Crisis communication -- don't wait until you're in a crisis to communicate

First Class Communication has always told our clients that when it comes to crisis communication...

• You need to be as honest as you can with what you know
• You need to show genuine concern for anyone who has been hurt
• You need to say how you're going to make things better in the future -- and then, for Pete's sake, make sure you follow through

So it was reaffirming to hear respected crisis communication expert Diane Chase, owner of C4CS in Pittsburgh, PA, and Charlotte, NC, reframe that same advice in three easy questions. The questions she posed are without a doubt ones you must think through before you give any media interviews about a crisis:

1. What do you know?
2. How do you feel about it?
3. What are you doing about it?

Chase, who spoke to the Arkansas Chapter of IABC today, also had some other great bits of wisdom regarding crisis communication:

• You can't wing it. (That's why it's so important to prepare a crisis communication plan that is regularly reviewed and updated.)
• Crises are a matter of when, not if. (So, really, you need to be ready.)
• It's vital to build relationships with media and other stakeholders before a crisis occurs.
• Crises present both danger and opportunity -- how you handle them defines which of those they turn out to be for you and your organization.

Are you prepared to turn a crisis into an opportunity?

Check out these cool photos

One of the many talents founding partner Dauphne Trenholm brings to First Class Communication is photography. On the first day of this year, she started her own blog -- Scene from the Hill at www.dauphnetrenholm.com -- with plans to update it with a new photo each day throughout 2014.

All of the photos so far are not at all work-related, and there's some really cool stuff on there. This one is called Winter Textures.

In addition to the photos, she includes all the info photographers care about -- exposure mode, focal length and so forth. Whether you are into the technical aspects or just want to see some great photos - visit her blog and enjoy!

Make your presentations pop

Remember the last time you sat through a presentation reading every word the speaker said because, well, there they all were, looming large on a big screen?

How soon did you quit listening and just start reading?

How soon did you think to yourself, just hand me the printout of the slides, and I can read them at home in a comfy chair?

Or, worse, how soon did you give up on the presentation altogether and start planning your weekend?

We’ve all been there – but hopefully not as presenters!

After all, PowerPoints and newer Prezis can be truly powerful tools to spice up presentations. But they need to be used creatively and as a means of supplementing or reinforcing your points. Mostly, though, they should be used to engage your audience.

How do you do that? One, never, ever simply rewrite your notes into a number of slides. Even if the words are not verbatim but pared down into bullet-points, you risk losing your audience if you don’t do more.

Sure, bullet points can be effective, but only when they are used to highlight the most important points that you are verbally elaborating on. When you use them, make sure they are there to reinforce the most important ideas presenting.

Another common mistake with electronic presentations is the use of detailed spreadsheets or charts. True, this is a way of supplementing the words being spoken, but we’ve seen too many that are way to complex to be shown in this manner -- the cells, numbers and words are simply too tiny for audience members to be able to see, let alone comprehend. Again, pull out the most important statistics or results, highlight those on the screen and just talk about the rest.

A better way to use either PowerPoints or Prezis is to illustrate important points with a fitting photo, funny cartoon or pertinent video clip that serves to illustrate a point.  Those techniques, when used well, grab and hold your listeners' attention, making it much more likely that they’ll get what you are trying to say.

Prezis are fun because you can be even more creative. For instance, a presentation First Class Communication gave about branding zeroed in on different parts of a cartoonish, branded cow.

With everything that’s available on the Web, there’s no excuse to have a boring presentation…ever…again.

It's time for a resolution

For 2014, I resolve to do a better job with this blog.

There. I said it. Now I just have to follow through.

Truly, I think I will because I've made it easier on myself. I'm embarrassed to say, but I jumped into  writing this blog two years ago without any proper planning. That's exactly what we at First Class Communication advise our clients NOT to do. It  causes us to shudder when they do -- strong, convulsing shudders, in fact.

So, if your New Year's resolutions include communicating better with your constituents, here are a few tips on creating, starting and -- hardest of all -- maintaining a blog.

