Communication – A Two-Way Street

You sent out a newsletter to your distribution list. Did it end up in electronic la-la-land? Or did you get feedback? And if you did – are you really listening?

Feedback? For what?

For each message that you send, you will likely get some compliments, some inquiries – on the topic of your message or something completely unrelated – and a few “unsubscribe” requests. But if you are not hearing anything back consistently and from many members of your audience, it’s time to ask to make sure that your message is on track and being heard, not deleted without being read!

The same is true of live events, be it a conference, a training session, a speech contest, or a workshop. What did attendees really think? What elements should you keep for the next event? What can you do better?

Feedback? How?

You can ask individuals directly to give you anecdotal evidence. This method works well to test new ideas prior to an e-blast. Just make sure that you don’t only ask your friends and your team members, make sure you ask a cross-section of your target audience.

To evaluate an entire event that may involve 50, 200 or 1000 attendees, you need to make sure that everyone has a voice. A survey is the best way to obtain and consolidate that feedback. Paper surveys allow you to capture feedback immediately – participants can carry their surveys with them and jot down ideas as they go through the conference. Others may just forget to turn in their surveys, and a reminder with a link to an online survey, through services such as SurveyMonkey and Constant Contact, will give you additional feedback.

While online surveys are typically anonymous, social media forums such as LinkedIn and Facebook provide an online forum for participants to offer feedback in a discussion format with other participants. This works best, of course, once you have a critical mass of members in those forums.

You have tons of feedback. What next?

Act on it! If there are multiple requests for an additional breakout session at a conference, accommodate it – of course, as long as it makes sense for the organization. If breaks are too short – adjust the schedule! If participants like receiving handouts, continue to provide them! In other words, let everyone know that you have heard, otherwise you will not get future feedback.

One “gotcha” is that you will not be able to incorporate everyone’s ideas. For example, if you are designing a flyer, it is impossible to make everyone happy. Text cannot be both red and black. The logo can only be one size, not both larger and smaller than your proposal. Keep discussions on such specifics to a small group.

What you do get out of it?

You have the benefit of knowing how your audience reacts to your messages and your events…and can adjust to make sure you continue to be heard. In other words – you have just created a dialog.

The Elevator Pitch: Going Up – or Down?

If you had never heard of Toastmasters – which of the following pitches would motivate you to find out what the fuss is about?

• In 1924, Ralph C. Smedley organized the first meeting of the organization that eventually became Toastmasters International, in the basement of the YMCA in Santa Ana, California.
• I would have never had the courage to present at the last customer meeting without the experience in public speaking that I gained through my Toastmasters club.

While the history may be interesting at a later point, it does not answer the initial core question of what Toastmasters is, and the benefits that your target – the potential member – can personally derive by joining this organization.

The “elevator pitch” has its name because it should be possible to deliver a message during an elevator ride. That does not allow much time – especially if the building is not high! The pitch should be easy for anyone to understand, not just for insiders, so it’s important to concentrate on the big picture, the one key benefit, and an action item. What action item? For Toastmasters, it is to visit a club, of course!

And remember to leave out abbreviations and jargon. Do not, for example, say, “My club had a very interesting Table Topics yesterday.” You are not conveying a benefit, and will only confuse your listeners. (For non-Toastmasters readers, Table Topics refer to the part of the Toastmasters meeting in which participants are given a random question, and must respond for 1-2 minutes, thereby practicing their impromptu speaking skills. It’s more fun than it sounds – themes have ranged from drawing a penny out of a hat and speaking about the year on that penny, to choosing what year in the future they would like to visit.)

Above all, show your excitement – if you are not passionate about the subject of your elevator pitch, why would your listener be intrigued enough to follow up?

Think of it this way – the ultimate elevator pitch is on Twitter. Instead of this entire blog, I would have only 140 characters to get my message across to you. So here goes (in 139 characters, with spaces):

Learn to speak with confidence – advance your skills in a fun, supportive community – visit a club to experience the magic of Toastmasters!

How - to even start?

Publicity – and defining a PR strategy – for a Club, Area or Division can be daunting. There are so many choices – and it is simply not possible to be in all channels, at all times, for all audiences.

What to do? Focus!

First, define your goals. Answering questions based on the journalism framework – who-what-when-where-why – will help guide you. For example, decide on your primary audience: is it employees of a corporation or industry? Are you focusing on communities in a specific city or neighborhood, or people with specific common interests, such as sports, dance, or crafts? What types of media do this audience read – e-mail, newspapers, Facebook, or flyers posted within a community?

