Logging in...Social-media revelations!

Being part of the generation Y, the use of social media was regarded as "easy" for me. Since the beginning of Public Relations studies, we have learned the theories and importance of using social media in PR and it was (for me personally) way simple as “keep it short, simple and precise”. Yet in the real world of work, behind the scene of keeping content “short, simple and precise” lots of hard work resides.

I thought that managing social media contents were not so complicated. After all, posting news, entertaining and grabbing the attention of audiences did not sound that difficult, I was wrong. My internship at Flymates revealed that I was actually completely off track about it.

Regular contents formation demands lots of time and daily researches. And while having audiences’ attention was quite easy sometimes, keeping their attention was way more difficult as Flymates uses social media to not only promote their image and keep in touch with stakeholders but also to drive traffic to their website. Therefore, I learned that applying PR in social media is paramount for any businesses as I observed that it acts subliminally. However the quality of the posts must be up to the level.

 I realized that strategic planning and timeline applies for everything, even for scheduling of content when it comes to social media. And having “likes” and “comments” on a post after much work is way satisfying.  

What I learned so far:

• ·          The world of social media is constantly upgrading itself and to be able to grab audiences’ interests, businesses should evolve together with the social media features.
• ·          Apart from researches, a post should hold consistent content and be as far as possible creatively presented.
• ·         Strategies and goals should be set up prior to posts and constant monitoring is important.
• ·         Published posts should not only be newsworthy but should also be introduced in a social media friendly way.

Finally, keeping contents “short, simple and precise” stays fundamental. I will never ever again qualify social media as "easy" again after the insights gained at Flymates. 

I hope my posts helps and till then thank you for reading.

Doralie.

Charles Telfair Institute.

Getting the hang of it - Lavinia Wehr - Bentley

Hi everyone,

My name is Lavinia, I am interning this semester with Perth Racing. Perth Racing runs both Ascot and Belmont Park racecourse along with all the events that go along side, these include Belmont Bonanza, The Masters series and Perth cup as well as other private events including corporate and social. Perth Racing is a vibrant place to be in something is always going on!

After my second week at my internship I have already seen A LOT, Perth Racing is a very fast pace environment and a lot can happen very quickly, especially with the Spring Carnival vastly approaching! It is everything I expected and more. I am very lucky my mentor at Perth Racing is great, I am so lucky to have someone like her, she has a lot of connections and knows everyone who is anyone in Perth, In recent years she had her own PR agency and is very willing to work with me to teach me a lot of her industry knowledge!

The team is really great and very approachable and easy to get along with, I have felt so comfortable the entire time, I am very included in all that is happening and really am starting to feel like I belong. So far at my time interning I have been working on establishing the 2016/17 media list. I have worked with our previous media lists to create a new one with the relevant media to communicate with them and issue them with new media passes, media car passes, and complementary tickets to help encourage the return of them for the new spring racing season. It is important to have a strong relationship with your media in order to be able to get press when you need it, especially for Perth Racing as they have a lot of consecutive events they need to keep the public engaged with the racing over the summer to draw a crowd!

I have also been working on the trip advisor pages for both Belmont Park Racecourse and Ascot Racecourse. Perth Racing want to generate more reviews and interest to their trip advisor pages and I was assigned the task to create strategies to do so here is what I came up with.

Top 5 strategies
 1. Thanking customers with positive feedback and encourage them to come again through promotion, or two for one tickets because this will encourage people to bring their friends and also their friends may also write a review.
2. Authenticity, thinking about the situation before answering and really answer according the comment, personal replies sound a lot more cordial and people are going to feel more likely to forgive previous mistakes, if any exist.
3. Highlighting the positives and mention the upgrades or improvements that might interest return or potential guests, enticing patrons to want to come back give the situation another go.
4. Good Customer service suggests you reply to all reviews, if you want more people to review on trip advisor, they are more likely to if they get a response, People like to be acknowledged and enjoy knowing that the company is taking on their suggestions.
 5.  Updating the Ascot and Belmont pages,  need to include  more information, photos, and more interactive to the website and our other social media platforms, also the info graphic suggested including an icon of trip advisor on the website I thought that could encourage more people to review. Or just be aware that we have the pages on trip advisor.


I have also worked on backgrounders for both Ascot and Belmont Park, and picture selection, hopefully the new and improved trip advisor pages should be up and working in a few days so you can all check it out! I will let you all know next week more about my next task working on our Privè fashion show event next week!

Here is a picture of me if anyone is wondering what I look like... or not.

The rise of social media

As I told you all in my previous blog post, I began my internship at Devahasdin Public Relations after I worked there in 2010 and found my love for PR.

