Tiffany's Mastery Journal

We have reached the end of the road. I am completing the end of my Public Relations Master of Arts degree at Full Sail University. This has been a tremendous journey of learning all about the public relations field as well as learning about my personal strengths. This coursework has been challenging yet rewarding. Going back to school while working full time and being a single parent has been a test of my organization, time management, and ability to balance work and life. This final class has been the culmination of all of the work learned in this program. We focused on revising and editing the thesis paper I wrote a few classes ago. I have been working with lifestyle clothing brand Public Nudity for my final project and it has been a challenge. The brand is new, so there have been challenges that the brand experienced that has impacted the public relations campaign. Working with this client has been a valuable lesson about working with a developing brand. While the brand has had some issues, I have enjoyed working with a growing brand and helping to establish their public relations policies. The goal moving forward is to continue to work with Public Nudity and continue to develop their public relations plan. As my time at Full Sail is coming to a close, I took a final look at my Mastery Journey goals. The goals I established for this course included building a website, seeking career guidance, and to build my networking skills. I have accomplished all of these goals. I have successfully built and are maintaining www.hudsonpublicrelations.com. With the information that I have learned throughout my coursework, I have made changes to my website that have drawn more visitors and I have begun to get communication from potential clients. I am averaging almost 300 site visitors a week. I have begun searching for a job. I have taken advantage of the Career Services at Full Sail and have submitted my resume for review. I have gotten some valuable feedback on how to improve my resume to attract potential employers. Finally, I have been working on my networking skills. I have been attending events where I can get out and meet people in the industry along with potential clients. I have also been reading books on networking. Currently I am reading Networking No Knows by David Shands. This book provides practical information when attending networking events. The last 12 months have a tremendous time of growth for me. When I began this program I never imagined getting to this point. I want to take what I have learned and apply it to my new employment opportunities. I have begun looking for positions in public relations while also working part time on developing my own business. I am going to continue to work on myself and my mastery journey.

As I am entering my final course in my program, I will continue to network, work on my final capstone project, and work on securing a position with a public relations firm while working to build my personal PR firm. I’m looking forward to this last month. 

I am beginning to wrap up my course work at Fullsail and I am looking forward to the next chapter once I graduate. I want to take advantage of the opportunities and continue to build my reputation in the PR industry. I’m looking forward to the next course and continuing on my Mastery Journey.

I am continuing with my Mastery Journey and I am at the conclusion of my Event Marketing and Productions course. Of all of the courses that I have experienced at Full Sail University, this course I have found to be my favorite course so far. I feel that this class provided me with information and skills that I can immediately translate into my new career path. During this course I created an event proposal for my Capstone client Latojia Dawkins. She is launching a new brand and the event I created was a popup shop and brand launch. Completing the proposal made me aware of all of the moving parts that goes into planning an event. Although we aren’t actually hosting the event, it was great to have the experience of planning an event. In continuing my Mastery Journey goals, I have been able to connect with event planners and I spent part of my summer interning with a local business, E-Chixx. They are an event planning business that focuses on business related and networking events. I truly enjoyed getting some first-hand experience by working events and managing the social media accounts for the business. While I have some time off from work and in between classes I plan on completing courses on Lynda.com. These courses will allow me to gain more knowledge and skills for my resume. With a few courses left, I am excited to extend my knowledge and continue to work with my Capstone client as she is working to build her brand. By working with her I am also building my brand as a future Public Relations professional. I’m looking forward to continuing my journey.

I just completed another course at Fullsail. This course was all about media relations. As a future PR professional, making connections to media is an essential I ingredient to getting your clients the press they need for their events or product. Overall, I wish that this course was longer because I felt that we only scratched the surface of what it takes to connect to the media. The week 1 assignment was probably one of the most beneficial that I have had at Fullsail. We had to come up with a list of media contacts. While researching various media outlets, it really taught me the importance of knowing your client and their target audience. Knowing this information is key to finding the right media outlets. I also learned that an area of growth for me is writing pitches. Writing isn't my strongest area, so I know this will be an area where I will need ongoing practice. As far as my mastery timeline, I really focused on making connections with other PR and media professionals. I joined a Facebook group for publicists and I am beginning to make real connections. I next want to reach out to the media professionals I found to introduce myself. This will begin the relationship process for my Capstone client.

In looking at my goals for this course, I am happy to report that I did enhance my research skills. In writing my thesis paper, I spent a lot of time on EBSCOHost and was able to utilize different tools to find sources for my paper. I also wanted to work on my public speaking skills. This is a goal that I want to roll over to my next course. While I speak often at work, I want to become more comfortable speaking to larger crowds and on camera. This journey has not been an easy one, but I am looking forward to what my next course has to offer.

With the end of the month comes the end of another course. I am one step closer towards earning my degree in Public Relations.  In the Public Relations industry, it is more than just getting the word about brands. Businesses want to know that the work of a Public Relations professional is related to their bottom line. Social Media Metric and ROI taught me that various social media indicators that I can utilize to provide value to the brands that I will work with. Most businesses focus solely on the money generated, but with my new understanding of social media metrics, I can show how social media can lead to their specific end goals. As with each class, I took time to look back at my goals when I began my mastery journey. I will admit that this course was challenging for me. In my personal life, my job has been back in full gear, so I found it difficult to give it my all. I didn’t complete all of my goals as originally intended. My first goal was to learn more about service metrics via a Lynda.com. Through this course, I was able to view many tutorials on Lynda that I feel will be very beneficial to my future. The videos appealed to my learning style so that I was able to keep up. My next goal was to gain more knowledge in technology by making connections outside of class. During my class, I connected with other Public Relations professionals and I was able to ask questions as it related to my coursework. It was a great opportunity to see how the information that I am learning relates to the real world. Finally, my final goal was to join a campus group. I didn’t meet this goal. I haven’t spent much time with the extracurricular opportunities at Full Sail. This is something that I want to improve upon as I prepare for my next class. As I am moving forward in my journey, I am taking each class as a stepping stone to learning more about myself. I didn’t do as well as I could this course, but I want to improve this attitude moving forward. I want to gain as much as possible from my time at Full Sail.

