Phones: the most important tool for Public Relations Practitioners in the 21st century!!!

Hi, everyone,

Today I will focus on the use of a telephone in the PR field. While having several technological tools which can be used to perform the communication tasks, a phone remains the more efficient as a phone will confirm if a mail is delivered, will gain time when something needs to be done or to 

confirm an information about particular issue.

A phone is the most important tool is the basic tool in the PR field. There are so many tasks which need to be achieved with the help of phone calls. During my placement, I have used the phone for different tasks. I was given the task to make an update of all general directors of parastatal bodies in the country. To be able to complete this particular task, I had to call a great number of those organisations, ask for the actual general director or president and update the information in the company’s database for later use. I've made phone calls for about three days where I spoke to several people to obtain specific information. Another important use of the telephone is when I had to call journalists for the conference. We had to call them and if ever they were not available I had to call back in order to know if they are attending the event.

Phone used in the company

During my placement, one thing for sure working is not framed by office hours. Once, there was a press release from one of the clients which came out at the end of the day and I had sent the press release to media outlets. Then, I need to call the journalists 20 minutes later to make sure they received  the press release and I need  to send another one in the case they do not obtain the document. This task lasts at least one hour after office hours because it is very difficult to talk to a journalist at 5p.m as they need to prepare the late news.

This was quite interesting to see how the use of a phone is important in the PR field as everybody considered the telephone to be outdated in present days where Internet is become the mainstream for communication. This need to be done as journalists are so busy that they do not have enough time look at their mails and in such case they can miss one important information given by a client. So, it is the responsibility of a PR agent to make things happen.

Hope you enjoyed reading this third post.

Cedric