Important PR Skills

Hi everyone,

Time has flown by since my last post, and as I went to write this one I thought I would struggle to find something to talk about, but looking back it turns out I have done quite a bit of work!

The main focus for the past four or so weeks has been the Australasian Safari. Kick off is less than two weeks away, so things are starting to get hectic. My main role was to try and get competitors featured in their local newspapers all over Australia to increase awareness of the Safari. This involved sending mass emails and becoming best friends with my excel spreadsheet. Initially I only got back a couple of replies, which lead to me calling competitors, interviewing them and writing media releases which got sent back to the newspaper. But what really got the ball rolling was making phone calls. It’s something that was never really emphasised in any of my units, but the importance of making a call is something that should not be disregarded. By calling the editors I got more than five papers involved, papers that otherwise would likely not have printed anything relating to the Safari. Not only is it great to get the articles printed, but also having a positive outcome from making calls is a big confidence boost.

A large part of my past few weeks, and something that is becoming quite common in my daily work at Bright Communications, is writing. Writing is something that always intimidated me a little bit. I can write a 2500 word literary essay comparing journal articles with no worries, but media releases scared me. Or they used to. I think I’ve lost count of the number I’ve written now, and not just for Australasian Safari, for the Yallingup Surfilm Festival and a couple of other clients too. After I wrote a few I gained confidence, and even wrote four in one day once! The biggest thing I’ve had to be aware of, particularly with the competitor media releases that I sent to the newspapers, is the use of quotes. Janine, my boss at Bright Communications, posted a link that I found helpful, and I think you should all check it out. From the wonderful PR Daily website the article is titled ‘4 Ways to Improve Quotes in Press Releases’. It looks at paraphrasing as opposed to massive chunks of quotes in your media releases and  keeping the tone conversational, as ‘conversational quotes are more believable’. There are also a couple of interviewing tips, the best one of all being to ask follow-up questions if you haven’t got a quote you can use.

Even though I’ve been in the office since the Indian Ocean Classic launch I’m really enjoying it and staying busy. My next outing is on 22 September down to Hillarys Boat Harbour for the Official Start of the Australasian Safari. It’s a free, public event from 4 – 7pm, so if you’re keen you should come down and check it out! More information is available here. Hopefully I see some of you there!

Lauren.