Public Relations Is a Personas Business

By Julie Wright —President
Twitter: @juliewright

It’s so easy today to get glued to our data, dashboards and digital interfaces as we develop and manage content marketing and other web-based communications strategies. But it’s important to remember that public relations is still a people business—or more accurately, public relations is a personas business.

As you monitor email click-through rates, social media engagement and website referral traffic, remember that behind every data point is a real person.  And to do your job for your client or company, you need to deeply understand your audience and what makes them tick as well as click.

So how can you develop and use personas to guide your communications?

1. Personas Start with Customer Data

Dive into the data you already have. Study your customer database and interview your sales and customer service team to isolate the demographic and psychographic profiles of your customers. Look at gender, age, job title, family status, education, values, hobbies and interests.

Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that there are three primary buckets into which you can generally separate your organization’s customers.

One category might be described as female public relations agency owners who live and work in California, have four or more years of university education, have teenage or college-age children, are interested in social causes, struggle to balance their demanding work schedule with family and personal needs, desire a more active and healthy lifestyle and love Champagne and elephants. (This would be me.) You might name this persona “Julie.”

You would do the same for the other two customer categories and explore their basic demographic similarities as well as their shared goals and challenges, values and fears. Let’s say the next persona is freelancers who work from home while looking after toddlers and school-age kids. We’ll dub this persona “Mark.” The third is professional women who are now empty-nesters who we’ll refer to as “Lisa.”

Once you’ve painted a data-driven picture of these three fictitious personas, you need to think about how you would speak to each of them so that they are attracted to your content and ultimately your product or solution.

The first rule of good communications has always been to know thy audience. Knowing them through this analysis of your existing customer data will help ensure that your content marketing pieces will better resonate with people like them.

2. What Problems Do You Solve for Your Personas?

How does what you do or provide in the marketplace speak to each persona’s fears and values or help them achieve their goals or overcome their challenges?

We know that “Julie” is juggling work-life challenges and has a goal of a more active lifestyle.

What kind of content might resonate to engage her?

How about humorous memes taking aim at the illusion that work-life balance is even attainable for a woman business owner? Or a more inspirational message to help her keep her mojo?

Or perhaps you’d develop longer pieces of content with advice and exercises to improve mindfulness, time management or ideas to help her take five throughout the day?

It’s not the content marketer’s job to convince each persona of what they need. It’s their job to figure out what the persona’s needs are and then speak to them with their content and present their product or solution as the ultimate solution.

3. Validate Your Internal Research with Outside Sources

From social listening on platforms like Twitter, to in-house customer interviews and third-party market research surveys and focus groups, you should invest additional budget and energy into validating your own internal research and hunches while expanding your understanding of each persona.

A custom-designed professional telephone and online survey of your persona audiences may seem a considerable expense, but it’s really a direct investment in ensuring you have nailed your personas so you can hit your KPIs and generate ROI sooner.

If budget is tight, work with your research partner who can create shorter questionnaires that will be more economical and still give you insights that your own digital data lacks. Insights you might gain from surveys are the purchase decision criteria (i.e. innovation, safety, convenience, prestige, speed?) that your personas weight before they buy. Or you can use an omnibus survey and tack on questions that help you understand what the size and distribution of your personas are in your market territory.

You could also design your own Survey Monkey survey using its recommended questions and structures.

For qualitative insights, match a handful of your customers with your personas and then conduct interviews to explore and understand their customer journey and motivations (goals, challenges, fears, and values). These one-on-one interviews might validate or challenge your assumptions and help you uncover new high-octane insights to improve your messaging and targeting. You could also approach this exercise as a focus group.

Once you’ve researched, developed and validated a clear picture of your target personas, for a little more inspiration, get creative with more descriptive names and a composite image for each. Julie, Mark and Lisa should become your team’s besties. Julie becomes “Julie the Juggler.”

You can also make her and your other personas more real and relatable with a composite.

Your research will also help you become more aware of seasonal considerations that also impact your personas’ needs and interests. Julie’s January juggling act, for instance, might include Champagne, New Year’s Resolutions for getting her fitness plan back on track and plans for attending and earning media coverage for a client’s product launch at the Consumer Electronics Show.

