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.
Sweaty palms, shaking hands, squeaky voice — if this is what happens to you during a presentation, you are not alone. Many people get nervous when presenting in front of large groups of people.
One way to feel at ease during a presentation is to control your content and make sure your presentation will dazzle, instead of put your audience to sleep. Having a strong PowerPoint presentation to help tell your story will do wonders to help calm your nerves.
While preparing for a recent client meeting in which we were presenting PR results, a colleague sent me an article from Ragan.com called “5 simple ideas to make your next presentation sizzle,” by Jon Thomas. The article provides some good guidance. I’ve incorporated these and my own experience in developing presentations to come up with five tips.
Consider the following five simple ideas to impress your audience:
- Tell a story. There is nothing that keeps an audience engaged like hearing a good story. Identify the story that is at the heart of your presentation or pepper anecdotes throughout. This will help keep your audience interested. For example, if you are giving a presentation about safety in the work place, tell a story. Provide examples of someone who was injured when they did not abide by the safety standards.
- Focus on one idea. Pick one idea or theme that you want your audience to remember. Once you select the idea you want your audience to take away from your presentation, make sure that your content reflects this theme. For example, if you want your audience to remember to lock the doors to the office at the end of the workday, create a slogan and provide examples that focus on locking the doors or what could happen if they don’t lock up.
- Create a new template. PowerPoint offers a variety of templates and backgrounds, but many are restrictive. Make your presentation unique by creating your own background or breaking out of the regular template. Does the logo have to be on every slide? Does each slide need two columns? Don’t be afraid to mix things up. Some companies have brand standards in place, so you might be even more restricted, but be as creative as you are able.
- Use images. Visual stimulation is essential when presenting. By using vibrant images to bring your presentation to life, you’ll not only have a better looking product, but Thomas suggests you’ll have a visual cue that “your audience’s brain can attach to your message.” Sometimes, all you need is an image in the slide to help explain your message.
- Give your ideas room. One of the most common mistakes is to put too much information on one slide. Because people innately have trouble focusing, try spreading the presentation out so there is one idea per slide. You’ll spend less time on each slide, but it will be easier to follow.
By creating a dazzling PowerPoint presentation you can feel confident in your content and, with adequate preparation, you’ll be totally ready for the presentation… For more tips on how to prepare for any public speaking event, see our previous blog post. Good luck!
Every year we see both witty and wacky April Fools’ Day joke announcements and fake news. And among those spoof announcements, there are those that go over well among consumers and others that go sideways. Before committing to an April Fools’ Day PR stunt consider how it could backfire. It’s all fun and games until you’ve irritated customers, are facing legal action, or have lost your job.
Last year, I offered some guidance in my post, Public Relations, April Fools’ Day, and Fake News, as well as some fun examples from 2010. And in 2009, we shared guidance on The Joke Press Release – Is it Appropriate for April Fools’ Day?
In summary, we offer the following three tips to consider when organizing an April Fools’ Day joke announcement:
- Timing is critical. An April Fools’ joke on any other day does not have the same effect. Erring by distributing your spoof announcement on either March 30 or April 2 can increase the likelihood your audience may be caught off guard, not realize it is a joke and most likely not react as you had intended.
Techie Buzz reported on an April Fools’ Day joke that one company launched in 2010 “a good week ahead of the actual occasion and in the process infuriated several customers.” As I stated above, timing is critical.
Offer a disclosure. Make it easy for your audience (e.g. media, customers, employees, readers, listeners etc.) to catch on that it is a joke. Last year, Papago Brewing in Arizona launched a promotion that a somewhat rare beer from Russian River Brewing was to be made available at Papago’s pub on April 1. Customers saw the announcement and came in for that specific beer only to be served a Papago beer instead.
Needless to say, customers became disgruntled and vented their frustration on Facebook, and an apology was posted the next day. For the full story and some of the Facebook posts check out Phoenix New Times, “Papago Brewing’s ‘Pliny On Tap’ April Fool’s Day Prank Backfires.”
