Week 7 - Building Bridges

Monday, February 22, 2010 2:07 AM

Public relations is crucial and significant job as it involves bringing people together, developing mutual understandings, benefits and joint action. Public relations practitioners act as the middle person, to pull things into one piece. The very core of this job scope is making use of their good communication skills to assist organizations in attaining their objectives.

In this line of job, it is all about building relationships, making connections, maintaining them to aid their clients, or organizations seeking publicity exposure, to be publicized. Pubic relations is directed at building good working relationships between organizations and their stakeholders and communities. Community relations and community engagement are vital of the job.

Therefore, public relations skills are needed across a range of organizations. Public relations practitioners need to spend a lot of time learning up on cultural differences because if, for example, their client is of different ethnicity, they would be prepared and ready. Besides, under different working environments, there are different challenges that would be faced. Thus, public relations practitioners need to adapt readily to their working environment and source for ideas for a solution.

Some challenges that public relations practitioners will inevitably face are time management, budgeting and building and maintaining good networks. It is then up to the public relations practitioners to decide what they should do in that situation.

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Week 6 - Manipulation of Media

Monday, February 8, 2010 12:22 AM

A key role of a public relations practitioner is to present the public face of an organisation and it can be achieved through getting media coverage. To achieve media coverage, the public relations practitioner would have to first get the media's attention with media releases or events.

The news that is being sent out through media releases, letters to the editor, emails has to catch the eye of media gatekeepers: editors, directors of news or journalists. The headlines or the first sentence has to jump off the page. It has to be something that is newsworthy; that has great news values. The way the media release is being framed is very important as well. It plays an important role in making your media release an outstanding one. So that being said, this is an uncontrolled communication as the media relations practitioner cannot be sure that the story will be used or even if it is being used, it might be in another form; re-written.

Besides being able to frame the news well and have the media release written was much newsworthiness, building relationships with journalists and editors can help with getting publicized. Maintaining the relationship is important as well, so as to avoid calling up a journalist who does not work there anymore. Knowing legal and ethical issues in media management is another key aspect that needs to be understood and respected. It will help you stay out of trouble with the authorities.

Working with the media requires a lot of skill, creativity and knowledge of how the media works. It is important to know how the media can be used to your organisation's advantage.

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Week 5 - Public Relations Research

Monday, February 1, 2010 7:17 PM

For a public relations practitioner, research is one of the most important tool. Unlike what many people say, research is not a waste of time and money. It can be low or no cost. It is not a waste of time either, because for each project a public relations practitioner takes up, he/she needs to know at least some background knowledge of the project he/she is dealing with. If the public relations practitioner does not do his/her research, he/she is basically guessing and/or making assumptions about the problem, opportunity and solution.

There are different kinds of research methods that a public relations practitioner can do and it really depends on what the public relation practitioner is trying to gather from the research. The very basic kind of research is quantitative and qualitative research. Quantitative gives you the 'what' and qualitative gives you the 'why' to a question or topic. Another type is the primary and secondary research method. Secondary research means that the information is gathered by someone else which is a cheaper method of research. primary research means that the information gathered is done by the practitioner himself/herself.

Research helps public relation practitioners to understand their target audience thus making their task more smooth sailing and effective. Information gathered through research can help public relations practitioners plan, carry out and evaluate their projects. However, it is critical that public relation practitioners are able to identify the appropriate methods of research to conduct because there are different kinds of research methodologies available. They must also be able to plan their time and budget well for the research.

On a basic whole, research aids public relations practitioners in their project and makes it more effective when it comes to getting the job done.

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