November 2010 – Page 8 – Management Library

November 4, 2010July 5, 2022

Holiday PR Tips

Tips of scrabble letters on a blue background

Media Tactics That Get Attention

Holiday media is crammed with advertisers claiming to offer the latest and greatest everything for everybody. Get out your boxing gloves, because it’s a seasonal fight for media space and consumer attention.

How do you get a word in edge-wise? What’s holiday newsworthy, and how do you rise above the competition with editors who are equally bombarded (and equally stressed)?

Feature News Releases

Media Editors look for outstanding stories that will engage their readers’ emotions. You can get a feel for this prior to creating your news release:

Review their past feature stories for examples of what they deem worthy.
Look at their website or blog for more clues.
Call the Editor and ask! They’ll actually tell you exactly what they’re interested in.

For example, if you’re targeting a local newspaper that’s circulated to the general public, it may be a deeply-felt human interest story related to the holiday season. To make your story stand out, bring it home to the reader by highlighting heartfelt experiences of helping real people in severe or unusual need. Make it interesting by making it really different. For instance, in this year’s economy, it could be a family that’s newly homeless due to job loss and how your company helped them. And be sure to tie it to the holiday season. How can your company help give them some happiness this season, despite their circumstances?

Customize Your Holiday Media Campaign

Media Editors can spot a generic and inauthentic news release in about two seconds. Your one-size-fits-all story just won’t hit the mark most of the time. So DON’T send the same story to every media outlet.

Do some homework, and craft your basic story to the individual media type and their audience. For example, publicizing an event that’s open to the public and benefits a charity may be perfect for a public service space on a radio station. It could be written as an invitation with background information. That same press release targeting television could be more effective if something visual is highlighted, such as the faces of the children involved, and the happiness they feel. TV might cover the event and run it afterwards, instead of before.

Online Press Releases

For holiday press, human interest stories have an excellent opportunity to go viral. Write your story, make it short, and include photos. Release the story:

On your social network platform
Distributed to free online press release sites

Through your email database
In your newsletter

The chances of it going viral increase if you:

Run some kind of a contest (Photo submission? Story submission?)
Utilize video (make it funny!), or
Offer something free.

Timing and creativity are super important. So be BOLD!

What catches your eye during the holiday season?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

Ms. Chapman’s new book, How to Make Money Online With Social Media: A Step-by-Step Guide for Entrepreneurs will be available very soon. With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

November 3, 2010September 30, 2022

Being Patient with Life Lessons

Excerpted from Linda’s forthcoming book, “Staying Grounded in Shifting Sand”

A colleague taught me an expression I really like- “You are a perfect expression of who you are at this moment in time. You can be nothing other than that.” If you continually judge people based on their worst behavior, you won’t find the gift that they offer. Rather than staying stuck in your judgments, shift to see a troublesome co-worker as capable of being kind, caring, or compassionate. Even if they don’t exhibit these qualities in the moment, see through their behaviors to what lies beneath- a soul being experiencing life.

Accepting others’ frailties and faults requires patience. We all have things to learn. And we encounter those who help us learn our spiritual lessons. Imagine a co-worker you really would like to change. What are they there to teach you? What are they mirroring for you that you need to see in yourself? They have been brought to you at this divinely inspired time for your growth and learning.

For example, if you are supervised by someone poorly skilled, there may be a lesson in there for you on patience or tolerance. Rather than stewing in frustration at someone’s incompetence, especially if there is nothing you can do about it, remind yourself, “We’re all doing the best job we can at any moment.” I also like this quote “Have patience with me, God isn’t done with me yet.” What a great reminder that we are all a work in progress!

When you get frustrated with someone who seems to learn their lessons more slowly than you would like, look back at times when it took you several dozen or several hundred attempts to master an important life skill or spiritual lesson. Honor and bless their journey of learning, as you deepen your own. Find patience and forgiveness in that moment and practice letting the rest go. Staying attached to your frustration or resentment doesn’t do you or anyone else any good.

If you can find ways to help someone learn skills they seem to be lacking, then provide that assistance. Just remember, people generally receive help only when they are ready to shift out of their past patterns. You can’t teach someone who isn’t ready to learn. Instead of worrying about what the other needs to learn, focus on the spiritual work waiting for you. Till your own fertile soil and see what you can get to blossom there.

I love this quote as a greeting for others. Imagine how different our work environments would be if we saw each other in this way every day:

I greet that place in you wherein resides the Center of the Universe

I greet that place in you wherein resides Truth, and Beauty, and Peace and Love.