With research, you will get these deeper insights into your personas’ worlds so your content can be laser focused to attract their interest and drive action.

4. Go Where Your Personas Are

Imagine Julie’s customer journey starting with a discovery phase. How might you position your content to be discovered on the web, via social media, in news reports, at a conference, in digital ads or via skywriting? You get the point. Understanding Julie’s persona allows you to match her media behaviors with your message placement.

What terms or hashtags might Julie be searching? Make sure that your web content is optimized for those search terms and your social media posts for those hashtags. Focus on her interests and search behaviors versus your product’s features and benefits. You might look at your Instagram data to see which hashtags have driven the most views to your content. Instagram business profiles provide more granular data from which you can derive such new insights.

If you don’t know what social platforms Julie uses, check your Google Analytics data to see which refer the most traffic to your website. You might find that Pinterest is providing as much traffic as Facebook. In that case, make sure you’re creating pinnable content on your site so that it continues to drive Julie from Pinterest to your site. Your branded work-life memes for social media need to be given a home on your website (most likely your blog), in order to have backlinks once they’re shared to Pinterest. That way, they’ll drive web traffic for you as well as social media engagement.

With all of your content, your purpose is to attract, engage, differentiate and drive people to take an action. The ultimate action is purchase, of course, but that’s a big ask. So, create multiple smaller opportunities for your persona to get comfortable with you and your brand before you expect a purchase commitment. Examples of small decisions for Julie, Mark and Lisa might include signing up for an email offer, responding to a contest or incentive, registering to download information or attending a webinar.

Other data sources can give you insights into your personas too so you can track their customer journeys. Google Analytics can show you all referral traffic sources and data to help you understand which websites are driving the most visits to your site and the behaviors people are taking once they land on your site.  Google Analytics can also unlock additional demographic information including interests.

This can provide additional clues to Julie’s, Mark’s and Lisa’s interests and needs but also show where gaps may be opening up in their website experience. Where in the journey are you losing them and what can you do about it?

Your paid digital and social media ads can also be driving Julie and her persona pals to your website. How does the paid traffic compare to the referral traffic coming from media hits, influencer mentions and social media? Often the former can produce more traffic but of lower quality, whereas well-targeted press hits, influencer campaigns and social media campaigns can produce a smaller proportion of overall website visits but with a longer duration of visit, more pages visited and a higher conversion rate.

And isn’t that what you want from your personas?

CONCLUSION: Public Relations is Really Persona Relations

The digital universe has created so many opportunities to serve our messages to more people without ever leaving our desks.

That’s a blessing from a convenience and scale standpoint but also a curse if you spend copious hours developing off-base content that isn’t seen by your ideal customers or doesn’t speak to their needs.

Public relations has always been considered a people business. And that’s what PR brings to the content marketing equation: an emphasis on building relationships over time and not simply a transactional view of each interaction. So, don’t lose sight of the real people behind each click, and think of every interaction that a person—or persona—has with your content as another step in a long-term, ongoing and mutually beneficial relationship.

 

Immersive Storytelling is the Future of Public Relations

future of journalism talk by Robert Hernandez


By Julie Wright —President
Twitter: @juliewright

The future of public relations and journalism are two sides of the same coin, and both are experiencing powerful technological advances that are reshaping how the media and professional communicators tell and distribute stories. While these changes have disrupted old business models and best practices, they’ve also benefited people by making it easier to access and consume the news and content they want, whenever and wherever they want.

The next wave of innovation is immersive storytelling and it’s poised to take content producers and consumers well beyond the two-dimensional experience of today’s news reports or public relations’ white papers, case studies, press releases and b-roll.

What Does the Future Look Like for Journalism?

There are already more mobile phones on the planet than toothbrushes or working toilets. USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Associate Professor Robert Hernandez shared this insight to provide context during his opening remarks April 28 to the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2018 regional conference hosted by the Greater Los Angeles SPJ chapter.

The annual conference attracted hundreds of journalists from across the southwest to the Universal City Hilton, and (W)right On Communications was proud to sponsor Hernandez’s presentation, “What Does the Future Look Like for Journalism?”

Well regarded in media circles as an academic and as a veteran of web journalism, Hernandez urged journalists to become early adopters of new technologies and embrace it for storytelling. It’s a message that holds true for PR pros, content marketers and brand journalists concerned about the future of public relations.

