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- Hate to Write? 3 Ways to Start Enjoying It
- What to Write When an Employee Dies
- 5 Ways to Get Your Email Read, Remembered and Responded To
- Six Tips for Writing in Easy Reading Season
- 12 Ways to Plug the Email Productivity Drain
- Two Questions to Ask Before You Start Writing
- 6 Ways to Aim Your Arrow for the Heart
- 6 Ways to Become an Idea Machine
- 3 Reasons Why You Need to Improve Your Writing Skills
- Get Personal With Your Holiday Greetings: 3 Tips
Archive for the ‘IABC’ Category
Early Monday morning: I was catching up on Sunday’s email, mainlining coffee, yelling at my son to get out of bed. When I opened an email from Paulina Callaghan from the Toronto chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators, expecting a routine event reminder.
“I am delighted to inform you that you have won the Tell Us Your IABC Story contest!” the email proclaimed.
I danced. Without music. My dog Cocoa joined in.
Then I set out to tell my friends, clients and suitors. Phone, email, tweet, blog, Facebook… So many ways to share.
But first, I decided I should finish reading the email. From experience, I know I can get into trouble by not reading the entire email.
Horrors! To allow time to inform the other contestants, Paulina explained, “kindly refrain from sharing this news until 5PM tomorrow.”
Thank goodness, I stayed off the computer Sunday, a rare occurrence, because I had cousins visiting from Calgary. I would not have been able to last that long. As it was, 10 hours seemed like 10 weeks.
I’m terrible with holding back good news. Both times I was pregnant, I was on the phone as soon as the test stick turned blue. New jobs and exciting projects, hot dates and proposals, graduate school–you name it. I burst with good news.
So how could I keep my mouth shut? Keep busy. But not busy enough.
My first close call was a reply on Twitter to Donna Papacosta, thanking her for including one of my posts in her daily roundup. I told her to watch for news from me this evening. I justified that on the basis that PR pros know all about teasers.
By the time my son was stirring, so he wouldn’t miss afternoon drama class, I got an email from contest rival and new friend Timothy White, reminding me of our deal that the winner would pay for lunch. Since the emails had obviously gone out, maybe a little tweet wouldn’t hurt. No, I didn’t want to incur the wrath of IABC.
No more emails either, because they’re too easy to forward to one our large IABC clan. But I did call a friend, who’s not a member, to spill, hoping the dam wouldn’t burst.
To play it safe, I went to the gym. Sweaty and exhausted, I backed out of my parking spot, very slowly, my van gently nudging the rear of the car opposite me that had decided to back out after me. The man screamed at me, pointing to a small scratch. Witnesses rushed forward to defend me.
I arrived home rattled, only to receive a direct message from somebody who rarely tweets about people saying nasty things about me. Her account must have been hacked. Hope they don’t promise my followers nude photos, like last time this happened.
These dramas speeded up time.
At 5:03, I sent out my newsletter. Three hours later, after helping my friend Peggy flash her jewellery designs on Pinterest, I’m ready to publish and tweet.
But first, my award-winning story.
“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
After I jumped from university to corporate communication, I understood how Dorothy felt when she woke up in Oz.
But then I started going to IABC meetings at Stop 33, the top floor of Sutton Place with the panoramic view of the majestic office towers and sprawling lake. Seated around the glittering tables with shiny people, I felt like I had arrived.
Better still, these power suits got me. They sympathized with my confusion over how to handle approvals, especially that policy wonk bent on sucking the soul out of my precious words. They told horror stories about micro-managing white male bosses. We moaned about deadlines. We laughed at the intrigues of office politics.
Through the speakers, I began to learn how to handle reporters, write a sound bite, prepare a communication plan and many other subjects then not found on any curriculum.
I remember Bobbie Resnick, now an IABC Fellow, making announcements. I can still hear the clapping for the monthly award winners, often Gary Schlee, ABC, who went on to lead college communication programs. They were my rock stars.
Thanks to IABC, I learned what they hadn’t taught me in school. What’s more, I could relax and enjoy the splendours of Oz. I started to feel at home in the work world.
Today I posted at IABC/Toronto about how language is heating up with the 2011 Canadian election scandal. Check it out.
Today I’ve posted at Toronto IABC. Think small, act big for your book.
Only Toronto members can comment there, so if you have anything to add, and I hope you do, please share here.
I was flattered when I received Dee’s guest post pitch. After all, this is not one of the big shot blogs with a queue of eager writers wanting to make a name for themselves.
