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.

Sometimes Virtual Isn’t Enough

With the continued rise of technology and demanding schedules, meetings are increasingly taking place via conference calls or webcams. Our team at Communiqué PR facilitates many interviews and meetings over the phone with clients, media and journalists not only in Seattle, but also around the world. And while virtual meetings allow us to cut costs around travel, are more personal than email, and are flexible for schedule coordination, they are not without pitfalls.

Before you schedule your next meeting to take place via conference call or Skype, consider a few of these challenges and solutions:

Remember virtual meetings are less personable than meeting face-to-face. Harvard Business Review recently published an article “How to Conduct a Virtual Meeting” by Dr. Nick Morgan, president of Public Words Inc. and author of several books on communication and speech, that addressed a few of these issues. Dr. Nick Morgan suggests two strategies for dealing with this roadblock. “Recognize that virtual meetings are suboptimal and plan accordingly.” He suggests using virtual meetings only for information-sharing and less important topics. Dr. Morgan says, “Save the emotional stuff for face-to-face meetings…So if you’re kicking off something important, or celebrating a big win, bite the meeting bullet and bring everyone together.”
“Label your emotions and ask others to do the same.” His strategy surrounding this concept puts the responsibility in the hands of the meeting facilitators to identify their own feelings surrounding the contents of the meeting and to also create an expectation that others label their emotions and opinions as well. He also suggests that the facilitator create opportunities to identify and clarify emotions relating to specific issues covered in the virtual meeting with clear questions or guiding statements. Dr. Morgan gives an example: “Jim, I’m really surprised to hear that third quarter numbers aren’t improving. Surprised and worried, actually. How are you feeling about them?” Giving everyone a chance to explain what their thoughts are gives participants an opportunity to verbally communicate the types of cues that you miss out on by not being face-to-face to read body language.
It is difficult to visually construe messages or ideas over the phone. Given this, it is essential that the meeting organizers plan ahead and distribute PowerPoint presentations, images and other pertinent information prior to the call. This allows participants to refer to visuals to better grasp your message.
Sometimes time zone differences make scheduling impossible. Clearly it is critical to look for blocks of time where daytime hours overlap when proposing a virtual meeting. You want avoid one caller having to wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. as this is not a good way to have everyone mentally present. If this is unavoidable, you may want to try to meet in person or look to deliver information in writing.
A good facilitator can make a huge difference. This person should keep everyone engaged and have questions prepared. Brainstorm ways to identify participants’ opinions and feelings on issues to make up for lack of body language cues.

As communications professionals we’re adept at ensuring key messages are conveyed in a variety of mediums, however these tips above are a good reminder of when to go virtual and how to make the most of these meetings.

Local Coverage of Serials Solutions

Most marketers and PR professionals appreciate the importance of having access to credible information. Many college students and researchers are in the same position. They need credible, current content and want a Google- like experience when searching their libraries for it.

Until just 18 months ago, accessing information in academic libraries (and some corporate libraries) has often been a painful experience as information is located in a variety of different databases. Researchers had to know in advance where to look for information within the library. With Serials Solutions discovery services, today’s research process is greatly streamlined.

Consider just one of the company’s solutions. Introduced in the summer of 2009, Serials Solutions Summon™ service allows students to search their entire library’s collection from one search box, providing a search experience similar to that found with Google. Students type their search terms and get a list of all the relevant physical books, e-books, patents, artwork and journals available to them from their library’s collection.

We recently had the opportunity to help get the word out locally about Serials Solutions. We reached out to several journalists covering technology and business to let them know about Serials Solutions’ plans to expand its workforce in Seattle. Much like the other tech companies located in the Puget Sound area, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google, Serials Solutions also employs a significant number of local people. The company currently employs 200 people in Seattle and is continuing to grow. The company plans to fill 30 positions during 2011, and is leading the way in a changing market.

As a result of our activity, the following articles appeared in March and April.

Puget Sound Business Journal, “Serials Solutions seeking 30 people; Microsoft, 3,297” – Mar. 25, 2011
TechFlash, “Serials Solutions, HathiTrust to provide full-text library search” – Mar. 28, 2011
Puget Sound Business Journal, “Question for Michael Gersch” – April 8, 2011

While there is a lot written about Serials Solutions in the library industry, we anticipate as the company grows there will be additional local coverage in the coming months.

Our Most Popular Posts: Q1 2011

The Communiqué PR team publishes new content on our blog several times a week. We strive to provide our readers with valuable information, analysis and tips relevant to today’s communicators and executives.

Given the amount of information we all receive daily, we recognize you may not read each and every blog post. So we thought it might be valuable to highlight the blog posts that were most popular among our readers based on the number of unique visits.

Below is a list of the most popular blog posts we published in Q1 2011.

How to Choose the Best Twitter Hashtag

Promotions on Facebook: What You Should Know

PR Predictions for 2011

Public Relations, April Fools’ Day, and Fake News

In Social Media, It Pays to Know Your Audience

Our Business is Growing. We’re Hiring!

We welcome your feedback. Do you have a favorite blog post from Communiqué PR? Comment and tell us your favorite(s).

The Blogging Toolkit – Everything a Business Needs to Begin Blogging

Launching a blog can seem like an overwhelming task. Getting started is half the battle. At Communiqué, we have helped several businesses and nonprofit organizations create, launch and manage their blogs.

For clients looking to launch a blog for the first time, we have developed a blogging toolkit that we customize for their particular needs. This toolkit assembles all the information that an organization will need to blog successfully.