- Be careful not to offend. In a blog last year one woman shared how her boyfriend played an April Fools’ Day joke by sending her a text that they need to talk and then telling her their relationship was over. The woman was naturally upset.
Similarly, YouTube’s 2011 April Fools’ Day joke involved celebrating its 100th birthday and offering a 1911 button that as Gawker explained, creates “an old-timey version of your video, complete with a piano-roll soundtrack. This joke is not appropriate for all videos.” Some viewers were offended to see videos of the Japanese Tsunami or other tragic events paired with light-hearted music. As stated by Gawker, “YouTube apparently neglected to anticipate the extent to which a mock silent-film treatment is not at all funny when applied to videos showing sad and horrible things.”
Of course in addition to the above, you’ll want to make sure any joke announcement or promotion your company pursues is consistent with your organization’s brand and supports its objectives.
One of my favorite joke announcements of 2011 was Think Geeks’ PLAYMOBIL(TM) Apple Store Playset. Described by ThinkGeek as “… a tiny representation of the store which sells us all the shiny Apple goodies we can’t resist. Then we noticed that the PLAYMOBIL™ iStore includes amazingly tiny iPhones, Macbooks, and iPads.”
Do you have a joke announcement, blog post or stunt planned for April Fools’ Day this year? Or have an experience you can share regarding past April Fools’ Day jokes? We’d love to hear from you. Please post a comment with your story.
Today, it’s a rare occasion to find companies that aren’t harnessing the power of social media. However, even though your company may not yet have a formal presence on social media platforms, it’s extremely likely that you and the majority of your colleagues and employees are active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or all of the above. With social media activity increasingly blurring professional and personal lines and creating a massive gray area around what’s public and what’s private, it’s incumbent upon business owners to have a social media policy in place, regardless of whether the company itself is active on social media platforms.
Back in April, we wrote about the importance of not only having a social media policy in place, but also training your employees on the policy to help ensure that they understand it and are using social media in a way that can help build brand awareness without inadvertently damaging the company’s reputation. Unfortunately, we’ve all too often seen what can happen to companies or high-profile individuals who experience social media blunders that go viral.
While social media policies should be clear, targeted, prescriptive, and empower your employees to be brand ambassadors, that doesn’t have to translate into materials that are long, boring and full of legalese. Gil Rudawsky of Ragan’s PR Daily, provides an interesting look at how Gap, Inc., took a refreshing approach to reinventing its social media policy for its global workforce.
Specifically, in an effort to differentiate its brand in today’s crowded marketplace, Gap is unleashing its 134,000 employees on social media to help create buzz and increase awareness. It also set forth a no-nonsense policy broken down into three categories, “Keep in mind,” “How to be the best,” and “Don’t even think about it.” While the guidelines aren’t publically posted, they were presented at a crisis communication conference and Rudawsky had the inside scoop on a few noteworthy highlights including:
Keep in Mind…
- There’s really no such thing as “delete” on the Internet, so please—think before you post.
- It’s a small world and we’re a global company. Remember that what you say can be seen by customers and employees all over the world and something you say in one country might be inaccurate or offensive in another.
- Your job comes first. Unless you are an authorized Social Media Manager, don’t let social media affect your job performance.
How to be the best …
- Be yourself. Be the first to out that you are a Gap, Inc., employee – and make it clear that you are not a company spokesperson.
If you #!%#@# up? Correct it immediately and be clear about what you’ve done to fix it. Contact the social media team if it’s a real doozy. - Add value. Make sure your posts really add to the conversation. If it promotes Gap, Inc.’s goals and values, supports our customers, improves or helps us sell products, or helps us do our jobs better, then you are adding value.
Don’t even think about it…
- Talking about financial information, sales trends, strategies, forecasts, legal issues, future promotional activities.
- Giving out personal information about customers or employees.
- Posting confidential or non-public information.
