The power of PR & social media writing

Wong and his colleagues (seated) with the participants at the end of the workshop

Benefitting 78 UTAR Public Relations (PR) students with his real-world insights on PR and social media writing was invited speaker and industry veteran Joe Wong at the “The Power of PR & Social Media Writing” workshop. Wong is currently Corporate Communications Senior Manager at Yeo Hiap Seng (Malaysia) Berhad (Yeo’s).

Held on 18 November 2016, the workshop combined Wong’s 12 years of experience together with efforts by the Institute of Public Relations Malaysia Student Association – Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman Chapter (IPRMSA – UTAR Chapter) to further hone the participants’ PR skills.

Participants were taught to understand audience’s behaviour, the must-know of PR writing and the usage of social media. They gained a better understanding on the application of current PR practices and how to make full use of growing social media platforms to reach audiences effectively.

“You must adapt to the evolving communication technology landscape because social media is making it increasingly convenient to reach audiences,” advised Wong. He pointed out the need to first recognise and understand the audience’s gender, age, race, income range, language preferences, education and hobbies by conducting demographic studies.

When communicating with the audience, he stressed on the need to have your message planned beforehand and then to choose the right platform to convey that message. Strengthening that point, he used examples of famous local bloggers, who used platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube to effectively communicate with their audience.

His talk also raised the importance of participants having good language proficiency and urged them to polish their PR writing skills, so as to be more persuasive in writing. Wong shared tips on how to produce good product releases, event press releases, feature and lifestyle articles, and crisis statements.

It was not all talk at the workshop as participants were assigned a crisis management task to work in groups of eight. The case study was titled “Cadbury and worm” that told of a consumer taking to Facebook after having found a worm in her chocolate bar. Wong instructed the participants to construct a sample Facebook crisis statement and to develop solutions for the crisis. 

Wong checking the participants’ crisis statements

“It was a good practical assignment that taught me how to first detect a crisis and then to strategise ways to solve the crisis. The knowledge gained is important, especially to PR professionals because being able to write a good crisis statement will not only reduce the damage to the company’s image, but also serve to retain stakeholders’ confidence. It is important that PR professionals master crisis management skills, and fortunately for us, we are a step closer because of this practical assignment,” said IPRMSA – UTAR Chapter Chairperson and Year Two PR student Chew Luck.

Marking the end of the workshop was a souvenir presentation to Wong by Chew, followed by an interview session where seven participants were successfully recruited to undergo their internships at Yeo’s. 

Participants actively participating in the Q&A session 

Wong receiving a token of appreciation from Chew