Page 202 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

MULTIMEDIA PUBLIC RELATIONS

about us than what they learned from our occasional mailings. Letters,
while highly personal, take days, weeks, and sometimes months to
complete the communications loop. The telephone helped close the
gap by allowing personal contact, but the telephone isn’t always
convenient, especially if we play telephone tag.
Web technology, especially e-mail, has created the kind of personal
communication that transcends distance and time. Exchange of infor-
mation is quick, easy, and usually advantageous to the demands of
both parties, because each determines when to interact. Critical to
this concept is the addition of the capability for our publics to respond
directly to us through our Web sites. This probably seems obvious, but
you would be amazed at the number of Web sites that do not provide
this capability. They pass up many golden opportunities to establish a
dialogue with their various publics.
A related, but separate, topic is providing your publics with the
ability to “opt in.” This has also become a standard feature of more
enlightened Web sites, and it is necessary to build solid relationships.
It has become bad form for organizations to “push” e-mail to their
192 publics, because it is often considered spam by the receiver. Instead,
providing them with the opportunity to decide individually whether to
receive information on a continual basis gives control of the relationship
to the receiver, which in turn empowers them. You must also make it
easy for them to cut the relationship, otherwise you risk incurring their
wrath. Angry people can be extremely troublesome to the public rela-
tions practitioner because they have quickly moved from latent public
to involved public. As public relations practitioners, we should view
this opt-in atmosphere as an opportunity to get to know our audiences
and empower them to drive our communications initiatives.
The richness of multimedia also allows us the opportunity to
customize our communications, creating the sense of having a con-
versation with someone. The interactive nature of multimedia com-
munications, coupled with instantly personalized messages, produces
an environment approaching the intimacy of face-to-face exchanges.
Through long-term exchanges of ideas, the practitioner is able to
anticipate issues and make contributions to management decisions.
Long-term exchanges with key publics allow the practitioner to gain an
insight into the organization’s operating environment that few others
have the ability to gain. Using this knowledge to provide context
for a decision is invaluable to an organization. The long-term nature
of the relationship gives the public relations practitioner a greater