Hernandez pointed out that TV took 38 years and radio 14 years to reach 50 million users but the web took only four, the iPod three and Facebook two to reach the same milestone. Technology is changing how we communicate and doing so at a breakneck pace.

On May 1, Facebook announced that it is introducing augmented reality into its Messenger platform. Soon, Facebook advertisers will be able to provide filters in Messenger that potential customers can apply to experience their product—like a new lip color, furniture or fashion—before buying.

On April 30, NBCUniversal and Google announced that they’ll be partnering to produce original virtual reality content for the NBC, Bravo and Syfy networks including NBC’s Saturday Night Live and Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules, which already has some 360 video available on YouTube. Will virtual reality content for NBC News be close behind?

My guess is that Hernandez would hope so. He urged news media to jump on these new technologies—including immersive 360-degree video, augmented reality and virtual reality platforms—and begin using them as storytelling platforms.

“If you think this is the final form, you’re fooling yourself,” said Hernandez of today’s mobile phones, mobile cameras and social media platforms.

The Future of Public Relations is Tied to New Storytelling Tech Too

Public relations professionals—particularly content marketers—should also be experimenting with these platforms and preparing for the near future of public relations where immersive storytelling becomes mainstream. We have the opportunity to adopt and adapt immersive platforms to communicate not just key messages but key experiences. Imagine how much more persuasive such tools would be in motivating a belief or behavior from your target audience.

And imagine how media outlets would appreciate content like 360 video or interactive augmented reality graphics to support a press announcement or event coverage.

With so much content competing to engage consumers and B2B customers today, it only makes sense that communicators adopt the most engaging and breakthrough new technologies to raise their content and messages above the din.

As Hernandez noted, for cash-strapped newsrooms, this technology doesn’t have to be expensive. He shared a VR tip sheet that includes apps to convert your mobile phone to a virtual reality recording device, several 360 video cameras and VR headsets at varying price points.

Hernandez heads up a VR journalism program at the Annenberg School, creatively named JOVRNALISM. He and his students have produced 360 video reports from places like Friendship Park at the border between San Diego and Tijuana and Korea’s demilitarized zone.

In this video, you can use your tablet or smart phone screen to explore a 360-degree view of the DMZ and listen while South Korea’s loudspeakers blast Lionel Ritchie’s “Hello” across the border.

Media outlets on the forefront of augmented reality include The New York Times. Hernandez cited their AR piece on David Bowie, which documents his costumes and style through the ages. Open The New York Times mobile app or navigate to their mobile website and search “augmented reality” on your iPhone or Android device to see and experience and be inspired by these incredible AR features.

Hernandez described AR as a “new type of journalism.” Here’s how The New York Times described it in their AR guide for readers:

“If photography freed journalists to visually capture important moments, and video allowed us to record sight, sound and motion, then our augmented reality feature goes a step further, making flat images three-dimensional. AR brings our report to you in a way that makes it more immediate than ever before. Imagine if journalists applied this technology to stories on the homeless and other topics where immersive technology can bring an experience to life.”

            – Your Guide to Augmented Reality in The Times

Imagine what content marketers can do when they deliver an immersive case study experience for their targets rather than another six-page white paper.

It’s not difficult to see how immersive storytelling could more effectively drive behavior change or swell a nonprofits’ donor rolls with an immersive public service campaign. Imagine using virtual reality to put your target audience in the passenger seat next to a distracted or drunk driver, in a homeless shelter, in an animal shelter or in a wilderness refuge being threatened by deforestation or climate change.

With augmented reality, imagine that for every donation of $100 to a wildlife cause, an app creates a 360 video of you surrounded by elephants at a watering hole or sitting with a panda bear in a tree and gives you the option to share it on your social networks. On the other end of the spectrum, picture an immersive corporate annual report that takes shareholders into the boardroom, onto the factory floor and into the field.

A new frontier is opening up that incorporates sensors with immersive technologies, says Hernandez. He has tried on a virtual glove that allows you to feel things in a 3D world—from a spider running across your hand to a cup of hot coffee. While this technology is still in the lab, it’s what’s coming next.

