Fourth Quarter: The end is just the beginning

Hi Fellow PR students,

It has been an amazing semester of PR internship.

For some of you, it will be the last time you see your organisations employees and you will move on to a new challenge.

For me however, it is just the beginning.

This is because I am staying to work with the WA Sports Federation (WASF) for the annual ANZ Sports Star Awards.

I am incredibly excited about this opportunity and look forward to the challenge of working on such a massive event.

over the past few weeks I have started to see progress in my work.

My supervisor said I am progressing well and I am taking in his feedback.

I think I learned quite a bit over this semester of internship.

I learned so many new PR and Marketing skills that I can take on board to my first real job.

I hope everyone else has learned something and had fun.

Francis Curro

Third Quarter: Social media training and the beginning of an event.

Hi Bloggers,

In part three of my internship at the SportXchange Project, I had the ability to use my journalism skills.

I got an opportunity to interview Paralympic basketball Shaun Norris, who has won a gold medal, and two silvers at the last three Paralympic games.

I did this in preparation for the ANZ Sports Star Awards.

WASF is running the awards and they have asked for the projects and my help to make sure the event gets maximum publicity and the athletes get some publicity for their minor sports.

It was a joy to interview Shaun, as he is such a humble man and is more focused on team success, rather than individual success.

This is just the start of the preparation for the event, which is in mid December.

I still have a bit of publicity work to do, which will come in November and early December.

I have also been writing many blogs, which teach minor sports who do not understand the value of social media, and how they can use it to benefit their sports.

I have learned more about sports marketing and using programs such as Instagram and Hootsuite to get publicity and coverage for your business.

Not long to go now, but it has certainly been a learning experience.

Francis Curro 

Second Quarter: Building my knowledge

Hi Bloggers,

Over the past month I lave learned quite a lot about the world of public relations, especially about the social media aspect.

I learned to use a program called HootSuite, which allows the user to manage and schedule their posts. As out news content is all sorted through by about 10.30am, we then look to which ones are the most beneficial towards all our clients. Thus, we make a decision on the best articles to post on twitter and Facebook.

We general send out four to five tweets per day, and look to send them out at peak periods, including 10.30am 12.30am and after dinner. I have also been looking at ways we can get more retweets and interactions be retweeting clients tweets and looking at hash tagging and talking to other users in different ways.

We are also working on WA’s biggest sporting awards, the WASF Sports Star Awards. I am looking forwards to working with the West Australian Sporting Federation, 32 Degrees events and the Department of Sport and Recreation on this event. It looks like a good opportunity to meet some other people in the media, as well as work with some great athletes. We have our first meeting this thursday, and the launch last week.

I look forwards to the months ahead.

Francis

First Quarter: Off to a flyer

Hey Bloggers,

On the 14^th of August, I began my internship at the SportXchange project.

SportXchange was set up by the local government and the West Australian Sporting Federation. Some of the aims include; helping out all the other sporting bodies in WA with gaining publicity, sponsorship, and providing them with volunteers etc. Our organisation aims to help other sporting bodies as Netball Wa, Football West, Basketballs WA, WACA etc.

So far, I have mainly been tasked at looking at their content analysis.

This includes when I get into the office on a Wednesday or Thursday morning, I open all the emails we have received, and put up relevant stories on the website or on social media.  Most of the posts I put up on twitter for example, are posts aiming to help out other sporting bodies, including using social media in a business, and general tips, at getting more publicity.

Some of the tweets I posted

I am mainly looking forward to also contributing to the WASF Sports Star of the Year. Every year, one West Australian sportsman/sportswomen is chosen as the best in the state.  I am looking forward to using my journalism and public relations skills, to work on this event.

The main lessons I have learned so far is speed and accuracy. As out website gets over 40 views a day, and we have over 170 twitter followers, it is important all the posts we send out are accurate and relevant.

I have also started doing some blog posts. Today I did a blog on Twitter. As some of the sporting bodies have never used twitter and  are not familiar with it, i wrote a blog on how it works e.g what a hashtag is etc. This may sound kind of basic to us, but to those who struggle with technology and don't understand how it can be helpful, its all new to them. They are yet to be posted, but we have already been told they will be helpful by Motorcycling WA.

I am looking forward to networking with others in the future, and the launch of the Sports Star of the Year award.

Cheers,

Francis Curro