The importance of accurcay accuracy.

Hi everyone!

I have now officially finished week eight of my internship and thought I would pop by and tell everyone about how I went throughout week four to week six at St John of God Murdoch Hospital (SJOGMH) in their marketing and public relations department.

I've decided that from now on I will be choosing a theme or topic for each blog post that best represents what I have learnt within the given time frame. Though the last three weeks weren't as hectic as the first three I definitely feel that I have gained a greater appreciation for the importance of accuracy in the field of public relations, and that is what I will be talking about today.

We were taught throughout our public relations degree that accuracy is paramount in everything we do and we need to adhere to the highest standards of verbal and written communication and ensure all our facts and details are correct. It was also stressed the importance of checking and rechecking all of our work as once it was published, printed, exposed, etc. it is harder to correct.

Any mistake in accuracy, no matter how small, can have a huge impact on your organisation. It could be monetary (costs associated with reprinting if it was grammatical, time lost from redoing work) and can impact your organisational reputation or image in a negative way (one example is the backlash Myer experienced from their grammatical error on their early bird gets the right size campaign). When faced with these sorts of consequences it does surprise me how organisations can make such mistakes in the first place.

But how does this apply to SJOGMH? Well aside from the fact that you should always be checking your work and aiming for 100 per cent accuracy, I have been spending a lot of time updating our contact database and organisational website.

I know a few of you have had the joy (sarcasm) of updating databases during your internship. Though it isn't the most stimulation of jobs I did gain a real life appreciation for how important accuracy is to SJOGMH. My primary focus was on updating the top 50 and top 100 doctor lists which is used by the public relations and marketing department and the hospital executive for various reasons, such as deciding event guests’ lists and for recognition.

On top of working on updating the database I was also charged with doing a small update to the organisational website. SJOGMH went through a small rebranding in which the official name of the hospital changed from St John of God Hospital Murdoch to St John of God Murdoch Hospital. As a result I had to check all the pages on the website and change the name of the hospital to the new name. Whilst doing this check I also picked up some spelling and grammatical errors that I fixed in the process.

It is through these tasks that it was reiterated to me the importance of accuracy. If I had the wrong number or address for the doctors on the database then they could not receive official invites to hospital events which could decrease morale and/or waste tickets on unfilled spots at events. If I didn't update the hospital name on the website it would cause inconsistencies in the branding of the hospital and spelling and grammatical errors portray a lack of professionalism of the organisation. I know and accept that mistakes can happen but completing these tasks I learnt that I had to be accurate if I was going to succeed, and sometimes there are no short cuts or easy options if you are aiming for accuracy.

All I can hope for is that between now and the conclusion of my internship I continue to keep accuracy at the forefront of my mind so I don't slip up and make a small (but important) mistake.

Until next time.

PRintern.

Everyone makes Misateks....Mistakes

After the initial feeling of being chuffed with myself fordressing appropriately and professionally I was thrown into the world of PR by being given the task of writing and sending a number of press releases to the local media informing them of my organisation’s upcoming awards night and the organizations which were named as finalists in the respective news proprietors’ area. 

Originally this task seemed to be right up my alley-a PR practitioner’s bread and butter. Easy right? I had done plenty of these in classes and for exams. I thought I was a regular PR whiz when I had completed over 25 media releases. I was savvy enough to remember I should proof read and double check all of my works before I eagerly go rushing up to my supervisor seeking approval like a small child asking their mother to watch them dive into a swimming pool.

I was disapointed to disocver that my work reveald some sily errors.  In the excitement of trying to complete the task quickly I neglected some basic writing fundamentals. It is only human however to miss errors – for instance, in the rush of reading this post how many of you noticed the spelling errors in the first sentence of this paragraph?  

The importance of paying attention to detail and checking, double checking or even triple checking your work should be held in the highest regard in the professional world.  My spelling and grammar was not the only thing that needed to be analysed with a fine tooth comb. The names, addresses and titles of the journalists or editors I was sending my releases to needed to be correct (a couple of my submissions did not originally reach their intended media outlet because the journalist I sent them to no longer worked at the business) 

I am also creating the audio visual presentation for the awards night which is fast approaching and needed to make sure names of the finalists and winners are correct, the timing of the slides run exactly to the minute of the event plan and the names of the finalists are written both in a traditional and phonetic fashion so as to avoid embarrassing verbal errors by the master of ceremonies. 

What originally seemed an excessively anal approach to fact checking and ‘pointless details’, has proven to be a vital necessity in ensuring the running of the organization and the upcoming awards night is a success. I realize that everything may not be as easy as it first appears.  Should there be mistakes or disasters the first question that needs to be asked is “could this have been avoided by fact checking or creating a precautionary plan?” Never again will I think things parades, expos, ceremonies or any event can just be ‘thrown together’. Painstaking attention to detail can go into the smallest of things.