District Winners

2017 District 2 Rising Star

Kimberly Buck
Public Relations and Marketing Manager
Danville Community College
Danville, VA

As the public relations and marketing manager for Danville Community College, Kimberly Buck took the helm of DCC's PR and marketing office during a college reorganization. Most of her first year in this role she was a one woman department, responsible for DCC’s media relations, advertising, graphic design, photography, event coverage, and social media. During this time, she also took on new duties as webmaster. Despite these challenges of a small staff, Kim implemented a comprehensive new outreach strategy that involved revamping and improving the use of DCC’s social media as a low-cost tool for recruitment, customer service, and two-way communications with students and stakeholders. She also diversified the college’s advertising and communication channels, moving from a strategy that was largely focused on print news to one that included digital, multimedia ads, social media, and specialty magazines. She transformed the campus print newsletter into a more widely read, electronic version full of multimedia content with trackable metrics. Kim also worked to streamline internal communications and workflow by creating an online work order system for internal clients to request public relations and marketing services. Finally, she saved the college thousands of dollars by redesigning the course catalog and creating a more readable, relevant document that has already won an award at the state level.

Described by her colleagues as energetic, enthusiastic, and passionate, Kim has an outgoing personality and strong interpersonal skills that have helped her build relationships on campus and in the community. She has worked to reduce silos on campus, partnering with other departments that have not worked with the public relations and marketing team in the past. When faced with a major project, she works long hours until it is done. Kim is a sought-after adviser on social media best practices in the Virginia community college system, giving presentations and workshops to her colleagues as well as informal advice on topics such as how to handle negative reviews and how to increase online engagement. Additionally, Kim attends professional development conferences at the regional and national level and serves as a Virginia representative on the NCMPR District 2 executive council.

Congratulations to Kimberly Buck, NCMPR District 2’s 2017 Rising Star.

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