MNG81001 Corporate Communication: Media Relations Strategies Report

This report delves into the realm of corporate communication, specifically examining media relations as a crucial aspect of managerial success. It explores the evolution of news media and its impact on business coverage, emphasizing the significance of social media platforms in shaping a company's reputation and facilitating communication with customers. The report outlines strategies for building effective media relationships, developing online media strategies, and socializing these strategies to enhance public relations. It also addresses the critical issue of handling negative news and maintaining a positive brand image. By analyzing these facets of media relations, the report provides valuable insights for managers seeking to master the corporate communication function and achieve organizational success. The importance of building trust and faith through proper communication is highlighted, along with the need for organizations to adapt to the evolving digital landscape.

Running head: MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION
Management Communication
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of the various means of
corporate communications. The corporate communication is regarded as one of the most crucial
facts for the managers to communicate with several employees and design their programs that
would lead to their success. The type of corporate communication that is chosen here is the
media relations. The use of social media is a very crucial factor the success of the organizations.
The online media strategies are helpful for the organizations to set up a good reputation for
themselves and communicate things like their new product and service launches.
Growth of business coverage in media
Some small businesses always like to get better coverage about their businesses so that
they can achieve better results. It is not always possible for them to inform all of their customers
about their products. Nowadays, various social media platforms are engaged in covering the
business organizations and their new stories. The social media platforms help those business
organizations to inform about their feedbacks. The small business organizations definitely take a
lot of time to build a proper reputation for themselves. The social media platforms help them a
lot in this scenario (Doorley and Garcia 2015). “Wider society has been in a state of flux and
change well before the widespread adoption of the Internet in the 1990s….”. (Podnar 2014).
The feedbacks and reviews from customers on their social media official pages will
definitely help them to restructure their organizations as suggested by the customers. The online
marketing will enhance the chances of profits for these small and large business organizations.
The busnes organizations always want to create a long-term reputation for their organizations
(Podnar 2014). Perhaps, social media works as the medium for achieving this (Doorley and

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Garcia 2015). There are many ways the business organizations can set up their hold in the
market. This can be done through media coverage like online, TV and several other media
exposures. The stories of those business organizations will go viral through media coverage. This
will effectively be helpful for organizations to attract a pool of customers.
Evolution of the news media
In the last few decades, the evolution of the news media has been excellent. This growth
and evolution of this news media has been the vehicle for success of the new business
organizations (Podnar 2014). Established and big business organizations already have a fair
amount of reputation in the business market. Therefore, the new ones need exposure so they can
come up as challengers for big ones. The news media has given them this opportunity in the
recent times. The use of this news media works as an alternative model for their own marketing
promotions through traditional ways (Doorley and Garcia 2015). “Knowing the types of
interactions that are likely to occur on different types of sites is important when considering how
communication takes place on these sites, and the likely motivators for interactions”. (Doorley
and Garcia 2015).
The news media has been an effective medium for spreading the news about the opening
of new buildings for the organization, launching of new products and services and many other
factors. These issues are largely important and this can be shown through news media. Negative
issues are also shown in the news media as well (Doorley and Garcia 2015). When a problematic
issue takes place in the organization, the news journalists cover this news to reach this message
to the customers. When the share of a company goes down or some issues are detected regarding
their products, consumers would be able to get informed about this thing (Carr and Hayes 2015).

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Build up better relations with the media
It is very essential for the organizations of contemporary times to build up good and
effective relationship with the media. This good and effective relation can be both with the social
media platforms and news media (Tiago and Veríssimo 2014). The marketers of organizations at
first should make up a list in which they will drop down their target audience. Proper
advertisements should be prepared that could enhance the organization to reach their targeted
audience. In this scenario, those business organizations will have to identify the influencers and
choose the relevant social media group. “Social media ‘gurus’ love to amaze by showing
impressive numbers about the explosive growth of websites like Facebook, Twitter and other
social networking sites.” (Dahl 2018).
Top priorities in the list should be marked and marketers will contact the social media
platforms to spread their messages through their platform. The advertisements will have to be
created and might be published in magazines as well. Thus it reaches to their targeted audience
(Tiago and Veríssimo 2014). The customers also record their feedbacks in those media
platforms. These responses are reverted back to the organizations for their further steps.
Journalists and social media activists should keep in touch with these organizations. In turn, the
organizations will provide contract extensions with those media channels. Thus the entire
procedure will be fruitful for the organization in terms of getting more customers (Bharati,
Zhang and Chaudhury 2015). The use of internet had been growing already before the creation of
World Wide Web browser. This factor could be termed as “growing diversity among user
communities”. (Doorley and Garcia 2015).

