Networking - Committed to the Vision

Networking needs to be done constantly, i.e., in both good and challenging economic times. Whether in person, online, by phone or by mail, it needs to be done systematically and with a purpose. By following the tips below, you can efficiently maximize the benefits of all networking.

Networking Fast Five:

• Be goal-oriented. Determine what events will offer opportunities to meet people who can help you reach your goals and objectives.
• Be systematic. Use your specific manual/electronic database system(s) to record notes about those you meet. Send a follow up e-mail or personal note with a brief conversation recap followed by an action-oriented next step to create relationship development momentum. Add additional notes to your specific database system as you learn more.
• Never stop. Before new meetings, review your notes on anyone you might see. Add new information to your database and send e-mails to those who did not attend, sharing something about the meeting that could be of interest to them.
• Find a mentor. Attend appropriate events to find people in your field who could help you learn more about your field. People love to be considered experts, and usually respond well when you treat theirs as an authoritative opinion.
• Say thank you. Keep the relationship alive by staying in touch with an occasional IM (Instant Message), e-mail, text message or something novel like an old-fashioned phone call to schedule a meeting over breakfast or lunch.
  
  

Making Mistakes: Rebound, Recover & Learn from Them

Growing up, we're given mixed messages about mistakes. Making them is necessary to learn, we're told, but we ought to avoid them anyway. As The New York Times reported last November, children are taught that great inventors like Thomas Edison embraced mistakes, but good grades in school are a reward for doing things right, and wrong answers can invite ridicule from classmates.

As we age, many of us invest heavily in being right. When things go wrong, we flagellate ourselves, blame others or try to cover it up. We're usually not interested in learning from experiences.

According to Dan Meyerson, senior vice president of leadership and development, Bank of America, "I always say, 'Bask in the glory of your mistake.' In other words, be comfortable with it and show others you can come back even stronger after making a mistake. It's important to show that it won't affect your self-esteem."

"If businesspeople are not making a certain number of mistakes, they're playing it too safe," explains Paul J.H. Shoemaker, marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "There needs to be more of a focus on processes versus outcomes."

Four Steps for Recovering from Mistakes

1. Process the mistake.
2. Own the mistake in its entirety.
3. Show remorse.
4. Plan how you will ensure that the same mistake doesn't happen again.

'In the Know…New, Emerging Communication Trends'

Effective Web Writing


Writing for the Web differs from writing for hardcopy! The trick to getting it right on the Web is in presenting text in a style compatible with how readers read online. Follow these criteria to ensure that your readers get the message you send:

Online readers:

• Read 25 percent slower from a computer screen
• Generally don't read word for word - they scan
• Dislike large blocks of text

Further:

• Be succinct. Write no more than half of the text you would for hardcopy.
• Write for scanability. Users skim what they read online.
• Use headings, highlights, bullets and hypertext to draw your readers in to the text.
• Be excellent in the mechanics of your writing.
  
  

'In the Know…New, Emerging Communication Trends'

The Business Value of Social Media is Priceless

Services such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn all provide an online means of building interpersonal relationships, and face it, most of us are in the relationship business. Bonds are built among users based on everything from shared interests to what happened on your last vacation - an online version of the chat by the water cooler. As people continue to participate on these sites, the effects will be noticed - as indicated in a recent survey*, the percentage of journalists who say the emergence of social media has a significant impact on the:

• Speed of News 73%

  Availablity of News 69%

  Tone of Discussion 62%

  Editorial Direction 51%

  Quality of News 43%

Usually thought of in a social context, it's time to explore the business value inherent in such social media as it:

• Helps you stay better connected to your personal and professional networks
• Provides a great way to communicate with people already using social-networking web sites
• Business applications haven't taken off the way social applications have, yet, considering that we're in the early days of even having such new, niche media.

*Source: Brodeur Strategic Planning Group

'Stay the Course' Communication Survival Tips

1. Hire an independent, award-winning PR/Marketing Communications firm like PROFIT Communications who can provide:

- Senior-level talent
- Personal attention
- Value
- Flexibility

2. Establish a realistic budget that you can work within.
3. Set goals. Put your goals in writing. An unwritten wish is just a dream. In writing, it's a commitment -- a goal - that's more likely to succeed.
4. Build your network. And start with the people you do know, as people with the largest circle of contacts, mentors and friends over time create lasting relationships that can eventually translate into new, exciting business opportunities.
5. Create innovative, new streams of revenue for your company or organization. For example, identify and market a different product or service that your business offers, in addition to your core mix.
6. Hone your speaking skills. Schedule speaking engagements to appropriate audiences to get the word out about what you do…in other words, create initial buzz and excitement about your products or services.
7. Develop a mentoring program. The idea that sharing what you know and learning what others have to teach is just smart management. Further, no process in history has done more to facilitate the exchange of information, skills, wisdom and contacts than mentoring.

Increase your Influence with Positive Speech

It seems that negative words weigh five times as much as positive words. Negativity is memorable.

Using positive language will simplify your life by eliminating the following eight problems of negative language:

• Negative language is non-communication
• Negative language is destructive
• Negative language causes defensiveness
• Negative language drives communication out of control
• Negative language causes intellectual deafness
• Negative language never brings closure
• Negative language never achieves victory
• Negative language weighs more than positive language

The major benefits associated with using positive language include:

• You are in control. Using positive language helps people know what to do, what the limits are, what their assignments are and what remains to be done.
• Conversations are shorter when positive language is used. Negative language brings confusion and causes conversations, meetings, discussions and disagreements to go on and on.
• Relationships are improved through positive language. This is because the confusion caused by negative language is eliminated.

