Morningstar Communications Luminary Blog

Last month I shared tips for choosing an organization that fits your networking needs.  It’s a big step, but joining a group is definitely just the start.

At Morningstar Communications most of our employees are members of at least one professional/networking organization. We’re lucky enough to work for a company that supports our involvement and pays our membership dues.  The catch, you can’t be a mailbox member.  And if you truly want to get value out of your dues, and meet new people who can help you reach your personal and professional goals, involvement outside the mailbox is a must.

This can be accomplished in many ways and at a variety of time-commitment levels. Consider the following:

If you’re pressed on time, start by attending event luncheons or happy hours.  To make the most out of lunch events, plan to arrive early and stay late so you can work the room and meet people not sitting at your table.

Another way to get involved is through volunteering. There is always something to be done and organizations appreciate the help of their talented members. Find a committee that interests you and get involved.  You’ll not only meet others on your committee, but can showcase your talents through committee work.

Become a board member.  Sitting on an organization’s board requires a greater time commitment than other involvement options.  However, board membership allows you to make a greater difference within an organization and get your name recognized within the group.

So get involved and make the most of your memberships.  You’ll reap far greater benefits by getting engaged than you will by sitting back and watching your mailbox.

Today, Morningstar Communications hosted a lunch and learn featuring Luann Feehan from The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.  Luann shared several ways for Chamber members to become smarter, more visible and better connected.  She also shared some great networking tips.

According to Luann the second biggest fear people have is meeting strangers, second to public speaking.  And it makes sense.  We’ve been taught to avoid strangers since we were young.  But the truth is, when you go to networking events, everyone is there for the same reason.  So don’t be afraid to make connections.

Three tips from Luann stood out.
1.    Utilize what you have in common. When you’re networking, take advantage of the commonalities you share with other people in the room.  For example, if you go to a Chamber Business After Hours event, open with “This is my first time at Business After Hours, is it yours?” or “What brought you to Business After Hours today?”
2.    Stand near the registration table to reach people who have just arrived.  We’ve all entered a room and thought, “Where do I start?”  Well, you can be the one intercepting people who have that same thought.  
3.    Set goals.  Go into every networking opportunity with a goal in mind.  Maybe it is to meet thee or four new people.  Perhaps you’ve checked out the attendee list before hand and have a certain person you want to meet.  Know why you are there and have goals set in advance.  You’ll be much more successful if you do.

When I was named “Public Relations Professional of the Year” by our local PRSA chapter back in 1996, I was surprised and honored.  But frankly, the chapter never leveraged me very well.

I’ve been suggesting for more than a dozen years that we ought to use our current PR Pro of the year as an ambassador to promote our profession externally to the business and civic community.  And we should use this person (and the other PR Pro alums) to strengthen the internal marketing to our 200+ chapter members.

I never knew exactly how, but I knew the pathway to get there.  We needed to get all of the former PR Pros together at one time to brainstorm the best solutions.  Easier said than done.

Thanks to our chapter’s current President, Barbara Pruitt and the VP of People, Andy DiOrio, Morningstar Communications was proud to host a gathering of 10 of our industry’s finest.

During a high-energy 90 minutes, we came up with a ton of great ideas, ranging from simple (have one former PR Pro of the Year provide a three-minute in-person “blog” that kicks off each chapter meeting) to highly complex (take a pulse of business and civic leaders) and have the reigning PR Pro of the Year serve as a lightning rod to focus community-wide effort to solve a big problem.

I still don’t know exactly where this initiative will lead, but it’s always great to hang with the best of the best.

Onward and upward.
 

I had a fantastic time in Manhattan last night.

Manhattan, Kansas, that is.

It was my first trip to K-State, and I was impressed! The campus was beautiful and, more importantly, the students were awake, alert and asking intelligent questions. Perfect.

I spoke to a smart group of PRSSA students about first jobs: finding one, getting your foot in the door and what to expect once the job is yours.

We talked about the basics I’ve blogged on before – dress up at an interview, keep the “L” in pubLic relations, make sure your cover letter and resume are customized for the hire-er, that sort of thing.

It struck me as I was speaking, though, that PR students have a doubly difficult challenge when preparing applications and interviewing. Or perhaps they’re doubly prepared. Let me tell you what I mean.

I was telling the students that your resume and cover letter, just like any piece of PR writing you would work on for a client, should be the following:

• Benefit-oriented, not feature-oriented. – Feature-oriented writing merely describes, as in, “This pizza is cheesy.” Benefit-oriented writing, however, gets right to the “So what?” of the matter. “For you, Mr. Cheese Lover, this cheesy pizza will tingle and tantalize your taste buds.”