I greet that place in you where, when you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me,

We are One.

Namaste

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Linda is an author, speaker, coach, and consultant. Go to her website www.lindajferguson.com to read more about her work, view video clips of her talks, and find out more about her first book “Path for Greatness: Spirituality at Work” available on Amazon.

November 3, 2010September 30, 2022

PR Gone Loko

Popular drink maker’s poor crisis communications could be its downfall

You would think one of the nation’s largest independent PR firms would know better than to argue with a reporter, but when Edelman PR, which represents Phusion Projects, makers of the controversial caffeinated alcoholic drink Four Loko, contacted the writers of a Seattle Weekly blog asking them to change the wording of a post, they only provided fodder for another damaging post. Here’s the full exchange, from the Seattle Weekly:

The flack took issue with Caleb’s statement that Four Loko “has the alcoholic equivalent of five or six caffeinated beers.” (No objection was made to his describing the drink as tasting like “Thor’s piss.”) Said Edelman:

This statement is not correct…Please remove this error from the online version of your story and please use the correct information from the materials we provided.

We looked at the materials provided, which said a can of Four Loko is 12 percent alcohol by volume. Well, that’s almost three times the abv of a can of PBR. And a can of Four Loko, at 23 ounces, is roughly twice the size. So that works out to five or six beers’ worth of alcohol per can.

But hey, we’re always open to a second check of our math. OK, we replied, How many beers would you say a can of Four Loko is equal to?

It depends on the beer–domestics or the high-end crafts or imports.

How about an “average beer”?

What’s an average beer? A Bud or a craft /Euro beer with considerably higher alcohol content by volume?

Given that your typical Phusion Projects customer isn’t likely to be choosing between Four Loko and a Grolsch, this response seemed evasive to the point of silliness.

Indeed, the Edelman representative insisted that wine was the better analogy, as if the Four Loko customer might opt for a light Pinot instead.

A can of Four Loko is equal to about 2 glasses of wine.

But even that’s complete horseshit. Yes, Four Loko has about the same alcohol by volume as your average wine. But your typical serving of wine is about 5 ounces. Which means there’s actually close to five glasses of wine in a can of Four Loko.

Behavior like that of the Edelman representative is what earned PR professionals the unsavory nickname, “spin doctors.” At this point, Phusion Projects is facing criticism of its drink purely for its physical dangers, but by attempting to muddy the facts about their client’s products, Edelman is actually laying the foundation for another crisis. With several high-visibility hospitalizations in the past weeks being attributed to Four Loko, Phusion Projects would be better off acknowledging the possible problems and publicly working with officials to find a solution.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

November 3, 2010July 5, 2022

Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You….

It’s appropriate penning this blog on the Day After the Day of The Dead election date. The votes are in, the surprises are in. The Republicans are back — in most places! Seems like only yesterday they were here (shall we call them Zombies?!). Is this the change we can believe in? For many Democrats who served for decades and are suddenly today looking for a new line of work, it probably is.

Let’s go back to a seemingly simpler time when an elected politician stated, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Great words that echo through time and transcend partisan political lines. Of course it was John. F Kennedy who uttered them near the close of his inaugural address in 1961.

But this blog is not about politics, or great American rhetoric (or zombies), it’s about PR issues, so let’s look at this sentence. It’s as powerful a piece of American patriotism, summoning fellow country men and women to serve their nation’s ideals in whatever capacity that has ever been written. But Kennedy didn’t write it. His speechwriter, Theodore Sorenson, did. Sorenson died the day before the election. But his gifted use of language in this one line of a speech, simple but poetic, clever but not self-serving, brief but powerful and enduring, will live on.

Strong writers breathe life into words. If your public relations m.o. doesn’t start and end with a proven writer crafting your headlines, making the content in subsequent paragraphs stand out and leaving a memorable impression on those who read your news releases, Tweets or other communiqués, you are already at a disadvantage.

We’re not talking about having the commas in all the right places (that’s what good copy editors are for). But we are talking about what one longtime business journalist in the Twin Cities always insists on, whether it’s his own copy, that of a fellow journalist or a PR person that just bombarded him again with a pitch and press release: “Make it sing!”

