International PR: Working Offshore

Congratulation to MATAORA, which is opening a new office in Hong-Kong, in the territory of the 'nine dragons'; Kowloon by the end of August   :)


Mataora, having 10 years’ experience in Design & Web has created a well reputed name internationally. Unfortunately not yet in Mauritius, We did work with a lot of Mauritian companies but mainly offshores; especially with French clients.

Since the beginning of my Internship, I’ve been mainly working for international clients of Mataora , namely Weedo-IT, a French advertising agency; specialized in creating Internet traffic and acquisition of qualified contacts. That is a great experience since you have the opportunity to be in contact with people from a different culture and share ideas, different approaches to solve problems as well as learn from them. You have to learn how things are done three and adapt to their culture to be able to create a good and satisfying project.

These things were really assets in term of personal and professional development. The only disadvantage that I can see is that, in my case, is that since we have been mainly working with international companies (Total/Peugeot/Intermarché/Nikon/WWF (NGO)/), our team is always trying to apply French PR & Marketing strategies for the Mauritian clients’ projects that do not always go well.

Visit us : www.mataora.com

The Social Media PR

Hello Amazing People out there,

Thank you for your support and for keeping alive this PR Blog :)

Well well well, almost 2 weeks of internship and yet a lot more to learn from. But before that i would apologise for I promise to write about the new Facebook poker game by Mataora Games, PUKé's launching party, which has been unfortunately postponed for September :(   [ but i will surely give you a little appercue]

Like Mataora Facebook Fan page to support Us :) 

"Show must go on". So During the last 2 weeks I have been learning a lot about Social Media and its use in PR. In the past few decades, Internet has had a huge impact on how PR professionals function. I would rather say that Social Media is changing the face of PR. The main professionals websites or/and blogs that I've come across during my placement at Mataora, is LinkedIn, Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon and Blogger, Tumblr. The social media PR is a plus for every company. It engages the company in a two way communication with its public, and spreads the word about the work conducted to a vast diverse online audience.

Mataora has recently made a partnership with Staub Marketing, expert in Branding & Social Media Marketing and together, they will soon be organising a Social Media Workshop for Business men who are trying to develop and increase their ROMI (Return ON Marketing Investment). This workshop consist mainly in presenting and highlighting how we can use Social Media to develop pour company and increase SEO visibility on browsers.

Well SEO (Search Engin Optimisation), Referencement in French, is the process of improving the visibility of a website or web page on the search engine's search results. Along with social media Public Relations, Net Buzzing, Mataora also do SEO for companies and individuals, who wish to be on the top search results of Google, Yahoo, FireFox & Bing.

So here is my 2 weeks Journey with Mataora & Social Media PR. Below a little view of our upcoming event the Social Media Workshop : LinkedIn.

See you soon amazing people and Good Luck.

Its August not July , Sorry for slight error. 

Setting the Stage

I am over halfway through my placement and overall it has been a very positive experience! To say it has not been challenging would be a lie, but I have learnt so much and the pluses definitely outweigh the minuses.


Background

I’m interning as a PR & Marketing Assistant at Student Edge (www.studentedge.com.au), Australia’s largest student membership. They offer a free card that can be used to ‘flash and save’ and through their website they offer discounts, comps and jobs to students Australia wide. The card is kept free through partners advertising to the database. I have actually previously worked for Student Edge for most of 2011 as a full time Account Manager (advertising point of view) so it is fascinating view an organisation that I know quite well from a public relations side.

The role of public relations in any organisation

For example, previously when I was an account manager, it was all go go go! Emails to check and reply to, internal and external meetings, following up clients for creative, scheduling and proofing media. Whereas working as a PR & Marketing Assistant is quite different. I am still working for the same organisation but spending a lot more time thinking about “the bigger picture”, rather than day-to-day detail. I definitely there is this element of ‘big picture thinking’ across all organisations to an extent. Parts of the PR team will have day to day campaigns to run, whereas senior PR personnel, especially those who work closely with management, will be looking at the role of PR in the organisation strategically. As one of my PR Lecturers Jacinta argues – public relations should not be in the School of Marketing at Curtin University, but the School of Management! I agree with her position.

Public relations and Student Edge

The first part of my placement was spent ‘base-lining’ – what is the role of public relations in Student Edge at the moment? Student Edge has previously never had a dedicated internal PR person. A national marketing director was bought into the organisation in December 2011, and prior to that both marketing and public relations was done on an ad hoc basis by interns. Student Edge is in the process of executing an ambitious but achievable marketing campaign over 2012 to meet business objectives. The organisation uses an external public relations consultant who sits on the board and works closely with the Chairman and the Chief Executive Officer. As mentioned, because Student Edge has previously not had a dedicated public relations employee internally, the first part of my placement was spent establishing where public relations fit in with the strategic marketing plan and overall business objectives.

“The world is flat” - Thomas L. Friedman

Sharyn, the marketing director, has had extensive experience in the youth, marketing and public relations sector and is acting as my supervisor for my placement. Sharyn is based out of the Sydney office (as of January 2012) so it can be challenging not having her around all the time! But, the joys of technology – we Skype, phone, email and DropBox regularly throughout the day to make sure I’m on task so she’s always close by!

What I’m working on

I’m working on a number of communication projects as we speak, so stay tuned – all will be revealed soon! How has your experience been so far?

- Rachel