PR University 2012 Recap

Another successful PRU occurred last week.  Thank you to our guest speakers and to those who attended and made this event so successful!  And a very special thank you to all our sponsors and to Carla Ulakovic and Michelle Nagel who made this event extraordinary!

If you could not make the event, please be sure to check out the below news release by Gail Dolan detailing the many useful topics at this year's event.

FPRA’s PR University one-day workshop of “Pump up the Volume” was a big success

The Southwest Florida Chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association (FPRA) hosted its annual PR University November 8th at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Estero, FL. Entitled “Pump up the Volume,” the professional development program featured local and national experts in event execution, branding law, nonprofit marketing strategies, and traditional and social media to help attendees hone their marketing and PR skills.

Lydia Antunes Black, Executive Director of the Lee County Alliance for the Arts urged nonprofit organizations to not only market their products and services, but to market their impact on the community as well to put a face on how it impacts the quality of life in the community it serves.

Chris Cifatte, news anchor at Wink-TV offered tips for contacting and sending press releases to WINK-TV, their news cycles, and the kinds of stories they seek to showcase daily.

Attorneys Edward Livingston and Bryan Loeffler of The Livingston Law Firm in Naples spoke on the importance of protecting trademarks and copyrights of company brands and provided guidelines to writers and graphic designers when producing web content.

John Korff of Korff Enterprises, Inc. of New York City provided interesting insights into event planning and crisis communications in sport and event marketing. As a veteran in the entertainment industry, he provided attendees with examples of how he has creatively generated publicity and attendance at professional tennis and golf tournaments, triathlons, concerts, and balloon and music festivals all over the country.

Mary Briggs, APR, CPRC, System Director for Media Relations for Lee Memorial Health System shared statistics from the Pew Research Center on how the public obtains its news—and how that is changing. She provided thorough insights on how to anticipate reporters’ needs and prepare and submit press releases that will be welcomed and published.  

The topic of social media concluded the day’s program, as Rafael Sangiovanni, social media strategist for rbb Public Relations of Miami discussed the growing importance of using visuals in the social media, including how to build a corporate brand using Pinterest, best practices for Facebook, and recent changes at Twitter and LinkedIn.

Sponsors for the event were The News-Press Media Group, PKE Marketing & PR, Simplify PR, Embassy Suites Hotel, and Verizon Wireless. Annual sponsors of FPRA, SW Florida Chapter are LCEC, Shell Point Retirement Community, Flame Productions/Internet, Owen Ames Kimball, Charlotte Behavioral Health Care, and J.J. Taylor Companies, Inc.