Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
I’m very fortunate to work for a company that supports its employees’ volunteer causes. From making financial donations to enabling employees to participate in volunteer activities, Communiqué PR fully embraces the spirit of giving back to the community.
One of the causes I’m passionate about is an annual volunteer trip I help organize to build houses in Mexico. Our group, “Club Baja,” isn’t an official 501(c)3, non-profit organization, but we’re simply a group of friends who rally our friends and family to do some good in the world.
We returned from our most recent trip in early May and over the course of 2-1/2 days, our intrepid group of 30 volunteers built two deserving families each a home and a latrine. It’s hard, manual labor, but completely rewarding.
As one of the trip’s organizers and its project manager of sorts, I’m tasked with managing a lot of moving parts—from coordinating with the non-profit organization on the ground in Mexico that helps us select the families, to managing the volunteer registration process. In the past I’ve used Excel to manage all of the trip details, but even this ubiquitous tool has its limitations.
There are four of us who organize the trip, and ensuring that everyone has access to the latest financial data or volunteer sign-ups can be challenging when you’re relying on emailing spreadsheets to distribute information and keep everyone updated. On more than one occasion, we’ve also run into the problem of document version control. There was definitely room for us to improve our operations.
Smartsheet is one of Communiqué PR’s clients, but long before we started working with them, we were using the spreadsheet-like tool to manage many aspects of the firm’s business operations and to collaborate with clients. Moving from Excel to Smartsheet was a natural transition for Club Baja and now we’re using it to manage most of the details required to pull off our annual trip, including:
- Tracking our expenses and income from registration fees and donations. Our organization runs on a break-even basis and knowing where we are financially at any given time is crucial.
- Storing documents such as registration forms, trip information packets and construction schematics.
- Tracking the inventory of tools that we keep in storage in Mexico so that we know exactly what we will need for our upcoming trip.
- Managing our volunteer information.
What’s great is that all of this is in one cloud-based location so that everyone involved with planning the trip can access the latest information and documents anytime, anywhere, and make changes if necessary. Plus, because Smartsheet is based on the familiar spreadsheet interface, using the tool is second nature.
Although Smartsheet is geared toward large companies or work teams, even small volunteer groups like Club Baja can use and benefit from enterprise-ready tools.
On Tuesday, May 6, the NBA named Oklahoma City Thunder player Kevin Durant as its Most Valuable Player (MVP). That day, during a press conference staged by his team, Durant showed his true colors as an inspiring and authentic leader.
During his more than 25-minute, unscripted acceptance speech, Durant spent little time talking about his own skills on the court. Rather, he chose to speak about the gratitude and love he has for his fans, his team and his single-parent mother whose sacrifices made it possible for him to become what he is today.
Nearly half of his remarkable speech was dedicated to his teammates. Although he could have given a generic “thanks for your support” message, he chose instead to speak to each of his teammates individually, calling out the things each does that make him a better player and a better leader. Everyone on the team—from veterans to rookies—heard his name and learned how important he is to Durant and to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The attributes on which Durant focused when speaking of his teammates had little to do with basketball. He spoke of his relationship with them as people. We learned that Durant is inspired by Hasheem Thabeet’s smile and by Thabo Sefolosha’s selflessness. We learned that, after a tough stretch of games, Caron Butler slipped a piece of paper into Durant’s locker that read “KD MVP,” which touched Durant. We learned that Russell Westbrook “will run through a wall” for Durant and that he considers Serge Ibaka as a brother.
We learned many things about the Oklahoma City Thunder during Durant’s emotional speech. As he frequently fought back tears when talking of the men who made it possible for him to be named the league’s MVP (as well as scoring title holder), we learned that Durant’s humanity is a key element to his leadership style. Through watching his speech, we also learned what authenticity in leadership looks like.
According to Kevin Kruse’s “What is Authentic Leadership?” article in Forbes, most theorists agree that authentic leaders:
- Are self-aware and genuine. They show their real selves to their followers and don’t hide their mistakes or flaws out of fear of appearing weak. Durant regularly spoke of his own failures during the speech.
- Are driven and focused on results. They do the job in pursuit of results, not for their own power, money or ego. Durant’s efforts have paid off for himself, with the MVP and scoring titles, but have also brought light to his team and fellow players. This new title may also assist in additional advertising and ticket revenues for the organization.
- Lead with their heart, not just their minds. Authentic leaders aren’t afraid to show their emotions and vulnerabilities in order to connect. Durant’s speech was all heart, with many tears shed to prove it.
