Lessons from running PR for a high school club
A third of your job is asking
Even the best managers, who always remember to remind you whenever a meeting is upcoming, have no idea what the meeting will actually be about. Part of your job is getting plans and information out of these people.
The outside world sucks
There's a ton of regulation that only serves the purpose of saving stupid people from themselves. You end up having to follow these regulations as well as you can, since, unfortunately, deregulation isn't your job. Worse, the regulation is often enforced by stupid people themselves, sinking even more time into following regulations that shouldn't need to exist.
Care on an individual level, not a group level
When it was time for the competitors I was managing to submit their works, I pinged those in the club's Discord with their IDs and made a dashboard that tracked qualification. This was good but I should've done more.
If I were to do this today, I would've worked with the club's advisor to be able to track when each competitor submitted their entry. This would let me communicate directly with competitors to keep things moving and force me to better understand how each competition works sooner.
Manual graphics aren't (usually) the way to go
2 TV graphics and 1 sign I made were never used. And of 4 Instagram graphics, only around 2 accounts liked them. These could've been AI generated, and as long as they were of the right dimensions and branding, nobody would care.
1 exception: a promotional flyer passed out at the start of the year. It got so much distribution that the time I put in to making sure it was well designed, put the most important information first, and included all relevant information was clearly worth it.