After all, blogs -- when used correctly and consistently -- are great information and marketing tools. Superintendents, principals, teachers, business owners, company executives -- heck, anyone really -- can use them to accomplish any number of important goals:

• Distributing information
• Promoting organizational values
• Inspiring action 
• Selling products or ideas
• Creating an online community

If you're thinking about a blog for your school district, your school or your class, think specifically about what you hope to accomplish with it. (For First Class Communication, it's being recognized as a trusted communication/public relations firm with expertise in education issues, specifically as they relate to Arkansas, i.e., we want you to know us as the firm "where education and communication conspire".)

After your overarching goals are defined, it's easy to drill down to appropriate themes, specific topics and then story ideas to fill each post. Once those are listed, you'll want to create an editorial calendar -- this will help you organize entries in such a way that you don't keep writing on the same topic ad nauseam. Nobody wants that, trust us.

You'll want to mix in announcements and news with some information about yourself and what you provide (but keep the all-about-me-news to about 10 percent of your content, please!) Businesses specifically don't want to come across as if they are trying to sell something every time they put up a new blog entry. And if you can keep entries somewhere between 300 - 700 words, you'll keep readers engaged and get noticed by search engines, too. Woo hoo!

Blogs should be thought of as sometimes helpful, sometimes entertaining and always worth reading.

Some people post daily, but we advise our clients to try for at least one post a week, three max, and to utilize other social media channels for more frequent engagement.

I've got my calendar filled out for the first of 2014, so look for the next Extra Credit post to appear on Jan. 15. You'll have to come back to find out what it's about, though.

5 Likes Away from our Goal

I set a personal, arbitrary and almost achieved goal of having 100 likes on First Class Communication's Facebook page by Aug. 31. Today, we're a week out, with only 5 likes to go to meet that goal.

If you haven't liked us yet, Dauphne and I would really appreciate your linking to our Facebook page and giving us the thumbs up!

Thanks! And have a great weekend!

So, where's your office?

It's funny.  Almost always, one of the first questions when you meet someone new is, what do you do?  When one of us explains that First Class Communication is our new business (where education and communication conspire!) the question that invariably follows is, so, where's your office?

At this point in the conversation, we've tried a number of answers, usually delivered in an apologetic tone -- "We work virtually, so out of our homes." "We have home offices, but we Skype every morning at 9 o'clock and are in contact throughout the day."

Here's the answer we've decided on -- and we're losing the apologetic tone. "Our office is wherever we are."

And though we're not alone, our virtual-not-physical workplace is on the cusp of a change occurring across the world today. The industrial age is giving way to the digital age, so the constructs of the industrial workplace (think 8-hour day, time clocks, set lunch breaks) are losing their relevance.

In many lines of work, it's not necessary for workers to gather at one location to get the job done. And that's a positive all the way around.

Consider these stats for businesses (pulled from IABC's Communication World magazine):

• At IBM, 40 percent of the workforce operates without a dedicated space, saving the company more than $450 million a year.
• Deloitte reduced its office space and energy costs by 30 percent through distributed workplace strategies.

And for workers,  the plusses are flexibility and the ability to work where you live (or travel). Younger workers (particularly Gen Y and younger) are coming to expect this, and research finds that all workers in this environment enjoy their work and tend to actually work more.

So, the next time you ask one of us where our office is, expect to hear, "It's wherever we are." No apologies.

Welcome to Extra Credit

Welcome to Extra Credit, my new blog. It's the newest in my list of new things, actually.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Dauphne Trenholm and I became partners in our new business, First Class Communication, LLC. We do public relations/communication work for education-related organizations -- so schools, school districts, colleges and such -- as well as for entities that want to communicate with or do business with schools and their patrons.
I'll write more (briefly, I promise!) about why we started our business and how we will work with clients, but for now I want to explain the purpose of this blog. As this new gig will allow us to visit schools and colleges all around Arkansas, I want to share some of the great initiatives I find in each. Plus, I'll be doing quite a bit of reading and research to keep up with education trends, so when I find something worth passing along, I'll post it here as well.
So, that's it. Thanks for dropping by, and I hope you enjoy!