Ben Cotton produced a fantastic post this month on the 2012 PR graduate schemes. So if you’re looking for a job after graduating this year, why not check out the list collated by Ben below and be sure to check out his blog and recommended posts below for more information and tips.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been researching and speaking to industry colleagues in order to create this years list of 2012 PR Graduate Schemes.
Despite growth stalling in the wider economy, it’s great to see the PR industry in rude health (judging by the number of grad schemes that is). The list is broadly the same size as previous years and as we’ve come to expect, it is predominantly made up of the larger, international agencies with London offices.
This years list makes one thing abundantly clear. Whilst final year students will be acclimatising to their most important year at university and thinking about dissertations, the race for a graduate PR job has already begun.
Ben cotton works at Edelman and blogs at the fantastic Social Web Thing, a must RSS subscribe for any PR student or young practitioner who wants tips on getting into the industry and advice from professionals. Here, Ben shares more insider knowledge on how to use social media tools to get that dream job.
In previous generations, a small number of people would hear about and apply for jobs, but the web has revolutionised the employability process, and now anyone with Internet access is a potential rival. The Internet has made the job market more competitive, but social media offers the greatest opportunities to showcase creativity, stand-out and land a job.
However, most people submit a CV consisting of two pieces of paper when applying for a job, rather than taking a risk. Convention should not stop people turning a document that is functional, rather than engaging into something truly memorable.
This post looks at practical tips and innovative examples of people who have used social media to land their dream job. Continue reading →
Below I’ve embedded a report we put together at Wolfstar Consultancy, with lots of lovely stats and graphs on how the FTSE Global 500 are performing in terms of social media in their CSR campaigns. There’s some interesting results and a few unexpected anomolies too, well worth a read
I was asked by my lecturer(/mentor) Richard Bailey to review a book for his site Behind the Spin.
I haven’t really reviewed a book before, especially not one written by two of my Leeds Met lecturers, so I was a bit apprehensive! I tried to be fair and honest and give the book constructive criticism. I’m told the authors thought the review was fair, so that’s a relief! I was extra critical of the social media in PR chapter, which is to be expected given that I work for Wolfstar!
Last night, Wolfstar hosted the Leeds Mashable Meetup, which Phylecia and I organised.
The event was a great way to meet and discuss the current issues and topics affecting both social media worldwide, specifically in the UK and most specific of all, those affecting Leeds.
The event brought together a range of people involved in the social media circuit, from the ‘techies’ like web designers, SEO specialists and so on, to those from a PR or business background, to event organisers around Leeds. Everyone had a chance to talk about what role they played in the Leeds social scene and in their companies, as well as put forward ideas as to how to keep Leeds on the map as being a important place for both internet services and business alike.
The topics discussed sparked discussion and debate, and I took the opportunity to bring up my debate about the lack of social media teaching on PR courses. From the look on the faces of those in the room, it was clear many people had no idea that the PR course was started to look so dated and many were a little shocked that there is next to no web and social media training included.
After the debate and presentation side of the evening, when we all began to talk in groups and networks, I was approached a lot about the topic from people on other courses who also felt strongly about their dated teaching, and from PR professionals who think something should be done about it.
In fact two blog posts that have stemmed from my discussion last night have already appeared this morning, Matt Murray’s post and sum up of the evening here, Matt Saunders’ post on Digital Fusion Magazine here and on Illiya Vjestica’s Smartdog Blog here. My blog post was also mentioned on the Guardian Leeds, so I’m thrilled with the amount of coverage this issue is generating, hopefully it will be a push for Leeds Met to think about changing the course!
After the success of last night’s meet up, there has been a lot of talk on Twitter about organising one in the future, which I hope will become a reality as the people I met, things I learnt and discussions I took part in last night were all invaluable.
I also found this video on Mashable this morning, which should be useful to everyone at the event and in the UK social media scene, though I was a little surprised with some of the stats, such as 33% of people still trusting banner advertising (I’m yet to find one!).
Today I finally got round to reading last week’s PR Week, which gets circulated around the Wolfstar office for us all to have a flick through when we get chance.
One of the bigger articles was the results of the European Measurement Summit, taking place in Barcelona. 7 key principles were agreed on, including plans to move away from AVEs as a means to measure coverage and the decision that social media should be taken more seriously and ‘can and should be measured’.
I always found AVEs a nice way to say ‘look how much more PR is worth compared to advertising’ *smug face* but the fact is that though the results may sounds impressive when reported back to a client, it doesn’t really mean a huge amount. As decided at the summit, ‘AVEs measures the cost of media space, not of PR’. So there has been a shift to ‘quantity over quality’ which in my opinion is a good thing.
I’m also a fan of other of the issues raised – social media. Being that it’s not only a big interest of mine (in case you hadn’t already guessed), but it’s also my current livelihood working at the UK’s first speciality PR and social media company, you can imagine any news in this area is particularly important to me.