To reach your goals, you will need to employ a mix of active, passive, and social public relations.

Active PR - is the promotion of the Toastmasters organization and its clubs and events, by pushing news out to constituents, both internally to existing members, and externally to prospective members. Examples are as simple as word-of-mouth and direct e-mail, classic outbound PR such as newsletters, press releases, flyers and brochures, and high-visibility activities including publishing articles into magazines and newspapers, television and radio interviews and public service announcements.

Passive PR – is creating awareness of the Toastmasters brand, without a specific agenda or event, through subtle references to the organization and members’ accomplishments to encourage inquiries. Examples include creating personal curiosity by wearing your Toastmasters pin and displaying trophies and certificates at work, and extending that reach by creating an e-mail address using “Toastmasters” in the address, and using Toastmasters business cards for yourself or your club, complete with meeting logistics.

Social PR – means using new social media beyond e-mails, to seek a two-way dialog and to encourage collaboration between individuals. Social media does not replace existing PR, or even existing Web sites, it complements them and provides an outlet for continuous dialog. A Web site is now practically a “traditional” medium, but many sites now include links or embedded dialog capabilities. Other ways to share and engage in a dialog include a Facebook fan page, LinkedIn group, YouTube channel, Twitter, blogs with comments, photo sharing, and countless other social sites from Meetup to craigslist.

For a preview of these examples, check out the PR for TM brochure. I will explore examples of these communication channels in detail in subsequent blog posts, and share tips and tricks!

Why - should I care?

It’s all about me. Really.

Because that’s the way your target audience thinks. It really is all about them. To get their attention, you need to answer a very simple question from their viewpoint: “What’s in it for me?”

If you want to buy a sweater, would you respond to an advertisement about how profitable the designer or manufacturer is? Of course you wouldn’t. You care about whether the sweater fits, has the right color to match your eyes or hair or pants, and how much it costs.

It is the fundamental difference between the goal of the seller and the goal of the customer. The seller, in our scenario, is the Toastmasters organization, which provides a forum for improving communication and leadership skills. The customer is the member who wants to get these benefits from Toastmasters.

Taking this a step further, the members care about improving their skills – by demonstrating these skills in their job, at events, and within their clubs. They may also care about getting the letters to their employers, which evidence their progression through the program. Many members may – and I emphasize may – also care about club goals, such as becoming a “distinguished” club.

If, then, a message is sent out about District goals – three levels above the club – members may no longer feel that their individual success is the most important thing to the organization.

Does that mean that club or District goals are not important? No. But it does mean that any communication to members needs to emphasize what those members have to gain, not that a District can gain recognition by becoming distinguished.

Consider your message in these examples:

• Why attend a conference? Not because the District has paid for the venue already, or needs a quorum for the business meeting, but instead because members will learn from keynote speakers and workshops, can cheer on club members in the speech contests, and renew connections – and make new ones – with other Toastmasters.
• Why get that extra educational award? Not because the District will become distinguished, but instead so that the member can gain proficiency and confidence more quickly.

It is all about each member, your customer. It is only by helping individual members improve that the organization as a whole is successful. And by focusing on the members – each member becomes a reference customer for Toastmasters!

Where – should you showcase it?

Location, location, location. This mantra does not apply only to real estate; it also applies to finding the right placement for your news about Toastmasters.

While many Toastmasters members join the organization because a friend or colleague invited them to their first meeting, you need to reach out to a larger audience when promoting an event, be it an open house for your club, or an Area or Division contest. Traditional PR dictates that press releases are sent to newspapers, radio and television stations. But just as your audience no longer gets its news only from traditional newspapers, PR also needs to expand into online channels.

It is not necessary to publish your message in every channel of communication. It is essential to select the right channels – those that are frequented by your target audience. For example, statistics published by the PEW Internet and American Life Project indicate that the median age of a Twitter user is 31. Translate that to mean that if your target audience primarily reads e-mails and never tweets, then Twitter should not be your channel for PR.

Let’s take a look at a few options.

• Press releases. Yes, press releases are still common practice. Make sure your story is compelling – find that hook that will attract the media. Remember, also, that many publications have online editions, to which you can submit events to departments even if the press release is not accepted.
• Flyers can help attract external audiences; they should be posted in community centers and in places of business (with their agreement!) in areas that are physically close to the event.
• Websites are still the most common place where your online audience goes to find information about your organization – and its events. Make sure that upcoming events are prominent on your Home page, and keep the page up-to-date!
• E-mail to existing members helps spread the word to internal audiences. Resist the temptation of blast e-mails to anyone who has not opted into your e-mail campaigns.
• Networking and social sites are a valuable tool to publicize events – and are a good tool to send reminders to events, reminders that could be seen as “too much” if you were sending e-mail. Choose your top 1-2 sites on which your members and potential members frequent.

