Another guest post from budding journalist Hannah Baker.

Today I come to the end of my week’s work experience at Quest PR. It’s been an interesting few days. As well as helping out the team with admin tasks (not to mention the occasional cuppa – a rite of passage for every work experience student) I’ve been able to see first hand just how proactive PR professionals are in ensuring clients receive every inch of exposure possible and how much new media helps them do this.

In particular, I’ve seen how Quest uses blogs – somewhat of a speciality for the team – to provide a powerful platform from which to make an influential mark on an increasingly virtual world.

I have to admit for someone who likes to keep update with our ever-changing world, I’ve been rather slow off the mark here. I browse a few blogs most days but I still get my opinion-fix on most issues from newspapers and their websites. Until this week I’d never posted on a blog and I hadn’t realised just how useful they can be in raising the profiles of individuals and companies.

I’ve helped the team work on its clients’ blogs, updating the blogrolls, searching for new and interesting bloggers – as well as researching some relevant topics. The team have shown me how posts need to be informative as well as helpful in guiding readers to further information and – particularly for business blogs – reassure the reader of the blogger’s authority and expertise on the subject.

Also, I’ve seen how personality can be injected into a blog without revealing your innermost secrets and that way readers engage more with your posts – and are therefore more likely to comment, recommend and act upon the advice they read.

One thing I hadn’t thought of before was how Quest uses blogs to feed stories and ideas to journalists. Something I’ll definitely take with me into my future career.

But while blogs play a significant role in raising profiles, traditional media are certainly not neglected at Quest with client folders brimming with magazine and newspaper clippings. It’s been interesting to see just how much different media complement each other.

So thank you Quest PR, for an insightful few days as well as all the digestives I’ve consumed while I’ve been here.