Learning about the Public Relations industry over the course of the semester taught me a lot that I didn’t know about public relations. From the start of the semester I wrote a blog called “First dip into Public Relations”, in this blog I discussed what I knew about the field prior to the start of the semester. To evaluate if I have gained a better grasp about the Public Relations industry I decided to look back on the blog I wrote discussing my prior knowledge of the industry to what I have learned throughout the semester.
In my first blog, “First dip into Public Relations”, I talked about what I knew about the industry prior to the semester. In the first blog I talked about how the world of Public relations focuses on communicating with the public by using specific information to target different audiences. What I learned over the semester after finishing my own personnel campaign was that to target audiences in public relations you have to start with coming up with objectives. In the Public Relations industry professionals come up with objectives for each campaign that they come up with, each of these objectives have strategies and tactics that are used to execute ideas to fulfill the objective. In my own campaign I had to go back to my secondary and primary research to come up with the objectives, strategies, and tactics that I used. I learned that ideas are backed up with information that you learn through research about the specific campaign that you create.
After looking at my first blog and what I know now about the PR industry it is evident that the information I learned over the course of the semester has given me personally a better grasp about public relations as a whole. One factor that helped my own growth and knowledge was completing our own individual campaigns. This semester was the first where I saw all parts to campaigns and doing them hands on taught me that I could create my own campaign. The timeline and budget for my campaign were two parts that I had never done, and it was cool scheduling when I would plan, execute, and evaluate the objectives, strategies, and tactics I used specifically. After putting my plan book together it was cool to look at my table of contents to see all the parts that I worked on all semester that came together to create my final plan book. The plan book was the reflection of the information that I learned through the course of the semester that allowed me to gain a better grasp about the Public Relations industry.
From looking back at what I knew about the Public Relations industry prior to the start of the semester to now I could see my own growth learning about the field. To reflect on what I learned I made a plan book which consisted of my introduction, secondary research, primary research, objectives, strategies, tactics, timeline, budget, and appendix. All these assignments that were given to me this semester were focused on the same campaign for the Grand Valley DSR throughout the course of the semester, and pieced together a lot of information that helped me understand what really goes on in the Public Relations industry.