PR interns: 5 tips and tricks to excel at what you do

An internship is among the best ways to score a job after college, but first you have to survive the experience. Here’s some advice from the trenches.

Internships are a learning experience. At the end of the semester, you want to be able to walk away with a list of things you have learned about your major and about the professional environment.

These are the top five tips and tricks that have stuck with me during my internship:

“There is (almost) always an answer on the Internet.”

When you don’t know something, finding the answer often is really as simple as using Google. It’s an amazing resource that we sometimes forget about or take for granted. You can easily find a lot of information to support your ideas and thoughts.

You can also use social networking sites like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook as tools to help you do research and establish relationships with journalists.

For example, after a few months of tweeting at my town’s mayor, I was able to get in contact with him about a national childhood obesity PR campaign I am working on for school. After researching some things he and my town have done for childhood obesity, he seemed like a great fit to help out with the campaign. He already knew who I was over Twitter, so he was more apt to help me.

“No question is a stupid question.”

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