Media Relations

Summary

Media means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, which reach or influence people widely. In the different types of media, the news media effect an organization the most. Media is a tool of deliver a company’s information and images to the community and constituency. And since the media are interested in satisfying the needs of readers and viewers—but usually they are more interested in bad news such as scandals, so how to build better relationships with members of the media and cultivate relationships with the right people in the media are very important.

There are some strategies about how to build good relationships, successful media relations program, and the online media strategy:

Building better relations with the media:

• Conducting research for targeting media—first, determine what objectives they have for certain story and search for the right place to pitch the story. Second, find out who covers their industry and the company specifically. Third, figure out who is covering a company’s beat, the firm’s corporate communication team needs to determine what kind of a reporter they are dealing with.
• Responding to media calls—it is very important because the responding can make a powerful difference in how the company appears in the story. The person who responds for the call, the tone of conversation should be friendly, communicate honestly, and try to get as much information as possible while being careful not to give in return any information that is not already public knowledge.
• Preparing for media interviews—here has some tips when preparing for a media interview: keep answers short; avoid saying "no comment"; listen carefully to each question; use "bridging" to move the interviewer from his/her question to your communication objective; use anecdotes, analogies, and simple statistics to make your point; and keep your body language in mind throughout the interview.
• Gauging success—the organization should indicate whether it is achieving its communication objectives by records the hit, looking where the ink has landed and how well the company’s key messages are communicate. Then they can highlight the actual corporate value created by communications activities.
• Maintaining ongoing relationships—organizations need to maintain the good relationship with the right journalists for their specific industry because they could build goodwill and credibility of the company.

Create a successful media relations program:

• Involve media relations personnel in strategy
• Develop in-house capabilities
• Use outside counsel sparingly

Develop an online media strategy:

• Extend media relations strategy to the blogospher
• Handle negative news effectively

Example and Self-Experience

Here is a video about media relations strategies.

An example of media relations, which we already read in the text book, is the Adolph Coors Company. They faced a big problem because of a nationwide boycott; since they didn’t have good relations with the media, they had a difficult time during the boycott.

The university I studied at in Taiwan has a good relationship with the news media. Therefore, on almost every occasion, I could see a big section of news reports about my university in the newspapers.

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References:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HEzoivI3Cc

http://elissafairchild.blogspot.com/2008/02/never-pick-fight-with-man-who-buys-his.html