Every engagement is an opportunity – don’t waste it

“Well, that was an hour of my life I’ll never get back!” said one of the hundreds of attendees at a recent national-level conference.

The speaker had just left the podium after reading from his prepared script, in the same, “I really don’t want to be here,” cadence for over half an hour.  When presented with questions from the audience, he rattled off talking points that everyone had heard before, making little connection with the audience.

At least he didn’t use Power Point.

He was not the only speaker at this event who gave the impression he just wanted to get off the stage.  People who should know better made little connection with their audience, lacked enthusiasm and displayed no apparent objective in their presentations.  They were just filling space and time.

Why do highly regarded corporate, government and business leaders throw away these rare opportunities to connect with important audiences?

Unfortunately, this happens all too often at all types of events.

Public speaking talent, like other skills, can be improved with coaching and experience; but even poor public speakers can get a point across if they have a goal in mind before they get on stage.

Before accepting another speaking invitation, ask these four questions:

Who is this audience?

What can they do for me and my organization?

What do they already know about me and my organization?

What do I want them to take away from my presentation?

If you can’t answer these questions, or realize that you have little to offer, politely decline to speak.  It may be better to attend the event as a non-speaker in order to engage key people one-on-one.  It may be better to send another representative who has a better connection to the audience.

Whatever you chose, do it with a purpose. Your audience will thank you .

Public Relations is not Marketing

I regularly troll through the help wanted advertisements on-line, looking to see what companies are hiring public relations professionals and what they are expecting their new hires to do.  Many, if not most of the ads looking for PR people today are actually looking for sales and marketing people, not public relations.  So, what is the difference between PR and Marketing?

The fundamental difference is in the purpose of the work.  Neither is “better” or “more valuable” to an organization than the other; both are important to the success of any organization.  Both involve communication, using sometimes similar techniques.

The main difference is that the purpose of marketing is to drive sales — or, for a non-profit or government agency, use of the product or service by intended audiences.  Marketing is almost always one-way communication; organizations build talking points and advertising campaigns that are directed at audiences who should be interested in the product or service.  It is fairly easy to evaluate the success of a marketing program over a short time period by measuring the change in sales or usage.

The intent of public relations is to build the intangible relationships that allow an organization to operate most effectively in its environment for the most benefit.  Public relations activities are not just one-way transmissions of messages to audiences, but involve two-way communication with internal and external audiences who are touched by the organization’s people, mission, and operations.  Most importantly, public relations professionals act as a councilor to organizational leaders to bring those viewpoints into decision-making.  In the long-run, PR improves the environment in which an organization operates, driving profitability, growth and serving the public good.

Public relations results are often not easy to measure in the short-term; but it is easy to see when they’ve gone bad.  Some organizations lose their reputations with important audiences overnight through scandal or disaster.  Many others lose their good names over time in a slow erosion of trust.

If you only see public relations as marketing, you may be leaving yourself vulnerable to both scenarios.

DoD policy now allows .mil access to social media

DoD is finally opening up access to social media sites for its people using .mil networks.  The new policy makes social media a more attractive communication strategy for defense and technology companies.

The new policy will allow most users to access social media sites as long as they adhere to normal guidelines to protect sensitive information.

Previously, the services severely restricted access to these sites due to network security concerns. Some services and installations banned social media sites altogether. This policy was frustrating not only for those inside the firewall, but also for organizations outside trying to interact with DoD members.

The Air Force has begun listing its official social media sites.  The Navy has a page devoted to social media policy as do the Army and Marine Corps.

Toyota’s Crisis Communication Still Running on All Cylinders

I’ve been resisting the urge to jump into the ring on the Toyota recall. There seem to be more people commenting on the PR response than on the mechanical issues which caused the problems in the first place. One more voice probably won’t add much more to the conversation, but maybe I can add some “halftime commentary” at this point in the game.

What’s going right:

1) Toyota entered the crisis with a strong, positive reputation for customer service and quality.  They invested in their brand through performance, not just advertising.

2) Toyota came out strong, admitted they had a problem, and put their reputation on the line promising to make things right.

3) Toyota mounted an aggressive, multi-faceted campaign to communicate directly with their key audiences. They didn’t circle the wagons and “go dark” as I imagine their legal team advised them to do.

What’s going/gone wrong:

1) Toyota’s CEO should have been out front in the US market much earlier, then handed the responsibility over to his US leadership.  His staying in Japan only fuels the fires against foreign companies. His first appearance should have been a remote interview from one of his US auto plants.  The Wall Street Journal reports that ‘Toyota’s secretive culture may have contributed to this posture.

