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?

Social media success -- it's more than a numbers game

Before embarking on a social media plan, we always ask our clients what they want from their social media efforts. The reply is often, “To get more followers.” We understand! Everyone wants more followers.  It makes your organization appear popular...well-liked...valid!

But having an astounding number of followers doesn’t necessarily mean you have the

right followers. To make the most of your social media efforts, you need to gain followers who will help you:

• Reach your organization’s larger goals
• Promote your brand
• Interact

 

To get those followers, an effective social media strategy should:

1.   Support the overall goals of your organization.

In order to accomplish this, you first need to define your organization’s overall goals for the next one to five years. Think about where you want to be – not on social media, but as an organization as a whole. Make it easy on yourself by keeping the list to three goals. More than that is probably not realistic.

After you set your goals, think about who, specifically, are the best people to help you reach each. Which social media channels are those people you identified using? Are some on Twitter and others on Pinterest? Target your message explicitly to those people, on those channels, and you will reach the larger audience, too.

2.   Reflect your organization’s brand identity.

A good social media strategy takes into account how your brand relates to people’s lives. Don’t be entirely self-promotional. In addition to reflecting your brand’s voice and important issues, your content themes should target the wider, related interests of your audience.

Facebook and Google⁺ posts that are relevant to your audience’s lives, rather than simply lauding how great your brand is, will attract customers and brand advocates. They are the ones who will spread the word about how fantastic you are.

3.   Include a means of engaging with your online community.

When planning your conversation calendar, remember that social media is not only about pushing information to your audience. The “social” part of it requires that you spend some time IN the conversation. Be sure to include time to respond to questions, reply to comments, and acknowledge mentions.

Also, include time to really listen to the conversation going on around your brand: read timelines, news feeds and boards. Find out what the people who like your organization are talking about, so you can be part of that conversation, too. When people realize you are fully participating in the dialogue, your community becomes stronger and wider.

Making a difference in kids' lives

I saw a terrific video on Facebook this morning of a young woman reading a poem she'd written called The Lost Generation. I encourage you to watch it.

The poem is a plea for adults not to write this generation of kids off as a hopelessly lost cause. Instead, she says in a hip-hoppy rhythm, give young people the nurturing and support they need to grow into the people they can and truly want to be.

A recent assignment has allowed me to talk to some adults who have done just that.

The Arkansas Community Foundation, which supports amazing work in towns and cities throughout the state, focuses on improving education as one of its seven pillars.  As part of that focus, the Foundation wanted an article about improving graduation rates for this summer's issue of Engage, the organization's magazine.

My graduate degree is in data-based journalism, so I started my research with graduation rate data obtained from the Arkansas Department of Education. I compared rates from 2010 to 2012 (the most recent available) to find those high schools where graduation rates spiked the most.

I have to say, there's no better feeling for a data-based journalist than when the "shoe-leather" reporting so completely bears out what the statistics show. And this was certainly the case here, as the data  pointed to real efforts to help students stay in and graduate from high school.

Without giving too much away, I interviewed leaders at three of the school districts where the graduation rates increased the most between 2010 and 2012.

At each one, school leaders had made concerted efforts to improve students' academic performance and, in turn, graduation chances and future opportunities. Sure, changes were made in the classroom in terms of instruction and curricula and credit-recovery opportunities. But the larger themes running throughout the interviews included the importance of:

• Spending time with students to let them know they and their futures mattered and that success was expected of them.
• Providing opportunities for students to realize they really, really could pursue a future that included college, technical school, the military or a job with a career path.
• Involving parents and community in efforts to keep students on target for graduation.

No doubt, strong, determined and caring leadership made all the difference in the world at these schools. The stories illustrate it. The data prove it. The poem's author begs for it.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison. -Victor Hugo, poet, novelist, and dramatist (1802-1885)

Speaking Up for the Common Core

At its last meeting, the Arkansas State Board of Education heard from two students and a teacher -- all from Benton School District and all very articulate -- speaking in favor of the Common Core.

Jessica Herring, a seventh-grade English teacher shared that her favorite part of the document aligning the district's curriculum to the new standards is entitled, "What the Standards Are Not." There you find: "The standards define what all students are expected to know and be able to do, not how teachers should teach. ... A great deal is left to the discretion of teachers."

Herring values that aspect of the Common Core because, she says, teachers are the ones who best know their students needs.

Seventh graders Ethan Tallent and Blakeley Fiedler talked about the creative, hands-on lessons their teachers use to make learning come alive during Common Core instruction.

Student Fiedler pointed out that the U.S. has fallen from 1st to 17th in worldwide education rankings. "If using Common Core will help us get to where we need to be in order to be competitive with the rest of the world, then we should use it," she said. "Nothing worthwhile is ever easy."

Click on the above names to see the videos of each of the presentations. They are worth watching...and, in the midst of all the anti-Common Core ranting out there -- these remarks are definitely worth sharing!

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!

Half-truths at best about Common Core

If everything that was put out there about the Common Core State Standards at Saturday’s anti-Common Core rally were true, we’d be running away from it too.

But it wasn’t.

In fact, we heard a lot of half-truths, totally misinformed statements and emotional grandstanding during the long-winded rally.

