Category Archives: Talking to your employees

What’s your company doing to celebrate the Olympics?

Talking to your employees

If your preparations for the Olympics have been little more than telling your employees that they need to plan their travel time more carefully to avoid being late for work, read on…

Don’t fight it
Sometimes it’s better just to go with the flow than swim upstream. Companies currently struggling against the wave of Olympic mania gradually sweeping the country might do better to think about how they can actually strike gold for employee goodwill and engagement.

So here’s five tips to celebrate the arrival of the five rings:

  • Get some big TV screens in the office – or even small ones
  • How about a daily Olympic themed raffle?
  • Every time Britain strikes Gold; every employee gets a bonus – £5? £10? Or maybe 15 minutes off the work day…
  • Early drinks on Friday to bask in the Olympic glow
  • Relax and enjoy.

So the chief executive is a human after all…

Social media, Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees

According to a newish survey by BrandFog, CEOs who use social media are more likely to be trusted by both employees and customers.

Seems like a nice chap
And it’s true; recently I was looking for a bank account to put some money in and found some good rates at a less than well known building society. Having checked on the FSA’s website that it was in fact registered (I said it wasn’t very well known), I then had a quick peruse on their website and found an engaging blog recounting the chief exec’s gardening experiences. Gullible I may be, but I felt that here was a person to be trusted and promptly deposited my money in to his (or at least the society’s) hands.

So a blog, regular tweeting or whatever social media channel you’re using, can influence the purchasing decision; but how do you get your chief exec to engage? Inevitably, it will be the communications team trying to encourage their chief exec to use social media and almost as inevitably they’ll end up drafting content to try and make it easier.

People will spot a blogus
But here is the dilemma: tone of voice and authenticity is absolutely at the heart of getting social media right – people will spot a bogus blog (blogus?) a mile off. Making sure you can replicate his or her style while getting the right content is critical and you can only do that with regular access and their engagement in what you’re trying to do.

Of course in an ideal world, your chief exec will write it themselves and it’ll be engaging, interesting and you can sit back and watch the trust in your company and its senior management steadily grow (you might even pick up some gardening tips).

Every great beginning needs a great ending

Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees, Writing

Imagine Usain Bolt (it is Olympic year so forgive the gratuitous sprint metaphor I’m about to indulge in – hopefully the IOC won’t get me for ambush marketing either) exploding from the blocks, shattering the opposition as he disappears in a rocket fuelled haze of power and pace.

Somewhat disappointingly, despite leading all the way down the track, he fails to dip for the line and Seb Clarke, a surprise late entrant to the GBR team, pips him for Olympic gold.

My point?  

Well, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a good piece of writing always starts with a good opener. But that shouldn’t mean the finisher can’t be a blinder too.

Finish with some pace; a call to action perhaps, a firm or controversial conclusion; or another question. One tip is to try and tie the conclusion back into opening – it’s sort of a reward to the reader for making it to the end (like the comedian’s punch line).

But whatever you do, don’t slow as you approach the finish line – put your hands in the air and dip for glory (can you see what I did there) and take the acclaim for a piece well finished.

So please, please, please (tell me a story)

Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees

The Christmas John Lewis advert is creating lots of interest
at the moment…which I suppose is what you get if you mix a touch of the
Smiths, with a heart rending tale of familial selflessness.

Whether you like it or not – I’m on the fence – it does seem to be the best of a rather dismal collection of Christmas ads from the big stores. The big difference is it tells a story; sugar coated admittedly, but a story nonetheless. Without sounding too simplistic, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end with a nice twist (to reward people for watching).

Are you sitting comfortably?
People like stories; they hold interest; stories are how we learnt to read and write; it’s why millions like watching Downton Abbey of a Sunday evening.

So how about some more story telling in your communications? Good
times for a change…

Slaying the media beast: PR professionals should be pleased, there is competition in the jungle

Social media, Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees, Working with the media

There was a time when the media pretty much dominated the world of public relations. Want to reach that particular client segment? Try the trade press. What about those potential investors? The business press. Looking for mass exposure? A good piece in a national should do it.

The big beast
It is fair to say that the media was the apex predator; the big beast which every PR practitioner would have to wrestle with, sometimes playfully, sometimes not, and usually on a daily basis. The good news, for PR people anyway, is that the media in all its print or online forms no longer has the jungle to itself (stretched that metaphor enough yet?).

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations defines PR as being:

“…the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.”

That last word – ‘publics’ – whether it’s your clients, suppliers, investors or employees, is critical in that social media has upset the old order and provided PR professionals with a whole new set of tools and channels to communicate with their publics in an increasingly targeted and segmented way. And best of all, you can actually have a two-way conversation…I think that helps that bit about mutual understanding.

Let Hercules do what he may…
That’s not to say that media relations has had its day, but when you’re considering your next communications project, the media relations element should arguably take its turn and queue up to have its merits considered like everyone else – of course, you shouldn’t expect journalists to sit down and take it. They can still be wild (sorry, I couldn’t resist it) but gone are the days when they dominated, which can only be a good thing for PR professionals and the businesses they promote.