2) Toyota didn’t put out much in the way of their own “visual aids” when the crisis broke, leaving networks to develop their own, often inaccurate, computer graphics.

3) Toyota dealers are now “tossing their Teddys in the corner” as the Brits might say, by pulling ads from ABC. They are protesting the volume of negative news stories. Pulling ads only gets you more bad press and makes you look childish.

I’m still in a wait-and-see position on Toyota. If I were a betting man, I’d bet the brand will survive. They started from a position of strength.

Time will tell, of course.  Most consumers and investors will forgive mistakes; though few will forgive lying or hiding safety information, as some are now charging.  Toyota needs to be on-guard against these negative charges, counter-attacking them wherever they appear, combining truth with integrity and performance.

Survey — Blogs major source for reporters

A George Washington University/Cision study found that 89 percent of journalists use blogs for story research. Nearly 70 percent said they used social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, while 52 percent used micro blogs like Twitter.

The study also found that Wikipedia, the user-edited encyclopedia, was a source for just more than half of the reporters surveyed.

“Mainstream media have clearly hit a tipping point in their reliance on social media for their research and reporting,” said Heidi Sullivan, Vice President of Research for Cision North America. “However, it’s also clear that while social media is supplementing the research done by journalists, it is not replacing editors’ and reporters’ reliance on primary sources, fact-checking and other traditional best practices in journalism.”

Reporters still rely a great deal on public relations professionals to help them with their research, according to the study.

Don’t trot out the CEO just yet: Survey shows outside experts are more-trusted sources

An annual survey of trust by Edelman Public Relations shows that company CEOs might not be the best spokespersons for your organization. Only 40 percent of respondents in the international survey reported they found company CEOs “credible” or “very credible.” On top were “academics or experts” and “financial or industry analysts,” with 64 and 52 percent respectively. On the upside, CEO credibility is on the rise in the U.S., up to 26 percent from last year’s dismal 17 percent.

Interestingly, when asked about the credibility of different sources for information about a company, respondents gave high marks – 41 percent – to “conversations with employees.” However, employees ranked below CEO’s and “people like me” when asked about the credibility of certain spokespersons.

Speaking of spokespersons, corporate spokespersons didn’t do well on the survey again this year with only 32 percent rating them as credible sources of information. Only social networking sites and advertising came out worse.

Trust in Technology Businesses Up

American businesses and the technology sector in general moved up in an annual survey of consumer trust for institutions by Edelman Public Relations.
Americans reported an 18 point jump in trust for business over last year’s study. While 54 percent of Americans trust businesses in general, 71 percent say they trust international businesses with headquarters in the U.S. American businesses improved their reputations overseas as well. Technology companies do particularly well, with 78% of U.S. respondents holding tech firms in high regard.
According to Edelman, many factors may have contributed to the jump in trust, including better stock prices and a willingness by companies to listen to stakeholders, treat their employees better, and “play a role in societal change.” On the downside, nearly 70 percent of respondents expect companies to go back to their old ways as soon as the economy improves.

Why would you want to get into social media?

I remember a conversation I had with a boss in the early 1990’s. I’d just seen the Mosaic web browser for the first time.  It was hooked into the young internet through a telephone modem, so the graphics took forever to download, but I knew it was a revolution in the making.  If we could publish information on this World Wide Web thing, we could stop all the wasteful printing we were doing.

My boss, however, was in his late 40’s and didn’t even have a typewriter in his office, let alone a computer.  He dictated his letters to his secretary, who typed them out in triplicate with carbon paper, on an IBM Selectric typewriter.  He told me I could look into this gizmo, but he didn’t want me to invest too much time in something this new.  After all “what good is a telephone if there’s no one on the other end of the line?”

Within a year, we were scrambling to get our organization’s web site up and running.  We brought in kids right out of high school to help us put together our first web pages. Hardly anyone older than 25 knew how to get the computer connected to the web.  Once the page was up, we started getting visitors who sent us e-mail feedback.  It was all very exciting, and all very random.  We had no plan, no goal for this new medium, we were just tossing up new content in the hope someone might read it.

Sound familiar? Today’s rush into the world of social media follows a well-established pattern of technology adaptation.  There are the early adapters, willing to jump at the latest fad. There is the majority of us who wait until the technology is established before committing. Then, there are the late adapters who wait until they are being hurt by not having the technology before they reluctantly get on board.