Despite the preponderance of words in all the communication channels of the 21^st century — and the corrosive effect text messaging is having on language and attention spans — good writing is still a highly valued skill, and a talent that can’t always be taught. Treat your written PR pieces for the gems that they should be. And if you have a truly gifted writer on staff, bump that scribe a raise, before he or she runs off for another profession.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at kelmart@aol.com, or 612-729-8585

November 2, 2010September 30, 2022

Leadership Transitions

Word-leadership-written-on-a-black-board

Guest blog submitted by Krista Peterson

The guest post on October 24 by Greg Waddell describes the delicate balance of leadership and management well, especially the whitewater rapids of change that most leaders are facing. Now, consider, amidst all the organizational change, new strategies and emerging business, the leader leading (and managing) all of that change is new in his or her role.

Challenge of Leadership Transition

A leadership transition is a critical change for the organization, the new team, key stakeholders and especially the new leader. The need for the newly hired leader to get up to speed quickly, understand the business, navigate the culture, build relationships with key stakeholders, assess and lead their new team, and understand their own personal leadership strengths and needs in the context of this new role can be a daunting task. So daunting in fact, that one research study* cited that 40% of leaders new in role will fail or be fired within the first 18 months. No one wants to believe that their newly hired executive could become a statistic. And yet, most companies are not doing a lot to support new executives during this critical transition.

Onboarding

In my opinion, critical transitions aren’t just defined by new leaders coming in from the outside. I have seen plenty of highly successful leaders make an internal, cross-functional move, and fail to make the transition effectively. In fact, they sometimes have it worse than the external new hire because they are usually a highly talented leader with an internal track record of success, and therefore are often left alone to figure it out. Sink or swim is not the best onboarding strategy with any employee, and especially not key leaders being counted on to drive the strategy forward for the organization.

Derailment Factors in Leadership Transitions

I would like to take the next month to create a dialogue about what causes new leaders to fail, and the kinds of support new leaders need for long-term success. I have seen plenty of new leaders fail, some fast and hard, others more slowly, in a painful rollercoaster of ups and downs. Regardless of their speed of derailment, they all have had some things in common that boiled down to the following causes: poor cultural fit, unclear role expectations, or an inability to get results.

What are some of the other causes of derailment you have seen in a newly hired leader? It would be great to hear what others see as some of the more common factors. Please share your thoughts.

*Bradt, Check and Pedraza, 2006

Guest Writer Information

Krista Peterson, MA, is Founder, Principal Consultant, and Coach at Stone River Consulting in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her phone number is 612-719-7658; e-mail is kpeterson@stoneriverconsulting.com

Krista brings nearly 20 years of experience in leadership development to the practice, largely from her time at Target Corporation, where she served as the director of talent development, leading the organization’s strategy for developing leaders. She also led the creation of an internal executive coaching function, and expanded the onboarding services delivered to new leaders.

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Steve Wolinski provides leadership development, organizational change and talent management services to numerous public, private and non-profit organizations.

November 2, 2010February 4, 2022

Expand Your Sales Force – Part 2 of 2

Man on a phone call looking at a sales chart on a desktop

Try Affiliate Marketing

In the last post, we discussed Affiliate Marketing as an inexpensive way to increase your sales force and boost your revenues. Here, we’ll take a closer look at HOW those revenues are earned.

Some Merchants run their own (i.e., in-house) affiliate programs using popular software while others use third-party services provided by intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates (see outsourced program management). Merchants can choose from two different types of affiliate management solutions: standalone software or hosted services, typically called affiliate networks.

Affiliate Marketing Compensation Methods

As Affiliate Marketing has evolved, so have compensation models. The methods vary:

80% – revenue sharing or cost per sale (CPS)
19% – cost per action (CPA), and
the remaining 1% use methods such as cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (CPM).

As a retailer, or Merchant, this is quite attractive, because Affiliates are typically paid a commission for each sale. And when the Merchant uses an Affiliate Network, all the activity is tracked, payments are made, and reports are automated.

Top Affiliate Network Companies

CompareTheBrands.com offers an in-depth look at many of the Affiliate Networks and their typical commission structures, along with great insights from real experience: “We make most of our revenue from affiliate programs, and have plenty of experience with them. Here are the best networks out there. See which one topped all others in this affiliate network review and comparison.”

