In all my years as a journalist, it never failed: 5:50 p.m. and my work phone would ring.  Did the caller not know we had a 6 p.m. newscast?  During the decade I spent working for a variety of television stations, the ‘show stopping phone call’ was one of the recurring mistakes people made when trying to reach members of the media. These landmines are easy-to-avoid IF you are aware of them.  So in the spirit of the 10-second soundbite, here are the four most common mistakes:

• Do not call close to deadlines

Yes, news is now 24-7, but there are still general deadlines for print, digital and broadcast journalists.  Educate yourselves about the medium and consider when might be best to call.  If you are unsure, research or ask.

• Limit your word count

I rarely had time for lunch – or even a trip to the restroom – so I definitely didn’t have time to read a long, detailed email (or field a long, detailed phone call).  Brevity is best.  Your subject may be complicated, but for my initial engagement, I needed clear, concise communication.  Quite frankly, “you” were one of a dozen people A DAY trying to pitch stories.

• Ditch the blast email

Email software is helpful, but it often ended up in my spam folder.  I would only realize that when a contact would follow up with a personal call asking if I had a chance to consider covering the upcoming event they emailed me about last week.  “What email? What event?” Although the methods and tempo of news has evolved, personal connections remain critical.

• Know your journalists

Speaking of personal connections: the people who caught my attention had clearly done their homework and knew a little bit about me before they reached out.  If nothing more, they were familiar with the story I covered the day before.  Or, in some cases, that I was from Kansas and graduated from the journalism school at the University of Missouri.  Too many others assumed I was a Gamecock or from South Carolina …

Landing media coverage is valuable to your company and to your awareness, branding and public relations efforts.  The potential upside is well worth the upfront time investment to prepare your pitch, and avoid these common pitfalls.  Feel free to email me if you have any questions.  Our NP Strategy team of former journalists can help you navigate what may feel like uncharted waters. And, since we’re free of our old daily deadlines, we’re available to take your call at any hour. Well, just about.

Heather Hoopes-Matthews is an award-winning journalist with extensive experience in South Carolina. A graduate of the prestigious University of Missouri-Columbia journalism school, Heather has delivered live news from the center of hurricanes, worked with “The Capital Gang” at CNN, and conducted investigative reporting that changed a South Carolina law to protect children.

Companies throughout the nation invest millions (or billions!) in their brands – from research and communication strategies, to analytics and more. But ultimately, the key to your brand’s success has always been and will always be your employees. So why do businesses neglect this important branding tool?

For perspective: organizations measure outcomes to ensure they have a strong, competitive external (customer) brand. They willingly adapt to the ways people communicate to build that brand. According to a March 2019 report from eMarketer, advertisers are expected to spend $129.34 billion on digital ads – the first time that the US ad market will spend more on digital than on traditional media.

But, on the other hand, the recent Gallup report State of the American Workplace shows only 13% of employees strongly agree that the leadership of their organization communicated effectively with them.

A possible solution? Today’s leaders should begin to apply the same ever-evolving techniques and strategies they use to communicate externally, internally. That means embracing the ways information is currently shared – Facebook messaging, project management software, streamlined apps, among many options.

Following are five suggestions to improve your internal communications strategy:

1. Treat your employee brand as well as your external brand –  Sixty percent of organizations don’t have a well-considered internal communications strategy according to a 2018 study from Arthur J. Gallagher & Company. Put a specific individual or department in charge of internal communications. In many companies, the human resources department is responsible for employee communications but others may use marketing or public relations teams.

2. Conduct a communications audit – Conduct an internal audit of the communications methods, preferences and tools used by employees. This research will serve as a benchmark to identify if a problem exists before defining specific goals. An internal communications audit is the foundation of a successful internal strategic communications plan.

3. Know your audience – Business may have up to four generations of employees working together (boomers, Gen Xers, millennials and Gen Z). While this diversity drives innovation, it also demands businesses understand their audience and how they communicate. Balance traditional communications (print, phone and email), with face-to-face communications, videos and podcasts.

4. Create a two-way communications strategy – Listen to employees. Employee feedback should be acted on with the same urgency as customer feedback. According to The Idea Driven Organization by Dr. Alan Robinson and Dr. Dean Schroeder, up to 80% of an organization’s opportunity for improvement comes from front-line employee ideas. Employee suggestions can benefit your productivity and bottom line, while also building stronger relationships internally; your team becomes invested in your company and serves as your best brand ambassadors.

5. Measure your results – Focus on the outcomes, not the output. Measuring outcomes can help you identify which messages and channels are having the greatest impact. Armed with this information, organizations can adjust to meet the needs of their employees.

