The Final Lap

----posted on behalf of Ong Wei Ni---

This would mark the last blog post of my internship experience. As all of us are making the final mark and polishing our final report, I'd like to touch on the interpersonal part of public relations - communications. Being in the public relations trade would demand excellent written and verbal communication skills. And it is through communications skills that we build our interpersonal relationships with others. 

Having said that, during the course of my placement, I was expected to forge good relationships with journalists. It is quite a challenging tasks as relationships cannot be forged over a day or two, but rather, through a long period of time. Creating a relationship is important and so is maintaining it. I would say that maintaining a relationship takes more effort than creating one. It is also a mental test of sincerity and trust.

Maintaining a good relationship can do much more wonders than one can ever imagine. Especially since public relations practitioners mostly deal with the media and instances where if a crisis was to happen, having good relationships and interpersonal communication skills are both essentially important to get the correct message across. Communication is also vital when something needs to be talked about to a firm's key publics, stakeholders and consumers. This is where communication comes into play.

Something to read up on: http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/cultural-services/articles/cross-cultural-pr.html 

Ethics in Public Relations

-----posted on behalf of Ong Wei Ni------------

While serving my placement in my current firm, other than doing the usuals such as monitoring the media, crafting out media releases and drafting the next communications plan, I thought about the context of ethics in the public relations context. As it is difficult to define what ethics truly is, I decided to google the meaning of it. This is what businessdictionary.com has provided me with: Ethics is the basic concepts and fundamental principles of right human conduct. This is also debatable to a certain extent of what exactly is "right" and who is to determine what is right and what is not?

With regards to my current internship placement, I did not experience anything "unethical" or out of the norm to spark off this discussion. This was just something that I had spent some time thinking about and decided to blog about it. Many people demand public professional practitioners to be responsible for what they say, preach and do. To see it on a normal basis, there is nothing wrong about it - we all have to be responsible for what we do. However, to see it on a corporate view, how do you differentiate between clinching a deal that is of utmost importance in gaining the material worth of a media release and whatnot but on the other hand, being susceptible towards something that you might not wish to commit yourself to? 

What I think is that we all have to stand firm on what we strongly believe in. This also brings us to the fact that why all firms and companies have vision and mission statements. They are to empower employees to stay rooted in what an organisation believes in and all employees will move in that direction. This article will share more about ethics in a public relations context > http://www.prsa.org/AboutPRSA/Ethics/documents/CS4A.pdf > I found this quite relevant to what we're studying. Have a good read!

Social Media in Public Relations

----posted on behalf of Ong Wei Ni-------------

I guess it might be familiar to all how social media like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other social sites have influenced a company’s profile. Whenever we get wind of something, it is almost a reflex action to check out Facebook or Twitter for first-hand instant news. Some news get out on these social sites even before making their official apperance on the papers. This is how social media is creating such a powerful yet intangible presence in the world today.

When a company thinks of creating more awareness and reaching out to the masses, the first suggestion is to create a Twitter or Facebook profile. In the beginning, the bulk of my internship was mostly about managing clients’ Facebook pages and monitoring the daily activities that take place on their respective pages. It is certainly interesting that today, instead of writing letters to express one’s woes or satisfaction, these are now translated onto a company’s profile page. This also makes it extremely important for public relations professionals to maintain damage control and enhance relationship bonds with their targeted audience.

Many would expect that the platform of social media is informal and something more targeted for the youths. However, it is interesting to read up on many articles that have a different take on that. For example, take a look at this link: http://mashable.com/2010/03/16/public-relations-social-media-results/ -- A part of it dictates that even political figures have jumped onto the bandwagon of social media. The listed example was Claire McCaskill, the junior U.S Senator from Missouri and the all-time familiar, U.S President Obama, is also currently very active in the aspect of social media. In our recent General Elections, our P.M Lee Hsien Loong has also attempted his first touch with Facebook. 

The ever-changing dynamics of expectations are now being shouldered upon social media. In my opinion, I think that all consumers and people want an authentic touch towards their expectations. It is definitely interesting to know that the boss of a company that you have been patronizing all these years is actually communicating with you over the Internet. I certainly feel that social media will only get more powerful as technology improves over time. What is your take on our era of social media?

With relevance to this, another interesting read: “Social Media is The Responsibility of Public Relations” http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/online-public-relations/social-media-is-the-responsibility-of-public-relations/

My Internship Experience

----posted on behalf of Ong Wei ni ----------------------

Hello everyone!

Today, I'd like to share with you about public relations and the press. 

As we all already know, in today’s world, public relations and the press are closely knitted. With much relevance this, my internship experience was about building relationship with the press.

One of the challenges faced was writing to the media with hope that your article gets pitched, for the right reasons. Writing a media release is not an easy feat, especially since it is specifically crafted to entice your targeted journalists or media to cover your story. 

At first, it was really difficult to think of a story’s angle. Especially since it has to be an angle that would entice everyone and this is something really subjective. What might be interesting to you or me may not exactly interest others. 

My supervisor has taught me many things about the press and how it affects public relations professionals. He told me that anyone could write a story but a story that’s being published is not just another story. One of the strategies to entice journalists is to cast your net further, craft a specific angle and to make it really interesting. A few of our clients have requested for specific target magazines or media that they prefer and even so, we’d still take the chance to cast our net further. This is so that we would have more options to explore and consider at the end of the day.

Here is an article that I’d like to share regarding my blog post: http://communication.howstuffworks.com/how-public-relations-works4.htm (It touches mostly on how public relations and the media are closely connected. Have a good read!)