The summit attendees agreed upon the idea that social media can be and should be measured, which I guess was a inevitable decision given how many PR companies have been integrating social media into their campaigns and as my manager Stuart Bruce pointed out in his recent blog post, even management companies like McKinsey have started advising on social media. The space for social media expertise is clearly a battlefield (though reports say that PR is winning) but the push for measurement seems to be unanimous.
The answer of course is a little harder. There are so many tools of how to measure your ‘Twinfluence’ or how well you perform on Facebook or how engaging your blog is, but there isn’t really any standardisation for how companies should measure. At least with AVEs there was an official ‘industry standard’. As CIPR President Jay O’Connor puts it, ‘We need a way to cut through the social media hype’. Though the push for proper measurement of social media has been agreed upon on this summit, I think we are a long way of any kind of standardisation.
I remember learning about all the different summits in my first and second year at university and the impacts they have on PR. I wonder if future students or perhaps even next years will be learning about this year’s ”Barcelona Declaration of Research Principles’? Of course that would first mean they would need to start taking teaching social media a little more seriously…
Today is the start of my first week of being a full-time employee at Wolfstar!
The Leeds Met PR course I’m on includes an optional full year of placement and though it is not essential to complete the course, it is strongly recommended. The best way to really learn PR is to practice it and with so much competition in the industry it is those with good experience that stand the best chance of getting employment at the end.
I’m really looking forward to getting a full year work experience and if all goes well I’ll actually be here until August next year. I really enjoy working as part of the Wolfstar pack and the experience and advice I will gain from my colleagues here will be invaluable when I return to university next year. I’m also excited to be starting work on my own clients and accounts, which I’m being briefed on today!
I think that working full-time after ‘university hours’ for the last two years will come as a bit of a shock, but the continuity of work is something I’m looking forward to as seeing a project from start to finish is something you never really get to experience just doing one day a week.
So thankyou Stuart and Tim for giving me this opportunity and to anyone that reads my blog it will now become less ‘PR student’ and more ‘PR intern’ for the next year or so!
This video popped up on YouTube on May 5th, and if you haven’t given it a watch yet click above and give it a run through.
Working for Wolfstar I already knew many of the social media statistics in the video, but seeing them all together and learning new ones really hit home just how influential (and huge) social media is, and particularly how important it is for brands. Below are some of the most important messages for brands thinking social media is just a ‘fad’:
25% of search results for the World’s top 20 brands are links to user generated content
So for every four potential customers searching for your brand online, one of them will reach someone’s blog or social media page – meaning that what they say about you will have a huge impact on how they view your brand. Which is pretty influential when you see that…
78% of customers trust peer recommendations
So what bloggers, reviewers and other online resources say about your product really does matter. I don’t know many people now who don’t check online reviews before they buy and the more expensive the products, the more we research it. Big supermarket chains like Tesco have even teamed up with Reevo for impartial reviews on their products – a brave decision but most likely useful in the long term.
But what does the video say about the 200,000,000 bloggers?
34% of bloggers post opinion about products and brands
This harks back to the point above about peer recommendation and user generated content. What bloggers say is hugely important to your brand and companies that ignore bloggers or choose not to get involved in or respond to what they say risk starting a new ‘Dell Hell‘. This is why blogger outreach is so important – befriending and making the most of bloggers can really help give your brand a positive reputation online, so why would any brand not do this?
Word of Mouth = World of Mouth
Word of mouth is already known as the best way to influence customers as we are more likely to trust and believe what a friend of family member says than what a company is trying to tell us. Bloggers are now seen as a trustworthy online source, so customers not only believe what the blog says but will active search for reviews and opinion from bloggers. When you put this together with just how many bloggers are out there, word of mouth really does become world of mouth.
So what does this mean for advertisers?
Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
I found this statistic most staggering, that less then 20% of the TV ad campaigns we see every day will ever generate a positive return on investment. The message has never been clearer that social media and PR are not only better value for money but also get better results. PR budgets may have be the first to get cut during the recession, but as the economic climate begins to improve companies should be looking towards using PR as money well spent to generate coverage and improve reputation where advertising fails, especially when you consider…
90% of people skip TV ads via TiVo/DVR
Now in the UK it might not be TiVo, but anyone that has Sky or Virgin Media and has access to ‘TV on Demand’ or records their programs for later knows how easy it is to just flick through ads and get straight to their show. For advertisers the bad news does stop there either, as…
24 of the largest 25 news papers in the world are experiencing record declines in circulation
Many UK newspapers have disappeared completely in the last few years and they won’t be the last. The fall in advertising and increase in readers going online for their news fix means traditional newspapers have taken a real hit. Advertisers have stopped using newspapers to target consumers because we just ignore the adverts unless they really jump out as us. It’s the editorial we concentrate on, the area PR targets. Which means PR also won’t be the one losing out on the increase in online news, as editorial is just as important here too.