In regards to my timeline goals, I was more active in classroom discussions. Usually, when someone replies to my post I just read it and move on. This class, I tried to engage more by responding to those that replied to me. I want to gain as much as possible from my classmates and I want to make meaningful connections. In an effort to gain more information on social media marketing, I have been doing outside research and learn more about social media marketing. I have signed up for a webinar on how to grow social media. My last goal was to make more contacts on social media. I have grown my PR Instagram page to 122 followers (I have less than 90 followers before this class), and I have grown my LinkedIn page to 37 connections (I had around 25 at the beginning of the class). Having to post consistently through this class I am starting to make a social media presence for my brand. 

Want to learn more about Hudson Public Relations? Check out our first video explaining who we are and the inspiration behind the brand.

As I am wrapping up on my next course in my journey to attain my Public Relations degree, I will say that this course presented me with many challenges. Writing for Interactive Media made me nervous because I am not very confident in my writing skills. Writing has always been an area of growth for me, so I wasn’t sure how I would succeed in the class. As I progressed in the class, I noticed my growth when it comes to writing. Part of being successful in public relations is having strong written communication skills. My goals for this course included developing stronger writing skills, view online tutorials related to writing, and to develop my own voice. In order to build my writing skills, I utilized Fullsail writing resources like Purdue OWL website and other resources. As I was working on my stories, I would go to these websites to gain better clarity on my writing. When I got to my final paper, I felt more confident in my writing. I also viewed the online tutorial on Lyndia.com on how to write press releases. I know that press releases are a major tool in the public relations field and I want to be as prepared as possible so that once I enter the field I am equipped to write press releases for my business and my clients. My final goal for this course was to develop my voice. I previously had a personal blog that I would occasionally write posts. In building my writing skills, I want to continue what I learned, and I have decided to restart my blog and write on a weekly basis. This will allow me to continue to build my writing skills as well as develop my voice. This class I had some personal challenges and I felt at times that I wasn’t as connected as I was in the previous course. This course took more for me to really focus and put in the time in effort. Moving forward, I want to make sure that I am sticking with my study schedule and make sure that I am taking time for myself so that I am not feeling overwhelmed. I am looking forward to continuing my journey to becoming a public relations professional.

Public Relations in A Digital World has been a class that has gotten me closer to reaching my mastery goal. I came into this course looking to expand my knowledge of how to incorporate my existing digital knowledge into the area of public relations. I’m please to say that I have learned a lot about merging public relations and digital platforms. We live a more technological world and as this continues to grow, we have to learn how utilize the technology that we have to make our marks and build our brands and the brands of our clients or companies. In public relations, having a positive brand is essential to earn the trust of our clients and customers. We only get one opportunity to make a first impression and we must be mindful that  what we put out is often people’s first interaction of us, so having social media, websites, blogs, and other platforms that are aligned with our core message is important. My favorite assignment for the course has been creating the public service announcement. This assignment stretched my abilities in the areas of creative media. Before this course I had no prior knowledge of how to create a PSA and so I had to work diligently to make sure that I was creating the right message for the organization that I chose.  I decided to create a PSA for Autism Speaks because as a parent of a child with Autism, I wanted to point out that children with Autism may have challenges, but they are also talented and strong in so many ways. I can definitely see how creating a meaningful PSA like the one I created for Autism Speaks can encourage the public to gain a better understanding of Autism and follow the call to action. As far as the topics covered over the course, I found the information on branding and creating a social media plan were the most helpful as a future public relations professional. Coming into this program, I wanted to gain a better understanding of branding and how I can help as a public relations professional. Social media is a large digital medium that will help build successful brands. Social media can be a daunting task, but with a proper plan can be what separates an unsuccessful brand from a successful one. Creating my own social media plan will be added to my toolbox of skills for when I enter the public relations field. Overall, all of the information that I learn I feel a I can apply when I enter the public relations profession. Creating social media strategies, helping clients discover which social media will attract their audience, creating press releases, PSA, and developing proper branding strategies are all things that I have learned in this course that will help my future branding company a success. I know that each brand or company has a unique story and this course has helped to develop skills that I can take and help companies tell their story. Before beginning this course, I had three goals that I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to hone my time management skills, continue to expand my knowledge  of public relations, and to connect with others in my class. I’m happy to say that with this course, I created a study/assignment schedule where I set time aside each day to devote to reading assignments and course work. I want to continue this as I progress towards my mastery journey. I have also spent time researching and reading articles in the area of public relations as a way to connect the assignments and the things  I am learning in class to the real world. As I continue on this journey I would like to continue to expand my knowledge and begin to seek a mentor in my area that has real world experience that would be willing to work with me as I grow in the profession. Finally, as far as connecting with my classmates, I did this through our discussion interactions, but I would like to form more intimate bonds with my classmates in my classes. I want to be a resource to them, and them to become one to me. This is a goal that I would like to continue to carry into the remainder of my classes.

A. (2013, November 26). The Top Skills Every Entrepreneur Needs. Retrieved            April 19, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/aileron/2013/11/26/the-            top- skills-every-entrepreneur-needs/#7f77ad0776e3