I've completed 15 days of my internship and after looking back at my time from 2010 and the past few weeks, there is one significant change I have noticed: The rise of social media.

Of course, I'm aware social media was around in 2010, but the ways in which it was used has now changed dramatically.  Although social media does not replace traditional media and the importance of a good media release or news coverage, I believe pairing traditional PR practices with new technologies and social media is the most powerful way to get a message across.

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with my supervisor and we devised a social media plan for the month of May for their client Queens Riverside. You can view some of the things that I helped to plan here.
Here's a version of a previous social media plan done by Devahasdin so you understand what they look like, but I can't show you the one being currently used before the plan is carried out, sorry everyone!

A social media plan didn't even exist when I last worked in this office.  I was shocked at how much work is actually put in to posting on social media on behalf of a client.  Even though the tone used is conversational (number one rule when posting on social media!), the effort put into deciding exactly how to seem casual when communicating to the client's stakeholders is crucial.  You must include important events happening in Perth during the month but also making sure events used throughout the month aren't similar to one another.
For instance, Wicked The Musical is beginning to show at The Crown in May, which means that it would be best not to use any other theatre events in the rest of the plan.
It is incredibly important to make use of plenty of hashtags, most importantly the few that are essential to that certain client, and as I have stated, the tone in which you post is vital.
I learnt all of these things in Techniques and Media Relations, so it was nice to be able to put some of what I knew to good use.

The social media plan covers what should be posted on many platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Facebook post for Queens Riverside posted by Devahasdin.

Instagram was only established in 2010 and not even on anybody's radars when I last worked at Devahasdin, now, it is becoming one of the first ways in which clients can directly communicate with stakeholders.

We have discussed the rise of social media and its uses in PR many times during class, but seeing the social media plan mapped out in front of me for an entire month really did give a lot of insight to what we have been talking about for the past few years.

The use of social media allows for direct two-way communication and real-time feedback between an organisation and its stakeholders.  Through the use of these platforms, many of Devahasdin's clients have been able to develop a stronger relationship with their clients, as there is ongoing communication mapped out for each month.  Stakeholders involved with Queens Riverside are able to see ongoing updates of construction via pictures (the staff at Devahasdin, including myself are also in charge of taking these pictures) and posts on these platforms.

Ongoing construction at Queens Riverside taken by Lauren Sydoruk (Account Support) and myself

Although social media allows organisations to engage proactively with their publics and the speed of information has significantly increased, there is a negative to using social media and that is in the form of complaints etc which can be seen not only by the organisation itself, but by the general public as well which can severely effect an organisation's reputation.

As we are all aware by completing this part of the assessment, blogs are also a large part of PR practice nowadays.  While being at Devahasdin I have been asked to compile media distribution lists for a number of different clients.  Another thing I've noticed about the rise of social media is that blogs and different bloggers are now targets for PR practitioners when reaching out to the media.  This also wasn't a large occurrence the last time I worked for Devahasdin.

Has anyone else been highly involved with social media during your placement?
Were you shocked at the large amount of work that is involved to post on social media on behalf of a client?

Let me know guys! :)

Claudia x

Social Media Calendar

Hello again,

its only my second post for the blog, and even though i have finished my Internship at Odysseus PR, i have learned some good way of handling a social media calendar. While working at the company, i was helping the PR manager in handling a social media calendar for the event to come. Yet sometimes, even though you do not have an answer to you mails, you are compelled to think creatively without any approval from the manager.

So, i was supposed to find ideas to post to the page we had created for an event company in Mauritius. From the very first day of my university life, i have imposed myself as a creative and motivated person. My very first step was to work with excel. How horrible, because, i have never used an excel sheet before. So the first thing was to GOOGLE, yes, google about "how to use excel and how to create an event calender in excel. Fortunately i am quick learner, i downloaded a nice template that i then showed to the Manager who was amazed of what i did to the template he sent me. I tend to forget sometimes that everyone does not use the internet as us, Students.

So, when time passed, my brain started to fuse with lots of ideas, after having done a lot of research on an very popular Indian Singer coming to Mauritius.

Picture from http://www.pardaphash.com/news/sunidhi-chauhan-loved-singing-tumhari-pakhi/724378.html

Along with the PR manager we had to find ideas how to promote the event to come. We had 6 weeks and even though i was going to be at the company for 3 more weeks, i wanted to find lots of ideas into promoting the event.

I thus thought that posting photos and videos were not enough. Why not posting on the career of the artist from the very first day she became popular, in order to engage the public about her career. Giving a reason for people to get interested to her story and her life as a singer. 

I though about her Twitter account where people were tweeting about her and her performance at  her recent concert in England. 