- Responding to an offensive or negative post by a customer. There’s no winner in that game.
Gap’s social media policy is a great example of how companies can create a compelling, easy-to-follow set of ground rules that engages employees in real-world language rather than 20 pages of legal jargon. Not only does it keep the company’s best interest in mind, but it also empowers its employees to be brand ambassadors with clear, easy to follow guidelines.
Do you have a social media policy? What works well for you?
Lately we have been thinking about and redefining our corporate values, and one of them surrounds collaboration. At Communiqué PR, we highly value collaborative relationships with our clients, co-workers and business partners.
Given we place a premium on collaboration, I decided to do some reading about what it means, why it is important, and how to best establish collaborative relationships. Let’s start with the definition.
According to several sources, collaboration is working together to achieve a common or shared goal. Nonetheless, the quest for harmony and working together to accomplish a shared goal is not always easy. People may share a goal, but may have very different ideas about how to achieve it.
Consider the University of Washington’s (UW) 150th anniversary. The PR and marketing teams at UW may have a shared goal of leveraging the anniversary to raise awareness of the institution and its impact on our community, but they may have had very different ideas on the strategies and tactics to employ to achieve this goal.
At Communiqué PR, we often have differences of opinion around how to achieve various objectives, and it is incumbent on us to come to consensus or resolve our differences so we can move forward in a constructive and harmonious manner.
This is a common challenge for many organizations as I discovered when reading a Harvard Business Review article titled, “Want Collaboration? Accept – and Actively Manage – Conflict” written by Jeff Weiss and Jonathan Hughes.
According to the authors, true collaboration only comes when people realize and overcome conflict. To address this conflict, they offer strategies for managing disagreements at the point of conflict as well as strategies for managing conflict upon escalation. The strategies for managing disagreements include:
– “Provide people with criteria for making trade-offs.”
– “Use the escalation of conflict as an opportunity for coaching.”
Whereas to manage conflict upon escalation the strategies include:
– “Ensure that managers resolve escalated conflicts directly with their counterparts.”
– “Make the process for escalated conflict resolution transparent.”
I found the strategies and their detailed explanations to be very interesting, and am considering ways to make them actionable in our organization. The authors also provide insight on three common myths surrounding collaboration as well how managers at IBM coach to resolve conflict.
If you are interested in ensuring you’re working in a collaborative manner, I recommend purchasing the article. While it was published more than seven years ago, I think some of the concepts are still highly applicable today.
For more on collaboration and the importance of agencies working well together, I would also encourage you to read Rod Brooks’ blog post titled, “Tip 8 – Advice for Agencies Looking for An Edge – A Clients Perspective.”
Exhibiting at a conference can be a great opportunity for companies to get in front of potential customers, media and fans. I recently had my first experience at an industry conference with one of our clients at Macworld. Our client was an exhibitor and we took the opportunity to set up media interviews to touch base and share the product road map for the year.
I was surprised that not every vendor fully took advantage of the opportunities that the conference provided. We thought it might be helpful to provide a few suggestions to make the most of your conference experience.
Consider the following:
- Meet with media. Most conferences will provide exhibitors with a list of registered media attending the conference. This is a great opportunity to connect your business with members of the media. It’s important to make sure that the reporter is a fit for your business to make the best use of both your time and theirs. Even if you do not have news to share, it can present an opportunity to get to know a reporter and position yourself as a resource for future stories.
- Connect with customers. Make the most of your booth and be available to demo upcoming products, provide training and troubleshooting advice to existing customers and answer questions. For many companies without retail stores, a conference is one of the few places that they are able to interact with customers face-to-face. It helps establish a personal connection and puts a face on your business.
- Give swag. People attending conferences expect to receive some sort of “swag” when visiting the booths. This can range from coupons, candy, and stickers to cool gadget accessories such as the latest cover or headphones. This will help to not only get your logo out there, which should be strategically displayed on the swag, but it will also build buzz and further spread awareness.
