YoungPRPros
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
A: YoungPRPros (TM) is a professional group comprised
primarily of people in the first ten years of their public relations careers,
but also inclusive of more senior professionals who seek a dynamic connection
to tactical trends in public relations.
Online resources at YoungPRPros.com include a Yahoo!-hosted email
listserv for real-time group discussion on a variety of topics of interest to
the early to mid-career PR professional as well as a regularly updated PR
article bank, PR links, PR polls and surveys, member photos and even quick
reference media lists. YoungPRPros also
holds networking happy hours in several cities across the country, including
Washington, DC, New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and
Seattle.
A: YoungPRPros’ membership includes men and women from
age 18 through 67, who work in agency, corporate and single practitioner public
relations environments, on every continent except Antarctica. Members also include journalists, some of
whom cover public relations and other areas of marketing, as well as people
from companies who serve the public relations industry. If you’re interested in more information on
membership demographics, as well as members’ opinions on the group check out
the 2nd annual YoungPRPros readership survey at: http://www.youngprpros.com/yprstudy2.htm
.
A: YoungPRPros is not a commercially subsidized entity
and is not intended to generate a profit.
It is meant to support professional development within the field of public
relations as a free resource.
YoungPRPros.com employs the Yahoo Groups interface, which includes a
limited amount of advertising content, but
YoungPRPros is not affiliated in any way with Yahoo’s advertisers nor
does it generate any revenue from Yahoo advertising.
A: Nope. But
you can support the group's branding efforts by buying something from the YoungPRProShop. There’s
a wide variety of fun PR gifts, from t-shirts to mouse pads to thongs! We make NO revenue from this and items are listed at the cost to us.
A: First and foremost, you can expect a prompt answer
to any question you pose to the group.
You’ll read career tips, media relations tactics and general
communications strategies, straight from the people who carry them out most
often. But be forewarned- like any
Internet message forum, you can also expect a certain amount of off-topic
discussion. This is why we make
available the NO EMAIL option or the DAILY DIGEST option, adjustable at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/youngprpros/join
anytime during your membership. This
function enables you to cut down on the number of emails you get each day to
one - or none - while retaining the membership privilege of the ability to pose
a question to the group at any time.
You can also read and post all messages directly from the website
itself, rather than from your email account.
A: When I entered the public relations industry in the nineties, I worked in budget-limited environments that precluded me from
attending industry conferences and participating in other expensive
professional development opportunities.
Further, I found scant resources on the Internet to bridge the gap. The online email lists dedicated to PR that
were already in existence frankly lacked tactical focus, and worse, were not
welcoming environments to the newbie.
I regularly witnessed junior pros who asked "rookie" questions
get dressed down for their naïveté rather than being given a leg up with a
little good advice. So I started this
group. 75 people joined within 10
minutes of the first announcement and we have over 30 times that many members
today.
A: As much as possible, we’ve tried not to legislate
behavior at YoungPRPros. However, we
will not tolerate:
A: If you are in a top 25 media market, there is
probably a YoungPRPro in your neighborhood.
The fastest way to learn if there are members in your city is to simply
post a message asking the group.
However, quarterly, YoungPRPros also holds an enrollment period for its
official member database. This is an
opt-in list that includes YoungPRPros members’ contact information, and is distributed
only to those who make available their own information during member database
enrollment.
A: Only members can access all the features of the
group. Go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/youngprpros/join
and enroll using your Yahoo ID. If you
don’t have one, it only takes about 30 seconds to create and it's free.
A: On each email
you get from YoungPRPros, there is trailing footer text that provides
un-subscription information and includes some advertisements. When you hit reply on your email program, by
default, it will include all of this text, in addition to the body of the
message to which you are replying. In
addition to creating an unnecessarily long email string, it causes severe
readability problems in the Daily Digest, which is basically a chronological
list of all the messages in a day. When
people don’t snip all day, and reply to each others’ replies in a string, it
creates an incredibly long, frightfully repetitive Daily Digest message. Simply delete the trailing text from your
replies and help us avoid the problem.
A: This happens once in a while, and most of the time,
delays are due to high traffic or maintenance on Yahoo’s server. If you experience a delay of more than 24
hours, however, the problem may be on your end.
A: First of all, if you’re using Microsoft Outlook,
consider creating a rule. Choose the NO EMAIL option or the DAILY DIGEST option, adjustable
at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/youngprpros/join
anytime during your membership. This
function enables you to cut down on the number of emails you get each day to
one - or none - while retaining the membership privilege of the ability to pose
a question to the group at any time.
You can always read and post messages directly from the YoungPRPros.com
website itself, rather than using your email account. But if you’d like to leave the group, you can also do so via the
link above. We’d miss you, though. Keep in mind that it can on rare occasions take
up to 4 hours for Yahoo to process your request.
A: This means that the message is off-topic, or not
directly concerning the subject of public relations. Members are encouraged to add this header to all off-topic
messages, as a courtesy to fellow members.
A: Here’s
the fastest method:
1. Create a new folder and
label it YPR. (You'll probably want to
do it in your Personal Folders if you're on an Exchange system)
2. Click on an email from
YoungPRPros that's in your inbox.
3. On the toolbar above,
click Organize.
4. Where it says,
"Create a rule to move new messages..." set the pulldown box to
"sent to."
5. Where it says,
"into," set the pulldown box to YPR.
ALL messages sent via YoungPRPros will now automatically move to that
folder.
Here’s a more thorough
approach:
1. Create a new folder and
label it 'YPR.' (You'll probably want
to do it in your Personal Folders if you're on an Exchange system)
2. Click Inbox.
3. On the Tools menu, click "Rules Wizard."
4. Click New.
5. Select "Check messages when they arrive" and click
"Next."
6. Select "With specific words in the subject."
7. In the Rule description box in the lower half, click on
"specific words," which is underlined.
8. Enter 'YoungPRPros' (without the quotes) and click
"Add."
9. Click "OK" and then "Next."
10. Select "move it to the specified
folder."
11. In the Rule description box in the lower
half, click on "specified," which is underlined.
12. Select the YPR folder you created and click
"Finish."
You can repeat this process
to filter your YoungPRPros mail again for off-topic posts.
1. Create a new folder
within your existing YPR folder and label it 'OT.'
2. Click Inbox.
3. On the Tools menu, click "Rules Wizard."
4. Click New.
5. Select "Check messages when they arrive" and click
"Next."
6. Select "With specific words in the subject."
7. In the Rule description box in the lower half, click on
"specific words," which is underlined.
8. Enter 'OT'' (without the quotes) and click "Add."
9. Click "OK" and then "Next."
10. Select "move it to the specified
folder."
11. In the Rule description box in the lower
half, click on "specified," which is underlined.
12. Select the OT folder you created and click
"Finish."
Note: You have to order your rules in your rules
list (the view you see as soon as you hit "Rules Wizard") to set
their priority. There's a "move up" and "move down" to set
the order they are run.
We strongly recommend
putting the rules you create for YoungPRPros as high up as possible, since
strict obscenity filters may otherwise keep you from getting innocent
YoungPRPros emails that contain words like "sex."
A: Each Friday, it’s your opportunity to tell your
colleagues about a recent achievement and how it came about. The most compelling stories make it into
print, within a special section of a PR NEWS column (sample: http://www.ianlipner.com/prnews.htm)
dedicated to highlighting the successes of members of YoungPRPros.