Mastery Journal

Ah, the end is here for my Master’s in Public Relations at Full Sail University. It has been a year of many trials and tribulations and I am very thankful for all of the support that Full Sail has provided during my journey with them. This course allowed for me to reflect back on why I chose this program and re-enlivened my desire to help small business tell their story to the world and make a difference. At the beginning of this program, my goal was to integrate all the knowledge that I gained from the program in creating myself as a PR professional and develop a plan and portfolio of my company so that when I graduate I will be ready to hit the ground running and help those small businesses. I definitely know that I accomplished this goal and I feel motivated to get going and do everything that I learned. 

Ah, the course before the final capstone thesis course. The end is near! Not to be taken that I am tired of the program but how much bubbling excitement flows through me to kickstart my career in public relations and start helping my clients tell their story to the world and become successful. This program has been a struggle for me with a knee surgery in January, health problems throughout, and dealing with a death in the family during this course. It has not been an easy feat to work through this program through all of that! 

My personal goal for this course at the beginning of the program was to develop and manage media assets for myself and for my client for support internally and externally through the public relations project. I realize now that the focus of this course was not to maintain and develop these assets but to develop an online media platform of the content regarding the public relations project and capstone client. Development of assets was made in previous courses through media lists of reporters, bloggers, and more. 

Having never developed an online media room before, this forced me to step out of my element, take note from other great media rooms out there, and develop an online media room that fit my needs, the needs of my client, and the viewers that will see the online media room. Since the topic of my client’s work is Vedic astrology, I do know that I will need to further develop the online media room that was created and add more imagery that speaks to the viewers of the online media room and how Vedic astrology can play a part in a balanced life and growth. 

Ah, the final day of Reputation Management Strategies. As I look back on everything that I learned during this course, I reflect to the original goal I set at the beginning of the program. My goal for this course is to develop habits to monitor changes of my own and my client’s reputation during a public relations campaign to create positive change when necessary.

Though I may have struggled with a few elements of this course, I do believe I have accomplished the goal I set at the beginning of this program. Since my client is a company of one, this added a new element than if I was working with a larger company may have been a lot easier than one individual.

This was the first course that I wished I was working with a larger company and learn how to develop a crisis communications plan that involved multiple departments and people within the company and how I would determine who would be on the crisis communications team and who would be on the crisis management team. It would have been great for every student to have the opportunity during the course to develop a crisis communications and management plan for our own PR professional business and what we would do in the event of a crisis. Though I do assume that during the final course of this program we will have the opportunity develop all sorts of plans regarding our own business and that of our client’s.  

This has been quite an interesting course that pushed me out of my comfort zone. For this month, we focused on Events Marketing and Production. I was unsure if there would be much that I would learn from this course as I spent over three years as an event planner for the Admissions department at the local university. However, I learned quite about regarding the types of events I can produce for my client and companies that I may work for in the future especially regarding the goal I made about this course. My goal for this course was to understand and integrate a variety of events that support the PR plan and awareness for personal use and for the client’s objective.

As part of the course we mainly had to work on developing two different types of events for our client, a webinar and a local event, that target the client’s target market. Though I was familiar with local, live events for the Admissions department, this type of event was different, especially regarding my client’s industry and how to utilize it within gaining new clients for her. This was great experience and I provided a recommendation to my client that we host the event. This pushed my creative process in determining fun activities that don’t feel very pushy or salesy to those that attend. I appreciate the opportunity to develop this event in the proposal as I will use this method in the future for other clients I work with.

This week, Taylor.d Consulting hosted a webinar for their client, Planetary Sara. This webinar focused on introducing their audience to what Vedic Astrology is and is not, including the differences between Vedic Astrology and Western astrology. Topics also included:

History and background of where Vedic astrology comes from,

Karma and your purpose in life,

Planets and houses,

and the types of…

5 Ways Wearing a Kavach Can Bring Peace and Balance to Your Life

Does Mercury Retrograde come and wreck havoc in your life? Did you know that there can be a simple and easy solution to counter planetary transits like Mercury Retrograde and other negative planetary transits from your life?

Planetary Sara will host a short 15 minute free webinar on 5 ways wearing a Kavach and gemstones specific to your chart will bring peace and balance to your daily life and…

As I come to the last day of this course, Media Relations, I breathe a sigh of relief. This must be the most difficult course I took in this program. Not because the content was difficult, at times it was, but the energy it took to complete each assignment with such thorough thought and decision making. I came into this course with the goal to learn how to speak to the media and engage them in relation to my PR goals for the campaign for my client. I learned that there are a variety of ways that we must speak to the media including creating engaging pitches, refining our press releases, speaking at press conferences, and creating media assets to deliver to them.

I struggled with the media assets in the media kit as my client was unavailable and I was unable to provide those elements to my professor. As a perfectionist, it bothers me that I couldn’t share or participate much in that assignment. In reflection, I also believe that an introduction into videography and editing would help with creating great content overall in this program. I’ve made some videos during this program and each time we are instructed to make more, fear runs down my back because I know it will not be profession grade and therefore not come off clean to the target audience.

As I near the finish line for my Market and Consumer Research Analysis course, I breathe a heavy sigh of relief. After having to retake the course after dealing with health issues and again retaking it due to technical problems, I feel extremely accomplished in the completion of the course. Finally! I owe much appreciate to my professor who was very accommodating with my struggles each time I took the course and provided excellent feedback regarding the content of my Capstone thesis paper.

Since so much time has passed since I started this journey in the program, I look back to my goal that I set for myself for this course. My goal for this course is to develop habits of researching markets and consumers in a variety of methods to understand the best medium to market to the ideal consumer with the organizations; object in the PR plan. I feel very confident during the writing and researching for the Capstone thesis paper that I have accomplished this goal. Implementing a variety of qualitative and quantitative research and even the development of my own research for the Capstone truly harnessed the core of the goal I set for myself.