Putting photos of her recent hair cut and her wedding pictures and asking advice from people interested into seeing her in concert in Mauritius. Why not creating an event to give away tickets for those who would answer right to her careers awards and giving an interest to people for visiting the page. 

Numerating the awards she was nominated and also those she won.

What i have learned for that project was that, i could be much more creative that i thought. Even if i was not asked to do such things, i decided by myself to propose ideas to the PR manager and some times later, all of my proposals were posted to the Facebook page.

Below is a link to the page if some of you are interested.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Super-Unic-Events/483567105106220?ref=ts&fref=ts

These are one of the exciting parts of my internship at Odysseus PR.

See you around

Angie 

15589565

Charles Telfair Institute Campus

Things aren't always Rosy!

Along with all the great achievements you do for companies or events in PR, there will be days where things go wrong and you might have to cop a bit of abuse from people. I think it is important to be exposed to this now so you are better equipped to handle it when it is your responsibility to do so.

The second event at Corporate Sports Australia that I have been working on during my internship - Perth Garden Festival - was last weekend. The event has had a overhaul and been spruced up since last year. The first thing to note: people do not like change. So there was a bit of backlash against the this change and in turn a lot of complaining visitors!

When working in events you are dealing with an extremely large mass of people, where you cannot ensure each and every person has the best possible experience at your event - as much as you would like too - it just isn't humanly possible when such a small team are putting the event together.

I admired the poise in which my mentors at Corporate Sports Australia managed the complaints, hearing everybody out. This can be very mentally taxing having people shout at you for something that is not solely your fault.

I feel I am going to be able to handle situations very well now that I have experienced it in my internship before full-time employment.

What I learnt

• Preparation is key


Always have your back covered by preparing for a crisis before it happens. The girls the office have template press releases set up for the worst possible outcomes you could imagine for events in order to make sure a response is given quickly if something goes wrong.

• Nip the problem in the bud before it gathers momentum


When there are complaints, it is important to speak to the unhappy people and resolve the issue before they go to social media to voice themselves. When negative comments are posted on the Facebook page responses are written up for each possible issue (i.e. parking complaints, ticketing, etc). All of the responses at the very least include thanking the complainant for their feedback and then telling them how you are going to rectify the problem. 

• Have a thick skin 


People like to let their anger out on someone - that someone might be you - do not take it personally, you are just a face. Once people have vented they feel better, once they have felt they have been heard and acknowledged. Just by hearing them out you are diffusing the situation. Talk to them as a human-being!

But along with the bad you have to remember all the positives, good feedback and happy visitors!

Top left - floristry workshops, Top right - Peppa Pig show, Bottom right - me and a crazy lady on The Project!

I feel so much better equipped to handle crisis situations in the future after being exposed to it now in my internship. Try to get involved in the not so nice tasks now so that its easier in the future.


Steph
Events Assistant
Corporate Sports Australia

14855689

PR is Not Just About Writing

Greetings everyone,

From the beginning of my internship, I was never been given a chance to write a news release and honestly I felt a bit depressed and worried at the same time as I have not enough work sample for my report. Until this one fine day before my contract ends, Nokia Malaysia consultant, Gan Kel Sern asked for help from one of us, the interns, as he need to upload photos of Nokia Lumia 920 phone on Nokia Malaysia Facebook page. So, I offered myself to take photos for him as I have passion in photography and plus I need to add up my portfolio. I was assigned to take photos with the following themes:

• Nokia as most personal smartphone
• Valentine's Day

He didn't provide me with DLSR camera and the only camera he offered was Nokia Lumia 920 phone. I was skeptical with the quality at first but I just give it a try to see if its turn out as phone reviewers said about the phone's camera quality. So, I took photos of the phone and I was amazed with the photo quality. After taking few shots of the photos, I passed the phone back to Kel Sern and he chose two best photos to be uploaded. 

The next day, I saw the photos I took were on Nokia Malaysia Facebook page and I was so happy. The links of the photos are below:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=563284517017593&set=pb.113065628706153.-2207520000.1370542244.&type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=563802590299119&set=pb.113065628706153.-2207520000.1370542244.&type=3&theater

Photo is one of the medium in communications. I believe if you have more skills to offer other than writing and ability to speak properly, your value as a PR person is higher. I'm glad my skill in photo taking is applicable during my internship and after that day, they known me as an intern who can take a good photo. I'm glad to get positive feedback from FHKL about my skill. I feel appreciated.

Remember, never give up. 

Best regards,

Fazar Ria Muneera Bt. Safree Zainudin

13761196/ 7D5B3504

Semester 1, 2013

Curtin University Sarawak Campus