We also heard this story from a neutral observer who just wanted to learn more about Common Core. It’s a story that illustrates an important point about the environment Common Core now faces:

A friend had a daughter who was struggling in her high school math class this year. What could be different? Why, the Common Core was being newly implemented. That horrible Common Core – it was causing all the “harm to students” the naysayers said it would. Further investigation, however, showed that the girl hadn’t been keeping up with her homework, thus the falling grades. 

Having been employed in communications at the Arkansas Department of Education from 2005-2011, we were there when Common Core was just a hopeful idea to help students all across the country meet their potential and a plan to keep the United States from falling farther behind other developed nations both educationally and economically.

Because we were involved at that stage, we went to Saturday’s event knowing quite a bit about the early context and development of the Common Core State Standards. You can read those in Friday’s post.

Rally at the Capitol on Feb. 1

Here are just three of the things we heard Saturday that alarmed us, to say the least, and that also made us realize that Arkansans are in need of accurate information about Common Core. This anti-group said:

• Common Core narrows the curriculum, so students are learning less. This half-truth, sadly, was voiced by a high school teacher.  Yes, it’s true, the Common Core for both math and English focus on deeper levels of learning of the most important concepts and skills. Gone are the broad array of facts that teachers must cover to meet the former Arkansas curricular expectations.  This teacher said there’s so little to teach, that kids just sit in class with nothing to do. That reminds me of concerns I heard about block scheduling – that too many teachers new to the block system failed to use the expanded period to teach more meaningful, hands on lessons. Instead, they were delivering their same 30-minute lecture and letting students spend the rest of the time doing homework and visiting.  I’m not blaming teachers…maybe better training on how to incorporate Common Core learning standards into the classroom is needed.

• Common Core produces workers, not thinkers. Again, a half-truth used to scare. I don’t know a single parent who doesn’t want her childreb to be able to land jobs  when they graduate, whether from college or high school.  So, yes, an important goal of Common Core is to prepare American students to be able to compete in the 21^st Century economy. But, here’s the catch. Never before has landing a good job so depended on an individual’s ability to think critically, to problem solve, to adapt to new situations, to communicate well, and to learn new concepts and processes. And the reason Arkansas wanted Common Core implemented is so ALL of our students would benefit from this curriculum.

• Common Core is a big plot to line the pockets of testing companies. True, testing companies will continue to make lots of money to research, test, implement, score and report test results. It's a complicated, sophisticated job, after all. But that was happening long before Common Core – ACT, SAT, SOAR, AP, states’ benchmark testing --  a decent argument can be made that students spend too much time being tested in recent years.  I’m not sure we’ve got the accountability equation right yet, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not needed. Common Core assessments, though, when fully implemented, will serve a purpose beyond accountability. For example, students will have summative tests along the way to determine which, if any, concepts need more time for mastery.  

We heard so many more false charges that we'll attempt to address later -- Common Core is rewriting history, brainwashing students, the stimulus for teacher evaluation systems, and the list goes on! Not only do students and parents need a better understanding of why Common Core is important and beneficial, but, it seems, so do many of our educators. And the facts need to start being sounded much more loudly than the vocal opposition we heard Saturday.

And the (anti) beat goes on

The anti-Common Core march in Arkansas is on. Literally. A group of protesters to the new and deeper learning standards for students will gather at the Arkansas Capitol at 2 p.m. Saturday (Feb. 1).

We’re all for the Constitutional rights to free speech and the right to assemble, and therefore respect their rights to make their case in this fashion. But we feel called to exercise our First Amendment right as well and state again that First Class Communication firmly throws our support to the teaching of the Common Core.

We plan on being at the Capitol Saturday to hear what these Arkansas Against Common Core organizers have to say, but we’ll be armed with a few facts of our own. Here’s what we know for sure about Common Core in Arkansas:

• State education leaders across the country – as well as governors both Republican & Democrat – warmly embraced the idea and strongly supported the development of the Common Core. Common Core has the support of Gov. Mike Beebe, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, the State Board of Education, the Arkansas Department of Education and many, many educators and citizens across the state.

•  One of the early and loudest cheerleaders for the Common Core was Gene Wilhoit, then head of the Council of Chief State School Officers and at one time director of the Arkansas Department of Education. 

• The Common Core student learning standards were developed by leading educators from the local, state and national levels. Common Core was not a top-down mandate.

• The process involved studying the best state student learning standards at the time as well as SLEs being taught in nations that are leading the world in education achievement. Student learning standards in English and mathematics that would enable higher levels of learning by American students resulted.

• States’ educators have been operating under student learning standards for years. In Arkansas, SLEs have been put together by large committees of educators in much the same way the Common Core standards were – referring to the learning standards from leading states like Massachusetts as well as cutting-edge education research in the subject area being addressed.

• Arkansas student learning standards, always approved by the State Board of Education before being taught, have been recognized for their quality, mainly because they did encourage higher levels of thinking across all subjects.

• The major complaint, especially from educators, about Arkansas student learning standards is that there are so darn many of them. It was hard to cover the broad scope of SLEs and still have time to teach well the more complex but most important concepts. (The Common Core, by the way, fixes that.)

So, it will be interesting to be at the Capitol on Saturday and hear what these “agginners” have to say. Our fear is that we’ll hear more in the way of scare tactics than facts. Either way, we’ll report back on Monday.