<p>I am currently a sophomore at a local community college and I am majoring in Public Relations. Lately I have been thinking about changing my major so I have been doing some research on "Computer Science" and also "Advertising". </p>
<p>I have a lot of freelancing experience. Such as web design, forum work, wordpress, photoshop etc so I want to take some of those skills and take advantage of them with my major. </p>
<p>Is there a good demand in advertising? Hard to find a job? And what is the pay like?</p>
<p>And same thing for public relations... ^^</p>
<p>What exactly are the duties as an advertiser or the PR field? What do you do...?</p>
<p>I’m still a student so you can take everything I say with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>You could always look into marketing communications (for my school, we focus on advertising and PR for this) programs. I find that ad/PR both go hand in hand and marketing as well. You can do PR or do some creative work like designing things and creating advertising campaigns. Several people have told me taking some marketing classes make you more marketable to the industry as you have a variety of skills involved in the field.</p>
<p>Good demand? Not sure but EVERYTHING needs advertising and publicity. The pay starts off okay/decent I hear (like able to get by but not able to buy some fancy things), but gets better through promotions. It also depends on your location (big city = big clients) and if you’re in-house or an agency. </p>
<p>I currently intern at a PR firm and we do a lot of writing. Writing skills are a must. Press releases and tweets, I write them a loooot for our clients. I also do a lot of pitching (trying to get journalists to pick up a story or event). </p>
<p>Besides writing, I’ve had the lovely chance to staff events in which I basically babysit the press or my client. </p>
<p>I, too, love design and have years of experience in freelance design. I’ve used my skills in PR when I help clients with their social media pages, if they wanna whip something up real quick for a banner or a promotional flyer I was here to do that. </p>
<p>Advertising firms, from what I have seen, have a creative team and a writing team. You could maybe find an internship and see which one fits you more. PR is very writing intensive but it is straightforward and IMO can be fun and has its perks. I found that the creative side of advertising made me brain dead but I haven’t interned so I don’t know what exactly they do – I just know from our class projects.</p>
<p>Is there anyway we could connect outside of the forum? I would love to talk to you about this field… Do you have an email or facebook by any chance?</p>
<p>Also, here is a link to the programs of study, (AA) degree at my school. </p>
<p>I see Mass Communications, advertising, PR, but not marketing communications.</p>