The following list of the best Affiliate Networks is compiled by an actual full-time affiliate marketer who has worked these programs for over five years, as reported by onlineprofitable.com:

Commission Junction (www.cj.com)
ClickBank (www.clickbank.com)
LinkShare (www.linkshare.com)
Affiliate Window (www.affiliatewindow.com)
Amazon (www.amazon.com)
Shareasale (www.shareasale.com)
Google (www.google.com/adsense)
LinkConnector (www.linkconnector.com)
CPA Empire (www.cpaempire.com)

Do you have tips for other small businesses just starting out with Affiliate Programs?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

.. _____ ..

ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

November 2, 2010April 26, 2022

Capital Campaigns #4: More Than Raising Money

It’s important to understand that, for many nonprofits, the benefits of conducting a successful capital campaign often extend beyond merely raising a specific amount of money. Of course, the purpose of the campaign is to raise the dollars, but an effective/successful campaign will also have a number of very worthwhile side benefits:

• The more people who support/give to the campaign, the more people who
create/enhance a bond with the nonprofit organization.

  Where the “campaign” period (the actual timeframe needed to attain the dollar
  goal) should be as short as possible, the visible campaign can last much longer —
  as long as needed to involve as many members of the organization and/or the
  community as is realistic. To a point, the more people involved, as volunteers,
  donors and/or event participants, the larger your constituency becomes and the
  stronger your constituents bond with your NPO.

• It makes everybody feel good – campaign leadership, volunteers, donors. It makes
all those folks feel good about success, and it makes them want to stay involved
with the organization.

People that have been leaders/volunteers for a successful capital campaign take
away a feeling of accomplishment, of satisfaction, that they will likely want to repeat.

• It gives others (potential leaders & donors) a look at how an organization
treats/recognizes its volunteer leaders and donors, and makes them think about
how they could get the same “treatment/recognition.”

  Different people have different needs that have to be satisfied.
  If people who were not involved in your campaign see how the needs of others were
  satisfied, next time there is an opportunity to participate as a leader/volunteer these
  folks would be more likely to want to be involved.

• When properly publicized/marketed, it educates a broad spectrum of participants
and non-participants about an organization’s mission, leadership and current
and future programs/services.

  A campaign goal can represent many needs to be satisfied with a specific dollar sum.
  Once the goal is attained, each of those satisfied needs can be discussed in various
  kinds of publicity/marketing pieces over many months after the campaign. Every new
  and/or expanded service the NPO provides is something to brag about!!

• Donors tend to give more to a major campaign than they have to the organization’s
ongoing fundraising; and, after completing their campaign commitment, they tend
to give at levels higher than they gave before the campaign.

In essence, a capital campaign can have a great impact on an organization’s marketing and community relations.

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? Email me at AskHank@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

November 2, 2010September 30, 2022

N = No and Know

Reflecting on the right word for N, I kept coming back to the word No. Then I was in the class that I’m helping to pilot for a client called Renewing Life – which integrates the mind, body and spirit partnership – and I know why No is the right word. We discussed the following activity in class, which explains it all. I’m using the exercise with permission so that you too can increase your ability to know when to say No. These are the facilitator instructions for you to conduct the activity yourself. I encourage you to do so!

Instructions:

1. Each person is to take out two sheets of paper. Give the following instructions one at a time as you do each one.

2. On the first sheet of paper write the word: SHOULD. On the other side of this piece of paper write the word: WHY.

3. On the second sheet of paper write the word: KNOW. On the other side of this piece of paper write the word: NO.

4. After everyone has written these words on their papers, the facilitator tells the participants to crumple, crunch up, rip to pieces, and destroy and throw the SHOULD and WHY paper into the wastebasket. (This is usually done with great drama.)

5. Explain:

Should and WHY are questions with no answers. They are both examples of “stinking thinking” as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous. Louise Hay, in her book, You Can Heal Your Life, says that she believes SHOULD is one of the most damaging words in the English language.

Shoulds:

imply we are wrong, or we were wrong, or we are going to be wrong
teach us NOT to listen to our own intuition or inner knowledge.
often have us feeling drained or guilty

Instead of thinking about what we should or shouldn’t do, ask yourself if an activity is LIFE-GIVING. Will this action give my life meaning, will it give me energy? If it will, then it becomes something to plan to do and look forward to….something you could do…or might do.

WHY is in the same category. There is no answer to the question “WHY?” It is okay to try to make sense of the things that happen to us. Making sense of something is different than finding answers to the WHY questions in our lives…”Why me?…Why didn’t I take better care of myself?” (Sounds a little like the SHOULD question!). WHY does not produce results. It just reinforces staying stuck. It is like trying to change the past, instead of saying, “Now that this has happened what am I going to do with it?”

