meetings..

Blog number three!

Hey all, I’m back with my third instalment in the story of a girl who started blogging after her placement!

Katharina, maybe this should be a new policy- I love this reflection process!

Anyway, I think today I will tell you about my meetings! That is right, I got to attend meetings! (I was rather excited about this...)

During my placement at the City of Swan I was invited to attend three meetings with Sascha. The first being with the people from a new magazine, Sheila (not as bad as it sounds, actually the replacement for silver), the second one I actually had to organise and that was with a local Swan Valley lady who knows everything about all people and then last week I attended a meeting with people from SCOOP Traveller!

I was so excited to be invited to all of these meetings! I felt that not only was this more what I wanted to do, not just sitting at my desk writing media releases, it was face to face interaction to build relationships with journalists and people in the local community!

My first meeting with Sheila was awesome. Sascha was able to discuss how City of Swan could engage in regular dialogue with Sheila and how this would be mutually beneficial, very text book stuff but really cool to see in real life! After this meeting I got to draw up a list of things to send to them, our ideas etc! I loved it, being involved in the meeting then being able to follow through to enable us to form a good relationship! I was chuffed.

The second meeting with Julie was great fun, I know Julie from having previously worked in the Swan Valley so it wasn’t at all stressful. I was able to provide input into our ideas about what should be done to promote food in the Swan Valley. Following our meeting with Julie, I was able to go away and compile a time line of the media release that could be written over the space of the year, and when they should be sent out! In essence I have compiled my first real (somewhat minimal) PR strategy! Over my placement I have looked at incorporating other activities or means of attracting coverage, not just through the media release, but that’s another story!
The final meeting I attended was held last week and it involved me being invited to Houghton’s along with Sascha and representatives from businesses across the Swan Valley to attend a round table with the managing director and other staff members of SCOOP Traveller. I found this meeting wonderful. I was able to meet great people from SCOOP and understand more about the goals of its magazines and how its distribution works (very interesting).
I was able to listen to the plans that the people from the Swan Valley had to promote the region to be on par with the Margaret River region and how we could work with SCOOP to get the coverage to achieve this.

So in essence I have been so lucky to have being included in all of these meetings! I loved attending them and I have really enjoyed making contacts and seeing how relationships between journalists and PR practitioners do exist and how we can best work to make them mutually beneficial.

End of story three

Moral of the story- I love meetings and the opportunities that they represent to build relationships!

Robyn
xxx