Hernandez didn’t omit the ethical questions that these immersive storytelling technologies prompt. In the immediate future, these technologies will be used to manipulate reality for “fake news” and misinformation where virtual reality cannot be distinguished from truth or actual reality. This is a scary downside, given how susceptible to fake news and conspiracy theories the public has shown itself to be.

Just like data privacy, cybersecurity breaches and social media bots; manipulation of virtual reality is another threat that communicators, journalists and society will need to navigate, but the sooner we adopt and become proficient in these technologies, the sooner we can put them to use for better storytelling experiences and the future of public relations and journalism.

“Content is king. This is still holding true. It doesn’t matter what technology we use. It’s how we use it to tell stories. It’s your attitude as a journalist and how you view that technology that determines the future of journalism.”

           – Robert Hernandez, USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism

If your attitude as a communicator is one of curiosity and comfort with change (and I hope it is!), then immersive storytelling technologies should excite you about the future of public relations and the new frontiers they will open for our craft.

5 Habit-forming Podcasts for PR Pros

Podcasts for PR pros

By Julie Wright —President
Twitter: @juliewright

If you’re a communicator today, that means you’re also an information junkie. What choice is there? If you don’t keep an eye on social media algorithm changes, newsroom shuffles and the next big thing, your next campaign could miss its mark.

Podcasts can make it a lot easier for PR professionals to keep up. While you’re driving, commuting or walking the dog, here are five fascinating podcasts for PR pros that you can queue up in your favorite podcast app to stay ahead of the curve or at least keep pace with the shifting media and digital landscape.

1. HowSound: The Backstory to Great Radio Storytelling

Why is HowSound worth a listen for PR pros? Because it’s all about great storytelling, and all great PR campaigns must start with a story worth telling and well told. HowSound digs into the stories that leave you parked in your garage waiting for their conclusion. It also shares the choices radio reporters and podcasters make to more deeply engage the listener. In short, it’s an opportunity to hone your own craft as a storyteller.

Tune in to episodes like “The Value of a Sympathetic Character,” which goes behind the scenes on the popular Heaven’s Gate podcast. Or “Don’t Write. Tell” which explains how a Planet Money reporter made a story on flood insurance memorable.

2. Social Media Marketing Podcast 

Each episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast is a deep dive into a topic related to—you guessed it—social media marketing and explored through host Michael Stelzner’s interviews with experts. The information is always up to the minute and insightful. As a podcast for PR pros, it will help you make the most of the social and digital tools available for your storytelling.  Stelzner, of Social Media Examiner, and his guests are generous with their knowledge. I really enjoyed listening to Sue B. Zimmerman’s interview last month on “Instagram Stories: How Business Can Make the Most of Stories.”

3. How I Communicated That from PRSA

I’ve only listened to the first two episodes of this podcast for PR pros that launched on the PRSA Member app in February, but I have high hopes for it. Its public debut on the PRSA website is expected in April. The first episode featured career advancement insights from a recruiter and the March episode featured a communications leader from the prestigious Cleveland Clinic on the changing role and expectations of her department. April’s episode features a Chipotle executive speaking on reputation management. How I Communicated That promises listeners “real world experiences that help communications professionals hone their skills amidst a rapidly changing environment.”

4. 2Bobs: Conversations on the Art of Creative Entrepreneurship

David C. Baker and Blair Enns are the only voices you’ll hear in the 2Bobs podcast, but for PR and other creative agency principals, CAUTION! 2Bobs can become habit forming. Baker and Enns mine their experiences as agency consultants and conduct incredibly open, frank conversations about the agency business. Take, for instance, this episode titled “How to Drive Your Employees Bat Sh*t Crazy.” (I, of course, have never done that to any of my employees, at least never more than one a week.)

5. Honorable Mentions

I’ve got so many favorite podcasts that my fifth pick is a bit of a cheat because I’ve turned it into a grab bag of favorites that are loosely connected to communications, media and PR specifically. However, here’s my take: as I stated off the top, to be a communicator today means being an information junkie, and that often means a lot of information is competing for your attention in a swipe-left, 280-character world. So, these podcasts are an opportunity to immerse yourself in a topic or a story as opposed to your constant multitasking. Think of these as a meditation or the equivalent of a Sunday Times long read.