• Relevant to the reader. – Similar to benefit-oriented, you have to tell the reader up front and in person why he or she should keep reading the cover letter, resume, press release, etc.

• WIIFM. – Same idea, worth repeating. Everything you write should be customized for your audience and provide them an answer to the question, “What’s in it for me?” A recruiter should clearly see what you will bring to an organization, not what the organization will do for your personal career path. Similarly, a reporter should see what a product or service will do for the end reader, not how excited the product’s inventor is to tell the world about it.

So back to the double curse/blessing. PR students are doing more than selling themselves (in a good way) as a person with their resumes and cover letters. They’re also selling their specific, relevant set of skills. After all, if a candidate can’t sell him or herself to me in a cover letter, why should I believe that candidate will be able to sell my client’s story to a reporter? Selling yourself is simple. You approve all the messages, write all the quotes – if someone can’t handle that, their PR skills may not be quite up to par.

It was also interesting to see the overlap in my job interview tips with the media training handbook I updated for a client this week. But more on that another time.

I had a great trip to K-State, and I hope the students learned as much as I did. (And, students, we want to hear from you! Tell me what you liked/didn’t like/wanted to know more about in the comments section below.) Thanks so much to the PRSSA group for having me!

And a final note in the creativity vein - there's nothing like a drive through the Flint Hills to clear this Prairie Girl's head and refocus her thoughts. Clouds and rolling plains as far as the eye can see. Perfect.

At Morningstar Communications, we've been spoiled. For the last three years, we've had our executive assistant, Suchitra. She's the best executive assistant an office could ask for. It was a sad day for us when her husband was transferred to Dallas in December. (We have chosen to hold off on replacing her.)

These days, everyone is being asked to do more with less at their jobs. We used to rely on Suchitra for everything: scheduling meetings, setting up the boardroom for meetings, booking flights...the list is extensive and includes things I'm not even aware of. She even kept a list of my favorite menu items from all the restaurants we typically order from so she would not have to ask me when we order lunch in!

And, yes -- Suchitra printed on letterhead for us.

In a Suchitra-less world, Shanny, Lauren and I have spent 10 minutes in the copy room scratching our heads and attempting test prints. Once we figured it out, I literally took a photograph of what our letterhead should look like when being placed in the printer.  I've hung this on the wall above our printer. I'm writing it off as one more crazy bi-product of this economy. :)

I attended this year’s Governor’s Summit on Regional Economic Development earlier this week along with 200 other business, civic and political leaders from our region.  I was impressed with the spirit of cooperation and collaboration.

But I was even more impressed with how all of the speakers talked about innovation.  From sewers to staffing…from energy to education… innovation was the single key take-away for me, as I was quoted in this article in KC Small Biz:

“Every speaker talked about how innovation will be the most important, long-term key to grow our way out of this extraordinary economic situation.  As big businesses evolve slowly towards new solutions, emerging businesses are in the best position to because they are more flexible, responsive and opportunistic.  These three elements are exactly what America needs to get back on track.”

Getting back on track is exactly what we need in America.  With new political leadership and new, evolving rules for corporate America, it’s up to all of us to be as entrepreneurial as possible.

Finding new ways to solve old problems will always fuel economic growth.  We continue to evolve and modify our services to help our clients grow.

And while we remain fully committed to innovation, our focus on providing leadership through excellence will never change.

Onward and upward.

Here’s the thing.

I’m sort of a cynic.

Especially when it comes to professional development conferences, I can be a bit hard to please. But last year’s Business Communicators Summit, hosted by the KC chapter of IABC, was so fantastic (I’m still using tips from a session on corporate blogs by Garmin communicators) that I was really looking forward to this year’s BCS. But the bar had been set, and my expectations were ridiculously high.

Here’s the thing.

KC/IABC jumped so high over the bar that my expectations were shattered. In a good way. Here’s why.

1. Connectivity – Not only did KC/IABC provide free WiFi for participants, the board was also smart enough to start a Twitter hashtag (#kcbcs – the conversation is still going) so attendees could tweet before, during and after about the things they were learning.

2. Content – From Shel Holtz and Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl) to the amazing group of local experts, each keynote and breakout session provided the two things I look for most in a conference: take-home-and-use-tomorrow lessons and things-that-make-you-go-hmmm. It’s like having a professional degree and a liberal arts degree, the best of both worlds.

3. Current Issues – At first glance, I thought the program might’ve been a little social media-heavy. But I quickly learned that it’s a large enough topic for several presentations to share and still provide fresh info each time. And it was very clear: social media is not something we communicators can ignore. It offers powerful ways to reach audiences in the way we know we now have to -- on a personal level.

