Britain’s Best PR Student Blogger of the year: SECOND PLACE!!!

What some (but not many of you) may be aware of is that seven lonnnnng months ago, PR Practitioner and Academic, Richard Bailey (who is also the Editor of online PR magazine, Behind the Spin) kicked off this academic year’s #BestPRblogs competition to promote the work of student bloggers (like myself) who are passionate about public relations.

One month ago, Livi Wilkes, Lauren Old, Morta Jablonskaite, Simona Novokova and I were shortlisted. I couldn’t have been more pleased! After all, I’ve only really been blogging properly since last September so to have my work deemed strong enough for the shortlist of a national contest with over fifty talented entrants was a really nice surprise.

Anyway, we had a month to impress Stephen Waddington, Chief Engagement Officer for KetchumPR and regular blogger in his own right (Seriously, check out his blog!), who was judging us based on:

• Our content,
• Our effort to build a community
• Technical competence in the design and function of our blogs

Today, the results were announced and Britain’s Best PR Student Blogger of 2015 was named in a dedicated blog post by Stephen…..

Morta and Simona achieved joint status as runners-up for their blogs Just PR (Morta) and SN’s PR Campaigns blog (Simona), both of which are beautifully designed and contain in-depth insightful content on a wide range of areas.

Me, myself and I? I placed (joint) SECOND/Highly Commended alongside mature student, Lauren, whose blog shares her experiences juggling her studies with being a mum. Her posts often make me smile, particularly her posts (like this one) relating her experiences raising a two year old to aspects of public relations.

Stephen’s feedback was very kind and reinforced areas I know I need to improve. He said:

Ashley’s Comms and Caffeine blog uses the Adele WordPress template. It’s a good portfolio design with links to her social media profiles. She’s a prolific blogger often posting several posts per week. The content is a mix of campaign analysis and insight into areas of practice. Ashley isn’t afraid of controversial subjects; a recent post takes on the Protein World campaign. Her next job is to work on engagement around her content to generate comments and inbound links.

Engagement has always been my weakness and I think my confidence is a strong possible cause for this. So, after my exams finish, I am dedicating (at least part of) my summer to improving the engagement surrounding my content to expand my reach and gain increased exposure for my work.

That only leaves the girl who secured first place and won the title of Best PR Student Blogger of 2015,

LIVI WILKES!!!

I’m so darn happy for Livi as her blog, Live Love Laugh PR, is a personal favourite of mine (I get to admit that now!). The open passion and clear love she demonstrates for PR is something I share wholeheartedly, and I love both the clean simplicity and overall ‘prettiness’ of her blog’s design as well as the down-to-earth tone she takes in her posts.

Overall, its been a pretty wonderful day and I can’t thank Richard enough for running this project over the past seven months and inspiring a new generation of public relations bloggers. Not only has this experience shown me how easy, interesting and FUN blogging is once you get started, it’s also really helped me gain confidence in my own personal ‘voice’.

The only way is up and thanks to Behind the Spin, I’m one step closer to making my mark in the industry.