Let’s start with Criminal with host Phoebe Judge. It rarely disappoints. The recent episode, “Cold Case,” I found mildly interesting until around the 24th minute at which point I was hooked for the last 10. Check it out if you enjoy a little true crime or mystery. Phoebe’s voice is the crème brulee of podcasting. Listen and you’ll understand.

The podcast Reveal which is a co-production between PRX and the Center for Investigative Reporting is always engrossing. Their episode on Silicon Valley and diversity creatively tackled the subject of gender and race in tech company leadership ranks. They did it by assembling a choir and contrasting a chorus that proportionately represented each gender and demographic. So, you could hear the small number of female voices/CEOs counterpointed against the large male chorus/CEOs or the near solo-sounding voices of African-American singers/CEOs contrasted with growing choruses representing Asian, Hispanic and white singers/CEOs. I suppose you have to hear it to appreciate its genius.

But tune in if just to listen to corporate spokespeople trying their best to cope with uncomfortable questions about issues like diversity, pay equity among female engineers at Google or Tesla’s safety record in its plant.

Hidden Brain with Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, choices and relationships. It’s always thought-provoking and often applies to the art and science of strategic communications.

I’ll save some of my other favorites for a future blog post. But if you’re not already listening to these podcasts for PR pros, you’re missing out and quite possibly falling behind! Let me know what podcasts you think we’re missing! Shoot me a note on Twitter at @juliewright.

(W)right On Communications Best of 2017! #GSD

By Julie Wright —President
Twitter: @juliewright

I’m excited to see what 2018 holds for (W)right On Communications, but when I look back on 2017, I’m awed by all that our growing agency achieved! As we like to say here, we GSD–got “stuff” done! But more than that, we made stuff happen, and that’s how we measure success. Here’s a quick glimpse at the events that made a difference in 2017 from where I sit.

Epic Team Outing to Kick Off the Year

JANUARY: We started 2017 off on the right foot with a trip to Universal Studios to bring our hard-working team together for a fun outing. There was just one little challenge: the torrential rain. Talk about team building. Wearing our ponchos like super heroes, we braved the storm and had a blast. The day left us soaked with memories.

In January, we also celebrated Chance Shay’s promotion to Practice Area Director overseeing the agency’s dedicated B2B & Technology Public Relations practice and Land Development PR & Community Outreach practice. With eight years of strategic communications experience, Chance continues to make significant contributions to (W)right On Communications and 2017 was no exception.

Talking PR Measurement in Miami

FEBRUARY: PR measurement was something we continued to invest in throughout 2017. Attending the Ragan PR Measurement Conference in Miami Feb. 1-2 allowed me to hear from industry veterans, academics and PR leaders from MuckRack, Google, IBM and Spirit Airlines–to name just a few of the great speakers.

Ragan’s 2018 PR Measurement Conference is in San Diego Feb. 20 and 21. If you’re interested in staying on top of the latest in PR measurement trends, tech and best practices, it’s not too late to register here.

Launched “Thoughtful Thursdays”—WOC’s Internal Professional Development Series

MARCH: We launched our “Thoughtful Thursdays” in March. These were one-hour professional development workshops that brought our team together (in-person and via our web-conferencing tech) to learn the latest in PR measurement, media interviewing, social media advertising, integrated strategic campaigns, leading effective meetings and more. Sessions were led by Chance Shay, Kara DeMent and me. I really enjoyed these mornings and now look forward to our 2018 series.

Adding Media Integration Services

APRIL: We added media integration services to our agency public relations services. Unlike traditional publicity, media integration opportunities are paid, not earned, opportunities. They can feature your product or service as part of a national, regional or local news or lifestyle program and will often include a lead generation component. Media integration works extremely well for products that are experiential like a resort or destination, and our hospitality public relations practice and its client partners have made good use of media integration since the service launched.

Opening WOC’s Downtown L.A. Office

MAY: We took a space on the 35th floor of the Gas Tower in the Banker’s Hill area of downtown Los Angeles. Our convenient base in L.A. makes it easier for the team to meet with clients and media plus opens the door to new relationships. Personally, I love my Pacific Surfliner trips up and down the Southern California coast plus exploring all that downtown L.A. offers like the sights and flavors of Grand Central Market.

