Tuesday night was the last general meeting of PRSSA for the semester. It started off on a great note because I won “Communications Committee Member of the Month!” That was pretty awesome.

The guest speaker at our meeting was Mary Henige, Director of Social Media and Digital Communications at General Motors. She was really awesome and had a lot to say. She says that social media is all about humanizing your brand and building relationships with consumers.

• Build confidence and trust.
• Create and strengthen awareness.
• Capture and channel feedback.

Something that she has found to work well at GM, especially during a crisis, is rapid response engagement. For example, they made use of Twitter for live chats with the CEO. They answered the questions of the consumers, before focusing on the media, because this gave the media an angle and showed that they care about their consumers.

Mary also made the point that video and multimedia are becoming more important to social media. You need to learn how to do it well to make sure your message is heard.

We learned a lot about the different types of jobs she has had over the years. Mary has had a pretty exciting career and I enjoyed learning about it!

*Also, as a follow up to a previous post, I did not get the fundraising chair position, but I’ve got lots of time to work my way up for next time!