- Focus on the long term. Leaders realize that nurturing a company requires hard work and patience. Durant took time to address the many rookies who will likely be playing the game after he has retired.
Given that more than 2,000 articles have been published about Durant’s MVP speech, it’s clear that viewers have been moved by the authenticity with which he delivered it. Syndicated columnist Mark Shields—who doesn’t cover sports, by the way—shared his thoughts on the speech during his appearance on PBS NewsHour.
“It’s a tribute. It’s such a testimonial, and it’s so real,” Shields said. “What do we seek? We seek the authentic. We prize the real, the human, the humane, the unpretentious, the genuine. He was all of these things. And very few people knew about it. And it was just—it’s an absolutely touching exchange.”
If you haven’t had a chance to watch Kevin Durant’s MVP speech, treat yourself. You won’t regret the time spent to witness a stellar example of authenticity and leadership. Personally, I’ll be adding the speech to my media training toolbox as required viewing and an example to which my clients can aspire.
On May 5, our very own Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) posted a tweet that received a large amount of backlash. In an attempt to deliver a traffic update with a touch of humor, SDOT referenced the popular meme “Scumbag Steve.”
Referring to this meme, SDOT tweeted a picture of slowed traffic near the site of an accident. The photo clearly demonstrates that people have slowed in order to view the accident, causing a long line up of vehicles. The image included “Scumbag Steve” hats imposed along the row of slow cars, while the tweet read, “You get a scumbag hat, you get a scumbag hat, everyone gets a scumbag hat! Haha I’m mean #sorry.” The tweet has since been deleted.
Given that SDOT is a state-run organization, many people took offense to the message insulting the public. An SDOT spokesperson released a statement to The Seattle Times saying, “Our traffic-management center staff typically will use a humorous meme to highlight a problematic roadway situation. Our intent is not to insult motorists, rather it’s just to call out where there’s a problem so people can make decisions about their trip.” Even the mayor weighed in on the situation. Ed Murray spoke to the Consumerist stating, “It’s never acceptable for a city employee to ridicule members of the public. I understand the Tweet in question was meant humorously, but many—myself included—took it quite differently.”
This incident raises an important question. In a world saturated with social media, where do we draw the line between being current or humorous and being offensive? Considering that traffic is typically a dry, uninteresting topic, should SDOT receive some credit for attempting to entertain its followers? Or would it be better off sticking to the facts and delivering traffic updates as simply as possible? Let us know your opinion on the controversial tweet.
We’ve had some fun recently working with one of our clients on an exciting company announcement. Seattle-based Spaceflight Inc., a spaceflight logistics company reinventing the model for launching small satellites into space, recently secured a launch service agreement for the maiden voyage of its SHERPA platform. The SHERPA, a free-flying satellite platform and in-space tug developed by Spaceflight, will deliver up to 1,200 kg of customer small satellites into low-earth orbit in 2015.
For those of you not space-savvy, this is a unique move. Launching a satellite into space is widely seen as being expensive and inaccessible for all but the largest companies and space agencies. The standard model involves a company purchasing an entire launch vehicle to deploy a single satellite. This is an inefficient use of resources and often prices out small-satellite customers working with smaller budgets— universities, startups, emerging space programs and others.
Spaceflight is changing up the norm and improving access to space for small-satellite customers by offering launch rideshare services. Instead of requiring customers to pay for an entire launch vehicle, Spaceflight piggybacks multiple small-satellites onto the extra capacity of a single launch vehicle. This translates to cheaper launch services and improved access to space for the customer as well as increased revenue for the launch service provider—a win-win.
Spaceflight’s own SHERPA platform builds on this unique approach with the capability to deploy multiple small satellites at considerably lower cost than was previously possible. To support the announcement, we targeted influential local, national and space industry outlets and reporters with the news, leveraging both Spaceflight’s unique business model and the SHERPA story. This strategy was successful, resulting in substantial industry and media interest as well as editorial coverage in many of Spaceflight’s key markets.
Here is a sampling of the articles generated by the news:
- Via Satellite
- Aviation Week & Space Technology (requires subscription)
- SpaceNews
- Puget Sound Business Journal
- Satnews
- SatellitePro
- Parabolic Arc
- NewSpace Watch
- Satellite Evolution Group
The best part about our job as PR professionals is supporting companies that are making the world a better place—in Spaceflight’s case, improving access to space for more people and organizations. Spaceflight has even more exciting plans in place for the road ahead and we look forward to continuing to support its business and communications initiatives.