Are you truly investing in a strong customer-facing brand that turns your associates into advocates for your company? If yes, congratulations. If not, now is the time to take the first steps.

Small businesses often find themselves in a difficult position with social media marketing: on one hand, many feel like their current revenue streams aren’t profitable enough to justify adding a marketing professional to their staffs, while on the other, many intuit that one of the best ways to grow is by expanding awareness of the business through social media. It’s no surprise, then, that many small businesses try to compromise by dispersing social media marketing responsibilities amongst the employees they already have.

It’s easy to think of social media responsibilities as simple, maybe even trivial, but there’s a reason why a growing number of businesses have added a ‘social media professional’ to their rosters: social media marketing and branding can be deceptively difficult.

Imagine, for example, that your firm has an event fast approaching. Nothing can cause an event to fall flat quite like a thin crowd, so you decide to leverage social media to drum up interest. Not wanting to make a big deal of the task, you ask an employee to create a nice graphic for the event and post it to your Facebook page.

We’ve seen firsthand how “simple requests” like these can lead to major headaches. Your employee might find the perfect image online and make it the foundation for the event graphic… only for your firm to receive a copyright infringement notice a few weeks later. Perhaps your employee dodges this landmine by utilizing custom or public-domain images but doesn’t account for resolution when adding your firm’s logo and text; all of the sudden your “nice graphic” becomes a pixelated mess (and, probably, next week’s trending meme).  . Improper sizing, font choice, and color selection can all sink an otherwise sound social media marketing post, and, even worse, cause your company to been seen as dated or ambivalent to the way modern consumers communicate.

At NP Strategy, we often come across clients and prospective clients who have dealt with situations just like those described above. In a perfect world, you’d have the budget to engage a marketing professional to run an effective campaign, but if you aren’t quite ready to make that leap, there are a few basic steps you can take on your own to execute social media marketing in a more professional manner.

Establishing brand standards and compiling a portfolio of approved base images will go a long way towards protecting your firm from legal issues and instilling a sense of professionalism in your media presence.

Your brand standards should include:

• Specific colors (just “red” or “blue,” but six-digit hex triplets used by graphic designers)
• One or two fonts, preferably with sizing standards
• Cleared images (either those that you’ve bought the rights to or those you’ve created yourself)
• Language guidance (phrases, slogans, hashtags)

Every social media post – whether it’s promoting an event, a campaign, or simply reinforcing your brand – is a very public, very permanent statement. At the end of the day, it’s your identity – handle it with care.

In the last 20 years, a horde of social media platforms has emerged. Odds are you’re an active user of at least one platform; between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit and the rest, a vast amount of online time is spent on social media.

With employees averaging hours of screen time daily, businesses are asking team members to use this to their brand’s advantage by engaging with them on social media.

The question is: how do you get your colleagues on board with using social media for business? Here are our favorite tips to strategically engage your employees on social media:

1) Find where your people already are

Most of your workforce will already be on a number of social media platforms. Once you’ve decided which platforms to use, simply forward the announcement to your team and ask those already on those platforms to follow your accounts. This helps expand your company’s network and can help spread your message quickly.

2) Have a clear content strategy

It sounds simple, but it works: engaging content elicits engagement. If you post content your workforce is proud to share, they’ll share it. Share business accomplishments, meaningful charitable initiatives, quality pictures, or impactful videos. It’s good to show your human side, highlight your workers, or even take a stand on important issues. The more authentic you are, the more authentically your workforce will engage with the content. Plus, you can tag your colleagues so that they know they’re a part of the success you’re having.

3) Consistency is key

The hardest part is sticking to a consistent posting schedule. This will keep your brand at the top of people’s minds when they’re on social media. The more you post, the more visible you are. Once you send out a post, make sure your team knows it’s out there so they can share, like, retweet, comment, and tag others.

4) Involve your employees

The more that you can impart a sense of ownership of your organization’s social media presence to your employees, the more likely they will be to engage enthusiastically. Allow your employees to be storytellers: encourage them to develop social media content and feature their work often across your platforms.

5) What’s in it for your employees?

This comes in two parts: first, employees deserve to understand why their role with social media is important, and second, they need to be rewarded for their efforts. Analyze your social media metrics and share the data regularly across your organization. Identify opportunities in incentive plans or employee appreciation plans to say thank you to social media supporters.

Getting employees on the same page when it comes to social media will spread your company’s message further, faster. It’s (basically) free advertising, so gather up the team and start brainstorming fun ways to engage those who are looking at your pages.

Originally posted in MidlandsBiz on April 25, 2019.

