The battle of the blogging assignments

I’ve neglected to mention that this semester is the first time that I’ve run two blogging assignments at the same time.

I’ve been spending the last two weeks talking about my second-year Marketing students’ blogs; however, I’m also teaching Public Relations to second-year Advertising Marketing Communications students.

The AMC students (or Advertising students) are writing weekly about PR speakers who are visiting their classroom via Skype or in person to talk about the topic of the week. Meanwhile, the Marketing students are reflecting on subjects related to their market research projects in another instructor’s course.

This week, I’m going share my favourite blogs from Week 1 of the PR speaker series as well as my favourite blogs of the week from Marketing class. My old Ryerson University journalism classmate Stephanie Minna Cass, a PR specialist at Mondelez Canada, taught students about the importance of including PR in the integrated marketing communications mix.

Since I have a big pile of marking on my desk that needs attention, I’ll get into my fave student blogs of the week without further ado:

Advertising student Brianna Visser shares the top five lessons she learned from Stephanie: be a sponge; when presenting a problem, present three solutions; be respectful; speak up; and have fun.

Advertising student Emily Rose writes about the top lesson she learned from Stephanie: Always trust your gut and don’t be afraid to say no if a work project has the potential to compromise your ethics.

Advertising student Sarah Durrant learns about the narrative power of PR and receives a potent reminder to pay it forward.

Advertising student Sarah Deacon reflects on the power of story and PR’s role in building brand and relationships with customers.

Marketing student Kayla Coleman reveals the three questions her research team members will be asking as they investigate the effectiveness of using social media for Subway restaurants.

Marketing student John Sullivan will be investigating happiness as part of the framework for his research into cereal choice. What does he mean? Read his latest blog post to find out.

Marketing student Colin Howard reviews some of the research his team will use to help make the YMCA more attractive to students.

Marketing student Emily Culhane reveals the research methods her team will use to explore the future of Canada Post.

Also worth a read are Kali Gieben’s blog and that of Kimlee Santos.

It’s a long list with plenty of read-worthy posts—and there were many other good reads that didn’t make this list of 10. But, hey, I’ve got marking to do. At the same time, I’m hoping you’ll take the time to visit a few of the blogs above and I don’t want to overwhelm you.