INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS MALAYSIA

Have you heard about this institute? Institute of Public Relations Malaysia

The Institute set up in 1962 where it does not belong to any individual professional Public Relations practitioner but rather to all those in its portal who desire the systematic, organized growth and development of Public Relations as a profession which can contribute positively to the nation’s continuous growth and development in all spheres of human endeavors.

What are the objective of IPRM?

The overriding objective of IPRM is to enhance professionalism among public relations practitioners in Malaysia. To meet this main objective, IPRM organizes various seminars and trainings for members and non-members. It also supports research and other educational activities in public relations.

The specific objectives of the Institute are:

·   To advise, provide information and create opportunities for discussions on all aspects of public relations activities.

·   To promote the understanding, development and recognition of public relations.

·   To establish and prescribe standards of professional and ethical conduct and ensure the observance of those standards.

·   To encourage the attainment of professional academic qualification.

·   To nurture, promote and maintain contacts with public relations practitioners.

The institute also provides internship to students from various universities within the nation and abroad.  In IPRM, interns are exposed to various tasks and activities in preparation to their future endeavour.  Check out for more information at http://www.iprm.org.my/

We can get more exposure and information about Public Relations in Malaysia.  Want to be a member now?

New Media and Public Relations

The digital world is: multi-channel, conversational, transparent, integrated, fast-moving, international. All of these attributes should play to the strengths of the PR industry and put the PR professional centre stage. If we take advantage of this opportunity and play to our strengths, it should push us firmly into the ranks of senior trusted advisors and finally differentiate us from the other creative service disciplines such as advertising.

We plan two-way communications between organisations and their publics to achieve mutual understanding. And these ‘conversations’ are held in an ever more transparent world. So companies are judged not just by what they do but also by what they say they will do and how the two compare. Actions really do have to match the words.

The beauty of the digital world for PR is that its gives us valuable tools to create these conversations. I see the digital world delivering three benefits to the PR sector.

1. Firstly, the capacity to communicate with all of your target audiences at the same time. Online communications reach consumers and customers at the same time as they do the media.
2. Secondly, the opportunity to create a real and recorded two-way conversation, which will highlight both the good and the bad in an organisation’s relationship with its customers, prospects, employees and stakeholders. This gives the communications process considerably more value as it allows companies to gain insights into customer behaviour and attitudes towards products and services – what they like and what they don’t like.
3. Thirdly, the ability to truly measure the impact of your communications – quickly, simply and affordably – demonstrating once and for all that PR can directly support business development and sales.

I’d like to make one thing clear. I really do not believe it is possible to separate ‘new media’ from traditional media these days. To put it another way, the two channels have converged. Offline media reference websites in their print additions. Their websites have links to blogs and other publications.  Online titles refer to stories in offline titles. The once clearly-defined areas of TV, radio, online and print have become inextricably linked. For example, TV and radio now broadcast over the internet, while mobile operators are hosting TV channels.

This means that any PR campaign that treats offline and online as separate entities will deliver poorer results. All PR campaigns need to address the converged communications channels as one entity to be successful. Understanding the relationship between, and the nuances of, converged media will significantly increase your opportunity to generate positive coverage and great results.

But, what about the channels of communication in new media? At first glance there seems to be a bewildering array of digital communications channels: blogs, micro blogs, forums, social networks, websites, free newswires, photo sharing sites, bookmarking sites, podcasts, videocasts…. I could go on.

To a casual observer, all of these seem to be changing at an astounding rate and feeding off of each other. But upon closer inspection it is clear that while there are many connections between them, they have one main thing in common: they reach a huge range of audiences in a much more immediate way than traditional channels and create two-way communications.

Surely the identification of audiences and creation of communication campaigns to reach them, and ideally generate a response, is at the heart of PR. This really is a huge opportunity for all of us.

Beyond reach and speed of coverage, the online media world would seem to have other advantages for the PR specialist. London-based media evaluation company Metrica launched Metrica Numbers 2007 . One of the most interesting insights it provided was that online titles featured the highest level of message delivery of any media type. Half of all online coverage delivered key messages, with an average of three messages per article.

As to specific channels, social networking continues to grow, with Datamonitor reporting that usage will more than double from 41.7 million to 107.4 million across Europe by 2012. The commercialisation of social networks has started as new owners of the big sites start to look for a way to get a return on their record investments. For example, companies of all sizes can now set up a presence on Facebook and encourage their customers to become fans. What is not clear yet is the impact of having fans’ recommendations pushed to friends, especially if companies do not limit the number of their communications and their content.

Opening yourself up to negative comment on a social networking site such as Facebook is a bit frightening for most PR professionals who are traditionally used to trying to manage communications. But the benefits of letting your communications go and travel freely can be considerable. Customer, prospect and consumer feedback and comments can provide valuable insights and work as an early warning system for upcoming issues. Plus, if all feedback is positive consumers are much less likely to trust it.

