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.
Have you ever sat through a conversation and 10 minutes later remembered nothing from it? You perhaps recalled you forgot to lock the car or were weighing out the options for dinner tonight. While these thoughts should cross your mind, having them during an important interaction hurts your ability to respond efficiently. But don’t worry, you’re not alone! Research shows that people only listen effectively 10 percent of the time. Craig Weber, author of “Influence in Action,” speaks to this bad habit and how it directly stems from the strength of our minds.
Now I know what you’re thinking: I can’t go to the gym and exercise my brain. Weber takes a different, and might I say, much easier approach to strengthening the mind called mindfulness awareness practices (MAPs). MAPs help you control the “beam of awareness” that so often unconsciously shifts. The goal of these exercises is to teach you how to catch your mind drifting and strengthen listening skills. Let’s run through a few exercises you can work on today!
Single-Point Practice
This first exercise might be the hardest yet most straightforward approach. In this practice, you center your focus on one object, like a spot on the wall or a tree outside, and relax. Your mind will roam, and when it does recognize the lost attention and return to your original point of focus. By actively practicing this everyday you’ll become more conscious of your mind in action and increase the time you can stay focused.
Mindful Listening
In the book, Weber says that listening mindfully presents a useful way to practice controlling your beam of attention. It allows you to put yourself in another person’s shoes and promote empathy. So how do you get better? Your opportunities to practice are endless: Movie night with friends? Lunch meeting? Call with a client? Practice focusing on WHAT and HOW they speak along with tone of voice. Intensely focus on what you’re hearing and force out all other thoughts. Concentrate as if you have to repeat what the person said in the last 15 seconds.
Notice Your Beam
I don’t know about you, but I could get in my car, drive to get a coffee and not remember much of the trip. This is a result of physically being one place, but mentally someplace else. To refocus your beam, Weber outlines two exercises to strengthen your ability to see where your beam is going:
-
- Every hour, take one minute and focus it on an external and internal object for 30 seconds each. For example, your breathing and a continuous sound occurring in the room, like a fan.
- Set an alarm on your phone to remind yourself to check: “Hey, where’s my beam at?” It’s a simple task but will help you see where your mind wanders.
Notice 5 New Things
Ellen Langer, a mindfulness expert at Harvard, defines mindfulness as “the simple process of noticing new things.” She recommends starting each day with the intention of noticing five new things. It could be an object or event, but it allows you to establish the goal of always being present and appreciative.
Take 2-Minute Breathing Breaks
We can all get caught up in our thoughts and become filled with regret from the past or worried about the future. By taking regular two-minute breathing breaks throughout the day, it allows you to temporarily free yourself of regret and worry to be fully present. Concentrate on the feeling and flow of your breath as you inhale and exhale. Focusing solely on your breathing is an opportunity to rest and recover in a chaotic time.
The list goes on with other MAPs to improve your daily focus and listening abilities. I chose these five practices because they’re the easiest and most result-driven to complete in the busy lives we all lead. If this topic interests you, I highly recommend picking up Craig Weber’s book and immersing yourself with other actionable practices he presents. Although MAPs may seem tedious, setting aside small pockets of time throughout the day will result in leading better and more rememberable conversations. Let’s use this time at home to strengthen our minds for when we go back to the office and interact in person.
Earlier this month, one of our newest clients announced a new business model, new company name and new funding. The client, a data performance company previously known as SoftNAS, will now be known as Buurst, unveiled that it was changing how it would charge for its services.
As with every announcement, we worked closely with Buurst’s team to understand the value of this news and what it would mean for customers, partners and the industry. Buurst’s novel approach is in response to the rate at which data is being generated. We learned the amount of data generated is essentially doubling every two years. The traditional approach to data storage and management is to charge a storage tax, which led Buurst’s leadership team to ask, what happens when companies can no longer afford their data?
Buurst completely changed its model and vision in response to an evolving industry and to position their customers for long-term success in the cloud. The change was forward-thinking and disruptive, and we expected the news to generate interest.
As we prepared for the announcement, we decided to pursue analyst briefings to secure third-party validation of the new approach. We secured briefings with IDC, ESG Global and 451 Research in which Buurst walked the analysts through the changes and secured their thoughts on the new model. Additionally, we requested that several analysts serve as media references and secured approved quotes in advance of the announcement.
Finally, we decided to offer this news under embargo to key journalists to allow them time to process the news, secure additional information about how this would disrupt the industry, and why the company was making these changes now. The embargo pitching led to two phone briefings and an email Q&A with a target publication.
Below is an overview of the original articles we secured on behalf of Buurst. Congratulations to the Buurst team on a successful launch of the new business model and brand!
