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