In the past I have taken workshops and specialized courses in Visual Design and what I learned there and strengthened during this course is that developing and determining your target market is the key to success. Though understanding and figuring out the target market for my client, or for any client, is not really an exciting aspect to the whole PR plan, it is the best way to secure success when implementing the PR plan for said client. 

During this month, we learned about social media metrics and ROI to help support and drive success with our own business or that of a client’s business. My goals that I made at the beginning of this program were to learn how to track, report, and analyze social media metrics from all platforms and integrate that knowledge into my PR plan and campaign for my final program in the program.

I confidently can say that I feel like I have accomplished these goals. We used our own social media accounts to learn how to travel, report, and analyze our social media efforts including the successes, opportunities for improvements, and where we missed the mark. I do have to say that I was scared to look at my analytics because I knew I did not have the time to work on promoting my content on my website to my social media accounts outside of the ones developed in the courses. I even got notices on my Facebook page that I need to do more with it otherwise it wasn’t going to be visible to followers or even potential followers if it wasn’t active enough.

As I near the end of my time in the Innovative Public Relations Tools and Resources course at Full Sail University, I reflect back on the goal I made for myself during my Mastery: Personal Development and Leadership course which started me on my path to becoming a successful public relations professional.

·      To understand the quirks of each social media platform, their advantages and disadvantages on PR campaigns, and how to use them to my benefit

I have many friends that are social media managers for various companies and I have always been envious of the fun they get to have on social media each and every day. I realize now that it is not always “fun” and that a lot of hard work goes into each post that is shared on social media. Making sure the caption is perfect, inspiring, and gets the viewer to do something is probably the most difficult concept for me to work on this month/ 

To also know which platform to use and which not to use is also crucial to the success of the PR campaign. It is not advisable to use each and every platform out there as you are spread too thin and it is always best to narrow down to 2-3 platforms that can share your content and brand effectively.

As a PR professional in the working, I learned that Instagram is great for photo heavy campaigns and especially for photographers and food centric professionals than for a PR professional. Even though I use Instagram regularly in my personal life it does not mean that it fits well in my professional life. I decided to focus on sharing the stories I get to tell via Facebook and LinkedIN as my two main social media platforms.

How a Medical App Can Provide Insights and Answers to People Suffering from Chronic Symptoms

With food sensitivities, inflammation, and autoimmune diseases on the rise, taking control of your health has never been more important. The foods we eat play a key role in reducing physical and chronic symptoms that can occur including acne, eczema, dry and itch skin, bloating and fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), joint pain, migraines, and respiratory issues. Unfortunately, many rural…

Redbooth is a task and project management app that both individuals and teams can use to work together and accomplish their needs. There are many project and task management tools and app available but they are not created equal. Some lack features of communicating with your team and others do not allow you to add components to the task needing to be completed.

Redbooth is all about simplifying…

As I near the end of my current course at Full Sail University, Legal Aspects of Media, I am a little sadden to see it end. I quite enjoyed this course as I’ve always had an interest in law and even considered studying law. It’s quite difficult for me to determine which assignment was my favorite in this course. I loved all the opportunities we had to study cases in this course. By looking at the actions of each side of the case, the reasoning’s for their actions, the outcome of the case, and providing my own insights deepened my knowledge of the topics covered in this course.

Out of all the topics that we covered this month, I feel as though the topic of speech is most helpful to me as a communications professional. There are many gray areas of when and where speech is protected or in violation. Since my focus is to promote and spread news, information, and awareness for the companies I wish to work for, making sure that I and my clients are protected and not liable for any wrongdoing is a huge priority for me.

The knowledge that I acquired this month will prepare me to handle potential legal issues in the communications industry by developing a keener sense of right and wrong when publishing media for my clients. As mentioned before, there are gray areas and those areas can get someone into trouble easily without even knowing so having the keen perception will enable me to know what is and is not okay to publish.

Today is my final day in my Writing for Interactive Media course at Full Sail University and as I reflect back on all that I have learned and my mastery goals for this course I am quite happy with all that I have learned.

 My goals for this course were to develop habits of effective storytelling for any specific situation and media platform in mind, strengthen my understanding of storytelling mechanics including voice, and master narrative principles for visual and digital media that engage the audience in complex information.

 At the beginning of this course I was pretty terrified that I was not going to be strong writer even though I love to write and tell stories, I have a habit of explaining too much and not being precise. Thank goodness that my professor was so considerate and informative on how I should better improve my writing rather than grade me harshly for making mistakes. As I wrote my final assignment, I felt confident in what I had to say and appreciative of the opportunities to tell many different stories and their impact, however unique.

Nearing the end of my Public Relations in a Digital World course, I look back on my goals for this course, how (and if) I accomplished those goals, what I have learned, and how the knowledge I gained can be applied personally and professionally. My original goals for this course were:

 ·      To identify and understand the definition of public relations and the public relations process.

·      To effectively develop public relations plans for myself and my clients. 

·      To understand how to respond to various circumstances and priorities.

 Though it seems as I reflect back on these goals that I may have jumped the gun on the second goal as we didn’t quite touch base on a PR plan but primarily built the foundation what PR was originally, how it has developed in this digital age, and the avenues in which we can reach audience to broadcast our message. I feel as though except for the second goal I can say I have accomplished the goals I set out for myself for this course.

 This course and the knowledge that was provided me pushed me in ways I’ve never experienced before. Learning how to create a PSA (Public Service Announcement), including developing a story board, filming, editing, and publishing was a huge new experience for me. Though my message was great, there is much for me to learn regarding developing a stronger story to tell that my message cannot explain.