Coverage Recap: SoftNAS Changes Name to Buurst, Announces Plan to Disrupt the Storage Industry
- SoftNAS Rebrands as Cloud Data Performance Company Buurst—Channel Futures, 4/17/20
- Vast Data Wows Investors with ‘Flash Everywhere’ Design—TechTarget, 4/17/20
- SoftNAS Drops Name and Billing Model to “Disrupt: Storage Industry—Data Economy, 4/16/20
- SoftNAS Changes Name to Buurst, Raises $5M to Help Companies Manage Data in the Cloud—GeekWire, 4/14/20
- SoftNAS Rebrands as Buurst with New Pricing Model and Channel Emphasis—ChannelBuzz, 4/14/20
As we all adapt to the “new normal” during the coronavirus pandemic, like many industries, PR agencies are rewriting playbooks for how to pitch reporters.
It’s a balance of continuing to drive results for clients while ensuring pitches are not tone deaf, appealing to reporters’ humanity, and counseling clients on the risk of appearing like they are capitalizing on the pandemic. It’s not easy and quite frankly the most challenging type of strategy development I have experienced in my career.
While PR professionals are not saving lives – and those that are have my upmost respect and eternal admiration – we are influencing how people think and how they feel. Many of us are grappling with our own fears and anxiety due to isolation and the uncertainty of the entire situation. But it’s our job to maintain our composure and help our clients communicate with their audiences as calmly as possible during this crisis.
In a recent blog on PR Daily, Elizabeth Tower Powell of DAI Partners shared an interesting perspective about how this is impacting the ways we provide counsel and help our clients during the coronavirus:
“When we tackle crisis situations, we usually have the advantage of objectivity. We address a disaster for clients, not with them. It is their problem, not ours. Right now, we’re experiencing the crisis together and its impact is severe. We don’t know the end date or the outcome and it’s difficult to suggest solutions.”
Considering this thoughtful viewpoint, I agree that we must take a step back and be very intentional in our strategy recommendations and execution to ensure we are thinking objectively on behalf of our clients. Given the enormous economic uncertainty and the need for brands to continue communicating with the public, below are four tips that can help.
- Communicate. It seems like a no-brainer, right? We are not expected to have all the answers but being proactive in staying in touch, being available and offering support and guidance can be very impactful. Working for a solutions-oriented agency, communicating without a direct result in mind can seem counterintuitive at first, but it goes a long way in building strong relationships with clients and demonstrates humility.
- Go above and beyond. Clients are taking on new and different responsibilities, as are their target audiences, and to those that want to weather the storm we need to roll up our sleeves and do whatever it takes to get the job done. Perhaps this is not the typical proactive pitch or communication plan development that is included in the scope of work; however, clients need resourceful help now more than ever.
- Showcase success, tactfully. This tip resonates with me as I am, likely overly, concerned about my clients appearing tone deaf or attempting to capitalize during the pandemic. That said, people are longing for something new and positive to watch. Take the launch of John Krasinski’s ‘Some Good News’ YouTube series, created to bring some positivity during these difficult times. Ok, maybe we can’t all be The Office’s beloved Jim, but we can help clients understand the importance of strategically showcasing good news, such as new business or new hires, as it can be reassuring to others that succeeding in this environment is possible.
- Look forward. It’s easy to get caught up in accepting that the current environment will be our “new normal.” I could be wrong, but I truly believe it is temporary, even if temporary is longer than originally anticipated. In a recent and rare address from Queen Elizabeth about the pandemic, an optimistic determination struck a chord with me when she said, “I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge.” As PR pros it’s our job to help our clients plan for recovery and prepare for the future.
There are many unknowns with COVID-19 – from a health to an economic perspective – but I firmly believe we must maintain an optimistic outlook in the face of trying times.
In the interim, as you work to determine what is resonating with media, you may find the COVID-19 Media Guide for PR Pros, by D S Simon Media, as a helpful resource specific to broadcast. The sponsoring agency is surveying local news outlets on a weekly basis about what they are open to covering during the pandemic. Clearly, hard sell messages don’t make a lot of sense right now, and this guide can help provide some additional perspective on how brands are succeeding at this during the current climate.
In the age of coronavirus, it seems that life has turned virtual.
Self-quarantine and social-distancing mandates have led many to turn to teleconferencing and virtual hangouts to maintain professional and social connections. Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype and Google Hangouts have become essential for workplace collaboration and friendly check-ins. And adoption rates have surged: Teams reported 12 million new users in March after widespread social-distancing guidelines were put into effect.
However, the shift to virtual meetings has also brought an audience of co-workers and colleagues into our private homes, for which we may not always be prepared. It’s easy to overlook that, by participating in a virtual meeting, we’re putting our personal space on display, along with our work-from-home wardrobe, whatever it may be. How can we ensure we’re appropriately set up for virtual conferencing?
