I have just passed the halfway point of my internship here at Telethon Speech and Hearing (TSH) in Perth. The past few weeks have been quite busy in the lead up to Loud Shirt Day, which raises funds for hearing impaired children. Check out www.loudshirtday.com.au for more information. As I type this, there are only 2 days to go until the big day!
Last week the office was a hub of activity as final preparations were being made.
Much of last week was spent updating the registration database as we had a massive influx of new organisations and schools ready to participate in the event.
Contact was made with the West Australian and we secured coverage for a piece to be written on Loud Shirt Day. A press release was written up and then sent to them.
On Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend another photo shoot, this time Telethon Speech & Hearing Patron Nigel Satterley and prominent WA builder Dale Alcock leant their support to the cause. The article was then published in the West Australian on the Thursday.
One of my tasks on Thursday was to prepare a media release to be sent to the Great Southern Herald, one of the biggest newspapers that circulates in the South-West Region of Western Australia. I was asked to take a human- interest angle to the story. Specifically, I was asked to highlight one of the students who travels several hundred kilometers from the South West of WA every couple of weeks to attend some the programs here at Telethon Speech & Hearing. The media release was prepared and at the last minute the students family were unavailable for comment and for a photo as they went on a holiday- so needless to say the media release was canceled. Which was a bit of a shame, I was a bit disappointed as I had put a lot of thought into the media release. However, I was still happy that our release from earlier in the week had gained coverage from the state newspaper the West Australian.
One of the components of the Communication Strategy that I designed at the start of my industry placement is a Social Media campaign. After setting up the facebook and twitter sites several weeks ago I have set up automatic updates on the sites, to provide followers and fans with regular interaction. Through the use of HootSuite I was able to set this up and found this saved a lot of time, and quickly made setting up the automatic updates become 10 minutes at the most as part of my morning ritual each day. This was a simple and easy time saver. And meant that rather than monitoring the sites every few hours myself, I could automate the process and provide followers and fans with relevant content at the same time. The task from my supervisors was to promote Loud Shirt Day and Nathan Morris’ especially designed shirt as much as possible - For more info check out:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au /ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250626241406
I have found it a bit of a challenge to provide fans and followers with rich, valuable and nourishing updates whilst still promoting Loud Shirt Day. I feel that this task has tested my creativity and resourcefulness. However, the only guidelines were that I need to promote Loud Shirt Day. As a fan and follower of causes and groups on facebook and twitter, in my own experience, I have found that if an update has no relevance to me or simply is promoting something, more often or not I tend to ignore it or choose not to interact further with it. What are your thoughts? What makes you want to interact/ click through with a site, be it facebook, twitter or other interactive media?
So, I have in sense, taken it upon myself to create updates that are somewhat relevant, informative, entertaining or valuable to the audience- as much as they can be. Links to bid on Nathan’s t-shirt, links to You Tube and links to register to sign up for Loud Shirt Day were all included several times in several different ways during the updates…it's coming up with new exciting information that’s relevant to promoting Loud Shirt Day that is proving to be challenging.
Now, I consider myself to be pretty social media savvy, and I also realise that theres always more to learn. So, I stumbled across a website by a guy by the name of Andrew McCauley who calls himself ‘The Social Media Bloke’ and what a gold mine of information this turned out to be! Check him out at www.thesocialmediabloke.com/
Now, some of the information on this site may be old hat for those who have blogged, tweeted and facebooked many a time before. But, I believe, for those who are serious about building up a genuine online presence through the use of social media then this site also contains a myriad of information and articles on how to really use social media to grow a business and its fan base. The site contains articles on topics such as: Creating a Social Media strategy for your business, using twitter for PR, personal branding and how to get high ranking videos on Google.
Through my placement experience so far, I have realised the importance of staying current on the new ways to communicate with an organisations publics. Including, how to best utilise and capitalise on social media trends etc. I must admit that I have become fascinated about learning how best to utilise social media tools like twitter and facebook to build up the knowledge of Loud Shirt Day amongst TSH’s publics. Not only that, but I have become fascinated with using social media to grow a business in general. I hope that this will set me in good stead when I enter the ‘real world’ of public relations and make me a valuable asset in the ever changing of PR.
Johnston (2007, p. 2) states due to the rapid technological developments that are taking place that the PR industry (much like other industries) is causing the industry to take a more specialized approach (Media Relations, Community Relations, Events Management etc). That being said, it’s easy to see why Social Media can therefore be viewed as a specialist area. As up and coming PR practitioners, I think its important to remain on the forefront of these developments so as to best equip ourselves for an ever evolving industry. According to Harrison (2008, p. 17) public relations is an ever- evolving profession and is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Yet despite this Harrison (2008, p.17) claims that the fundamentals of communication remain the same- the more speed and technology is used the more important it is to tailor the message to the individual. Interactive media is changing the rules of media relations. The public relations industry is shifting. And as the world changes we as emerging public relations practitioners must evolve with it. Whilst evolving I think its important to remember that regardless of technological advances, people are people and, we need to communicate directly to them- we still need to tailor our message to our specific publics.
I found this video on YouTube which I thought summed it up nicely. It's an advertisement for DK Publishing in the UK and shows the importance of individualising messages and not making assumptions of the audience regardless of ever changing technology. Even though it is in reference to marketing/advertising, I believe that it is cross contextual in regards to public relations as well. Check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Weq_sHxghcg
I hope everyones placements are going really well,
Until my next post,
Alyce
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