But my antenna should been gone up at the mention of “free” in the subject line. The alarm bells should have sounded when her submission contained the words “peak” when she meant “pique” and “reign” instead of “rein.”
What should have stopped me dead in my tracks was her request that I re-insert a link I had omitted because it had nothing to do with the post. Ironically, Dee had ranted against superfluous links.
When I spotted the “reign” mistake again in a blog an expert tweeted I simply had to read, I figured maybe I was being too tough. However, I made sure these examples were included in the list of common sound-alike confusions I provide in the new edition of Write Like You Talk–Only Better.
From running another blog, for the Toronto chapter of IABC (International Association of Business Communicators), I know that newbie bloggers can be sensitive souls. I want to help them. And I don’t like to look like Mrs. Cardwell, my grade seven English teacher, who would stamp her kitten heels in frustration when we kept making the same mistakes over and over.
When I refused to add the meaningless link, Dee complained about not getting paid for the link after she’d spent all that time on the “free” post for me. At her request, I took it down.
I don’t feel bad because I’m against sleazy link-building practices. Solid links are tough to earn.
But from all those “$20-a-post” ads I see, I know that many McWriters are toiling for these content farms, whose mission is to hoodwink the search engine giants with misbegotten links.
Writers have long kick started their careers with low-priced prose to magazines and other prestigious publications. But the writing had to be good. One “peak” or “reign” and the editor would stop reading.
The payoff was being able to show prospects that the big shots had published you. Today you also earn a prized link.
Highly regarded newspapers such as the Globe and Mail have gone from paying peanuts to saw dust. But I still send them articles occasionally because their circulation is huge and includes the kind of people I want to impress. The last time I published there, I immediately received a call from an occasional client who is now sending a stream of quality work. I also vie to provide guest posts for blogs like Problogger and Ragan.com because they always deliver new subscribers and attention to me.
So Dee, here’s my my advice if you want to go from being a McWriter to a white table cloth writer like me: Hone your craft, by avoiding sound-alike confusions and other common mistakes. You can do this, and earn more, by getting a job with an organization where the boss knows how to write well. If you dare, write quality posts and articles for big shots.
Google and other search engine keep changing their algorithms to discourage the content farms. You’re not helping your career by slaving for them. Don’t blame me.
And thank you, Dee, for reminding me that nothing in life is free. Now if I can only cast off the spirit of Mrs. Cardwell. And why do I still remember her green suede shoes?
Thanks for the photo, Floyd Brown.
We keep hearing that social media use has to support our strategic objectives. Still, it’s difficult to resist the lure of shiny new platforms, even for hyper-focused Graham Machacek, director of marketing communication and business development at Volunteer Canada.
Graham and his team use Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media to crank up the volume of this national voice for organizations that rely on volunteers.
They integrate these channels with the association’s web site and the microsites for specific initiatives. Take the examples of last year’s landmark research on the changing face of volunteerism and Get Involved, which matches volunteers’ interests and personality with the needs of volunteer organizations.
Face-to-face meetings and conference calls are also important ingredients in the mix.
A web that works
“It’s a web that works together,” says Graham, “furthering the objectives of Volunteer Canada, namely promoting thought and practice leadership as well as its relationships with stakeholders and its own organizational health and sustainability.”
Graham insists that “everything always relates back to our mission. Each media is used according to its demographics and strengths. For example, we use Twitter to share links and Facebook more for conversation and opinion.”
Let me disclose that Graham is a client. Naturally, I met him volunteering, for the International Association of Business Communicators.
Recently I produced an annual report with him. When we were planning, president & CEO Ruth MacKenzie expressed her desire to collaborate with the association’s many stakeholders.
So I suggested we create a report in an interactive blog format where members could express their opinions on specific questions and share their stories. Grasping how this would his would help them listen and shape their brand together, Ruth and Graham immediately agreed.
Conversations with stakeholders
This interactive format stimulated conversations about the burden of volunteer screening in sports leagues and similar groups as well as the role of new Canadians in volunteering, underscoring the importance of these issues to Volunteer Canada leaders.
What’s more, it demonstrated that Volunteer Canada wanted to hear from members who would be more interested in the report than Facebook updates. As Deborah Gardner, executive director of Volunteer Toronto, told me: “It meant a lot to us that we were asked.”
Graham urges non-profits that have not taken the plunge “to recognize that social media is here to stay. You need to collaborate with your audience to define your brand and these channels help you do that. Your brand isn’t only about how you want to be seen, but how others perceive you,” he says.
