Are lousy navigation menus killing your intranet?

Every intranet needs navigation menus to help users find their way around.

Although the Enterprise Search is best for scoping out specific items with keywords, navigation menus create a call to action by advertising important options that users may not otherwise know exist. However, not all menus are created equal.

Building great navigation menus comes with experience, so here are six tips to help give your menu-building skills a boost:

1. Keep it simple. Focus on tasks that are essential to your organization’s objectives. Don’t attempt to mirror your entire information structure by cramming in as much as possible. Categorize items logically and in easily recognizable patterns without letting your menu become a cluttered sea of text.

2. Create calls to action with verbs. Start menu item names with verbs instead of nouns. As examples, say “Send Form” instead of Forms, “Request Time Off” instead of Vacation Calendar, or “Register for Courses” instead of Courses. When your menus convey the potential for action, your users will be more likely to use them. This way of labeling menus is also known as task-based navigation versus topic-based navigation.

[FREE DOWNLOAD: A step-by-step guide to assessing which internal communications channels are working for your organization.]

3. Choose horizontal over vertical. Your intranet allows for top horizontal and side vertical navigation menus on any page, but do not offer both. Top horizontal menus are typically favored over vertical menus. If you have to choose one, choose the horizontal. A vertical menu (sometimes called a “hamburger menu”) can take up valuable real estate and impede usability. Sometimes they can actually discourage users from using it altogether. To save space on your intranet but still create large menus, you can use mega menu navigation (see point No. 4).

4. Don’t be afraid of mega menus. Think of mega menus as a design canvas that can enhance your intranet’s usability. They can be used to sub-categorize related content into discreet vertical columns in a dropdown from the top horizontal menu. You can have up to three columns, but don’t overdo it. It’s tempting to add so much content that the dropdown sprawls bellow the fold. Limit the number of items that will appear. Your users don’t want a list of 10 upcoming birthdays or anniversaries in a dropdown any more than you do.

5. Know your audience. Learn more about them; put yourself in their shoes. What do they need? What do they want? Remember, everyone isn’t the same. Different age groups, job occupations, and departments will have different needs and desires. Focus your menu structure on the users, and they’ll be more likely to access your intranet’s offerings and features.

6. Make use of site and page access. Every site and page, such as Department Sites, offers the option to apply view security to specific departments and employees. Use it to limit what different users can see in the navigation menu. This can help ensure that the right information is available to the right people while omitting the rest. That way you can keep your menu simple and more focused on user needs rather than offering a generic companywide menu that doesn’t apply to everyone.

Do you have your own tips for building better menus? If so, please share them in the comments section.

A version of this article originally appeared on Intranet Connections.

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University's digital newsroom an oasis in 'a media desert'

If you handle PR for an organization of any size, you probably know the feeling: You have a dynamic story to tell, but little to no luck in interesting the press.

The problem is compounded at Governors State University, a south suburban Chicago institution whose 5,500-student enrollment might attract journalists in most other markets. Sitting 40 miles outside of major urban area filled with colleges, however, Governor’s State tends to get overlooked by TV camera crews and newspaper reporters seeking a story.

“We’re in a really weird location in terms of media market,” says Keisha Dyson, assistant vice president of marketing and communications. “We’re actually in a media desert, and we have very limited resources. We have a very small staff.”

This year, Governors State is seeing results from a new content strategy with the launch of its new digital newsroom. The site is run on PressPage software, which eases posting and social media sharing. (PressPage is a Ragan partner.)

“Before, we didn’t have anything,” Dyson says. “We did not have a newsroom. This is baseline data for us, which is why we’re thrilled, because before we were getting no attention.”

Student article wins coverage

Take, for example, a student rally in March in a state beset by a budget impasse. Until 2015, the university didn’t even use social media, and its main channel to spread the word was an e-newsletter, says Dyson, the author of the new content strategy.

In January, however, Governors State launched its digital newsroom, so there was a platform where it could give the story some legs.

It wasn’t an easy task. Students at colleges much closer to the urban center were also hosting rallies. Governors State’s two-person comms team drove its own story by posting a graduate student’s article on its platform and notifying reporters with whom the college had built a relationship.

“Similar to your civic duty to vote, you should consider this your civic duty as a student at GSU,” Matt Gentry wrote. “The gravity of the budget crisis for GSU is hard to understate, and the ramifications are especially real for those that expect to graduate after May 2017.”

