I’m sitting in the race marketing office at Hoosier Park, a place I’ve become quite familiar with over these past few months. I love my internship and it’s taught me so many things I know I’ll need to know for the rest of my life.
The other day, I was talking to a friend about my internship. She made a comment about how it seemed like a different kind of thing for a PR major to be doing. While some of what I do is untraditional when you compare it to getting coffee or sitting at a desk all day, I would almost say that everything I do here is public relations.
I mean, everybody needs public relations.
Yes, everybody.
We live in a world where communication is instantaneous. In what seems like less than a second, you can have something posted to Twitter. Wouldn’t your Facebook feed look a little bit nicer if everyone was required to take an intro to PR class before signing up?
There are about a million different definitions of public relations and it means something different to everybody. When somebody says the phrase “They need PR help,” what comes to your mind? I tell people I’m a public relations major and the response is usually, “Oh, you want to work with social media?”
To me, public relations is about connecting people and effectively communicating. It’s about being able to promote your client and yourself in the best possible way. Can’t we all use that in our lives? We all have to interview for jobs. We all have to be around people.
Public relations can teach you how you can control a message; agenda setting can be powerful. Public relations can help you keep your social media profiles professional and in line. Public relations can help you learn how to talk to someone at a networking event.
Don’t we all need a little bit more of that in our lives?
From the Vanity Desk 