Media Relations and Media Monitoring

Hi there everyone,

Its me again, Jacky. In this post I’m going to share my experience on media relations, media monitoring, challenges that I have encountered and lesson learnt throughout the process.

After co-organizing the event that I have mentioned previous post(Dare to Dream), I am assigned to distribute and monitor the media release. The whole process enable me to gain more knowledge in dealing with the media.

Process

First, softcopy and hardcopy of the media release is given to me with the list of different media outlet with names, phone numbers, fax and emails which targeted by Interhill. As guided by my supervisor, my duty is to email, fax and call each media outlets that has been listed.

Media monitoring starts the day after the media release were send out. Monitoring news might be a headache as there are so many articles and possibility of appearing in ANY pages is equally divided. There's also media outlet that takes up two to three days to publish the news.

Challenges and lessons learnt

Email, as we all are very familiar(I guess?) where it is just a another formal email of informing the media outlets with the attachment of the release. Faxing however, is my first time and my supervisor guide me through as the faxing machine is quite ‘ancient’. Here comes the part where it involves the communication between two person - calling the media. From the list given by my supervisor, it is understand that there's already some sort of connection established in different media outlets. I am then to call up different individual according to the list as to make sure that they have received the media release(I guess this is to remind them to publish in a subtle way?). Talking with the media personnel through the phone may seem to be very easy then meeting face to face but making them feel at ease is hard. Luckily it all went well, due to the fact that this is my first time calling these people and I stated that I am the new intern for my supervisor. 

After that, buying newspaper ranging from English, Chinese and Malay is a must as these are mentioned in the list. This may be the annoying part of all but it made me notice different article in the newspaper which are very interesting. In the another hand, sometimes media outlet did not publish the release and according to my supervisor sometimes we had to call them up and inquire. Media monitoring are then continued to the next day if there are media outlets that did not publish the release. On third day, if there are still no signs of the release on the newspaper, I am then are oblige to call them up to inquire whether we 'missed' it or they decided not to publish. The whole media monitoring was quite a hustle for me as I had to re-inquire with the media outlets to ensure that they publish the media release. 

Conversing happily without sounding like you are asking favour is a good skill set to learn with not only the media personnel but the others too. During the whole process, I am nervous and scared obviously; I pulled through and learnt a lot. Thanks to my supervisor, opening up this path for me and this made me further understand on dealing with media and in general people who I am going to work with in the future without offending them.

Different type/language of newspaper

Clipping the article

Quite excited/ happy to see the release to be published

Overall, I think media relations is very important but if the company already established a good relationship/connection with the media there will be less obstacle in publishing the media releases.

With hopes,

Chen Hau Yung

Miri Sarawak Campus

15655945