I gave my third presentation this week on Online PR (or should we be calling it PR2.0?) to undergraduate public relations students here at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and am loving the response from students.

I first presented in Dr. Brenda Wrigley‘s intro PR class. She recommended my presentation to Dr. Sung-Un Yang’s, who invited me to present in his intro PR class as well. I received feedback each time thanks to Dr. Wrigley’s wonderful suggestion to quickly survey the students.

My third presentation this week was in a combined PR Management class, and the students were more eager to ask questions, get involved straight away, and, well, start blogging.

Most are graduating in May, want good jobs, and realize they need the skills to communicate via blogging and other social media.

The most asked question: How do I start?

My answer: Dive in. Monitor blogs. Comment on blogs. And, start blogging now. Become a part of conversations that are already happening.

Elise Arsenault, a Senior PR student, started her blog r2r: relating to relations:

As this is my first post, I’d like to point out that I’m very new to blogging. Being that I belong to the generation I do, I’m very exposed to social media outlets and I feel as though I’m fairly tech savvy. However, blogs to me were always those odd little ways that people tried to express themselves; expression that I felt wasn’t very relevant to me. As more and more people are quickly realizing, this is clearly not the case.

Thanks Elise, you rock!

…over a week after countless other bloggers and I posted about it. And they actually spoke with the public relations department (because they’re a traditional media outlet, ah ha!):

Could Target, the ever-hip, contemporary retailer, really have such a low opinion of blogs, the ever-hip, contemporary media channel?

Yes, at least for now. “We do not work with bloggers currently,” said a company spokeswoman, Amy von Walter, who agreed to speak with this traditional media outlet.

“But we have made exceptions,” Ms. von Walter said. “And we are reviewing the policy and may adjust it.”

Target tells a blogger to go away [The New York Times]

I do love Target, but not when their PR peeps act stupid and refuse to “participate with non-traditional media outlets” in lieu of addressing a serious issue. As The Consumerist points out:

…the idea that blogs do not reach Target’s “core guest” is idiotic. This website is a non-traditional media outlet and we’re certain that our readers shop at Target.

Well said.