PRWeek published a thought-provoking article by David Quainton on ‘The lost art of relationship building’ last week. The article examines the often tenuous working relationship between the PR professionals and journalists, exploring various communication issues with reference to the current focus on the new medium – digital PR.
Useful findings
According to the article, a survey was done by PressChoice on a group of 130 financial journalists. The good news is that the group is generally pleased with the professionalism of the industry. However, the article also revealed 5 main grouses the financial journalists had with their PR counterparts:
· Too many press releases being sent to them
· Too ill-informed and not knowing more than what has been written in the press release
· Over-hyped stories that undermined the credibility of the PR operation
· Limited specific information on the company website
· PROs not returning calls as promised
It is interesting to note that it is the influx of junior PROs, who are learning an excessive amount of new skills who are more prone to commit the above acts. If you are reading this and are ‘guilty’ of committing any of the above acts, it’s probably high time you start doing something about it.
A good start will be...
The CIPR’s new one-day Autumn/Winter 2008 workshop on ‘Building better relationships’ taking place on 24 October in London. It allows you to discover ways to develop relationships with clients, colleagues and journalists using the powerful theories of Transactional Analysis (TA). More importantly, participants will be able to identify why they react positively - and sometimes negatively – to colleagues, journalists and clients, and formulate strategies to deal with specific issues and situations.
Find out more!
Keep a look out for the brand new series of CIPR Autumn/Winter 2008 training programmes that will go ‘live’ online soon - www.cipr.co.uk/training!
Choo-Li Tan, Training Development Officer