Taking the PR Measurement Conversation Global

JUNE: Grant and I traveled to Bangkok to attend the AMEC Global Summit on Measurement and annual awards dinner. The conference attracted communicators, media researchers and evaluation experts from across Europe and Southeast Asia. One of the highlights for me was meeting Professor Jim Macnamara in person. Somehow, I had the good fortune to sit next to him throughout the two-day conference. As the author of all the textbooks I studied on PR measurement, I was thrilled to meet him in person and hear about his latest projects firsthand.

A New WOC Strategist as Sweet as She is Swedish

JULY: Sandra Wellhausen joined our team this summer, and it felt like we’d found the missing bolt in an Ikea Billy bookcase box!

Nothing Eclipsed August

AUGUST: Pardon the pun, but a lot of effort went into seeing this major solar event. Being able to enjoy it with friends and family was the result of a great team supporting our (W)right On client partners and operations.

Peak Mindfulness

SEPTEMBER: It was a month of mindfulness for WOC with everyone at the agency focused on major client projects from a video for the City of San Diego’s energy efficiency programs to the grand opening of the University of Redlands’ new San Diego campus. Speaking of universities, our friends at the College of Business Administration at CSUSM had Grant and I in to speak to students during their “In the Executive’s Chair” class. But peak mindfulness (you’re expecting puns, now, I hope?) occurred as Shae Geary and I attended the Yosemite Wellness Retreat Weekend hosted by client partner Tenaya Lodge. We hiked Sentinel Dome stopping for yoga as we started off and once we summited. It was out of this world. Check out the link for their 2018 wellness weekend dates!

Are You Guys Dressing Up for Halloween? Of Course.

OCTOBER: It was another fun Halloween at (W)right On’s San Diego office.

Keeping the Creative Visual Communications Flowing

NOVEMBER: We were grateful that KeAsha Rogers joined our team bringing her graphic and digital design skills and passion to benefit our client partners. She had to hit the ground running as we were full-tilt in a sprint ourselves to launch a rebrand for one of our nonprofit client partners. (KeAsha, 16-hour days aren’t the norm—we swear!)

Making a Difference for a Major Nonprofit Client Partner

DECEMBER: December was the debut of Radiant Health Centers, a rebrand for AIDS Services Foundation Orange County which had been providing HIV testing, prevention and education services and comprehensive social services for 32 years. The nonprofit’s leadership saw the need to offer broader services to Orange County’s most vulnerable LGBT community members. Their launch event was a rousing success, and it was a proud moment for the entire (W)right On team. We have had the good fortune of helping many nonprofit clients over the years, but the courage and vision of Radiant Health Centers’ leadership and supporters have really touched and inspired us.

Not to be overlooked, we celebrated Kara DeMent’s promotion from Communications Coordinator to Communications Strategist in December.

What’s in Store for 2018?

We have so much planned for this year, but at (W)right On Communications, we like to take stock of our achievements and not gloss over the high points we hit in 2017.

2018 will mark a very significant milestone in the agency’s history. And to celebrate it, we’re working on exciting plans that will continue our growth, our ability to produce wins for our client partners and opportunities for our team members to grow and achieve. Stay tuned!

 

When Your Passion is Contagious, it Spreads

Contagious passion

By Julie Wright —President

Twitter: @juliewright

Passion is an awesome thing. It gives you the drive needed to push past obstacles and embrace challenges. But passion alone isn’t enough.

To succeed as a strategic communicator, you need what the (W)right On Communications team calls contagious passion. Contagious passion is one of our core values. Why?

Because, if your passion for your client, pitch or charitable cause doesn’t infect others, you can’t advance it. With earned media, shared media and word of mouth driving more brand connections than paid strategies today, contagious passion is essential to your success as a communicator.

Any trending hashtag is a symptom of an outbreak of shared passion across the Twittersphere. It signifies that thousands of people are fired up about this Sunday’s game or the most recent national “holiday” celebrating chocolate eclairs or brandied fruit.

Similarly, a long string of comments on a Facebook post will raise a post’s visibility on the platform. In a way, the Facebook algorithm is fueled by contagious passion. But to achieve that kind of engagement you’ve got to develop content that contains an idea, concept or image people can connect to emotionally. Without that shared feeling, there’s no reason to care and without a reason to care, there’s no motivation to act. Which means failure.

