Owned media as the way to create successful relationships with stakeholders

The main goal of public relation is to establish and develop relationships with stakeholders and influential publics in order to promote and influence the views about their organizations. The most adopted practice to cultivate these relations is through the media. PR professionals strategically plan the implementation of media to divulge their messages, they adjust their communications to the logic of the media. In this sense, as Savic stated, the media are something that change and transform the communication.

What different specialists pointed out is that modifying the communications of corporations according to the media logics to establish relationships with key stakeholders is not always rewarded. So, how can PR improve their ability to develop relationships? A solution to this enigma comes from the implementation of owned media to communicate the news, the directions and the information of organizations. But, why this tool can really help PR in meliorate the construction of relationships?

Nowadays, how people feel organizations and their brands has changed, it is not merely consumption, now brands stand for information, trust, lifestyle, quality of the organization. So the way in which PRs direct the content of their brands is a key aspect to effectively manage and influence the relationship with stakeholders. PR can’t just disseminate messages, they have to take into account the wishes of their stakeholders in order to create an embraced vision of the organization. Having owned media can be beneficial because it’s a platform in which the main logic is to inform and communicate with stakeholders, not only communicate to. PRs can really interact with their stakeholders, creating an open and two-way relationship with them, they can successfully communicate with them understanding their needs, their expectations, their reactions and their interests.

Another advantage of owing media is the positive content that organizations can provide with this platforms. Especially during a crisis situation, being able to enter in the media logics and in their processes of agenda building is difficult. What mass media can say about the organization can destroy and demolish the relationships created with stakeholders in years of hard work of PR practices. The owned media in this case, is essential in giving, providing and maintaining the reputation of companies, it’s a way in which corporations can answer to the doubts of their publics and positively respond to them, it’s a means to save their relationships. With owned media organizations can affect the stakeholder’s agenda, presenting the context of the issue in an appropriate manner that do not damage the reputation and the legitimacy of the organization. With owned media, the control over the communication factors is in the hands of organizations and their public relation departments.




For these reasons we can say that owned media can improve and help PRs in creating and maintaining their relationships with stakeholders because they are a key influential tool. PRs, in these sense, do not have to just modify their communication according to the media logic, they can develop, promote and elaborate the own content of their organisations, according to their rules.







About the author:
Emanuela (25) is an Italian Master student in Corporate Communication at the University of Amsterdam. She is aficionado of sports media. She likes also cinema, series, travelling and enjoy the life with her friends.