When I was a child, my parents would constantly remind me of the importance of making a good first impression. Little did I know that they were laying the foundations for good networking habits! Regardless of which profession you are in, networking can enhance your career by helping you establish valuable professional relationships and increasing your visibility in the marketplace. Below are a few lessons I’ve learned over the years about building a wide-ranging network.

Be Engaged

You can’t build a network if you don’t engage with your community. Find ways to get in front of the individuals you are looking to connect with: join and attend events hosted by professional organizations or take part in talks hosted by your library or local colleges. Intentional networking is important, but don’t discount the connections you make every day in your personal life. Those friends you attend sporting events or exercise with can provide other valuable ways to expand your network.

Be Genuine

Authenticity is essential. Get to know people on a personal level so you can make real connections with them. Having a set of questions you are comfortable asking in any setting is helpful. They can be as simple as: “How was your weekend?,” “Have you read any good books or seen any good movies lately?,” and “What are your favorite restaurants in the area?”

Connect the Dots

When you are introducing one person to another, go beyond just saying names. Describe how you know the person you are introducing and be sure to describe the professional role each individual plays. For example: “John, I’d like you to meet my friend Amy. Amy and I went to college together and she is now leading an organization focused on childhood education. Amy, John is a real estate broker and we serve on a local board together. The two of you are both passionate about education and I’d love for you to share with each other your involvement.” A strong introduction can help connect the dots and strike up a meaningful conversation.

Follow Through

If there is someone you are looking to create a long term relationship with, follow up after your initial interaction. Send an email shortly after, and find ways to interact with them in the future. Ask them to coffee, invite them to a professional event, forward articles you think may be of interest to them.

Taking just a few minutes to think about your networking now can pay dividends for years to come. If you ensure that you put yourself in the right situations and are equipped with the right attitude towards networking, you can very quickly build a powerful network!

Jean Cecil Frick has built a career out of trusted relationships. She is a veteran of the private, public and non-profit sectors driven by helping individuals and organizations achieve their goals. Today, she serves as a senior strategic advisor at NP Strategy where she helps clients connect with the right people and get their message across to key audiences.

Originally posted in MidlandsBiz on April 4, 2019.

In July, I wrote about the natural conflict between legal and public relations. Legal wants to win a case or obtain a permit while limiting the liability of the client. In other words, protect and achieve whatever specific objective is at hand.

The public relations professional, on the other hand, has the broad objective of maintaining or improving reputation and the narrower objective of shaping a specific message.

The best client result comes when legal and public relations coordinate so that their respective objectives complement each other and increase the client’s chances of meeting its short- term and long-term objectives.

Coordination of legal and public relations starts with each party respecting the others’ strengths.

First – Public Relations. Public relations professionals are at heart, storytellers. People understand stories and public relations professionals often can help shape the message by telling a story. Legal positions are often just that – legal positions. Reducing a legal position to a story that stakeholders can understand will go a long way to achieving a client objective.

Now – Legal. Facts matter to lawyers. For that reason, lawyers spend a lot of time getting the facts and checking the facts. Public relations professionals should be just as concerned with the facts. A message plagued with incorrect facts will take a client backwards.

The good news is that if legal and public relations are working together, they can seamlessly communicate the client’s position and assure that the facts are correct. The stakeholders understand and support the client’s objective because it is communicated in a clear, simple, understandable and accurate way.

We formed NP Strategy as a subsidiary of Nexsen Pruet to better marry the unique strengths of legal and public relations to produce a better result for the client.

As a businessman, Leighton Lord has critical first‐hand experience in running a large business, managing people, and building consensus. Currently, Leighton is founder and Managing Director of Nexsen’s communications affiliate, NP Strategy, LLC. At the age of 42, he was elected Managing Partner of Nexsen Pruet, making him one of the youngest managing partners of a major law firm.

Originally posted in MidlandsBiz on March 8, 2019.

As the old folks would say, “’Memba film? That’s when the moving pictures MEANT something!” The days when artists would craft thoughtful, moving stories; capturing them on a medium that was delicate, expensive and fleeting. I’m thinking of Citizen Kane – Lawrence of Arabia – Metropolis! Singular accomplishments that even to this day, remind us just how powerful moving images can be.

Nowadays, anyone with a smart phone can be a filmmaker of some degree. That’s great for accessibility – it’s never been easier to breathe life into your creative visions! (We all know what that’s done to the definition of ‘acceptable level of quality,’ so I’ll save the snobbery.) But – I bet we can all do a little better even with minimal effort.

Working with clients, I’ve found it helpful to break down the core benefits of film and get back to the basics. Not only will it make your video more watchable, it’ll help you distill down what you’re really trying to accomplish.