Above all, be consistent. If you find that you have found an audience through one predominant communication channel – stay there!

When - is the right time?

Imagine the following: you are reading your e-mails at 1 p.m. on a Friday before a long weekend, and are anticipating your early departure to beat traffic and enjoy your time off. A new message pops in, detailing a project that requires significant effort. The deadline? Monday morning. What do you do? If the e-mail is from your manager, of course you take action. If it is not – and remember that Toastmasters is a volunteer organization – it will very likely go ignored.

What happened? The audience of the message was not given adequate time to plan and execute the task – a classic case of the last-minute fire drill.

Timing is everything when it comes to communication. There is tried and true wisdom – such as not sending e-mails with requests on weekends or around holidays, just when everyone is trying to clear their (virtual) desks. Still, the key is to know your audience, and when the best time is to reach them.

A few rules of thumb will help you time your messages:

• Give your audience enough time to respond. Assume that they cannot drop everything to get back to you right away; give them the appropriate time, such as a week. Do not solicit them at the last minute.
• Let your audience know when you need a response. Without a deadline, there is no urgency. And, as we know, a task expands to fill the entire time allotted, so plan a little buffer in case someone gets back to you a day late.
• Follow up with your audience, as promised. If you tell them you will provide more information, make sure you do it. Don’t be “that person” who promises, “I’ll call you” – only to never be heard from again!
• Send reminders. If there is a long interval between the request and the completion date of a task, send a reminder the week prior to the actual deadline.
• Spread the wealth. Don’t overwhelm your audience with too many requests. That may include coordinating with others who are also sending requests to the same audience.

If you do your job right, then you will never hear the classic response, “Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine!”

What - are you trying to say?

How many e-mail messages do you get in one day? Twenty? Fifty? One hundred? Chances are, you do not read each one. Chances are, you do not read any one of them to the end!

How, then, do you make your message heard, whether on e-mail, on a Web site, in a verbal pitch? You need to grab the attention of your target audience. And while you have that attention, you need to tell them right away what you want from them.

In public relations, there are different reasons for communicating:

• To inform. Were officers just elected? Who won the recent speech contest? Is there an upcoming event? Give your audience the details.
  
• To persuade, to motivate. Reaching a goal means asking your audience for something, such as joining your club, or soliciting volunteers to take a committee chair position. Let your audience know exactly what you want them to do, and by when.
  
• To create awareness, goodwill. Even without a specific action item for your audience, keeping the Toastmasters name in the public eye helps solidify its reputation as a go-to organization for speaking and leadership skills.
  
• To build on-going, two-way relationships. Similar to networking, before inundating your audience with one-way requests, it is important to build trust, a two-way street of communication. In its simplest terms, that means providing useful, even entertaining, information that is relevant to the audience. Taken further, it means actively soliciting feedback.
  

Make sure that you know the point of your communication, and express it clearly – and in the right format for the medium. E-mail, the Web and social media are the current communication methods of choice, and are conducive to short, to-the-point messages. Longer stories are more appropriate for print media.

The following strategies can help ensure that your online communications are noticed, and not ignored or even deleted:

• Be creative! Use a unique or humorous hook. For example, if you are looking for help for an end-of-year event, but need to solicit volunteers in August, acknowledge it as a “Christmas in July” request!
  
• Keep it short! Your target audience is likely reading on a mobile device, and will not get past the first two micro-screens. If you find yourself typing the words, “Please excuse the length of this e-mail …..” you’ve already lost your audience.
• Place any call to action at the beginning. Many readers miss the actual “ask” because it only comes after all the details. Summarize up-front, and include – limited – details later.
  
• If more detail is required, use links and attachments. One co-worker placed a document into an e-mail message, making the text 20 pages; after printing, said co-worker even stated that it was not “that long, only” 16 pages. Your audience does not expect a manual in an e-mail text. If it is truly needed, make it an attachment, or provide a web-based link to download it.
  
• One message – one point. If too many calls to action are in the same message, only the first one – or the second, at most – will be noticed.
  
• Highlight important points with bullets or bold text. But do not overuse the bold or italics, or the effect will be lost – similar to the solid block of yellow highlights in my college textbooks after an all-night study session.
  

So make your point – keep it creative, keep it relevant, keep it interactive – and keep it short!

Who - are you talking to?

