Print, radio and television media are all striving to fill their publications, radio and news bulletins with interesting and controversial content.

And with all of these outlets receiving vast quantities of news stories, not just from their particular state or region but from around the world each day, they’re rarely short of material. Now it may be that there are occasions when you or your business becomes one of those media outlets stories.

The story could be positive:

o Your company is announcing a massive profit
o Or your company has won an award.

Or it could be negative and damaging:

o Mass sackings
o Insolvency
o Industrial accident.

So here’s a very important question for you to consider. When you or your business is in the media spotlight for whatever reason, how would you deal with the media?

Well you have two choices.

o Deal with the media in a proper, professional and positive manner.
o Deal with the media in a suspicious untrusting, and unhelpful way

It’s your choice. But before you make that choice, lets take a very careful look at the repercussions each of those choices delivers for you and your company.

Case study:

So you’re dealing with the media in a suspicious, untrusting, and unhelpful manner. Fine you’re choice, but what you’ll find is that under those circumstances, the media wont go out of their way to offer you favours, or be a little lenient in times of crisis. In fact you’ll find that some media outlets will actually go out of their way to run negative stories about you and your company. As a result of that credibility can be eroded. A negative public perception of you and your business begins to manifest itself. Now ultimately that can lead to a drop in sales.

Sounds gloomy don’t it. O that’s the bad news now lets shift into the positives.

You have the power to change all of that if you work with the media and not against them,

If you deal with the media in a proper professional and positive manner, you increase your chances of gaining positive media coverage in the future. And the reason for that, well the media appreciate being treated well, we all do, they’re no exception. And human nature’s a funny thing, treat someone well and with respect, and they’ll more than likely reciprocate. Now there are no guarantees there never are, but it increases the chances.

The media will tend to respect you more if you treat them professionally and in a positive manner.

If you have a professional and positive relationship with the media it will generate enormous confidence within your company.

Knowing that you have synergy with the media will enable the staff within your company who deal with the media to do their job without constantly being on edge or concerned about the media.

And having a professional and positive relationship with the media means that in times of crisis, they may, no guarantees, but they may cut you some slack.

Now I’m not saying that if you work with the media and do everything correctly, your still not going to receive negative publicity. If you’ve just sacked 200 workers, it’s going to be difficult to sell that in a positive light.

However if you do the right thing by the media in that particular situation you at least have a better chance of gaining fair publicity. So hopefully you now understand that when you are dealing with the media in any situation, it’s far better and smarter for you to work with them rather than against them.

But that’s not just going to magically happen for you, you need to know how to achieve all of this so that when you’re actually in a situation where your dealing with the media, you know what to do how to handle that situation so that you get the best possible result.

You’ll have enough things working against you running your own a business, interest rate, sales, staffing issues, the list goes on. You don’t want to have to worry about the media as well. You need the media far more than they need you.

Knowing how important a media policy is to you and your business and how to write your own media policy, will give you the tools to allow you to deal effectively and professionally with the media. The media will appreciate that and that means your relationship will be healthier and more sustainable with the media.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1996082