Fortunately, Julie Lasky of The New York Times is here to help. In a recent article, she detailed several ways we can look our best on webcam. Here are a few tips from her article that might come in handy for your next teleconference or virtual happy hour.
Lighting is Key
First, make sure your lighting situation is appropriate. Avoid having a light source directly behind you or within view of the camera, as this can cause glare for your audience. Having the light directly opposite you can help you literally shine for the camera – in the best of ways, of course.
To look your finest, avoid sitting directly under a source of light. This can create unwanted shadows on your face, making you look more like a ghost than a co-worker vying for valuable meeting time. Consider using ring lights or lamps and position them two feet opposite where you’re situated.
Make Sure You Can Be Heard
Next, consider the acoustics of the room, if you will. Hold your meeting in a setting where sound is absorbed and echo is minimized. Rooms with carpeting, window shades or curtains, and other upholstery can be ideal, as these can help contribute to your own personal sound booth. Large rooms composed of wood and glass are nice, but may be counteractive when it comes to trapping or bouncing sound.
Also, if you use headphones or AirPods, make sure they work appropriately with your computer and the application you’re using. Being ill-prepared for technical snafus can lead to a communication breakdown.
Know What’s in the Background
When considering your backdrop, keeping things simple often pays off. Neutral backgrounds will help keep the focus on you. Opt for rooms with neutral colors such as light blue, light gray, off-white or beige. Minimize background activity and avoid having multiple rooms or areas of high foot traffic, such as a staircase, within view of the camera that can distract your audience.
Or maybe you’d like to give your audience something to look at. Sometimes this can help with introducing a sense of calm, vibrancy or optimism. Try creating a simple setup, with a bookshelf in the background or placing a plant nearby. Or you could film yourself in front of an elaborate painting or art piece to try and inject a little inspiration into your setup.
It’s easy to overlook the unintended consequences of letting outsiders virtually enter your home. Pets may bark during client calls, children may barge into the room and cry during work meetings. These things happen. But creating your own niche for hosting virtual meetings will help you maintain consistency and a semblance of normalcy with your work routine. And it will help keep you prepared for whatever the job throws at you, keeping you focused on what’s important and less preoccupied with how you appear.
This blog isn’t for designers. This blog is for the people who write and want people to read their work, people who work with designers, and people who have always wanted to learn more about design. You don’t need to become an expert in Adobe Illustrator, become fluent in color theory or learn all there is to know about fonts. In order to create a good design, you just need to follow some rules about layout, visuals, and text.
I’ve written up some very basic guidelines based on my experience with designing infographics and apps. I hope they will help you think about how you want your content to look. I’ve also included sources with more in-depth information if you’d like to take a deeper dive. A well-planned design will make your content more readable, your key take-aways easier to find, and people will want to read your work. You don’t have to follow these guidelines, but it’s always good to know the rules before you break them.
Note: If you have a style guide you want to reference, now is the time to check it for tips. When I talk about your page, I’m referring to the area on which you’re designing. Your page may vary in size and shape. When I refer to your copy or content, I simply mean the words on your design.
Layout
One of the first things that you should focus on when drafting your page is what it looks like from far away. You should be able to identify the different elements and see how they interact. If your entire page is covered in text with no spacing, it’s not going to be readable. If your eye doesn’t flow over the page, it’s going to be frustrating to look at. If you want people to be able to read your text, you need to know how to adjust your layout based on your medium and you need to grid your page.
Gridding is the structure that your design is based on. It buffers text from the edges, separates columns, aligns content and makes it visually satisfying. The organization that gridding brings makes your design cleaner and more readable and, if your content goes across multiple pages, helps bring the pages together. Using a grid with two or three columns for text is a great choice in many mediums. It’s generally accepted that column widths should hold between 50-80 characters.
To determine how to grid your content, first you need to consider where it will be shown. The medium could be an image posted on Twitter, a word document, a banner or one of many other formats. The medium should determine the size and shape of your page. It should also suggest margin gridlines based on visible area, which can help you determine other grid spacing.
When working on your layout with a designer, discussions on layout can include the addition of open space, aligning text with other elements, and mirroring other formats. It may help to provide sketches or find examples of layouts you like when giving feedback.
Visuals
Next, think about what the entire page looks like together, considering the colors of your work and the images or graphics you plan to use. If you use colors that don’t match the content or colors that clash with the other colors on the page, your reader may become distracted and choose not to read your content at all.
When you’re working with color, less is more. Consider how different one area of your page looks from the rest, or the contrast. A pop of color will bring your readers’ eyes to that area, so use it for your most important information or key points. If your brand already has defined colors, use those. Otherwise, choose a color that you like or one that fits with your content. Depending on the hue or saturation, you can use this as your accent color, your background color or your highlight color. The next step is to find or build a color palette, or a selection of colors that go well with each other. Ideally, choose colors that are different enough that a black and white print out would still be readable.
