Pickle Jar Communications

I’m going to be chairing the CIPR Education & Skills Sector Group’s event on Building Contacts with International Media on the 26th February. It should be an interesting event and we already have lots of people signing up to attend. So now I have the challenge of deciding what questions to ask them, what way to steer the discussion … and how to claw things back if the discussion goes off on a tangent. Some initial and very obvious thoughts for questions to the panel include:

1. How to get the stories to overseas media (distribution methods, is email okay, what services are there to use to help with this)
2. Where to begin with building contacts – are UK-based correspondents a good ‘route-in’ as such?
3. Can language be a barrier?
4. Do different countries have different conventions in terms of writing and issuing press releases?
5. What kind of stories should we be trying to place with international media?
6. How can we monitor pick-up of stories in overseas media?
7. Perhaps encourage the panel and members of the audience to share experiences or anecdotes about working with overseas media.