Trafcom News

Don’t be shy about following up

Audio version below

This morning I was speaking with a fellow independent communicator about the subject of following up. Sometimes we indies fall into the trap of responding to a request for a quote, and then forgetting all about it. You get busy. Stuff happens.

In my experience, clients appreciate your following up, for a couple of reasons:

1. Your quotation may have gone astray. This happened to me this afternoon. I had sent a proposal on March 25. The prospect phoned today, March 31, to say she had just found it in her junk folder. If I had followed up, she would have been alerted to the presence of my precious message among offers for malehood enhancement.
2. The client may truly want to move ahead on the project, but is bogged down with other priorities. So, your follow-up call helps her to stay on track with her project.

My favourite way to follow up is by phone. These days, email is so ubiquitous that a phone call stands out. And if your original email got trapped in Spam Land, what makes you believe that your follow-up note won’t suffer the same fate? In the call, I don’t want to badger the person by saying what might be on my mind: “Hey, have you read the proposal that I spent six hours on? Huh, didja?

No, instead I say something like: “I was wondering if you’ve had a chance to look at my proposal for your podcast project. April is looking pretty busy, and I wanted to be sure to set aside time for you.” In this way, you’re seen as helpful, not pushy. And of course, in your heart of hearts, you do want to function as an important resource for your client, right?

So please don’t be afraid to follow up. Even when you’re busy.

Here's an audio version of this post. Note, if you want to download it, click on the "down" arrow in the player.

Following-up by donnapapacosta ;

IABC/Toronto Communicator of the Year

Peter Aceto, President and CEO of ING DIRECT Canada, received the 2010 Communicator of the Year  award from IABC/Toronto this morning at a ceremony downtown. ING DIRECT Canada is the largest direct bank in the country.

If you’ve seen Mr. Aceto in one of his videos or read his tweets, you know that “what you see is what you get.” He carries this sense of transparency in all of his communications.

Powered by two lovely cups of coffee, I’ve captured some of his remarks for you.

Truly a “social CEO,” Peter Aceto places the highest value on communications and connecting with people, referring to this strength as the biggest predictor of leadership success. Of course a CEO must be concerned with profit, but he contends that the leader must also be held accountable for valuing people and communications, for behaving responsibly, for providing value and service, and for always telling the truth. “Communications will become the most valued leadership skill in five years,” he predicted.

To be effective, messages must be simple, transparent and honest. He believes that there’s no longer a need to communicate differently to different stakeholders.

Throughout his speech, Peter Aceto emphasized the excellent contributions of his team at ING DIRECT Canada (some of whom were in the room – along with his wife and mother), and introduced a few of the staffers who so capably handle internal and external communications.

He reminded us that communication occurs when the message is understood, not just when it’s disseminated.  He then shared a story of one time within the bank when leadership assumed that all employees were aware of a new program. Thanks to Peter’s brown-bag lunches with call centre and operations staff, he discovered that this wasn’t the case, and that employee communications needed to be improved in this particular area.

When asked about internal communications, Mr. Aceto told us that the bank has recently implemented Yammer, an internal Twitter-like micro-messaging tool. “It’s important for us to hear what people within the organization really care about,” he said.  

Responding to a question about the time he himself devotes to social media, he said: “We know that social media is not going away. We need to be there, to be a part of the conversation.” He cited the example of ING DIRECT Canada’s new Thrive account. “Online we’re getting direct feedback from people, from customers,” he said. The public responds through social media much more easily and quickly than they would by email or letter.

All the IABC/Toronto members I spoke with were impressed with Peter Aceto’s passion for his work and his dedication to constantly improving as a communicator.

We were also inspired by a speech by Priya Bates, ABC, who has been named a Master Communicator, the highest honour bestowed by IABC in Canada. Congratulations, Priya!

Thanks to the organizers of IABC/Toronto for this worthwhile morning, and to the event sponsor, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority.

Storytelling insights from a master: P.W. Fenton

I’m delighted to bring you my latest Trafcom News Podcast, which features insights from renowned storyteller P.W. Fenton. P.W. publishes the award-winning Digital Flotsam podcast, among others, and has a long and eclectic history as a broadcast engineer, actor, photographer, musician, songwriter and video producer. I’ve learned a lot about telling stories from listening to P.W., and I hope you will too.

