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In this blog, we explore what it takes to engage, inspire and connect whether you are building a personal or organizational brand.
Join us in this ongoing conversation about creating effective leadership communications with strategies and tactics that foster understanding and motivate people to act.
Join us in this ongoing conversation about creating effective leadership communications with strategies and tactics that foster understanding and motivate people to act.
Social Media: 140 Outrage-Inducing Characters
The Tweet read, “If a girl is drunk, is it ok to have sex with her? Reply yes or no to @drphil #teensaccused.' It was deleted almost as quickly as it was posted, but the “ill-advised” question posed by Dr. Phil McGraw (or his team) drew understandable outrage. And the impact of this mind-blowing social media misstep lingered long enough to make it into this week’s edition of Time magazine.
Message Development and Our Negative Bias
Anyone who is serious about message development has to factor in the negative bias of the human mind, as I wrote this week in a blog post for The Washington Business Journal: Have you ever wondered why no one seems to hear the positive messages about your company or cause? It may have something to do with the basic wiring of the human mind.
Your Public Relations Firm Relationship: Is It a Marriage Made in Heaven?
Outside public relations support can be an invaluable tool – whether you’re working on a single project or in a long-term engagement to provide perspective, expertise, and communications support. But if you’re spending wads of money and feel as though your relationship with your PR firm is spiraling toward the drain, it’s time to reexamine the basics.
Change Management: Post Sale to Jeff Bezos
In the movie Avalon, the father character Sam Krichinsky, remarks wistfully, "If I knew things would no longer be, I would have tried to remember better." I'm sort of feeling as Sam did today when I learned about the sale of The Washington Post to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. We mourn for what was while moving forward to the future.
Spokesperson Training: 5 Tips for Staying on Message
Poet Robert Burns tells us that “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Well, the same holds true for spokespeople and their messages. One of the goals of spokesperson training is to help people with message discipline. Even after careful thought and planning, spokespeople and presenters often stray from their message, tripped up a by a hostile question or something else unexpected.
Spokesperson Training 101: Never Lose Your Cool
It's not been a great week for the Anthony Weiner campaign. Aside from the candidate's own missteps, his communications director and spokesperson, Barbara Morgan, made her own mess. Speaking to a reporter from a political website, Talking Points Memo, Morgan lambasted former intern Olivia Nuzzi and her article, which painted an unflattering picture of the Weiner campaign and its team. Morgan's tirade broke just about every spokesperson training rule and used almost every expletive in the book.
Messaging Development: Can You Write a Great Subject Line?
The headlines about the Bradley Manning WikiLeaks trial offer a great lesson on messaging development. Scanning my Twitter feed and the Washington Post headlines, I thought, at first, that the uber-leaker was acquitted. That’s because the headlines all focused on the fact that he was [...]
Celebrating Message Development that “Rocks”
Posted on “The Rock” in Ellicott City, a picturesque and popular historic village in Maryland, the sign reads: “Climbing prohibited on these 300 million-years-old geological formations; let’s all respect The Rock.”
Improve Your Storytelling: Change Your Perspective
Everyone, it seems, is jumping on the storytelling bandwagon, and with good reason. Storytelling is a powerful communications tool that taps into both our emotions and our minds' most effective way of accepting and retaining information.
Spokesperson Training: Spokes-Disasters and How to Avoid Them
Let’s face it, if you are like most people, you’d rather get a root canal than have to stand up and speak in front of group. And with good reason. Absent effective spokesperson training, a nervous misstep can cost you a client, cause a deal to go south or create a social media firestorm from which it is hard to recover.
Liz Wainger says:
Liz Wainger says:
Liz Wainger says: