Week 9 Readings- Newsletters and Community Relations

I believe the key messages from this weeks readings were that proactive communication can assist with image, and that the role of community relations is an essential one, keeping the community informed and in turn, benefiting the company. The key messages regarding newsletters were the need for clarity surrounding the impression you want to make and what you want to achieve, the importance of reflecting your organisations objectives and allowing for two-way communication and identifying the needs of your audience.

The key points in the readings could be applied to my groups work in that they emphasised the importance of clear information and what to include in a newsletter so it is of interest to your target audience. They also showed how a newsletter can be utilised to put your organisations objectives into context, demonstrating why it is important to the community. This is precisely what we wish to achieve through the communication tools used in our plan.

The readings made me think more about PR theory and practice in that they emphasised the importance of quick and honest communication early on to avoid conflict later, they also outlined the importance of utilising your PR tools effectively (specifically newsletters). There is little point in creating them if they do not fulfil their purpose. The job of a PR practitioner is to identify this purpose and to ensure the writers are meeting it, not solely tooting their own, or the companies horn. We need to know what is it the audience wants to hear? (loved the analogy on this one- the one about the boasting Christmas letters) I now better understand the layout, function and purpose of a newsletter and how every decision is relevant. Newsletters can be directed at a large variety of stakeholders and the newsletter should reflect the interests, and meet the needs of the target audience. Decisions must be made as to how often it will be produced, what it will look like, its content, its language and its format and all decisions must relate back to the audience. There were some clever language tips in the readings covering everything from catchy headlines to sentence structure and the importance of wording a statement in benefit terms and not commanding the reader does something. It’s also important to have up to date contacts and to NEVER send a newsletter as a CC (which was an excellent tip because I didn’t even think of how this technique would expose other email addresses).

The readings related to the other reading I've done in previous weeks in that the construction industry reading reiterated the importance of identifying changes to legislation, which refers back to the importance of SWOT analysis. It also emphasised the importance of clear and honest and coherent communication and that goals must be workable, practical and quantifiable, all of which was emphasised in the chapter about PR plans. The importance of clearly identifying and understanding your audience and stakeholders is again emphasised through the newsletter readings, as is the importance of moving beyond one way communication. It also ties to ethical practice ie someone must be willingly subscribed to your newsletter and be able to unsubscribe. The newsletter readings also emphasised how necessary it is that a communication tool fits into the overall strategic plan.