Category Archives: Book Reviews

Social Media Book Reviews Galore!

Below you’ll find every social media book I’ve ever reviewed on this blog going back to 2013! Woah, that’s a long time ago!

Leveraging Technology in Leadership Communication by Carolyn Mae Kim [Book Review]

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Leveraging Technology in Leadership Communication by Carolyn Mae Kim

Dr. Carolyn Mae Kim has a new book out about leadership and the role technology can play in building ethical leadership. Published by Routledge, this new book is titled Leveraging Technology in Leadership Communication.  Below I review this brand new book.

But before we start, I must admit my bias up front in reviewing this book. In my social media class, I use one of Dr. Kim’s other books, Social Media Campaigns: Strategies for Public Relations and Marketing (I reviewed the first edition of this book in 2016. I currently use the second edition in my class).

Professor Kim is someone I have long-admired. She is a leader in public relations education and the work she has done in helping build the PR program at Biola University is an inspiration. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from her as well as work with her on a few projects and I know her to be a person of exceptional character. Lastly, I had the opportunity to make a small contributions to this book in a leadership spotlight (more on that below). So, again, fair warning: the review you will find below is biased.

Continue reading Leveraging Technology in Leadership Communication by Carolyn Mae Kim [Book Review]

Discovering Public Relations by Karen Freberg [Big Announcement]

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Discovering Public Relations by Karen Freberg: What is it?

The public relations educator’s community is abuzz with news that Dr. Karen Freberg has a new public relations textbook coming out, Discovering Public Relations: An Introduction to Creative and Strategic Practices.

I’m thrilled to announce that I have had the honor of creating the ancillary materials for Karen’s new textbook. This new textbook is designed for the public relations class. It is currently on pre-order and will be available in August, in time for the fall 2020 academic year.  Below, I discuss Discovering Public Relations: An Introduction to Creative and Strategic Practices and the ancillary materials I have created for it.

Continue reading Discovering Public Relations by Karen Freberg [Big Announcement]

A Review of Teach Social Media Published in the Journal of Public Relations Education

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Review of Teach Social Media Published in JPRE

I’m thrilled to share some exciting news!

My book, Teach Social Media: A Plan for Creating a Course Your Students Will Love, was reviewed in the Journal of Public Relations Education (JPRE). This review was written by Natalie Tindall.

Read the review of Teach Social Media here in the most recent issue of JPRE, issue 6, volume one.

journal of public relations education

Continue reading A Review of Teach Social Media Published in the Journal of Public Relations Education

SEO Fitness Workbook by Jason McDonald [Book Review]

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SEO Fitness Workbook by Jason McDonald Book Review

Teaching search engine optimization (SEO) to public relations and marketing students is an essential part of our jobs as PR and marketing professors. In this post, I review the SEO Fitness Workbook by Jason McDonald. Whether you teach SEO in a writing class or in another course, this book offers opportunities to build lessons in SEO keyword research, offer instruction on best practices for writing SEO-friendly website content, and more.

The book I am reviewing is the 2019 version, but the 2020 version of McDonald’s SEO Fitness Workbook is already available. There is also a teacher edition of McDonald’s SEO workbook.

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Portfolio building activities in social media: Exercises in strategic communication By Karen Freberg (Book Review)

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Review of Portfolio building activities in social media: Exercises in strategic communication By Karen Freberg

Last summer, Dr. Karen Freberg [Twitter | LinkedIn] published her social media textbook, Social media for strategic communication: Creative strategies and research-based applications, to great fanfare.

Since then, her textbook has skyrocketed up the Amazon charts for social media textbook best sellers. The buzz generated has been well-earned as Karen has been more than an inspiration for those of us teaching in the social media space. She has been a leader, advocated, and supporter to so many of us, including myself.

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Reviews of Two Resources Often Discussed on this Blog Published in JPRE: Social Media Campaigns Text and Meltwater Software

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The semester is right around the corner! Classes start for us next week.

I had an amazing and very busy summer with travel to 3 continents: Europe, Australia and South America. In addition, it was so great to see many great friends and people whom I truly admire at AEJMC in Washington , D.C. I cannot truly express the depth of the admiration I have for all of the people who’ve worked so hard to advance the field and who’ve truly made AEJMC PRD such an amazing  educational opportunity. I left AEJMC inspired. I just wish I had more time to chat with everyone.

Continue reading Reviews of Two Resources Often Discussed on this Blog Published in JPRE: Social Media Campaigns Text and Meltwater Software

A Roadmap for Teaching Social Media by Karen Freberg (Book Review)

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As many readers of this blog know, I’m a major fan of Dr. Karen Freberg and her leadership and work in the field of social media education.

Last year, Dr. Freberg published A Roadmap for Teaching Social Media: All the assignments, rubrics, and feedback you’ll need to present a strategic social media course. So, of course, when this book came out, I had to get my hands on it.

Continue reading A Roadmap for Teaching Social Media by Karen Freberg (Book Review)