For more on how Spaceflight’s shaking up the industry, check out www.spaceflightservices.com.
Creating meaningful content that perfectly displays your industry thought leadership can be an arduous process. So when you come up with something brilliant, why not utilize it to its full potential?
Repurposing can extend the life of your content and boost the number of people who see it. As Frank Strong points out in his PR Daily article on repurposing, there are a myriad of different ways to do this. Following are a few of the most effective.
Turn an article into a presentation. People are more likely to remember what they see than what they read (90 percent of information the brain processes is visual) so turning a written piece into multimedia is sure to be effective. Create a Slideshare presentation out of the most interesting elements of your article or blog post. Choose a piece that has bullet points or subheads so it can easily be broken down and be sure to add relevant, eye-catching photos.
Use statistics as social media fodder. Tweeting an interesting statistic from a blog post or white paper will likely lead readers back to the original source, effectively extending the life of your content.
Write a blog post based on a white paper. In the tech industry, a white paper is often written by a lead product designer to explain the philosophy and operation of a product in a marketplace or technology context. They provide a wealth of facts, statistics and explanations about your client’s products and industry that can serve as the backbone of a compelling blog post.
Syndicate your blog posts. There are many benefits to syndicating your blog posts – more reach, visibility, sharing and traffic to name a few. Many publications accept syndicated content, but make sure your post matches the audience of the publication you pitch. If you pitch to the wrong publication, even if they decide to publish your piece it won’t be reaching the right audience so your efforts will be wasted.
These are just some of the ways to increase the life of your content. What other suggestions do you have for making your content go the extra mile?
Social media is relatively new, but it has proven to be a vital element in the customer-engagement equation for businesses. With the constant changes taking place on social channels, it is important for companies to understand how to best use these valuable tools for gaining attention from target audiences. In particular, recent changes on Facebook and LinkedIn will certainly begin affecting how journalists, marketers and PR professionals use social channels.
Facebook has been undergoing some significant changes that will affect how companies can reach their audiences. Previously, companies could create a Page, essentially a company or brand Facebook profile, and push content to their audiences through this medium. However, the ease and low cost of this source may soon not be as effective as it once was.
According to Ad Week, Facebook has recently been reworking its news feed algorithm, making it more challenging for companies to get impressions from their content, no matter how clever they may be. An anonymous source from Valleywag claimed that Facebook is reducing the organic reach of Pages to 1 or 2 percent. This move will make it continually more challenging for companies to reach their audiences through Facebook posts, eventually forcing companies to pay for ads on Facebook instead.
A Facebook spokesperson responded to this change on CNET: “We have not given a specific reach number that Pages should expect to see because organic reach will vary by Page and by post. Like many mediums, if businesses want to make sure that people see their content, the best strategy is, and always has been, paid advertising,” the spokesperson said.
While that might make it more difficult or costly to reach audiences, Facebook recently announced a new tool that will be valuable for journalists, which PR professionals should note as well. FB Newswire is a public page of real-time news that will curate original pictures, videos and status updates on the latest news, weather, entertainment and more. According to the Wall Street Journal, Storyful, a social news-verification company, will monitor FB Newswire. Each photo, video or status update on the page will link back to the user’s personal Facebook page, giving journalists the opportunity to contact the user for the information around the post. PR professionals will need to take note of the changing ways journalists get their news leads and possibly re-strategize depending on how successful FB Newswire is.
LinkedIn recently announced another change in the social media world. In just a few years, LinkedIn has made a variety of changes to the way the site aggregates news and then pushes it to audiences. An article from the Huffington Post highlights LinkedIn’s recent timeline of change. In 2011, LinkedIn introduced LinkedIn Today, a news aggregator. The following year LinkedIn created LinkedIn Influencer, which is a blogging platform for thought leaders and experts selected by LinkedIn.
LinkedIn recently announced LinkedIn Publishing, giving each user the opportunity to create content, a privilege previously reserved for the select 150 leaders and experts. LinkedIn Publishing is an exciting new tool that enables companies to potentially increase brand awareness. Essentially, it will give users access to share their blog posts to the LinkedIn community. LinkedIn Publishing will give PR professionals another outlet to assist clients with reaching their target audiences.
Social media is still relatively new, but even so, is constantly changing. Social channels must encourage community involvement (as has real-time news) in order to keep the interest of users, journalists, marketers and PR professionals alike. FB Newswire and LinkedIn Publishing have the potential to be two useful sources, and it will be intriguing to see how these social media sites affect the PR industry.