I have a friend who has a contagious passion for slowing climate change. When she tells me about a book she encountered that examines the top 100 solutions for reversing global warming and what it taught her, it’s not long before I’m downloading my own copy of Project Drawdown and telling others about it. In a matter of 24 hours, I’ve infected three other people with this book’s intriguing research and ideas.

I’ve been thinking about our agency culture and the importance of our values, like contagious passion, because we added a new team member a few months ago. During the interview process and since joining the team, she has made it clear that she has a passion for communications, for her clients and for the work we do at (W)right On Communications.

Her client partners have quickly taken to her because they can see, and more importantly feel, that she cares about their organizations and achieving results for them. Her fast start has been remarkable but no accident. She brought the passion and infected others with it.

Think about the last time you were in a meeting where someone renewed your enthusiasm for a project or won you over to their vision or idea. I guarantee you that their contagious enthusiasm played a big part, and you probably applied yourself to the task with more gusto because you were inspired by it.

You can fake passion, but it’s hard to fake a contagious passion. If your words don’t align with your body language—animated gestures, leaning forward, maintaining eye contact—people won’t pick up on what you’re putting out. If your heart isn’t in it, then your passion won’t feel authentic to others or move them. Most importantly, it won’t fulfill you.

And that’s important. You should love what you do, care deeply about what you’re communicating and be invested in the success of your idea, client or team.

That passion motivates you to excel, to learn all that you can about your client or craft and to challenge yourself to grow and reach mastery.

We all encounter wet blankets in our work life. People who are genetic anomalies and immune to passion. They’re a bummer to work with or for, of course, and probably don’t understand why no one listens to their ideas or wants to go to lunch with them. Think Eeyore.

Those people are probably just in the wrong job or career. Or they’ve given up and lost their mojo.

For others who love what they do but struggle to muster a contagious passion, the cause can often be their own fear and insecurities. They’ve put a wall around their passion because they’re afraid to be wrong, to fail or to show that they don’t know something they should.

For your passion to be contagious, you need to get in touch with it. What excites you? What’s worth sticking your neck out for?

If you have a contagious passion for a hobby or a sports team, invest the same zeal into your client’s business or your employer’s industry to find the joy. It’s possible. Often, the more you invest yourself in a topic, the more exciting it becomes. It’s the difference between the college courses you had to take in your first year and those you chose to take in your senior year.

In the same way that smiling can make you feel better, choosing to find the joy can make you feel the passion. The cart doesn’t always have to follow the horse. The main point is to find it, feel it and spread it to others.

We spend a lot of time blogging here about communication strategies and tactics, but communication success starts with passion and the ability to make others care. What goes around comes around, and contagious passion is no exception. I hope you’ve felt mine and that this post leaves you a little more stoked to make the most of your work whatever it may be!

 

Scaramucci’s Top 5 Fails as a Professional Communicator

strategy is choosing what not to do

strategy is choosing what not to do

By Julie Wright —President

Twitter: @juliewright

If any good comes from Anthony Scaramucci’s 10 days as White House director of communications, I hope it’s the realization that being a professional communicator is no cakewalk and, truly, best left to people who have invested their careers in the profession.

Just as it’s easy to quarterback an NFL team from behind your TV remote, it’s easy to watch a White House press briefing and offer your take on messaging, delivery or timing.

The Mooch was more than a modern-day Icarus who flew too close to the sun – or some other fiery orange orb. He was someone who underestimated how hard good, strategic communication is and how costly and unforgiving bad communication is.

I’ve said it before: there are no shortcuts to PR glory.

The following is a list of cardinal communications sins Scaramucci committed in his short-lived career in strategic communications.

1. Having no communications strategy.

What was the strategy?

Based on the sound bites in the first few days, it was hard to tell. Guess what? You can’t communicate successfully without a solid communication strategy that has the buy-in of your team and client or boss. Scaramucci did submit a communications plan, shared by CNN here (thanks to my former boss, Della Smith, for sharing this link), but it is more of a lengthy memo full of platitudes and commandments that are far easier to promise than they are to deliver. And, again, there’s no overarching strategy. It’s a tactical plan and glorified to-do list for Scaramucci and hardly something a professional communicator would recognize.

