In life we all know there is an importance when it comes to detail, although in a public relations sense, detail is everything! It is the reputation which you are publicly representing; therefore anyone can see the mistakes.
Recently it has been my responsibility to send emails back to people who have submitted photos into our competition and to thank them for their submission. This is where the little things of PR really make a difference, such as; not giving people the wrong idea about their submission, or making sure it is BCC not CC when replying to them all as we don’t want to give out peoples private emails. Also it makes you read every word carefully, as it would look horrible if the email (sent to over 400 people) had spelling mistakes or errors throughout.
Also over my internship I have been conducting a booklet which is to be used for a Growers Tour to China and Vietnam. This booklet is being released to 50 people who are attending the tour and was proofread by 5 people in the department including myself. Although some things did not seem important or noticeable, it was the small things such as commas before and after numbers that I managed to pick up. For example it said Wednesday 7, September and the next one said Thursday, 8 September. These minor details were not important to the information, although they made the document look unified when it was all completed. This is something I have enjoyed about my internship, is finishing a project and seeing it completed, printed and binded. It is such an achievement and makes it worth putting the effort into your work.
Throughout the time I am at CBH we have been using things such as campaign monitor and other software programs that allow us to evaluate how many internal employees open links and read what type of stories. This attention to detail meant that I had to write a newsletter piece with more of a personal twist as people opened links to stories that moved more away from business information and more into the environment of the people in the building. When analysing this information it shows the importance and effort you have to put in to communicating and the best way to do this.
Also at CBH the decision was made within the internal communications team to release more documents as videos rather than emails or documents published to the website, therefore a video planning meeting was set up between 4 people including myself to discuss how this would be done. Video planning meeting process was extensive and broken up into 4 sections; idea, processes, actions and objectives. Using this 4 section process means that each important point can be taken into consideration and the action which the team needs to take to tackle each obstacle. This is something we have been taught over our entire degree at Curtin, to double check everything, make sure you have the facts, and assess the situation accordingly.
So remember my fellow PR brothers and sisters, pay attention to detail, it is a reputation on the line!
Happy PR Interning :)
-Rachel