MAKING SENSE is more realistic. It is answering questions in a different way.

6. Now take the second sheet of paper with the KNOW and NO on it.

Explain:

From this course you have more knowledge – you have gained skills, self-awareness, and self-acceptance.
From your illness or the struggles with the illness of those you love, you have grown, you KNOW yourself and what you need better, and you may have a greater sense of what you want from your life and what you have to contribute. Knowledge is healing.
From these same experiences you have asked yourself your limits and have grown in your ability to say NO to those things that are not life giving, or dissipate that energy you need for living.

Saying NO to others is often saying YES to you. It is setting healthy boundaries and helping add focus and direction in your life.

NOTE: Use the NO page to demonstrate when you hold it right side up then “Say NO (then turn the sheet upside down so the word is now ON) to turn your immune system ON.”

This is the whole course! You now KNOW much more than when you started Renewing Life and you can say No to things that will drain your energy and say YES to yourself.

Fold the KNOW/NO paper and keep it in a safe place always. You now KNOW how to live in the NOW.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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November 1, 2010January 26, 2022

Ethics of Whistleblowing

Last week GlaxoSmithKline settled a claim with the US Justice Department for $750 million. However, what really made the news was that whistleblower Cheryl Eckard stood to receive $96 million for her efforts.

The concern, as raised in today’s Wall Street Journal, is that with such a potential goldmine on the back end, potential whistleblowers will be going straight to the feds before working through internal channels. For over 20 years major organizations have built extensive ethics and compliance infrastructures, including helplines and ethics training that details the suggested ways to report misconduct.

Pending regulations to be enacted under the new Dodd-Frank financial reform law have compliance officers worried that whistleblowing will be expanded far beyond the False Claims Act.

Most ethics officers would prefer that employees go to their managers first before going to the helpline, which is usually monitored by an external service that reports back to a company official.

Is the concern that potential whistleblowers will now bypass these protocols and run to the feds overblown?

The answer depends on what are the true motivators of the whistleblower. For most employees, going to the government would not be their first course of action. Whistleblowing often results in retaliation or even termination (it did for Cheryl Eckard). it is a high risk gambit for an employee.

In the Glaxo case, from August 2002 to her firing in May 2003, Ms. Eckard urged GSK managers to take swift and decisive action at Cidra, including shutting down the plant. She made a full report to the GSK Compliance Department, which treated her complaints as unsubstantiated. She then reported the fraud to the FDA in San Juan.

However, some whistleblowers definitely have an axe to grind. Many of them are looking to seek retribution against a company they feel has mistreated them. Anecdotes about some of the heroic whistleblowers from the Enron and WorldCom era paint a picture of whistleblowers who were not well liked within the company and felt no qualms of taking the neer-do-well managers to task. For these class of employees, requiring stringent internal reporting may deter them, but it also may prevent valid claims from being made.

Other employees are not looking for a windfall. They have legitimate issues and feel that the company is either not willing to listen, or is not able to effectively address the situation. Surveys have shown that 50% of observed misconduct goes unreported

For these employees, requiring them to go through internal channels as a deterrent to going to the feds first will thwart the underlying goal of the entire whistleblowing statute: to get people to report. Why deter someone who wants to do the right thing?

For the organizations that are concerned that new federal rules will unleash waves of bounty hunters, they may be well-advised to first look internally to see how safe employees feel in reporting and what they can do to ensure that no observed misconduct goes unreported. Protecting employees from retaliation will lessen the need for them to go to the government in the first place, regardless of the bounty at the end of the line.

November 1, 2010March 28, 2023

Is team building over 2000 years old?

The theories behind team building could be a much older than originally thought. In fact Plato may have been the first ever team building expert!

Plato and Aristotle possibly talking about their recent team building event. — Plato & Aristotle possibly talking about their team building event.

For some years we’ve been saying “teams that play together, work together” and it seems that although team building is thought to be a comparatively new addition to business training Plato, one of the world’s most influential philosophers, had a similar view over 2000 years ago; “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation” Plato

So we’d encourage you to make time to play with your colleagues this week, take a ball to the park, eat ice cream in the afternoon or play darts at lunchtime – whatever you think would be fun.

We spend most of our waking lives with our colleagues so let’s enjoy it.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Team Building.

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Blog by Fresh Tracks: Experts in Team Building, Team Development and Staff Conferences
Website: www.freshtracks.co.uk