Show us who you are

Imagine those old, gossamer close-ups from Casablanca. Like a photograph but more immediate, film is an intense conductor of emotional energy. So much about us is programmed into recognizing faces and expressions as a means of communication. The lesson – if you’re going to effectively communicate an idea, let me look you in the eye. You founded your company? Show me your face and tell me why. Don’t be a disembodied voice over a PowerPoint – or worse – a slideshow.

It’s about an Experience

Say you’re trying to recruit new employees, and would love to produce some testimonials. But maybe your operation isn’t quite as interesting as the cookie factory from Edward Scissorhands (SOMEONE had to be oiling Vincent Price’s robots, right?), so you park an employee in the canteen, put a cell phone camera in front of them and tell them to spill their beans. What’s produced is a four-minute monologue resembling a hostage video.  Remember: film has the power to take us somewhere unfamiliar. Take me into the life and experience of that employee – interacting with coworkers, family and enjoying a decent living.

It’s about a BRIEF Experience

Editing is its own category at the Academy Awards for a reason: with attention spans approaching goldfish levels, none but the most captive of audiences will hang around for your 10-minute yarn about… well, anything. As Rocky teaches us, you can do a lot with a brief montage. While professional editing comes with a professional price tag, we can ALL do a better job of trimming the fat from our content (myself included). In most, if not all cases, less is more. Keep it short – salient – and sweet.

In that spirit of brevity, I’ll leave you with the often-quoted words of Maya Angelou: “People will forget what you said, but will never forget how you made them feel.” Put another way: make a connection, share an experience, and get out before you become boring.

Taylor Kearns is a filmmaker at heart and a professional communicator by trade. Ever since he got his hands on the family camcorder as a child, he’s been using video and sound to tell stories. In college, he turned that love of moving pictures into a career in broadcast journalism. He went on to earn two regional Emmy awards for his work. With seven years’ experience as a photojournalist and reporter, Taylor sought out the feature stories he knew would resonate with viewers.

Originally published in Midlands Biz on February 26, 2019.

Consider this:
Who would the Beatles be without Ringo, John, Paul AND George?
How successful would Clemson have been this year without Dabo Swinney AND Trevor Lawrence?  (As a Gamecock, that sentence was painful for me to write.) My point: every successful group consists of diverse members with individual skills, quirks and characteristics. Without each of them, you wouldn’t have a complete team.

Joining NP Strategy more than three years ago was an incredibly exciting challenge; a new adventure that gave me the opportunity to help build a team from the ground up. Hiring team members is similar to assembling a puzzle – the goal being to find the pieces that fit together perfectly. That selection process is the key to success in any organization; you have to find your Ringo, John, Paul AND George to be successful and provide well-balanced services to your clients.

For example, in our organization we have the creative one, the smart one, the leader, the calm one, the go-getter, the one with great hair, and many more. We try to balance variety with compatibility. It’s tough to do correctly – you need a great leader with a sound judge of character, who is willing to make hard decisions, exemplify high performance standards and mentor along the way.

There are four pieces to assembling an award-winning group:

1)     Understand your organization’s values and how it works

You are in charge of assembling (and developing!) a group of people to spend hours, days and years together. Ensure everyone is committed to the same ideals and core values of your organization. If you are a group that crawls through the trenches together, every team member needs to be ready to get their hands dirty.

2)     Provide clearly defined roles

Roles and positions should be precise and communicated well. Each team member should understand their responsibilities and know how to meet them. Communicate expectations, and empower and expect your team members to exceed them. Setting goals allows you to measure success.

3)     Encourage learning

We all should learn something new every day, but supporting lifelong learning is a benefit that not all workplaces provide.  Encourage team members to take a trade course, learn a new skill or join a leadership organization. Any of these opportunities will keep your team members interested in learning more about what they do and keep them working hard for you and your organization.

4)     Recognize and reward achievements

Consistently provide positive feedback and offer incentives for success. This can be through professional development, gifts or bonuses.  We all thrive on being appreciated, so team members should understand their worth. Be creative with how you celebrate each other, as it’s scalable to any budget.

I’ve enjoyed helping build our team, but even greater joy comes from watching how our combined, varied skillsets work together to meet a new challenge each day. We’re not the Beatles, but together, I think we are a pretty good group.

Amanda Loveday, recently named Associate Director of NP Strategy, has a passion for meeting new people and building relationships. It is what has made her a powerhouse in politics and communications. A decade of experience taught her the importance of getting to know the community and how to interact with people, especially those with different personalities and backgrounds. Get in touch with Amanda at (803) 540-2190 or amanda@npstrat.com.