I had the privilege of delivering the keynote presentation for about 100 Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) chapter presidents this past weekend, to help kickoff their annual Leadership Rally in Scottsdale, Arizona.

I’ve put the slide deck on SlideShare and embedded it below.

The presentation encourages audiences to adapt the concept of Buyer Personas (a topic evangelized by David Meerman Scott and Adele Revella among others) and apply it towards identifying admirable leadership traits that we can emulate or adapt, and incorporate into our own Leadership Personas.

In addition to an engaging session (and a great lunch) I was able to meet many student attendees individually and hear what’s on their minds as they prepare to lead PRSSA activities on their campuses and soon enter the workforce.

Pitching the media and merging traditional PR tactics with evolving 2.0 concepts and social media tools were topics discussed, as well as some thoughts on reverse mentoring instances that young PR professionals may encounter with veterans as they enter the workforce, given their natural understanding and hands-on use of social media.

It also seems that I mentioned the social networking efforts of Michigan State University more than once in my presentation. This wasn’t intentional, yet on my Google searches for examples their good work popped up regularly. There are, in fact, many great examples of social media use by PRSSA chapters across the country. Also, I had a chance to meet Stephanie Dockery, PRSSA president of my alma mater, Illinois State University. Go Redbirds!

Some additional thoughts:

• My thanks to all the PRSSA members who shared responses via Twitter before and after the presentation, and thanks also to Immediate Past President Brandi Boatner for inviting me, and current PRSSA National President Rebecca Timms for live tweeting much of my presentation (and everyone who joined in).
• Those responses can be found via #prssalr and #prssa hashtags.
• I’m hoping to include some of these and other students’ observations in a future PRSA Tactics article or blog post about Thought Leadership on the Social Web.
• Also, when we were discussing media pitching, Alexander Monney of San Jose State University pointed us to this post by Robert Scoble with some additional helpful advice. Thanks Alexander.

[slideshare id=1597837&doc=prssaleadershiprallyryanzukaprfinal-090617102629-phpapp01]