Stephanie Kuschel | Sept. 21, 2010
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| Photo by Stephanie Kuschel |
| Sheila Shidnia, Butler University's director of Web marketing, talked to students about how the basketball team's rise to national prominence affected her job. Web traffic was so large, the servers crashed repeatedly. |
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“It’s similar to a crisis situation –even though it’s a good story,” Courtney Tuell, director of public relations, told students Monday. She and Sheila Shidnia, director of Web marketing and communications, visited adjunct lecturer Irene Bushaw’s J321 Principles of Public Relations class.
Tuell and Shidnia shared their experiences with students and answered questions about what it was like to be in charge of communications for a small university that suddenly found itself thrust into the national spotlight.
When the Butler team made it to the Final Four Championship, the news almost was more than anyone – including the university’s Web site — was prepared to handle. The university Web server easily handled the usual 15,000 hits per day, but traffic surged 291 percent. The main server repeatedly crashed, and the university realized it had to react quickly to accommodate the extra attention.
“There was a ‘panic time,’ there was a lot we had to react to really quickly,” said Tuell.
Shidnia explained that the university’s fledgling social media network, which had existed only one year at the time of the tournament, was another complication. The university had not yet created a separate Facebook page specifically dedicated to its basketball team. Before the university had time to address the issue, outside fans had created more than 40 Facebook pages.
When the network news organizations began calling, communications management became even more pressing.
“If you don’t have a good idea of what your message is, you’re really going to have a hard time communicating,” said Shidnia.
Tuell and Shidnia worked long days and nights to develop a strategy. They prioritized media organizations they needed to accommodate first, starting with local news organizations and major networks. They organized and disseminated information to accommodate the large volume of people suddenly seeking answers to questions about the university.
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| Photo by Stephanie Kuschel |
| Two members of Butler University's public relations team, Courtney Tuell, left, and Sheila Shidnia, talked to students Monday. The discussed how the school's NCAA appearance created a frenzy of activity for their department. |
Tuell and Shidnia left students with a few words of advice, encouraging them to find careers they enjoy and to embrace the unexpectedness of life, especially in an evolving field such as public relations.
Shidnia’s advice about PR was the same as her advice about how to approach the future.
“You don’t know what is going to happen until it happens,” she said. “A huge skill is being able to make decisions in the middle of chaos.”
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