We are celebrating staff development again: Orchard account executive Harriet Black has gained the Chartered Institute of Public Relations PR Diploma, receiving a distinction for her main project which focused on ethics in public relations.
Handling the media is not a dark art
There can be no question that the new world we live in presents some extraordinary challenges for businesses; some we have never seen before and others we could have easily deflected in the past… not anymore. We live in a world of increasing transparency and accountability not least in terms of media expectation. We now have both traditional media and “new” media – a true age of 24 hour news.
Businesses are expected to talk, often on issues that are less than comfortable and certainly defend their position across a range of media platforms from newspapers to broadcast, LinkedIn to Twitter. In the past, an understanding of how the media works and how to deal with them may have been a “nice to have” but now it is vital if a business is to be seen to be reputable, accountable and to have a clear understanding of their position and messages to demonstrate expertise.
Being a credible spokesperson with an ability to craft positive and controlled messages has never been more important. Hiding and not engaging with the media is not an option. Worse still is being interviewed or writing a statement without understanding the media and doing it badly. The worst is rehearsing your message so much it is the only thing you say in an interview and you come across as a bit of a robot…
Tune up your social media
Social media, if you believe the hype, is the most important thing you need to focus your business on right now. Just for a nice change, the hype may be justified. Social media can be hugely powerful if harnessed in the right way. Making use of the networks, tools and platforms it provides can be very useful to online PR campaigns and can help win you precious profile and attention within a busy marketplace.
Jumping straight in and getting on with it can seem tempting. None of the tools themselves are that tricky to use, and there are online tutorials aplenty to show you how to design a Facebook page or win new Twitter followers quickly. However the first few steps in social media is also where many people get turned off. If there are no quick wins or no obvious results the feeling is often that they don’t ‘get it’ or more often that it doesn’t ‘get them’ and profiles are allowed to drift into dereliction.
New for 2011: Orchard is offering more training
This year we are expanding our training offering to the Channel Island’s business community. Alongside our successful bespoke media training which, over the years, has seen many of the most senior people in CI business being put through their paces by Emma Anderson, we are promoting our presentation skills training and have launched a new course on introducing businesses to social media.
All three courses are designed for small groups of between four and six people, either from the same company or in a mixed group. We believe in learning by doing so, while there is some theory and knowledge to be gained, our courses mainly focus on delegates putting into practise what they have learned through mock interviews, presentations and activities.
For more details of our training options please visit the Orchard website or download one of the course flyers below.
Introduction to Social Media 2011