Account Executive and Professional Development Director

Allen Hall Public Relations

In my first year at AHPR, I worked on the Oregon Family Magazine Account where I drafted content for our Facebook page. In the first three months of taking over social media channels, our team gained 12 followers on Facebook and increased the frequency of profile views. I typically post content that directs people to our website or offers family-friendly activities to do.

After a year of working with Oregon Family Magazine, I thought that I would be well suited to join the leadership team of AHPR for the next year. In my role as Professional Development Director, I worked with other members of leadership to encourage other PR students to join our team. I also networked with PR professionals across the West Coast to speak at our meetings.

Highlight

This post from Halloween performed significantly better than other Facebook posts. Typically, we only get one or two reactions to posts.

This post got 87 reactions, 3 comments and 11 shares.

I accredit this significant increase in interactions due to the number of shares, increasing the total number of views. I think the number of shares went up because of the image. It isn’t a stock image – which we typically use – and the dog is adorable. The actual post content was also helpful to pet owners, as it informed them on how to keep their pets safe during Halloween.

Professional Development Director

After creating an outline of what our meeting topics for the term would be, I reached out to professionals well-equipped to teach us about the skills I had outlined. The schedule I developed for fall term is included below. As a general plan, each term included one speaker focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion in communication. We hosted professional development workshops on topics like resume building, cover letter writing and interview skills. I also planned a social media strategy series, which entailed bringing in speakers that could share knowledge on content creation, influencer relations and reporting/metrics. I did my best to tailor these meetings to the needs and interests of our members and got some really great feedback. In addition to learning so much from our weekly speakers, serving as professional development director allowed me to improve my skills in organization, networking and public speaking.