Dan Lauth

Dan Lauth knows a thing or two about tweets. Dan is in the business of helping his clients with social networking, a new frontier in public relations.

He has had the real-world opportunity to use his communication skills at Edelman, the third largest public relations firm in the world. The Portland office handles accounts from Starbucks to General Electric, and the largest brands to the smallest local companies.

Dan specializes in technology such as software and web-hosting companies: “not consumer tech, but more deep-tech.” His responsibilities include writing press releases, information briefs, and anything to help companies manage their social media.

“We use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and we do corporate blogging. It’s a big direction in which PR is moving. With our team we try to our clients on how to capitalize on these tools.”

The Web 2.0 guru also helps his clients identify marketplace trends and develop strategies to grow that membership. He asks “How are we going to drive this company’s image?”

“I think the social media thing is going to explode, because the traditional forms of media are dying out. Newspapers are moving online, and now there’s a blogger industry that is starting to be accepted as mainstream. We’re moving from a general public, to marketing to the individual person, and you do that via social media.”

Dan is honing his skills in the trend with the aim of becoming a social media expert – the neo-post modern wave in PR.

The Seattle native came to Portland State in pursuit of a master’s in communication. In between teaching public speaking courses, Dan compared faculty with student notions of classroom cheating, the focus of his thesis.

He advises grad students to choose a thesis topic that will help them professionally. “The more they can apply your studies to what you’ll be doing in the real world, the better off you’ll be.” Dan also says to start networking as soon as possible and “always keep an open mind.”

Story and photo by Melissa Shavlik