Collaborative brand
“Anybody can sit down and tell you what their brand values should be, but you need to take a look at how people see you. That’s especially important for nonprofits.”
Reflecting on a recent podcast he produced with social media guru Brian Solis, Graham pointed out that “ín this day and age, people have more power than ever before to influence change. If you base everything on the objectives, then chose the right channels, you will do the right thing.”
Volunteer Canada “is very progressive and innovative, so there were not any issues,” he notes. However, communicators for nonprofits who run into resistance are advised by Graham “to say why it’s important, why it drives your objectives. And put your time and energy into deciding which channels are getting the most traction.”
Just as gray is the new black for fashionistas, so storytelling has become the new social media for corporate communicators. Book after book, from The Tipping Point to Made to Stick, insist that we tell stories. Microsoft has even created a new position senior director of storytelling.
Whoa!
As someone who has been telling corporate stories for many years, let me interrupt with an emergency news flash. Yes, storytelling is the best way to capture attention, hearts and memories and make your point. But it’s much more difficult than other forms of nonfiction writing.
Just like in a story, though, the higher the mountain, the more rewarding the quest.
After I watched the presentation of friend Donna Papacosta from the IABC world conference, I realized it was time to share what I’ve learned as a creator of corporate story moments. I know I should tell a story here, but it’s difficult to have a story-generating conflict with someone as nice and smart as Donna.
Until it became trendy, I did not consider myself a storyteller. If I were, I would have written hit novels and screen plays. I have tried, but I just can’t sustain the long and loopy story arcs.
Short vignettes
Lucky for me, corporate storytellers don’t have 300 pages or two hours to spin the yarn. We have a few sentences, pages at the most, or a few seconds, minutes at best.
So although I have learned a lot about the craft from screen writers and novelists, especially Stephen King’s On Writing, I have spent more time reflecting on the short stories told in television commercials. Or at least that’s how I justify hours flopped out on the couch when my eyes and brain are too tired to read or write anymore.
The main difference between television commercials and corporate storytelling is truth. Commercials are about fictional characters who we can relate to because they are just like us or the people we want to see ourselves as. But the characters in corporate stories can’t be idealized. They have to be real.
Short, real stories can be employed in many ways, from anecdotes that introduce your presentation to detailed case studies to quick examples.
Heroes we love
My favorite is the regular-employee-as-hero tale. These almost always involve our hero coming through for customers and co-workers despite a Herculean challenge: the ravages of the tornado, tsunami, ice storm or other natural disaster… the bombing of the twin towers or other violent event… the project with the impossible deadline… the new mission-critical system that doesn’t work… the evil competitor stealing clients… the heartless bureaucrats destroying dreams … I could go on, but you get it.
That magic comes not only from recognizing typical employees as heroes, but also from showing examples of the behaviour the organization would love other people to emulate.
Notice that these story lines are all based on conflict and resolution. You cannot have a story without conflict. The more insurmountable the challenge seems, with setbacks thrown in to build tension, the more dramatic the story will be. The more dramatic the story, the more likely are people to pay attention, remember and think about how the narrative applies to them.
Conflict is vital
Unfortunately, some corporate folk like to pretend they don’t have problems. This makes it impossible to tell a story. Air brushing the facts also undermines their credibility.
Fortunately, you can often find inhuman forces that will spark the conflict, as in the natural disasters and violent events I just mentioned.
Better still, finger an outsider bad guy, as in the evil competitor or the heartless bureaucrat. The us-against-them mentality will kick the chronicle and unite your audience against the common enemy.
Hi-def emotions
The better you develop the character of your villains and heroes, the better your story will be. Your audience has to care about the hero. If Val had to first make sure the home generator was powering her dad’s dialysis machine before rushing into work, we love her all the more. If Tony sacrificed fantasy sports camp to meet the deadline, our applause will ring louder.
But sometimes the conflict has to come from within, as with the flawed system your IT department developed or bought.
To deal with that, you can admit that life is messy and we learn best through our mistakes. Or you can imply that the conflict came from a situation and not an individual. Spend as little time as possible blaming and move on. This does, however, water down the drama.
Of course, anyone who works in corporate communication knows how compromises get you through the approval process. Write a Cadillac, but settle for a Volvo. The good news is that compelling stories can often grip micro-managing approvers so tightly that they’ll interfere much less than usual.