Using our toolkit, we do the following:

Identify your main objectives. In order to launch a successful blog, it is helpful to identify what you are trying to accomplish. You need to answer the question, “Why am I doing this?” Are you trying to change behavior, inform a key audience or entertain?
Identify your key audiences. Ultimately, you want your blog to be read. Before creating the content, it is critical to identify who your readers will be and understand what motivates and/or resonates with them. Then, filter all content through the eyes of your audience by asking how it will be helpful to them.
Name your blog. This step seems obvious, but selecting a memorable and meaningful blog name can help give your blog recognition. The name should be relevant and not misleading.
Identify success measurements. You can determine the success of your blog in a variety of ways. Identify how you or your company will determine the success by measuring variables such as the duration of page stay, unique visits or increased site traffic. It is helpful to set achievable benchmarks on a quarterly or semi-annual basis to measure growth.
Determine roles and responsibilities. Empower members of your team or company to help with the development of the blog content. This will help everyone feel included and ensure the blog can function consistently. This will alleviate pressure on one individual as team members take ownership in content development.
Develop a publishing schedule. Your readers need to know what they can expect from your blog. The best way to achieve this is by committing to a schedule and delivering. If you can blog once a week, we’ll help you set up a process that will best accommodate this goal.
Build a strong pipeline of content. We recommend you develop an editorial calendar and have a handful of blog posts ready for publication before you launch your blog. This will also help to ensure content is posted consistently and on time.
Establish clear deadlines. Let contributors know when their blog posts are due for review. To ensure there is clarity about deadlines, we recommend scheduling calendar updates to provide reminders when draft posts are due to reviewers.
Identify a process for managing comments. It will be important that you read comments and respond to them in a timely manner. We can help you think through the process for this.

As part of the blogging toolkit, Communiqué PR will also provide your team with ideas for search engine optimization, guidelines for developing content, a checklist for reviewers to use, and ideas for standard features that should be included when developing your sites.

If you’d like more information on the benefits of blogging, please check out the links below or give us a call. As you can tell from our site, we are passionate about blogging!

Building Buzz in a Noisy Market

Launching a product or service is no easy feat, especially when you are entering a market that has been shaped by strong, established leaders and become saturated with other emerging players. How do you cut through the noise and differentiate your organization? How do you avoid becoming a “me too” scenario?

We were recently reminded of this challenge as we worked with new client Kudos Community to help promote the launch of its new online coupon platform that delivers risk-free, targeted coupons and offers to consumers to turn online engagement into real-world transactions for businesses. On March 29, 2011, Kudos Community debuted its website in the greater Seattle metro area and was well received by media and key industry analysts.

Nonetheless, we weren’t without stiff competition. Kudos is one of more than 400 daily deal sites currently available to consumers, a growth statistic reported by Entrepreneur magazine in a story entitled, “Which Daily Deal Site is Right for You?” In March 2011, Local Offer Network issued a report stating that the industry will “expand by 138 percent to $2.66B in 2011.” The report also stated that “deal sites are now in 80 markets across the country compared to just 48 in Q1 2010.” And when evaluating the competition at the local level, we learned of a number of competitors who are based in Seattle including Tippr, Daily Ticket and Ideal Network.

In order to cut through this noise, we took a strategic approach and developed an integrated PR campaign to capture the attention of industry analysts and media, with the following in mind:

Key Messaging: Many of today’s group-buying platforms are simply not business or consumer friendly, nor do they provide a way for consumers or businesses to give back to their local charities or organizations. It was crucial that we developed messaging that clearly articulated the key differentiators of Kudos Community’s platform to businesses, consumers and nonprofits compared to other platforms available in the market. The messages we developed helped us to present a unified and consistent story to analysts and media in the weeks prior to launch as well as crafting the press release to formally introduce Kudos Community.
Analyst Relations: Analysts are a critical audience to engage when building credibility for a new company or product. They influence customers, provide validation and endorsement to the media, and create visibility around the category in general. Kudos Community conducted several pre-briefings with prominent industry analysts at Aberdeen Group, Forrester and Gartner to begin fostering relationships and provide an early look at the platform and how the model differs from competitors. As a result, the company was able to secure two references from key analysts to provide commentary to media in support of our outreach efforts at launch.
Embargoed Media Briefings: To secure editorial coverage that would appear the week of launch, Communiqué PR targeted journalists and bloggers at top news outlets who closely follow the emerging trend and ongoing news surrounding group-buying sites. Again, the key messaging we developed proved invaluable once again in our discussions with media, who often asked, “What makes Kudos Community different from other sites today?” or who felt as though media was saturated with news on similar group-buying sites.
Official Press Release and Buddy Emails: On the day of launch, we sent a buddy email along with the official press release to all of the media we had originally contacted under embargo to draw attention to Kudos Community. We also extended our outreach to include media that covered niche vertical markets such as nonprofit and philanthropy, restaurant and retail outlets. This tactic helped to garner additional media interest in developing a news brief to accompany the press announcement.

Overall, the response our client received from media and analysts was positive. Because of our strategic planning, they were easily able to recognize the greater savings, flexibility and revenue potential Kudos Community offers businesses, consumers and nonprofits.

Thus far, Kudos Community has been featured in the following:

If you’re interested in learning more about Kudos Community or how PR can help effectively launch a new product, even in a noisy environment, send us an e-mail at [email protected].

Management Best Practices – Ideas From Google

Recently, a colleague of mine sent me an article from the New York Times that is an excellent read for anyone managing or leading people. The article entitled, “Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss” highlights how Google analyzed and identified best practices for producing highly effective managers.

We thought we’d highlight the article here on our blog for those of you managing PR, social media or marketing teams. The article only takes a few moments to read, but contains some excellent reminders. I also highly encourage people to read the sidebar which includes “directives” Google produced for managers to employ as “good behaviors.”

Some of the reminders that were helpful to me included providing specific, constructive feedback, holding regular one-on-one meetings with teammates and coming up with a clear strategy and vision for the team.

Insights for Leaders Navigating Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.