said I was?!—and didn’t fully realize until I arrived that 1910 PR was a full-fledged student-run PR Firm.
OUR PROCESS
As part of 1910 PR, we had to plan, promote, and produce content for a variety of clients. I also didn’t realize the time it takes to make events run smoothly! Here is a look into the process our team had for client work:
Reach out to our client.
Figure out what the client’s expectations are.
Produce content for them and the event, whether that be designing social media posts, writing press releases, or producing any other content.
Ask for feedback from the client regarding the content you made.
Apply any requested edits—might take a few tries to get right.
EVENT PROMOTION
Promotion is one of the biggest goals I learned about while in 1910 PR. Promoting an event for a client requires an abundance of work. There are a multitude of things to take into consideration when producing content.
You must examine the platforms that you could use to promote clients, the budget you have been given, the audience you are wanting to engage with, and the actions it will take to get them involved. This might require you to change some things along the way, so I was pushed to adapt throughout the process.
CONTENT CREATION
Creating content for clients has been a wonderful work experience. I learned how to use Canva, an amazing, user-friendly website that we used to design graphics. I appreciated how easy it is to operate and that I can make designs on my own.
It’s become one of my favorite places to design infographics, logos, graphics, and other pieces. I was even able to use Canva to design content for my personal podcast that I recently launched—just one example of how 1910 PR developed skills that I will continue to use in life!
COLLABORATION
Communication is such a vital aspect of life, both personally and professionally, and I’ve been able to further develop my communication skills through 1910 PR. I’ve learned that communication is key on any team regardless of size. We used different platforms to communicate such as Slack, Facebook Messenger, and good, old-fashioned phone calls.
I was thrown a curveball around spring break when COVID-19 spread to the point of concern in Texas. The situation forced me to adapt my ways of communicating because I couldn’t see people face-to-face anymore. Once 1910 PR went completely online due to the virus, our team took more than 15 FaceTime calls to finish our work.
All-in-all, I was so honored to be a part of a team like 1910 PR. What started out as me running late and running on fumes, quickly turned into a semester filled with excitement and challenges that pushed me to become a better professional. I can’t wait to see all of the different ways I can utilize my newly developed skills!