But how does social media affect students?
80% of companies use social media for recruitment
This is something I point out time and time again in day to day life with my peers – companies ARE watching what you do online and it WILL affect your future employment. This means don’t ever post offensive status updates, don’t swear non-stop in your tweets and look at what pictures are being posted of your on Facebook. Pretend you are a future employer, would you hire you after looking at your Facebook page with the profile picture of you passed out on a pavement in Leeds? The answer is no, no you wouldn’t. Your social media pages have become an extra arm of your CV, if you put that much effort into ensuring you have the perfect CV, vet your profile page just as aggressively.
Percentage of companies using LinkedIn for recruitment = 95%
LinkedIn may not be as flash or fun to use as Facebook, but the statistics couldn’t be clear enough – almost 100% of your future employers are using it and if your not on their your only putting yourself at a disadvantage from the start. LinkedIn shows your employers where you have worked before, what skills you have and how many people you are connected too – something which is very important in PR. Further to this, past employers and business colleagues can post recommendations for you online, so instead of a future employers phoning for one or two references, they can read ten or twenty online. Reaching out to a company on LinkedIn could give you an advantage over the competition before you even step through the interview room door.
Things to remember:
We no longer find the news, the news finds us…
We will no longer search for products or services,
they will find us via social media.
We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it…
It’s official, Schmoo lassi has gone live! Check out their new website here: (Click me!)
The company was started by two budding entrepreneurs, Laurence Nair and Hayley Hadfield, who met whilst studying at Leeds University. The recent graduates wasted no time in setting up Schmoo, which produces lassi – usually drunk
after a hot Indian meal to help settle the spicy burning sensation as well as provide a nutritious, tasty beverage!
The special part of Schmoo is that it is fresh and refrigerated, giving it extra health benefits over competitors and tasting more refreshing.
I have been working with Schmoo with the Ptarmigan Academy, which I mentioned joining earlier in this post. You can read all about our shenanigans here.
There will be a campaign getting customer involved with some incredible prizes launching soon – so what this space! Give the website a click to spot the dodgy picture of me on the team!
This was the first time I’d ever really tried to pass on some of my social media skills and knowledge that I have accumulated over the past few years, mostly gained from my work experience at Wolfstar and my addiction to networks like Twitter.
I was very thankful for the opportunity from Richard and his continued belief in me, however I was very nervous about standing up in front of a team of adults and attempting to demonstrate that a 20-year-old student actually has something worth passing on! However after meeting with the team and finding out what they wanted to get out of the session I soon felt more comfortable and it wasn’t long before I was itching to get the chance to go up to the front and say my bit!
Web 3.0 could be just around the corner...
The session started with Richard giving an ‘informal lecture’. I use this term because even though he was talking ‘at them’, the team were invited to ask question and give their own opinion, which they did giving the talk a two-way communication feel – relevant when you are talking about social media! Richard explained how the web had adapted and evolved into ‘Web 2.0′ from owning content to sharing content, from presentation to participation and the way social media fits in with these new concepts. I learnt a lot from this session and also recapped on some of the old theories from my first year!
After a short break we moved towards the more practical side of the day, teaching the team how to set up and use social media sites. This was my main teaching section, and after giving the team my WordPress guide (which I’ll add to the e-portfolio and link here) I showed them my WordPress blog and the Dashboard. I love the stats tool on WordPress and so after a tour of the Dashboard I published a blog post I had written the night before live, so that I could demonstrate how to monitor the activity using the stats tool. I showed the team how I link my blog to Twitter and Facebook to let my followers and friends know I have a new post up and how this affected the stats, as well as talking them through Twitter itself. I demonstrated how I could use Twitter to monitor who was talking about me and who had retweeted my blog post.
The blog post proved a success and was retweeted serveral times drawing a lot of traffic to the blog. Further to this Alastair Campbell replied to me directly during the demonstration on Twitter, giving the day even more interest! I finished my demonstration by showing them other monitoring tools like Google Reader, Tweetdeck and Tweetreach as well as other sites like FourSquare, Last.fm and YouTube. By the end they were a bit stunned by just how many sites I used and asked how I had to time to check them all. As one of the team pointed out, if I could afford a smartphone I would become so ridiculously absorbed in it that I might forget about life outside social media all together!
The day was a real success and I thoroughly enjoyed teaching social media those unfamiliar with it. From the feedback I received from both Richard and the British Waterways PR team, I did a great job and seemed passionate and excited by the subject, which I’m overjoyed at as there is no better compliment!
Ben cotton works at Edelman and blogs at the fantastic 
WordPress blog and the Dashboard. I love the stats tool on WordPress and so after a tour of the Dashboard I published a 
