PRSSA National Conference: Chapter Branding

Attending PRSSA National Conference is like hitting the lottery for a PR student. It’s where all the best and brightest future leaders of the industry meet to learn, discuss trends, exchange ideas and, of course, business cards. This year, conference was conveniently hosted in Temple’s hometown of Philadelphia, allowing for a total of 40 members to attend! Sessions included young professional panels, industry veterans (like Temple alum Jason Mollica) and chapter presentations. The University of Florida’s session focused entirely on developing your chapter through brand building in order to develop a strong and proactive program. Here are a few main points that I took away from the presentation.

1. Establish A Mission- Coming up with a mission gives your chapter a clear and concise direction for the year. It provides a central theme in which speakers, meetings, and even social media can be centered around.

2. Create A Strategy- Once you have determined the vision for the year, the next step is to create a strategy to give guidance to that theme. The purpose of your strategy is to have a plan that will best suit your chapter in when it comes to promoting the brand.

3. Promotion- Promotional material gives a visual to your chapter theme. Chapter business cards with a uniform logo, that year’s hashtag, and member t-shirts are great ways to build up the year’s brand.

4. Develop Your Programming- Chapter meetings should coincide with the year’s theme. Speakers, skills seminars, and workshops help unify the brand with the promotional material and established mission.

5. Revamp- It’s important to keep things new and continually refresh your brand from year to year and even throughout the semester. A theme can get stale from week to week, so finding new ways to approach it is important and helps keep your members interested and engaged.

6. Connect Your Message- Keep things uniform over all promotional platforms. From social media to flyers to the website, it’s vital to stay consistent in your chapter voice.

In the words of PRSA International Conference keynote and digital analyst Brian Solis, “Brands are not people, and people are now brands” and PRSSA chapters are no exception!

This guest blog post was written by PRowl Staff Member Jaime Martorana.