Goodbye and a tiny cactus

I’m finished! It was 10 of the toughest weeks of my life trying to juggle my internship, my usual job and three other uni units – but it was one of the most important and uplifting career experiences I’ve had.

Here are some of important nuggets of wisdom I’ve learnt through my internship at LiveLighter that I’d like to pass on to you all:

1. By August this year, Facebook will make changes to reduce newsfeed "clutter" from organisation's pages. This will mean that organisations' posts will have next to no organic reach. This essentially means that organisations (both businesses and not-for-profits) will have to pay to boost almost all of the Facebook content they post, rather than relying on it being organically shared to their followers and through likes and shares to non-followers. This will mean that organisation’s Facebook posts will likely become less frequent, but more professional. Social media managers will have to consider the organisational benefits of each Facebook post (as they are putting money behind it) and will have to be looking more closely at KPIs to make sure their Facebook posts are worth the financial investment. These changes will likely impact you just as you’re starting to get jobs at the end of this year – so keep this in mind.

2.       2.  A useful exercise to ‘sharpen’ an organisation’s social media presence is to come up with a very specific profile of a hypothetical person who fits into your target audience. For LiveLighter, the Comms team came up with the hypothetical person “Tracey Turner.” Tracey is a mum in her late forties, works as a part-time receptionist at her local tyre power, likes Take 5 magazine and Today Tonight, and has tried a number of different diet programs but keeps putting the weight back on. Before creating a Facebook post we would have to think “how can I make this post appeal to Tracey?” which helped us to make sure we were creating content that was actually engaging our target audience.

3.       3. Pay attention to who’s liking your content on different social media platforms. LiveLighter’s Facebook was mostly middle-aged women who were looking to make lifestyle changes for themselves and their family, whereas LiveLighter’s Twitter following was mostly health professional looking for resources to share with their patients and clients. We had to tailor different posts for each platform to cater for these specific audiences.

4.       4. Bring a notepad and pen with you everywhere! You may think you can remember everything that’s discussed in a meeting, or all the points your manager wants you to include in the media release, but I can assure you that you won’t. Good note-taking will ensure you’re not annoying people by asking them to repeat what they said.

5.      5.  Blogging is still a thing. I’ve had many blogging-based assignments for my Internet Communications degree and always complained that nobody still reads blogs. But they actually do – LiveLighter’s health advice blog is one of their most successful social media platforms.

6.      6.  Only wear dresses and skirts you’d be comfortable climbing up stairs in to your internship. If it’s going to shimmy up your thighs as you’re climbing, leave it in the wardrobe.

7.     7.   I’d also recommend getting your mentor and other team members you worked closely with a small present to say thank-you for taking you on as an intern. It leaves a positive lasting impression of you as a worker and person. I got everyone in my team a bunch of flowers, and they got me a tiny cactus (I know you were wondering how the cactus comes into it).

Thank you for reading my blog posts. I'll continue to follow your internship adventures.

All the best,

Bec

The media launch! How we unveiled our new advertisements with PR flair

On Sunday we had the media launch for the new LiveLighter TVcommericals, which was an important learning experience to say the least!

We’d hoped to get as many Perth metro news outlets to the event as possible for an advanced preview of the new TV commercials, as well as presentations and interview opportunities with health and nutrition experts. We’d hoped to secure a lot of media coverage around the new ads so that viewers would see them and go “oh – these are the ads that everyone’s been talking about” and watch them more actively. We had also hoped to get some public discussion going about Australia’s junk food consumption and some follow-up media elicited by the initial news stories (talk-back radio often repeats stories that are in that day’s newspaper).  

The media launch event really drove home to me how unreliable the media can be. We originally had four media outlets confirm that they were coming to the event, but channel 7 were the only station that showed up. The West Australian couldn’t make it, but asked for a voice recording of the presentation (alongside the general media release). Here are some photos of the media launch set-up:

 Prop from the filming of the new advertisements made a great feature decoration

 Our display of situations where people often eat junk food (eg, had to stay late at work, 3pm pick-me-up, etc.) to show frequency of Australians' junk food consumption

Set-up of the room for the media launch

In the end we got a couple of media mentions from the launch: a short piece on Channel 7 Sunday night news (which has a very high viewership), an article on page 7 of the West Australian (below) and an online article on the West’s website on Monday morning.