The strategy should be based on research and data to support clear and measurable objectives. Ultimately, the strategy guides your decisions and ensures that you’re speaking via the right channels with the right messages to reach the right audiences.

The Mooch opened his kimono to the New Yorker. Not exactly the publication read by the President’s base. His approach showed he was communicating to an audience of one and, to be fair, his communications plan did say that “Comms is a Customer Service Operation—POTUS is the Number One Customer.” However, making the boss happy is not a viable communications strategy.

2. Asking questions without knowing the answers

Professional communicators know that you do not ask questions to which you don’t know the answers. You do your research.

Why? Because credibility is as perishable as a bowl of fresh guacamole at the company picnic.

Professional communicators will often put a five- or 10-minute time delay on their email outbox. They’ll read and re-read an important Tweet before they push it out.

They do this in the same way that they wouldn’t walk into a press briefing without knowing exactly what questions to expect and preparing for them, like his former boss recently did in a press briefing where he was asked about Hezbollah.

So, that’s why a professional communicator would not toss out a Tweet like Scaramucci did accusing the White House chief of staff of leaking Scaramucci’s financial disclosure statement. That document was requested by a reporter and it was released 30 days after Scaramucci had been appointed to the Import-Export Bank as its chief strategy officer in late June.

Professional communicators base their communications on research and data. These elements inform your strategy so that by the time you’re actually communicating, it’s on a solid platform that you can feel confident will produce the desired results. You don’t wing it.

3. Not realizing that nothing is off the record.

OK, first, was The New Yorker interview off the record at all? The reporter says Scaramucci never requested that it be, but later Scaramucci implied he thought it was.

Regardless, the first and last rule of expert media training is that nothing is off the record. The generally accepted rule about going off the record is that it’s up to the source to say in advance that what they’re about to say is off the record. You cannot do it after the fact.

A best rule of thumb is that if you don’t want to be quoted saying something, don’t say it.

It’s not a tough rule to learn, but it sure as heck is a tough lesson to learn when you get it wrong.

4. No key messages

What are key messages?

They’re your mantra, your sermon and your three-point shot all wrapped up in one. You figure out what points you’re trying to make in media interviews before you participate in media interviews.

If I had to retroactively decipher Scaramucci’s key messages based on his interviews and Tweets, they would be: “don’t trust Reince Priebus;” “do trust Sarah Huckabee Sanders and expect her to get ‘better;” “Scaramucci loves the President;” and “Scaramucci has no control over the President’s / White House’s communications agenda.”

After all, amid the White House communications team changes, the President Tweeted that the military would no longer allow transgender men and women to serve. A total surprise to all. And again, no strategy, no messaging and no research or planning to understand the implications.

Scaramucci did mention in his communications plan that “Every Comms message needs to have a nexus to Make America Great Again and jobs.” But if he made either of those points in his New Yorker interview, I certainly missed them, and his many other expletives, insults and accusations would have overshadowed any of them.

5. Not knowing who his friends were before making enemies.

Coming into a new position, it is not unheard of to get pressure from a new boss to clean house for them. If the boss wants to get stuff done and his or her team is struggling to advance their agenda, they will look to find new people capable of carrying out their vision.

But when you become the boss’s enforcer, the first thing you do should not be to put everyone on notice and instill fear and anxiety. That just takes a bad situation and makes it worse. Particularly when your communications plan says priority #1 is improving the culture, as Scaramucci’s did.

You start by building your alliances so that by the time the tough decisions must be made, you’ve created alignment with the people who are staying rather than fear and mistrust.

In other words, you figure out who your friends are first. Even if the President of the United States is your friend, and loves you, you need friends in the trenches with you.

It’s a tough job, being a communicator. It’s highly visible. It’s prone to second guessing. And the stakes are often high while involving judgment calls. That’s why experience counts so very much. As does having a strategy, basing it on solid information, having clear messages to guide your communications, staying away from off-the-cuff comments to the media, and surrounding yourself with people you can trust and with whom you can confidently go into battle.

Get one of these five things wrong and you’ll probably lose a little sleep or have some tough conversations with your boss. But get all five wrong and you’re out of a job and an international punchline.