What really stuck out during the day was the focus on professional communicators being people first. Now, this makes sense and probably sounds obvious. But try being a “real person” when the pressure is on and the press are calling. Too often we give into corporate speak and legalese.

Or, just as easy, we tweet and blog just to make ourselves look smart. I’m all about self-promotion – but there’s got to be a way to show what you know and who you are at the same time. In fact, our speakers recommended just that. I think “engage” was the key word of the day.

Shel and Mignon both spoke about the importance of engaging with your audience in the social media space. This means jumping into relevant conversations, listening to what’s going on, and being yourself.

Shel gave some great examples of regular people being regular people on Twitter. Doing so allowed them to build relationships and networks of other people who trusted them. Then, when crisis struck at their companies, these smart tweeters had already established trusting relationships with people who could help spread their companies’ messages and resolve the problem.

Mignon talked about engaging honestly with your online community. She recommended rewarding the audience and mentioning individual audience members by name, such as giving a little shout-out to them in a podcast or on an email newsletter.

So here I am, honestly engaging with you, my public. I’ve shared some of the things I learned yesterday, and now to give you a more clear picture of my true self, I’ll tell you my very favorite thing about yesterday’s conference.

Meeting Grammar Girl.

What about you? Did you attend BCS? What was your biggest "Aha!" of the day?

Eric was featured in last week's Kansas City Business Journal article, "Experts advise using green claims fairly." It's very timely, as every company is looking for ways to either become more "green" internally and/or infuse environmentally-friendly practices into their product and service offerings. Eric also commented on how small businesses and entrepreneurs can help the country recover from the recession in a KC Small Business Monthly article about the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce's 4th Annual Governor's Summit.

Questions loomed.

Then Clara introduced me to a little bird. His name is TweetDeck, and I love him because he brings order and clarity to my Twitterlife.

The great thing about TweetDeck is that tweeters can search any topic, phrase, hashtag, etc., and keep a pane open with all the tweets in the Twitterverse that match the search.

I got a little braver. I searched “letterpress.” Lo and behold, printing companies around the world and – be still my heart – stationery tweeters who also run stationery blogs. I followed a few more. A few even followed me back.

I realized that never again should I be stumped for ideas, because the Twitterverse is filled with them. Whether looking for suggestions on business best practices or what to cook for dinner, the answers are waiting. Simply send TweetDeck on a recon mission and watch your creatweetvity go wild.

I’ve recently come to realize I’m a big “milestones” person, which is odd since I would not consider myself a goal-oriented person.  I guess, for me, life is more about the journey than the destination.  Milestones simply give me a chance to reflect on where that journey has taken me.

Today, I tweeted my 1,000th update on Twitter. Now, this by itself is not really all that exciting. Thousands of users have thousands more tweets than I do.  1,000 doesn’t earn me special recognition, or even a fancy feather to put in my cap.

1,000 does give me a chance to look at how I’ve become involved in social media as a whole and what I’ve learned from participating in this space, specifically on Twitter.

I learned about Twitter from media coverage related to James Buck tweeting his way out of an Egyptian jail.  I didn’t think much it about then, but continued to see mentions here and there.  Finally, I signed up—@mdd044, by the way—and tweeted my first update on July 15, 2008.  What did I say?  “doing PR like it's my job because, well, it is.”  Groundbreaking, I know.

Now, seven months and 999 tweets later, I’m addicted to learning from and interacting with my followers, and addicted to learning all I can about social media and community-building and how I can use that knowledge to help our clients. I truly believe social media is changing and will continue to change the playing field in my profession. After all, social media and social networks are about building relationships with various groups through personal interactions.

What has been your favorite Twitter experience?  Do you remember your first tweet?

It's 70 degrees and sunny in Kansas City today, which makes staring out the window (or at a computer screen, wishing it was out a window) the only logical activity besides skipping down the street in celebration. Still, work must go on. So take advantage of a sunny day and resolve to have a sunnier outlook on a project you've been nursing along.

Here are a few quick hits to get your creative juices flowing.

Ah, Yes, More About Me? Here are '25 Random Things' - This New York Times article is interesting based on content alone. (And no, this isn't a prompt to go spill your guts on Facebook. Save that for a Saturday.) But I absolutely love the way it's written. The appositives are playful and drive home the point that we really are interested in random facts about nearly total strangers. What about the things you're writing? Could you "steal" this style or find another way to make your words appropriately playful?

Blue the hue of creativity? Red for detail? - If you can't get out in KC or aren't having the same stroke of weather luck we are, it seems surrounding yourself with images of blue skies might help unlock your more creative side. Though a note to my friend the auditor -- keep seeing red. It's good for you.