It was interesting to see how the different news outlets went with different news angles based on the same media release and launch – channel 7 focused on the new ads being shocking and “graphic”, whereas the West Australian went with the new link between fatty liver disease and obesity as their angle. I think the way LiveLighter’s PR manager wrote the media release was highly effective, as there was lots of newsworthy content within it, which allowed different equally-newsworthy angles to be used by the media. This is a technique that I’d like to employ in my future media release writing.

Immediately after the media launch, we had a photoshoot with a family we were hoping to have as the focus of a Sunday Times article about ways families can avoid junk food. It’s true what they say: don’t work with animals or kids! It took around an hour to get the shot we needed because the kids couldn’t keep still and were getting very bored and impatient. We ended up getting the shot, but not needing it because the Sunday Times now wants a story about a family going on a “challenge” to quit junk food, rather than a family that’s already very healthy. Again, working with the media can be somewhat frustrating at times. I wrote the pitch for the Sunday Times article, so am still pretty stoked that the PR manager liked my work enough to pitch it to the media.

I'd love to hear about other people's media experiences so far, feel free to leave a comment.

Until next time,

Bec

PR future seems brighter, having been at LiveLighter

My first few weeks of my internship have made me a lot more confident in my decision to pursue a career in PR, as I’m completely loving my experience in the Communications department at LiveLighter WA.

LiveLighter is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to educate Australian adults about the health risks associated with obesity, and is run in WA, Victoria and the NT and ACT. Most people would recognise LiveLighter from their TV commercials about the health risks of having a “grabbable gut” and “toxic fat around your vital organs.”

I think a key reason why I’m enjoying my internship so much is because I’m contributing to a cause that I’m passionate about and highly interested in.

During the 10 weeks of my internship I’ll mainly be completing tasks that assist with the day-to-day business of the organisation, rather than any specific project. So far I’ve created a number of Facebook posts, blog posts and an e-newsletter, as well as completing daily media monitoring and research. The way LiveLighter uses their Facebook page to promote their website and blog content is very effective and worth checking out. My most recent 'topical' Facebook post:

I’ve started at LiveLighter at a pretty exciting time, as there's a new TVC (television commercial) campaign being launched in April. It’s themed around junk food and LiveLighter anticipates that its might ruffle the feathers of the junk food retailers it targets. I’m excited to see how the media attention around the campaign will develop.

My two mentors, Liz and Clare, have been pretty amazing. They’re really approachable and have confidence that I can do a good job with any work they give me (which makes me feel pretty confident too). They’ve taken me along to lots of meetings and events with them so that I can get a feel for what day-to-day business in PR is really like (hint: it involves LOTS of meetings). Last week I got to see one of LiveLighter’s resident experts do a video interview for Health and Medicine online, to accompany a story about "grabbable guts" in the West Australian.

It was fascinating how fast it all happened; the videographer set up, asked her questions and packed up all in 15mins. It was a bit of a reality check into how fast journalists and the media work, and how organised PR practitioners need to be to be able to effectively work with them. 

I also attended the Heart Foundation “Lock in the Love” fundraiser in the CBD. The Heart Foundation and Cancer Council jointly fund the LiveLighter program, so there is often cross promotion between LiveLighter and these organisations.

It was interesting to see how a traditional fundraiser works behind the scenes. Often for PR plan assignments we’ve developed the concepts and “hooks” for fundraisers, but haven’t had to go into details such as volunteer rosters and scripts, choosing locations based on sunlight/foot-traffic/how far you have to carry resources, etc. It was interesting to have to think about just how many minute details have to come together for a fundraiser to function successfully.

Until next post,

Bec Byrne