In this 19-minute podcast, P.W. talks about the keys to a good story, how to keep the listener interested, and where the best stories come from. Much of what he says is relevant to podcasters and others who communicate in audio formats; it’s also important information for business communicators who recognize the value of telling stories to convey meaning.

Please check it out and let me know what you think. You will find the audio file and show notes on the Trafcom News Podcast blog.

Storytelling tidbits

Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting a webinar for IABC members, called Telling Stories: Captivate Your Audience with Compelling Content. If you’re an IABC member, you can access the archived webinar here. If you’re not a member, please watch this blog, because I’ll be publishing a version of this presentation in this space soon.

In the meantime, please take a look at these selected tweets about the webinar, which nicely capture some of the main points. I did mention Storify and content curation toward the end of the presentation, and many people on the webinar were intrigued by both the concept of curation and the use of Storify as a tool, so I thought it only fitting to use Storify to talk about the webinar itself.

Over the next few weeks and months I will be sharing more content on the subjects of storytelling and content curation. I believe that we need a lot more stories in our communications, and a lot less corporate-speak that no one reads or listens to. Do you agree?

NOTE: If you are reading this via email, you may not be able to see the Storify segment. To see it, please read this post directly in the blog.

 

Three books on storytelling

At the end of my webinar for IABC members this morning, I mentioned three books on storytelling. I confess that I am still reading them (yes, all three at once), but can recommend them just the same. I hope to do a review on one or more of these books soon. For now, here are the names of the three volumes:

Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, by Peter Guber

The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion Through the Art of Storytelling, by Anette SImmons

The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative, by Stephen Denning

If you have read any of these, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Do you hate your website?

Small business owners and independent practitioners sometimes say things like: “I hate my website” or “Don’t look at it yet, it’s a work in progress.”

If you are not thrilled with your website, then come out to the IABC/Toronto Professional Independent Communicators (PIC) meeting on April 6, when Paul Chato of YourWebDepartment.com will walk us through an exercise called “Interview with Your Website.” You may just discover that your site is not yet earning its keep!

I had a chat with Paul about this the other day, which you can listen to here NOW:

Indy Cast 24 by donnapapacosta

Or, you can download the MP3 file here to listen LATER.

For more information, or to sign up for the workshop, visit the IABC/Toronto website. I hope to see you on April 6!

Has your news consumption changed?

I woke up this morning, retrieved my damp copy of the Globe and Mail from the porch, and read the ongoing coverage of violence in hockey, which covered the front page. Normally I would have driven to the Y and switched on CBC Radio One – catching part of the news report – but skipped the gym this morning out of a need to babysit my sump pump during the deluge that has turned the Greater Toronto Area into a soggy mess.

As a result, it wasn’t until I logged onto Facebook and Twitter that I learned of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  My friends and contacts were linking to mainstream news coverage, photos, videos and more. Because of the timing of the disaster, it was not in the Globe; and because of my own neurosis, I didn’t drive to the gym and hear a CBC report.

This is not the first time that social media “news” has trumped traditional news outlets for me. I remember when the plane landed on the Hudson River and transfixed us all. At the dentist’s office later that day, I remarked on it to the hygienist, who had no idea what I was talking about. The radio station blaring in the office played top hits, not news.

To me, social media not only speeds delivery of the news; it also personalizes it. After I posted a link to the New York Times article on Facebook, my friend from Tokyo, Kaz Amemiya, president of the IABC Japan chapter, commented that he was all right, but that a nuclear reactor was in danger.  Twitter friends in the U.S., Canada and Europe chimed in with reports about their relatives in Japan. Later, I learned that Google had reacted to the tsunami with a Person Finder tool.

The days when we gleaned all of our timely information from the morning paper and the six o’clock TV news are long gone. We still rely on the mainstream media for their coverage of worldwide events, but it’s our own networks that often alert us to it. Individuals on the ground then augment that coverage on Facebook and Twitter. It’s the combination of citizen journalism and traditional coverage, along with the immediacy of social media, that I find fascinating. What about you?

B2B social marketing: An interview with Eric Schwartzman

Finally, a book about social marketing for business (not just consumer) marketers!

Listen to Eric Schwartzman, co-author (with Paul Gillin) of Social Marketing to the Business Customer, talk about how business-to-business companies can use social media to listen to the market, generate leads and build client relationships.

On the Trafcom News Podcast blog you can read the show notes and listen to the podcast interview. Please let me know what you think!