- Use time to dine with like-minded people. Conferences offer a unique venue where hundreds or thousands of people with similar interests, goals and objectives come together in the same place. This is a great opportunity to connect with like-minded people for dinner, drinks, lunch or coffee. How often do you get uninterrupted time with industry peers from around the world? Reach out to contacts beforehand and propose meeting up during the conference. You can also encourage each person to bring someone else to broaden the networking opportunities.
- Transcribe action items. During meetings with media, your time at the booth, or listening to keynote speakers, you’ll likely make mental notes to follow up with someone or suddenly have an idea for improving your business. It is important to keep track of these notes by either jotting them down or downloading them into a task management tool. You’ll want something to refer back to and ensure you are not losing the valuable information you’ve garnered from the conference.
Conferences require a great deal of money and valuable time out of the office, but if you take full advantage, they can yield great business results.
In the world of social media, blogs have become an important medium to share your company stories beyond a traditional press release, allowing you to promote your company’s services as well as your perspective on relevant industry topics. In addition, blogs allow you to gain valuable feedback from your customers as they write comments on your posts and also help to build engagement as you take the time to respond.
If your company does not yet have a blog, you are missing out on a great opportunity to establish your thought leadership, increase awareness and visibility, and drive online engagement and website traffic. In addition, blogs often serve as the foundation of meaningful content to share on other social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
At Communiqué PR, we often help our clients develop their blogs whether it is brainstorming ideas or helping to draft and edit posts. For some clients who take on their own blogs, we are often asked how to write a compelling post.
I recently came across a timely article written by Neil Patel on Ragan’s PR Daily about this very topic, and many of the tips he suggested are ones we often recommend. In his post, “The no-fail guide to writing popular blog posts,” Patel shares some of the lessons he has learned over the years. Here are just a few to consider:
- Use Simple Words. When writing your posts, use simple words to tell your story. Patel suggests “writing posts with a fifth grade vocabulary” as it will make it easier for the reader to understand the content, no matter the topic.
- Use the Word “You.” Blogs are a great way to build a connection with your customers, many of whom are seeking some sort of personal connection with your brand. While many eyes will be reading your blog, Patel makes a great suggestion of making them more personal by “thinking of somebody you know and pretend you’re writing the blog post for just him or her.”
- Write How-To Posts. People turn to blogs because they want to learn something, so it is important to provide useful information. If you have a solution to help solve a problem, write out all of the steps involved. For each step, be sure to provide prescriptive guidance, explain what to look for and any confusing points that may arise.
- Write Detailed Posts. We often suggest to our clients the length of a blog post should be approximately 500 words, but only if they are sharing meaningful content. Patel shared his experience of “writing a long, detailed post with lots of good, specific information” and found many of his readers appreciated it by commenting and sharing the post. He also shared a good tip to add “images, statistics and graphs as they will get more links than the same post without the visual appeal.”
- Hook Your Readers. As with any media story, the best way to grab the attention of your readers starts with your headline. Patel says a great blog headline combines at least three of the following features: that it is unique, useful, and ultra-specific and urgent. Then hook your readers with a great first sentence “people can’t resist.”
- Create a Conversation. It is important to remember that blogs are a platform to begin a meaningful conversation with your readers. One tip is to always end your posts asking questions which encourage your readers to post their thoughts in the comments.
- Prove Your Points. As Patel reminds us, it is always important to prove any claim you make. Making a claim in a blog is no different than making one in your marketing collateral, website or when speaking with media. If you are not able to substantiate it, you will lose credibility.
Creating valuable content is imperative for social media and, with blogs, content is king. And a key component is to develop content that connects and engages with your readers. In addition to these tips, we have shared ideas on our blog about how you can get started in blogging and why blogs are a key pillar of B2B social media strategies.
But we want to hear from you! What tips do you have for writing a compelling blog post? What have you found works best to drive engagement and “sharing” of your posts?