PR Students and Pros Meet Online
April 5, 2008 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
Anyone who thinks the world needs yet another social networking site must have rocks in their head.
Cue the music. I guess Robert French, a public relations instructor at Auburn University has rocks in his head, because he’s set up a new meeting place for his students, other students, instructors, and public relations professionals.
It’s PR Open Mike, and there are 150 members so far. No MyRagan.com, but that’s not the intent.
It’s not that I need yet another social network to belong to, with another UserID and password. But it’s good to seen something organized around students.
I’ll be signing up and checking out what Robert and the students are up to.
Technorati Tags: auburn university, public relations students, faculty, teachers, pr open mic, robert french, social networking
Hey Eric,
Well, people have certainly said worse of me … re: the rocks in my head.
MyRagan & others are all good, but nowhere have I seen a focus on PR Higher Education – faculty & students. In fact, few PR news or network sites even have “education” as a category for their news/activities. So, that’s the genesis for propenmic.org.
Kind of strange that we don’t have a place that focuses on improving interaction & sharing within this specific higher ed community. I’ve dreamed of something like this for a long time.
Thanks for considering signing up, Eric. We’ll gladly keep a slot open for you. Oh, and here’s an idea … use the same login / password you use at another site. We won’t look at the info, even if we could. ;o)
Thanks.
Robert
By the way, we own the URL for PROpenMike.org/.com, too. But, students voted for the PROpenMic.org moniker.
Well… To tell you the truth, I’m finding that I’m getting a lot of value out of two highly focused social networks these days (Spill.Com and PROpenMic). Not a conscious thing. Just kind of happened that way.
MyRagan.Com has bruises from the 10-foot poles I’ve been touching it with.
Hey Eric, I was reminded of this post a few days ago. Thought I’d share some recent news about PROpenMic with you.
This post – http://is.gd/3hOb – relates the status of PROpenMic after six months. We compared the site’s traffic, among other key benchmarks, against some other sites.
We are, at the very least, equal to MyRagan.com, if not beating them in traffic and audience involvement over the six month span. All that and we still only have what, 1/4 to 1/5 of their membership.
So, it isn’t the size of the audience / membership, but rather what they do with the network. Let’s not forget, MyRagan is powered by a corporation with $10+ million in annual revenues. PROpenMic is funded with a little over $30 a month out of my pocket. Yes, the Compete.com and Alexa.com numbers are estimates, but I’d be kind of scratching my head if I was MyRagan.com’s staff. Wouldn’t you?
MyRagan has a staff. Writers. Editors. IT people. PROpenMic has, well … the membership. Seems that there was a void in communication social networks. No one was (and still – pretty much no one is, other than us) focusing on PR students and faculty. And, half our network is PR practitioners.
Maybe you can do a follow up on how some niche networks can serve a need, fill a void, and actually draw an audience.
You were right, of course. We aren’t MyRagan and never intended to be. I was likely more surprised than anyone at PROpenMic’s success. Still, for a nonprofit educational site to show such growth in a small time, compared to a multi-million dollar corporation’s effort … well, that’s worth a second look, isn’t it?
I’d like to have you involved. The students will benefit. Thanks.