The dissertation is finally done and submitted! I cannot tell you how happy I am, and also how relieved! The last three months of my life were basically invaded by this piece of work… Nevertheless, I’m quite satisfied with what I’ve done and I’m already anxious to know the results; however I’ll have to wait till July.

So, as you can see from the photo, the topic of my dissertation was “The Impact of Social Media on the Public Relations Industry.” This issue has been around for a few years now and has been researched before too, but because of the very nature of social media, namely always changing, I believe it is necessary for this matter to be studied on a very regular basis. Most importantly though working on this project helped me gain a vast knowledge into the PR practice, which from a personal perspective is extremely valuable, because I am not a PR student, but a business student, who is pursuing a public relations career. So, now I am a lot more familiar not only with a number of theories relevant to the communications practice, but with the industry itself now and before the emergence of social media. Also I had the chance to meet and get to know some experienced PR professionals and certainly made a few good connections.

More than 18 million views just on YouTube in only 4 days! Now that's viral!

I saw the querilla marketing campaign below the other day and I thought "WoW!" It's so cool and so good that I simply had to share it even if some of you might have already seen it. 

While watching, I was staring at the screen, no blinking, just staring at all the dramatic stunts: ambulance, fighting, half-naked girl, police, guns, shooting, blood, rugby players - absolute action happening live on a quiet square in a small Belgian town. 

When I saw the last few seconds, I was laughing like crazy, completely surprised by the unexpected outcome - turns out it's a promotional campaign by TNT. I was shocked, but imagine how shocked the people at the square were!

When was the last time you watched something on a video cassette? 5 years ago, 10 years ago or maybe 15 years ago?

I can’t even remember when... Things change so rapidly; we manage to embrace new gadgets as soon as they come alive and forget about using the old ones or even about their existence.  Take for example the past few decades when we got to know the VHS, then the CD, then the DVD, then the USB etc.

Wonder what else happened? Well, have a look at Rackspace’s fascinating infographic below – it shows some interesting facts about the evolution of our technology world and how far we’ve come.

Last summer I served an 8-week internship in Social Media Marketing at Delta Agentur – Advertising and Communications Agency in Germany. I was part of their Social Media Team and it was certainly a very enlightening and fun experience too.

I am not going to write about everything I actually did that summer, but about the most relevant ones I believe are of importance for my future career in PR. So, among other things I was writing various blog posts (listed here) and copy for different websites and publicity materials that the agency was responsible for. I was also engaging with Facebook followers and supported the agency’s Twitter stream with content.

All this included a lot of research, monitoring and listening in various online channels and I must admit these activities very much helped me gain a deep understanding of social media networking.