The next highest profile channel after social networks is the blog. Blogs seem to be growing at an almost immeasurable rate. Importantly for the PR sector, they have a clear and simple role to play in campaigns. It is an accepted communications tactic for companies to use a blog to provide a human face to an organisation. Indeed, Microsoft are so committed to the channel that they have 4,500 bloggers aiming to transform its corporate image and change perceptions of the world’s biggest software company. As CEO Steve Balmer puts it: “It’s been a great way to communicate with our customers and for them, more importantly, to communicate with us. It touches people more.”
It is also worth mentioning micro-blogging, as it is grabbing more than its fair share of headlines at the moment.

Services such as Twitter, Tumblr and Pownce allow users to create blogs of up to approximately 150 characters along with pictures and video. They are displayed on the blogger’s page in real time. The key differentiator for these services is the ability to link to mobile networks so ‘followers’ of your blog can receive updates by SMS. People can also follow you on a Really Simple Syndication (RSS). While a constant flow of SMS updates may not seem a terribly valuable form of communication, Delta Airlines uses a Twitter account to keep customers up-to-date. And the short format and mobile input means that micro-blogs are proving to be the fastest growing form of communication on the planet.

A serious example is the tragic earthquake in China, which according to technology blogger Robert Scoble was reported faster on blogging service Twitter than it was by the United States Geological Survey, whose sole purpose is to provide early warnings of seismic events. Plus, Twitter reaches everyone at the same time – consumers, journalists, fellow bloggers and followers. 

A rather less serious but equally informative example of the power of Twitter is the case of Ryan Kuder, a Yahoo! employee who sent 19 Tweets over 10 hours to his followers, updating them on his less than smooth redundancy discussions with his boss. By 9pm West Coast time it was on the Silicon Valley tech sites and blogs and had reached the UK

Instant, universal communication of news: the PR person’s dream or nightmare? I’ll leave it to you to decide.

Once information has been delivered through social media release, email, or via a website, blog or RSS feed, the role of the PR person isto facilitate the development of the story, not to tell it. The journalist is quite capable of testing the robustness of claims and past statements and actions of the organisation issuing the information. This role as facilitator ultimately means that the PR person has to hand over control of the story.

Once in the public domain, customers, competitors, prospects and even employees can join in the discussion and debate around your story. The key is to make sure that as wide a range of available information as possible is available so that your key audiences can make up their own minds.
In this free-form world of communications, building alliances and coalitions with supporters is crucial.  So a big part of the facilitation process is for PR teams to stimulate supporters to provide content.  Traditionally known as ‘word-of-mouth’, we all know that third-party endorsement carries considerable value… and the digital world is no different.

The travel industry has understood this for years, and sites such as Trip Advisor have become a must use information source for travellers around the world. You get to know which hotels in a resort have the best cleaners, sea views and restaurants. Conversely, we also discover who has the worst before we book. Trip Advisor was bought by online travel company Expedia, who saw the tremendous value of the community for its own marketing. Top-listed destinations and hotels can be emphasised to customers and lower-rated ones dropped from campaigns.

Taking this a stage further, a number of consumer brands have created sites where they can garner customer feedback into issues that impact the brand and its future – and so build supporters and hopefully advocates to drive positive word-of-mouth. Coca Cola and McDonald’s have both taken this route in the last 12 months with the launch of sites designed to tap into consumer opinion and build a consumer network for market research and communication.
As you may have guessed by now, I am very optimistic about the future of PR as the online world continues to develop and grow. The online world will become an ever more important source of information, news, opinion and comment as access speeds increase and the Internet becomes ever more mobile.

We are in the ideal position to take advantage of this opportunity. So if you are not using new media for your PR campaigns now, I urge you to start as soon as you can. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.
If new media is already a part of your daily life, promote what you are doing, demonstrate the results that these campaigns deliver, and continue to innovate. As a result your organisations, clients and teams will all benefit, and the PR sector will be rightly seen as the natural champions of new media communications.

This thought piece is excerpted from the keynote speech of ICCO Executive Committee member Richard Houghton explores the wide – and uncontrollable – world of digital media and what it means for the practice of public relations at the ICCO Southeast European Summit in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
http://www.iccopr.com./

What is New Media?

If you are wondering where new media trends are going, the answer is within the internet and our cultures desire for fresh intertainment.  Networking and video-sharing websites are the biggest thing happening within the web.  these internet phenomenons have bet set-up to target consumer groups such as students and toher young adults.  Networking website like Twitter and Facebook have caught people's attention day after day.

from custom options to user programmed applications, these profile sites are where the audience gather and share interesting entertainment, the latest trends, jokes and other media.  The online society can also be broken into societal groups to be successfully targeted by advertisements and subjects of interest.  Another place to look for present and future media is the massive realm of massive online multiplayer games.  These virtual games have caught the attention of millions of gamers who wish to join in virtual experinces. As this generations of gaming develops, I believe people will be consumed by the media presented in these online worlds.