Using People-First Language

Respectfully use people-first language when referring to an individual with an illness or disability. By putting the person first (proper name, or child, man, woman, etc.) and the disability next, you focus on who the person is and then note what the person has: "child with Down syndrome" NOT "Down syndrome child."

What is Viral Marketing?

What does a virus have to do with public relations and marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a PR/Marketing-oriented message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as ‘word-of-mouth,’ “creating a buzz,” “leveraging the media,” “network marketing” and “permission marketing.” But on the Internet, for better or worse, it’s called “viral marketing.” While others have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, the term “viral marketing” has stuck.

*The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free web-based email services.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely fast.

Email Marketing FAST FIVE

It’s Inexpensive.
Email marketing is an affordable way to stretch a tight marketing budget – and whose isn’t these days? Unlike direct mail, email carries virtually no production, materials or postage expenses. Email marketing is 20 times more cost effective than direct mail, and can cost as little as fractions of a penny per email.

It’s Effective.
Email marketing enables you to proactively communicate with your existing customers and prospects instead of passively waiting for them to return to your web site. It is a highly effective way to increase sales, drive site or store traffic and develop loyalty.

It’s Immediate.
Email marketing generates an immediate response. The call to action is clear: “Click here to take advantage of this offer,” or to learn more about this service.” Surveys can now be conveniently incorporated into almost all formats. Initial campaign response generally occurs within 72 hours of the time the email campaign is sent.

It’s Targeted.
Businesses can easily segment their lists using a variety of criteria or interest groups to ensure that promotions go to the individuals most likely to respond to your offer.

It’s Easy.
Nowadays there are web-based email marketing products available for small and medium businesses that include professional HTML templates or semi- custom designs, list segmentation and targeting capabilities, as well as automatic tracking and reporting capabilities.

PROFIT's eMarketing Communications Program FAQ's

Q. Why consider using an eMarketing Communications program?
A. To communicate with a pre-exiting database on a regular basis where an initial relationship already exists to build awareness and business…bottom line.

Q. What makes PROFIT’s eMarketing Communications Program unique compared to traditional stock-based mailings?
A. Affordability, flexibility, frequency and the ability to specifically identify and reach the designated recipient.

Q. What key components ensure the success of PROFIT’s eMarketing Communications program?
A. The success and results derived from using this email marketing program have everything to do with an accurate and maintained database, message and timing.

Q. What kind of results can be anticipated when using this targeted eMarketing Communications Program?
A. PROFIT Communications began using this email marketing program in January ’06 to build awareness of the PR firm and to drive traffic to PROFIT’s web site, resulting in a blended 78% increase in all monitored web site categories to-date.

Q. How helpful are the reporting & tracking aspects of PROFIT’s eMarketing Communications Program?
A. Very important, in that you can identify who is opening the mailing, how often and who is driven to the web site to obtain additional information and resources. Further, this is an excellent way to identify new prospects/donors/volunteers, and to cross-sell new products and services.

Why Strategic Q-and-As Ought to Accompany Press Releases

The Q-and-A is a very fundamental part of any important announcement your company or organization is about to make. The press release is intended to focus on the few most key and critical points of your announcement. However, we’ve found that it’s also advisable to provide the media and other audiences with additional details to ensure your story is understood and accurately reported in the form of a Q-and-A. The Q-and-A goes a step further in anticipating and providing the answers to additional questions that specific audiences might ask, placing any spokesperson in a pro-active position versus suddenly finding themselves stumbling over their words.

PROFIT’s ‘Fast Five’ Steps to Developing an Effective Q-and-A…

• Brainstorm anticipated stakeholder questions. Consider gathering a group of people from your company or organization [i.e., HR, Sales & Marketing, Investor & Community Relations] to review the press release announcement and to help generate the questions each audience is likely to ask.
• Tailor your answers. Essentially, know your audiences up front and be prepared to craft answers tailored to meet their specific information needs.
• Repetition is good. Repeating the same concepts in different answers isn’t redundant; in fact, it can help increase key message retention.
• Keep it concise. Each answer should be concise enough that the person using the Q-and-A can read through it a few times and pick up the essence of the key issues.
• Tackle the tough ones. It’s tempting to remove the difficult and sensitive question…don’t. Make an effort to answer every single tough question on your list as honestly and openly as possible and if all else fails, know that the spokesperson can say, “We don’t have all of the information now, but we’ll get back to you as soon as we do.”

'Plan Your Work & Work Your Plan'

Creating a plan of action or your communications blueprint is still one of your best and most strategic public relations investments short and long-term. Lately we’ve seen a lot of businesses wanting to skip the plan, pass GO and collect their $$ so-to-speak. Shortcuts are great for certain things, but trying to execute a new Public Relations/Marketing Communications project and/or program without a plan is like building a house without a foundation, often resulting in low to ‘0’ results.

Pre-project planning and proper timing can more than double the likelihood of project and/or program success when you factor in PROFIT’s Planning Fast Five.

PROFIT’s Planning Fast Five:

• Proactive, ‘in-control’ project management ensures results, versus reactive, ‘out-of-control’ project management whereby results are significantly compromised.
• Timing is everything when it comes to having sufficient time to build a themed-campaign, establish sponsorship/partnership alliances, arrange for an honorary event chairperson or celebrity and establish key media and sponsorship relationships, just a few things that make the difference between a proactive and well-managed program, versus the reactive kind.
• Planning allows you to strategically leverage any and all marketing communications opportunities when part of a cohesive, integrated plan of action.
• Planning improves program metrics tied to successfully accomplishing program goals and objectives.
• Remember…positive results are the direct result of planning!