Talk with Tiffany

Recently, I sat down with Tiffany Kline, a Senior at Ohio Northern University. Tiffany is currently a marketing and communications intern at St. Rita’s Medical Center in Lima. She has been with St. Rita’s for a little over a year and a half now. Tiffany worked part time during the school year and full time during the summer of 2016. Over the summer she was the temporary communications coordinator. While in this role she had the opportunity to handle media relations, internal and external communications, social media and lead our new website launch.

I asked Tiffany various questions pertaining to her internship and problems she sees in social media and the field of public relations. The full podcast can be found here. Here are a few of the questions and answers from my time with Tiffany.

What’s a typical week like? (If no week is typical, then what was last week like?)

I don’t really have a typical week. Every day I go to work there is always something different that I wasn’t prepared for. During the last week, I have done a variety of different things, but I would say the main thing that I do is keep our new website up-to-date. On Dec. 1, 2016, we went live with our new website. This was my mini project that I started working on at the end of July. It was so cool to see all the hard work that I had put into this website, come to action. When I am not doing website updates, I may be attending team meetings or meetings pertaining to the site, it never seems to end. I also do all our schedule media, whether that be monthly or weekly. When scheduling individuals to fill these slots, I always try to go with the theme of the month, so for example February is heart month and we feature quite a few of our heart physicians. I also assist our director, marketing manager and communications coordinator.

What do you do to keep current in the PR industry?

To keep current in the PR industry I try to continue learning about different things that I am doing or think I would find interesting. To do this, I try to look at different PR articles. Just recently I learned how to track a bitly link to see how many people have clicked the link.

Did your education prepare you for working in PR? How? 

My education at Ohio Northern University did prepare me for the real world. Through Dr. Aggie’s AP quizzes, I have a better understanding of AP style, which made me a better writer. Through Dr. Fleck’s news quizzes, I stayed current with the news, because you never know-how a national story could affect a local station and the company you are working for. My education at Northern beyond prepared me, but my internship experience confirmed that a Northern education put you ahead of many other PR students at different schools.

How does technology affect your daily work?

I use technology daily at work. I am constantly working on a computer and spend majority of my day sitting at my desk working. I have also learned that it’s important to be able to pick up the phone and call someone because if they aren’t answering your email then your best bet is to either call them or pay a visit. When I am away from my desk, I always have my phone on me, because you never know what can happen when your away for just a few minutes.

What three tips would you offer someone just starting out in PR or looking for an internship?

1. Apply, Apply, Apply

You may not get your dream internship the first time around, but you never know what you may like.

2. You can always continue fine tuning your writing skills.

One of the biggest problems is that people not are not informed on their writing. It is very important when writing for your company whether it be social media or a simple email that you are using proper AP Style and formatting. Just know that the environment you work in is always going to be changing. It is your job as a PR major/professional to stay up to date and put your best foot forward.

3. When going in for the interview, be yourself. If the fit doesn’t work, then it is for the best.

Other Notes/Comments:

The social media platforms that we currently use at the hospital include:

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. I use Facebook pages to manage our Facebook account. Through business manager I can view all the activity for our page.

 I will use ads manager to create an ad that we will run on both our Facebook and Instagram accounts. The ad I create will typically relate to something that we are doing at the hospital or a campaign we are running at that time. We also will utilize SEO for key word searches. Using SEO ensures that when individuals search certain medical terms we will pop up on their search engine. Overall, social media are a very important aspect in the marketing and communications department because this is just one small way we can share everything great our employees do and why doing their job is so important to them.

Problems/Issues with social media within the hospital:

I would say Twitter is our weakest platform. In Allen county, there isn't must use for it since we aren't in a major city. We utilize it to communicate with media but it is not our strongest platform to reach our publics.

I really enjoyed speaking with Tiffany about public relations and various uses and issues with social media at her current internship. I would love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share in the comments below!