Companies can buy space in these interactive worlds and post advertisements and what's more interesting you can go to virtual stores and make purchase online! no need to go out anymore!

Isn't that great? What do you think? Is it good thing or not?

When the Media is too much.....

Media and PR is synonym.   Sometimes the 'relationship' is so good but sometimes not.  Everyone expects journalist to be pushy to report facts and it makes PR professionals cringe.

Well, we can't blame them because they are just doing their jobs.  Hey! they got datelines to catch up to.  It's only sometimes we hope for some balance in the resulting coverage and it turn out to be not like what we imagine.  Sometimes they do go beyond the limit.  They cross the line from aggressive to offensive.  What do PR do when this kind of situation happens?

• If the statements continuously been misquote eventhough repeatedly been correct, take a necessary consultation from legal counsel that sometimes make a positive difference and taken every reasonable action to get the facts corrected.
• If a media editorial bias is so strong even after threatened with formal legal action, remember that media is NOT the most important audience. Why did I say so? Because it's the least manageable and it has an agenda of its own.  There is other way for example buy the advertising space and publish the truth there and you can control the message.
• Or, beside advertorials, consider whether the audiences important to you or your client are actually being negatively influenced by the media coverage? By simply increasing positive and accurate direct communication with key audience members about a crisis situation that you will balance out the inaccurate negativity in the press. 

People in every profession break the rules, they violate the ethics and responsible business practices to which they allegedly subscribe.  Reporters and editors are no different.  Again, preparation and crisis plan is the most important things in every profession.

Whose the person to find during CRISIS?

Your company is in crisis. Whose the 2nd important person after CEO during a crisis? (i'm talking to you PRO!).  Yeah! it's PR Officer indeed.  Probably the during this period PR is the most busiest person in the world (besides Prime Minister) but company crisis is not something new in the business area.  So what do you do as a PR of the company?

Prepare.....prepare...prepare....

It's a battle of war for you.  Preparation is a must.  Preparation can include developing a detailed crisis strategy, creating media materials in advance, arranging media training for key executives and pre-establishing a crisis team


Make sure all the facts is there.

Gather as much information about the situation as quickly as possible and form a variety fo sources.  Consult legal counsel and communications counsel to see what information can be released and what should not be reveal.  IF by any change, the 'not to be reveal' news need to be shown as an evident just make sure it do not jeopardize the corporate image of the company.  Stay in constant contact with the management or crisis team.


Tell the truth.

Information release to the media or the publis is TRUTHFUL. If it happen to be false, Man! your in great danger! The credibility will definitily be irreparably damaged.


Show you care and sincere.

Do the best to understand what the public's concerns will be and adress those concerns directly.  Be sympathetic to those affected by the issue at hand.


Never overlook the power of common sense.

Think through the differenct crisis solution scenarious.  If your gut instinct is that they are off the mark, get more information and keep thinking.  Trust yourself and your advisors.



No one can predict a crisis, so as a 'success PR' appropriate foresight and thought can be one of the tools to handle crisis. 

PUBLIC RELATIONS & CORPORATE COMMUNICATION

Are they the same?  Yup! both are relatively the same eventhough their objective and tactics are quite different.  Public Relations creatively promotes the image of its client to the public, corporate communication adheres to the compicated bylaws of compliance in both internal and external communication, promoting the integrity of a corporation with very little room for creativity.  Let's have a simple description for both.


Function 

• Public Relations --> Profession that relates mostly to the promotion of an image, depending on its client. 
• Corporate Communication --> a profession that prides itself for coloring compliantly within the lines

Audience

• Public Relations are more to the media. It means newspaper, radio, televisyen, magazines and of course the internet.  Publicity comes by way of any mention in the media. 

• Corporate communications are more directed to its employee base, customers and partners via email, memos and the occasional press release.

What's up with Public Relations ?

When i was first writing in this blog, the idea was to give a definition of Public Relations, it's characteristics, job function and i would like to discover the world of 'Public Relations' ..

Ok! of course first of all, we have to know what am I talking about here...let's start  with definition.

What did they do??

• Anticipating, analyzing and interpreting public opinion, attitudes and issues that might impact, for good or ill, the operations and plans of the organization.
• Counseling management at all levels in the organization with regard to policy decisions, courses of action and communication, taking into account their public ramifications and the organization’s social or citizenship responsibilities.
• Researching, conducting and evaluating, on a continuing basis, programs of action and communication to achieve the informed public understanding necessary to the success of an organization’s aims. These may include marketing; financial; fund raising; employee, community or government relations; and other programs.
• Planning and implementing the organization’s efforts to influence or change public policy. Setting objectives, planning, budgeting, recruiting and training staff, developing facilities — in short, managing the resources needed to perform all of the above.

Did u get the idea what PR is all about?  Good! I bet you understand!

“Public relations helps an organization and its publics
adapt mutually to each other.”