Character slices
Because corporate stories are short, you don’t have much time to build character. So select only the most telling details. And remember the advice of my grade 9 English teacher: develop the character of your heroes and villains through what they say, what they do and what other people say about them.
Although you want to keep your corporate stories real, you can ignore or photoshop details that would bog down the story or embarrass your heroes. For example, I will often tighten dialogue or clean up glaring grammar mistakes, especially with people whose first laguage is not English. If I’m telling the story in print, I don’t need to mention that my hero has a wandering left eye or strange taste in jewellery.
Your story
Similarly, if you’re telling your own story, you don’t have to blow your life wide open, just reveal a few details that make your audience say, as they do so well in the television commercials, “He’s just like me.”
Don’t toot your own horn. It’s fine to write an effusive introduction that someone else will recite, but when you’re talking or writing a personal anecdote, be humble, even self-deprecating, if you want to be loved.
I read one blogger who tells too-perfect personal stories to introduce her advice-filled posts. However, I would take her more seriously if she occasionally mentioned bingeing on cookies or yelling at her husband.
Because posts are often more personal than corporate storytelling, it’s not surprising that some of the most moving storytellers live in the blogosphere. Naomi Dunford, who combines tales of personal tragedy and triumph with smart internet marketing advice, is one of my favorites.
Common ground
Naomi cuts to the visceral feelings level that everyone shares. In one post, she told the story of being broke with a sick baby on the way, then suddenly achieving internet success. I remember the post because I can relate to worries about money and loved ones and stubborn optimism.
This need to communicate from a common ground is why leaders should avoid mentioning luxury vacations and talk more about precious moments with their children or lessons from working construction in college. And don’t forget that you can decide on that common ground only by clearly understanding who you are telling your story to.
Although classic storytelling advice may go on about the importance of setting, remember that corporate stories are short. If you want people to read your account, you need to grab them by opening with the conflict, then circling back, but only to the scene, context or back story bits that are absolutely vital. As with character development, select only very specific and colorful details that will best paint the picture or make your point.
Get to the point
Ever since Aesop’s fables, around 600 BC, there’s been a moral to the stories we tell. Corporate stories have to have a point too.
Most corporate storytellers clearly state their point, in the introduction and the conclusion.
Remember that if the point doesn’t quickly become obvious, your readers will feel like you do when you’re listening to a wind bag talk about her weekend, while drumming you fingers and saying to yourself: “Get to the point!”
To sum up, here’s what corporate storytellers need to remember
- Be concise
- Keep it real
- Base your stories on conflict and resolution
- Drive the conflict with heroes and villains
- Develop your characters by selecting specific, colorful, telling details
- Clearly state the point of your story
- Appeal to emotions your audience can relate to
- Relate to your audience from a common ground
Learn from the masters
Although much of my advice has focused on the constraints of corporate storytelling, please don’t limit yourself. You’ll find the best storytellers in books, movies, television and advertising.
Learn the techniques from the epic masters. Then distil them into magical corporate story moments.
Now that everyone writes so much every day, we corporate writers often feel the urge to help people who don’t have our training, experience and DNA.
Our skin crawls when they write it’s instead of its, especially in 44-point font on a PowerPoint slide. Our stomachs churn when we try to make sense of a jargon-filled plan. Our brain synapses dim as we struggle through a long-winded email.
We are needed. We want to help.
But how? This subject comes up a lot at IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) gatherings, where my fellow professionals keep saying that we should coach more.
What is coaching?
However, I’m not always clear on what my colleagues mean by coaching. It’s not the same as sports coaches screaming at sweaty athletes. That would get us fired. And it’s not like those life coaches, with their perky aphorisms and acronyms.
So I asked a career coach, Lee Weisser, who has invested a lot of energy into training and coach certification. She also has a master’s degree in adult education. Better still, she has many years’ experience as a corporate writer. She gets us — and the people we want to help.
How performance management differs
The first thing to understand, Lee insisted, is the difference between coaching and performance management.
Coaching is about asking people questions until they come up with the answers themselves and reveal truths. That way, they’ll gain insight and take ownership, she pointed out.
Performance management is about setting objectives in collaboration with people who need to improve, then working with them to determine how to best to achieve those objectives.
Coaching strengthens the positives; performance management fixes the negatives.
My telling tale
The trouble is that coaching doesn’t always work, I replied, citing the example of the coach-style psychiatrist I visited back when I was a stressed member of the corporate world. I would rant about all the obstacles and injustices in my life, while he would nod.
