The Kent State chapter and the Akron Professional chapter of Public Relations Society of America are coming together for the eighth annual YouToo Social Media Conference on Friday, April 10.

“YouToo is a social media conference geared toward communication professionals and students to educate them on the ever-changing world of online social communication,” said Jennifer Kramer, director of public relations and marketing communications in the College of Communication and Information.

The YouToo conference originally started as a boot camp to train students and professionals in social media, Kramer said. YouToo has now evolved into one of the leading conferences about social media.

The conference will consist of two keynote speakers, a panel of health care professionals and speakers from agencies like AKHIA Public Relations, True Digital Communications, Lifebanc and Summa, she said.

“The opening speaker is Mark Smith, who is with The Washington Post,” Kramer said. “He will be speaking to the conference attendees about social media in the newsroom, how to use social media to drive news and how public relations and social can work with the news to inform the public.”

The second keynote speaker is Gini Dietrich, founder of Arment Dietrich and author of the New York best selling book “Spin Sucks.”

Public relations “in the past were called spin masters because you were trying to spin the news in your favor,” Kramer said. “She uses a play on that as the title of the book, that spin sucks. It’s about being honest, transparent and two-way communication.”

Dietrich will discuss her book and how social media can be used to communicate to the target audiences.

“The rest of the day is filled with regional experts speaking on several different topics all related to social media,” Kramer said.

For a full list of the events, speakers and schedule please go to http://www.youtoosm.com.

ContactJ Jessica Darling at [email protected].

Editor’s note: Due to a reporter error, Kramer’s title was originally wrong. It has been fixed.