Getting up to speed with new clients is always a challenge. We’re the first to admit it – we’ll never know our clients’ businesses as well as they do. But knowing a client’s business makes telling that client’s story so much easier (not to mention more effective). Here’s a creative way our team has started getting to know new clients: instituting Shadow Day.

Especially for clients who make or sell products or perform some kind of service, shadow days help us PR folk quickly understand the actual day-to-day business of running the business. I mean, we can throw out all the industry jargon we want, but until we actually see a transfer seat or a ramp installed in a mobility van, it’s just that...jargon. Plus, it’s proven to be a great way for us to get to know our client contact, the challenges he or she faces every day and how we can help.

Shadow day can last just a few hours or an entire workday, depending on the client’s business. Matt and I recently spent the morning with Karyl, Mark and Jay at Mid America Coach to learn all about mobility vans and shuttle bus sales. We toured the facility, demoed some ramps, and practically role-played through a typical sales cycle with mobility customers. We talked about the differences in bus and mobility customers, too.

When Tricia and I recently shadowed Beth and Adam at Old World Spices & Seasonings, we packed some sample kits for Fundraising For Scouts and saw their customer cultivation process, start to finish. Of course, any shadow day that requires hairnets is going to be one to remember.

As you prepare for a shadow day with a new client, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Prep your client. Tell your contact why you want to shadow him or her for the day and provide a broad outline of the kind of experiences you’d like to have. For example, you might want to know about the sales cycle with different types of clients, how a product is made start-to-finish, or where different departments are located within a company’s campus. If possible, include a coffee or lunch, too (your treat, of course). Mealtime away from the office is a great way to get even more candid information from your contact.

2. Come with questions, but have an open mind. It’s good to have an idea of what you want to learn, but don’t get bogged down worrying about the fact that you skipped question #3 or started at the end of your list. Be open to all the information coming at you, and be prepared to come up with more questions as needed.

3. Dress appropriately. If you’re headed out to construction sites for a whole day (been there, done that), jeans and sturdy shoes are in order. If your clients are required to suit up, make sure you’ve visited the dry cleaners. Don’t assume your every day dress will be appropriate for your client’s every day.

4. Be humble. This is the time to get your hands dirty and ask all the questions you’ve been afraid to ask. Shadow day means freedom to clarify everything. Are there bits of jargon you don’t really understand? A process that’s over your head? Today is the day to clear it up. It serves your client well for you to really “get” the business. Don’t let your pride get in the way of what you could learn. Equally important, be prepared to do things you aren’t used to doing and might not do perfectly. Just keep telling yourself, "It’s about the experience."

5. Think beyond the day-to-day. You want to have a good idea of your client’s daily routine, but listen for cues about other topics, too. Shadow days can tell you a lot about internal politics or company culture. You can find out your contact’s relationship with others in the company, which is very important as it plays in the decision-making process.

What do you think? Have you tried a shadow day before? What are your keys to a successful day?

At Morningstar Communications, we provide insight, lead with strategic thought and unite great minds in our industry to create solutions. As part of our commitment to excellence, we regularly bring together the brightest minds in business for Illumination Sessions to discuss challenges and success strategies for today’s businesses.

During our last Illumination Session, our Luminaries shared their thoughts on strategic planning. It’s one of those things we might not think about every day, but requires careful consideration. Our world is changing faster, and the rate of change increases every day. Like Moore’s Law, business ideas and strategies can become outdated as quickly as they came to life.

Strategic plans used to take one-, three- or five-year horizons. An elevator speech was 30 seconds long. Now, we see more and more businesses looking at 12-, 18- or even six-month horizons for their planning. Elevator speeches are a mere seven seconds in length. So with the quickening pace of business, how do business leaders effectively plan for their organization’s success?

We asked our Luminaries to come prepared to talk about effective strategic planning in an era of 90-day scorecards. Our discussion centered around three key points:

 3. Make it Work
Even the most well-written strategic plan needs a team of cheerleaders and on-the-ground players to put it into action. Buy-in has to come at all levels for a plan to succeed.

We’ll post more on the discussion and each of these three insights in the upcoming days. For now, though, take a look at our panel of strategic planning Luminaries. What a smart group!

Katy Briggs
VP, Strategy
Willoughby Design

Reinhard Mabry
President and CEO
Alphapointe Association for the Blind

Eric Morgenstern
President and CEO
Morningstar Communications

 
Vincent Sabia
Vice President, Client Services
Right Management Consultants

Mike Saunders
Managing Partner
Spencer Fane Britt & Browne LLP

Todd Stettner
Executive Vice President and CEO
Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City

Gary Weinberg
Chief Operating Officer
National Seminars Group