While the outbursts had a temporary calming effect, nothing much changed. Until he gave me some performance management-style advice.
One day when I was going on about how frustrated I would get when the subway was late, the shrink finally spoke up and said: “Leave 10 minutes earlier.”
My life changed. I became more punctual and less stressed.
A pure coaching approach is even less likely to work with many of the people you want to help because they think their writing is just fine. They will point to the many splendid diplomas on their walls as proof.
Focus on results
To coach people like that, Lee advised, you need to go beyond writing and ask them about the results they want to achieve.
For example, with a professional who is frustrated by his difficulties in becoming a well-recognized expert, you might ask about the people he wants to impress. Then you could ask him about the writing style that would appeal to them.
After that, you could tilt to the performance management side, giving him tips on what to do and what to avoid. You could offer to go over his next attempts until he gets the hang of it.
Shifting balance
I combine the coaching and performance management approaches when I’m training people about writing, based on my ebook Write like you talk–only better.
I start out as a coach, asking workshop participants what makes them really connect with people in conversation. Here, I’m uncovering a positive truth, the talent for communicating most people honed as a kid. Then I ask them how they might apply that to their work writing.
Because many can’t fully answer the second question, I have a list of tips, which means I’ve tilted the scale from coaching to telling them what to do, performance management.
Then the balance shifts back to coaching, as I ask the participants about the person they most want to connect with. I feed them two questions to focus on: What gets her up in the morning? What keeps him up at night?
For corporate objectives
Performance management would carry more weight than coaching if you are training about a corporate objective the individuals don’t necessarily own. For example, likely your organization knows that people are squandering too much time reading and writing long emails.
By pointing out the personal benefits of improved productivity, understanding and retention, you can try to persuade employees to own the objective of writing concisely, which would move the conversation back to coaching.
You could also ask them to come up with their own strategies for accomplishing this. But soon you’d return to the performance management style of advising them how to do it.
Strength to build on
The weight you place on performance management is also determined by how much strength they have to build on.
For example, it’s unproductive and probably futile, for me to figure out on my own how to assemble my new shed. No matter how deeply I long for protection for our bicycles and garden tools, I suck at mechanical tasks. I don’t have enough positives to build on. I need performance management, not coaching. Or probably outsourcing.
Unfortunately, your co-workers probably can’t outsource all their work writing, not only because of the potential cost, but also because of all the expertise, thinking and personality that must be pulled out of their brains.
Although coaching is trendier, Lee concluded, it needs to be balanced with performance management. The big challenge is to keep fine tuning the balance for the individual you want to help.
I opened my talk last night to the Toronto chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators with a story about the day I first realized I was in the right career.
I was lugging news releases, in heels of course, to the Ontario press gallery. I looked up at the grand legislative building, the pink palace as we called it, and felt so thrilled to be part of the political drama, to know I was having an impact, to realize how much I loved writing that helped people make sense of their world.
I was so exhilarated I felt like throwing my hat up into the air, just like my TV role model, Mary Tyer Moore, whose reruns I used to watch daily.
Even though many people in the audience were too young to know the show, about a small town girl taking on the big city, they could relate. First thing this morning, I got an email from one of the participants, telling me about her Mary moment, which climaxed with Donald Trump’s jet.
I hope I’ll hear more.
Only a story could go deeply into my feelings and connect at that level with all the people who’d had the same kind of ah-ha moment.
What’s yours? Tell me the story behind your Mary moment.
A few months ago, I heard Don Tapscott talk about his new book, Macrowikinomics. I’m using it in my talk to IABC this Tuesday evening, so I’d better practice this tongue twister title. You try it.
Don compared the changes our society is going through to the introduction of the printing press. In mediaeval times, monks spent decades copying the bible by hand. Then along came Gutenberg.
Priests were up at night worrying about losing control as more people could read and interpret the Bible. Kings lost sleep fretting about losing control now that people could understand more about their world.
These days, as Don said, the revolution involves people connecting with each other through social media. Hosni Burak and other politicial leaders have found out what that can lead to. No wonder some of our business leaders and bosses are losing sleep over the erosion of their control.
The revolution should play out well for professional communicators like me. After all, we are experts at connecting people.
Still, I’m losing sleep. Where will I find the energy to keep climbing those learning curves? How will I make my online friendships tighter? How will I keep up with all the new demands on my time?
Fortunately, I love learning and people and the work I do. And I’m comfortable writing like I talk.
I will figure out the rest.
I will welcome the new day.