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Development of online media strategy
In order to approach the customers in a better manner, the organizations will have to use
the social media by developing a proper strategy. In order ti build up a proper strategy, the
organizations will have to follow some steps so they can build up effective social media
strategies (Leonardi 2014). At first, the marketers will have to get online and listen to everything
that is being said. This is an essential form of corporate communication. They must engage in
listening to the viewpoints of the customers and important facts about their brands. Thus they
will be able to know about the important influencers of their brands (Tiago and Veríssimo 2014).
They will then put up their aims and objectives for their brand in the online media platforms.
Then it is time for the customers to listen to the organization. The valuable things will be shown
to the customers to attract their attention (Vernuccio 2014). The use of social media can also be
called as the “democratization of information’ transforming people from content readers into
publisher…” (Dahl 2018).
The service providers of the organization might choose to deliver free samples to the
customers to bear a good image. The proper media plan will be developed with the help of their
effective content. They should fix the timeline on social media for the development of the proper
content (Vernuccio 2014). Some factors that could be delivered by them on social media
platforms are articles by guest authors, relevant statistics on the products, feedback polls and
their results, opinions of others and photos of all their products (Dahl 2018).
Socialization of social media strategy
Social media platforms are indeed very effective mediums for the proper communications
between the service providers and the customers. In this era of digital transformation, companies

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will have to be swift about connecting with their target audience and provide them with their
desired products. The stories of the organization should be shared through the social media
platforms (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis 2014). Professionals will have to understand that they
should always care for the preference of their customers. If the presentation of the brands
through social media is not appropriate, customers will not connect with their services or
products. The socialization of the social media strategy is a part of making public relations
stronger. “What can be said with some certainty is that the widespread adoption of
communication technology has increased the speed of lessened the effect of geographical
boundaries on information exchange”. (Doorley and Garcia 2015).
Through the socialization of these strategies and conveying the proper messages, a
relationship of trust and faith will be built between the customers and the service providers. This
trust is essential for the overall success of the organizations (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis 2014).
The way that the social media strategy is placed will be the key thing to provide desired things to
the customers. Proper engagement between the customers and organization will indeed be a big
help to socialize even better (Dahl 2018). The interaction between these two parties will
strengthen the relationship and cater for the growth of the company.
Handling of the negative news
In some cases, it has been noticed that the rival organizations are not able to survive in
the competition in terms of service and product offerings and they try to fain thir strong position
through negative publicity (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis 2014). They spread wrong information
about their competitors on social media and try to gain the advantage through convincing
customers about this. This is a dishonest method of winning customers from rival companies and

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ethically incorrect (Constantinides 2014). There are some ways of how different brands should
take up the charge of proving to their target audience that they are right and they have been
presented wrongly. In their social media campaigns, they should always make it clear to their
target audience that they care for their customers. It can also be quoted from the research works
that “…social media is more a lucky combination of technological advancement combined with
post-modern consumption behavior.” (Dahl 2018).
In fact, they have no intention of hurting the emotions of their customers (Stephen 2016).
If any wrong information has been shown to present their negative image, it is a conspiracy of
their competitors. The first way of communicating in this scenario is to listen all the things that
has been spread about them. The organization has to stay positive and transparent to their
customers. On a public sphere, they will have to communicate with the common public and
address their position. This will boost up the trust of customers in them.
Conclusion
On a concluding note, it has to be stated that corporate communication is a crucial part of
the success of the organization. Until the organizations and their managers communicate
effectively with their customers and work on their feedbacks, they will never be able to
overcome the difficulties regarding communication. In fact, they should seek the assistance of
the several social media strategies that would help them to keep updated about the preferences of
their customers. Customers should also be conscious about dealing ith fake negative news about
the companies. The relationship of faith and trust should always be there through proper
communication.

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Reference List
Bharati, P., Zhang, W. and Chaudhury, A., 2015. Better knowledge with social media? Exploring
the roles of social capital and organizational knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge
Management, 19(3), pp.456-475.
Carr, C.T. and Hayes, R.A., 2015. Social media: Defining, developing, and divining. Atlantic
Journal of Communication, 23(1), pp.46-65.
Constantinides, E., 2014. Foundations of social media marketing. Procedia-Social and
behavioral sciences, 148, pp.40-57.
Dahl, S., 2018. Social media marketing: Theories and applications. Sage.
Doorley, J. and Garcia, H.F., 2015. Reputation management: The key to successful public
relations and corporate communication. Routledge.
Doorley, J. and Garcia, H.F., 2015. Reputation management: The key to successful public
relations and corporate communication. Routledge.
Leonardi, P.M., 2014. Social media, knowledge sharing, and innovation: Toward a theory of
communication visibility. Information systems research, 25(4), pp.796-816.
Podnar, K., 2014. Corporate communication: A marketing viewpoint. Routledge.
Stephen, A.T., 2016. The role of digital and social media marketing in consumer
behavior. Current Opinion in Psychology, 10, pp.17-21.
Tiago, M.T.P.M.B. and Veríssimo, J.M.C., 2014. Digital marketing and social media: Why
bother?. Business horizons, 57(6), pp.703-708.

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Tsimonis, G. and Dimitriadis, S., 2014. Brand strategies in social media. Marketing Intelligence
& Planning, 32(3), pp.328-344.
Vernuccio, M., 2014. Communicating corporate brands through social media: An exploratory
study. International Journal of Business Communication, 51(3), pp.211-233.