There is great pressure today for organizations to get into social media.  Many Early Adapters are two or three years into social media and have made it part of their daily operations.  Hollywood saw the opportunity early, as did airlines like Southwest and government agencies like NASA.  Each had the blessing of an open, transparent corporate culture that welcomed two-way communication with their publics.  They may have started into social media with an advertising mindset (“Hear what we have to say!”) but have developed the ability to engage in conversations with their publics.  They have used social media to built relationships.

Most organizations, however, have just entered the conversation in the last year.  They are still in the one-way communication stage (“Here’s our latest press release!”) and have yet to change their cultures to the point where they are listening, let alone engaging with their publics.  I see many making the attempt to build communities through social media, but most are still stuck using Twitter as another bulletin board.

Where are you right now?  My recommendation for most organizations still waiting to dip their toe into the social media pond is to first ask yourself “why?”  Why would you get into social media now?  Is it to engage your key audiences? If so, is your corporate culture ready to really engage? If it takes more than an hour to respond to an inquiry from a key audience member, you’re probably not ready. Not really.  The investment in time and energy you need to really make social media work won’t pay off for you.

If your reason to get into social media now is, “because everyone else is doing it,” you will be disappointed with the return on your investment.  My advice to you it to come up with a list of goals for social media engagement, just as you would for a public meeting or a press conference.  Build processes that allow your organization to engage in a two-way conversation.  Assign the right staff members to moderate your on-line personality.

Then, when you fire off that first Tweet, there will be someone on both ends of “the phone.”

Recommended Reading: “4 Myths About Social Media”

http://mashable.com/2010/01/26/myths-social-media-business/

Haiti Quake Illustrates Crisis Communication Cycle

Press reports coming out of Haiti tell of hope and hopelessness, heroic rescues and somber burials.  The disaster hit us hard here in Colorado Springs.  Some of our neighbors were victims.

Predictably, though, news coverage and commentary are now turning away from the victims and towards arguments about who is to blame and what should be done next.

The reporting reflects a cycle I have seen in most disaster coverage over the past 20 years. It is important for organizations to understand this cycle; especially if they are on the front lines of the next crisis.

The first reports from a fresh disaster are usually sketchy as news organizations scramble to determine whether the story will be big news or worthy of only a bulletin at the bottom of our TV screens. Proximity, familiarity and scale are normally the determining factors. Fires in California affecting 1,000 people or floods in Italy affecting a million will normally merit more coverage than landslides in Bangladesh affecting 10,000 people.

The next stage is the emergence of the first photos and video from the disaster along with on- scene reports from victims.  I was surprised by how quickly cell phone interviews with survivors made it out of Haiti, accompanied by cell phone video and Skype reports.  I expect the speed and quality of “survivor video” will continue to increase with every new disaster.

If the disaster merits on-scene reporting, news organizations begin the mad dash to be the first on the ground, live.  The most prominent reporters will cover the disaster themselves for a few days before passing their microphones to the second-string.

As this transition happens, coverage also transitions from the scope of the disaster to reports of rescue and relief efforts moving to the scene. There is great hope on display in the photos and video of skilled responders boarding planes loaded with relief supplies. It appears everything will be fine.

Then, the mood changes. The second-string reporters on the ground are under tremendous pressure to produce compelling stories by deadline.  Overwhelmed first-responders are too busy to cooperate, so reporters go looking for victims. Hopeless-looking and pleading for help, the victims, not the rescuers, become the story.

At this point, the anchors back at their news desks start asking the “hard questions” about why aid isn’t getting through.  After all, we saw video just yesterday of aid being loaded. Why hasn’t that aid reached the victims our news teams found this morning?” The complexity of a rescue and relief effort is too much for news organizations to understand.

Many news organizations truly think their pressure will improve the rescue and relief efforts underway.  News coverage begins to feature remote interviews with family members, begging for help to find their missing loved ones. Aid agencies complain they are being impeded by red tape.  It all looks like chaos.

Then, as relief agencies get a foothold, victims get help. The initial rush of relief supplies gets distributed and the situation stabilizes. The second-string reporters begin to pull out, aid slows and the press turns to parceling out blame.

“Who is to blame?” becomes the story.  Politicians, disaster planning experts, environmentalists, and more victims and their families dominate the coverage.  This is where we see on the news today.  After this phase, coverage normally dies out, relegated to the back pages and think-tank analysis while relief efforts and rebuilding go on, almost unnoticed.

It is important for organizations dealing with disaster or planning for the next crisis to understand these phases.  They can be found in most crises, from international disasters like Haiti, national-level events like Hurricane Katrina or in local crises like the New Life church shooting. Proper crisis communication planning before a disaster should incorporate these phases, predicting what resources will be needed and what messages will be required.

Check your crisis plan.  You never know when you might need it.