When it comes to graphics, prioritize quality. An image that’s pixelated or doesn’t relate to your content makes it seem like you don’t care. A well-chosen image elevates your subject by connecting your readers’ unconscious relations to whatever the picture is. To ensure your image won’t be pixelated, check your medium and try to have a minimum of 180 pixels per inch (ppi). If you’re using non-image graphics, make sure that you’re using a vector graphic rather than a raster graphic.
Like word associations, color and image associations can have a mix of cultural and personal influences and may not always translate between people. When working with a designer, discuss emotive goals and consider requesting versions of the work using additional color palettes to compare the differences.
Text
Finally, look at your page’s text. In English-speaking countries, text goes from left to right and from top to bottom, so make sure that your copy flows the same way. If you set up your gridlines correctly, your copy will line up cleanly with the rest of your page, you’ll have space between columns, and your lines of text won’t be longer than 80 characters. Try to avoid what designers call orphans, the lone word ending a paragraph on a different line, or widows, a lone line of a paragraph in a different column.
Like many of these concepts, typography is its own area of expertise with such immense amounts of detail that it can become overwhelming. Font is a variation on the weight or style of a typeface, but, in most cases, they’re interchangeable. For now, I’ll simply introduce the categories of typeface: serif, sans-serif and display. In general, it’s a pretty good bet to use a serif font at one size and a sans-serif font at another.
Serif fonts have small embellishments like the base on the “l,” the weight at the tip of the “a,” or the tail on the end of “u.” Many feel these fonts are easiest to read in print and have an older feel to them. My favorites are Times New Roman, Perpetua and Georgia.
Sans-serif – or without serif – are the cleaner, minimalistic fonts you often see online. These are easiest to read and ideal for online body text. My favorites are Lato, Segoe UI and Tahoma.
Display fonts are used for small areas of text like titles or subheadings. These typefaces are not designed for legibility, so don’t use them in bodies of text. My favorites are Pacifico, Satisfy and Elephant.
One of the trickiest but most valuable concepts is visual hierarchy, which is basically how your brain understands and prioritizes the content on the page based on size, shape, color and contrast. A large, bold header is going to attract more attention than the smaller text you put in your paragraphs. An italicized section of text in a distinctive color will draw your reader’s eye. Determine the three or four most important sections or elements of your text and use formatting to prioritize them. Too many fonts, weights or colors will muddy your text and make it harder to read. Be mindful about the flow, what you want your audience to remember, and how weight and color affect the balance of the page.
When giving feedback on someone’s work, ask them how they chose the typefaces and why they decided on that organization of visual priority. If you disagree with the ranking of information, discuss the first three pieces of text you want the audience’s eyes to see.
If you follow these recommendations, you should have a good foundation on which to build your skills. Simply, leave space for the text to breathe, use a color palette when you can, and stick to two or three fonts. When in doubt, ask someone you trust for feedback.
Following design rules will lead to cleaner, more legible work that your audience will want to read. Designing is imparting mindfulness, structure and creativity into what people see. You may not call yourself a designer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create well-designed work.
According to data from the Pew Research Center, one-in-five U.S. adults say they get their news from social media. That’s slightly higher than print newspapers. If you’re reading this and you have a Facebook or Twitter account, you probably already know that this trend presents serious concerns in the age of COVID-19.
Further data proves those concerns warranted. A recent Pew Research Center article shared findings from a survey uncovering that people who turn to social media for political and election news are less likely than others to closely follow coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The survey data also reveals that more than half of these consumers have seen made-up news about the pandemic on social platforms. According to the survey, “Those who use social media as their common news pathways – 18 percent of U.S. adults – fare comparatively poorly when it comes to answering” questions about the virus.
It’s simply harder for individuals who scroll through social media feeds for their news to know whether that post their friend’s uncle shared is backed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Additionally, the spread of false updates or preemptive sharing of developing stories can exacerbate already challenging situations. For example, with social media news feeds constantly updating, individuals could be exposed to a developing story’s headline once and then potentially never again.
We’ve seen information spread like wildfire during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is critical that reporters and news sites don’t take advantage of these uncharted times. It’s equally as important for the rest of us to ask questions of our sources.
Social media can be a great source of comfort and connection, especially now. Unfortunately, it’s not the best source of accurate information about COVID-19. While reading the news can be anxiety inducing, ensuring the spread of accurate information is critical to keeping people safe.
If you have gotten into the habit of relying on social media for news, please check out CDC and World Health Organization’s “latest updates” pages, as well as their social media accounts. These sources may provide important perspective for you and your loved ones.