“My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure.” Just as this quote by Ashleigh Brilliant applies to us as speakers, it is also relevant to our communications within public relations.

The message you think you sent is not necessarily the message that your audience heard. Knowing your audience will help you craft that message to accomplish your goals.

The first question is whether the audience in your communications is internal or external to Toastmasters. An external audience is not familiar with terms such as Area and Division; that District 4 includes over 200 clubs; let alone what it means that a featured speaker is a DTM (Distinguished Toastmaster). The messages aimed at an audience outside Toastmasters should be free of abbreviations and jargon.

Secondly, determine whether the target for the communication is an individual, a select group, or a wider audience. In each case, the more personalized the message is to the intended audience, the more receptive that audience will be to the message.

• Even general announcements must be targeted. For an external audience, corporate clubs typically target other employees. Community clubs focus on other demographics to find potential members with similar interests and goals, including age ranges, cultures, even fluency in a foreign language, by advertising in a neighborhood, church, school or sports center.
• A specific group typically has shared experiences and knowledge that can be leveraged in the message; repeating basic knowledge for this audience may be received as being condescending. Status reports and project plans are usually geared towards a more specific group internal to Toastmasters, such as club officers or a contest committee.
• A message to a particular person is most effective if it is individually tailored. If a message is sent to only one person, but does not address him or her by name, and is an obvious generic mass mailing, the response will be low.

Let’s take a specific example: you need a volunteer. In this case, asking an individual is more effective than asking an entire group. We can learn from a simple social interaction: in high school, the dance floor was empty when one courageous boy walked towards to a group of girls; upon arrival, he asked if anyone wanted to dance. While I love to dance, I am not “anyone,” and I still had the romantic notion of being the only one asked. No one else accepted his offer, either.

The same is true of a long distribution list for a request; every recipient will assume that someone – else – will sign up. To find a photographer, choose an individual with an interest in photography, and mention any prior photos taken for the club or other events as a reason for choosing him or her. Or ask someone who has wanted to gain visibility in the organization to take a role as an event chair, explaining how this opportunity will accomplish this goal. You are much more likely to hear “yes” in response.

Finally, knowing your audience also tells you where to place the message. Both Toastmasters and potential members have different preferences; some respond well to face-to-face meetings and phone calls; others prefer e-mails; still others use the new social media channels, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Knowing the communication preferences of your audience will help you place the message where it will be seen, both by current and potential members.

In other words, one size does not fit all. Send the right message, at the right time, in the right medium – to the right audience.

Communication Essentials using a Journalism Framework

In fifth grade, one homework assignment challenged the class to analyze newspaper articles: find a story in which the first two paragraphs did not answer the following questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? It’s no surprise that each article conformed to this structure. The remainder of each article then elaborated on the details behind the answers to those six questions.

Fast-forward to today. News and PR releases are no longer just published in print – they are also published online, through Websites, blogs, podcasts, social media…. the list goes on and on. And while the opening line is often an anecdote to draw in a reader, the core content answering those six questions is still placed at the beginning of news and PR pieces.

Let’s take a step back to see what those core questions, which are at the heart of journalism, teach us to communicate our message more effectively to audiences both inside and outside the Toastmasters organization. Each of these questions should be answered in order to most effectively structure your communications.

• Who – Identify your target audience. Are they members or non-members of Toastmasters? Is it an individual or a group?
• What – Define your message. Is it to inform, is it a call to action – and is it relevant to the audience?
• When – Determine the timing for disseminating the message. Is there enough advanced notice for a call to action, or is it sent too early or too late?
• Where – Define the medium to be used to publicize the message. Print or electronic or both?
• Why – Give the audience a reason to care. What is in it for them?
• How – Execute the broadcasting of your message – this is the bag of tips-and-tricks that will ensure you are heard. It also involves choosing the types of public relations you will use – active, passive, and social PR.

In subsequent posts, I will look at each of these topics in detail.

If we build it, they will come..... but only if they know where to find it!

Public relations is all about spreading the word of the many benefits of Toastmasters - both internally to our members, and externally to our communities. Through PR, each of us can create an excitement around our organization, to entice new members to join, and to keep current members enthusiastic and engaged.

Communication is the key to public relations. As Toastmasters, we are well-versed in verbal, face-to-face presentations. We need to extend these core values, and use them to talk to one another, and to the community. After all, public relations is about making that personal connection and encouraging participation in our program. Of course, that connection can also be established using the written word and social media for that initial introduction.

My goal is to make each member an ambassador for Toastmasters!

I will be posting a weekly PR tip in this blog, and encourage your comments and ideas.