The rally ended up being covered in the Chicago Tribune, WGN-TV, the Daily Southtown newspaper, and local affiliates for all three major broadcast networks. (The newsroom followed with a story on a rally its students attended in Springfield, the state capital.)

A newsroom story on how Canada geese were nesting at the university also took off in local newspapers and on TV news broadcasts. Maybe statements such as this helped drive interest: “When geese feel threatened, they will typically charge humans from behind striking them with their wing or beak.”

“We got insane coverage of our geese, and that was the result of PressPage,” Dyson says. “We put what was considered an internal story up on PressPage and it became a regional news sensation.”

For a communications shop that didn’t have any previous data to benchmark itself against, this was all rather exciting.

‘Own our own stories’

“We believe we should own our own stories,” Dyson says. “We believe that from this office, we tell the very best stories that are coming out of our university.”

With two people, the university can tell just five or six really good stories a week externally, Dyson says.

[FREE DOWNLOAD: 11 Essentials for a Stellar Online Newsroom]

“I can’t say that we’ve convinced [journalists] to tell the story we want them to tell,” Dyson says. “What I can say is that we owned our own story and we’ve told our own story. And in some instances, we’ve had members of the Chicago media retweet our stories.”

Another story that PressPage turned into a hit was an announcement that its board was freezing tuition, despite the uncertainty of state finances. That won coast-to-coast coverage, from San Francisco to Washington.

“That story got picked up by the Associated Press, and it spread like wildfire,” Dyson says. “That’s a great example of something that would have been traditionally ignored.”

'Professor Fraud’

The platform allows the university to highlight interesting experts. A faculty interview just posted features Bill Kresse, assistant professor of accounting, who goes by the name Professor Fraud and has been featured everywhere from The Washington Post to PBS.

The prof, who harbors a fascination for shysters, “has shared a drink at the Ritz with Frank Abagnale, one of the most notorious con men and impostors of the late 20th century,” the university reports. “He’s rubbed elbows with Frank Sinatra, and he was mentored and befriended by Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, the only federal judge to sit on the bench without going to college.

"Fraud creates this continuous battle of wits between those who are trying to separate us from our money and those of us who are trying to prevent them from doing that,” Kresse says. “So it’s a marvelous puzzle that keeps changing and manipulating, and it really gets the imagination sparked.”

PressPage has also enabled the communications team to begin measuring the success of the stories and adjusting coverage of the campus accordingly.

“We’re using SEO strategy to expand our storytelling,” says Dyson.

@ByWorking

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Will Ferrell hears critics, abandons Ronald Reagan ‘dementia comedy’

The many voices of condemnation seem to have prevailed.

Comedian Will Ferrell’s plan to produce and star in a movie about President Ronald Reagan and the onset of his Alzheimer’s disease drew ire—and obscenities—from many on social media. By Friday morning, posts from @sethrogan, actor Joe Piscopo and politicians all condemned Ferrell, urging him to “not go there.”

By early afternoon, a response finally came from Ferrell’s camp, and The New York Post reported it on Page Six:

The 48-year-old comic confirmed Friday that while he had seen the script and considered signing on to star in and produce “Reagan,” he was no longer going ahead with the project. A spokesperson for Will said, “The REAGAN script is one of a number of scripts that had been submitted to Will Ferrell which he had considered. While it is by no means an ‘Alzheimer’s comedy’ as has been suggested, Mr. Ferrell is not pursuing this project.”

Public figures backed Reagan’s children, Michael and Patti Davis. It was Davis’ open letter to the actor on Thursday that led to outrage about what Hollywood Reporter has described as a “comedic dramedy.”

[RELATED: Turn your health organization into its own media outlet.]

Davis’ letter was published in The Daily Beast; her disgust was evident:

You intend to portray my father in the throes of Alzheimer’s for a comedy… I watched as fear invaded my father’s eyes - this man who was never afraid of anything… Perhaps for your comedy you would like to visit some dementia facilities. I have - I didn’t find anything comedic there, and my hope would be that if you’re a decent human being, you wouldn’t either.

#AlzheimersIsntFunny is one of the hashtags that popped up Friday morning. Michael Reagan posted on Twitter:

Other people whose families have been affected by the degenerative condition expressed outrage, including Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, who posted on Facebook:

On Friday morning, Fox Business News reported:

[Ferrell] has played a president before with his famous impressions on Saturday Night Live of President George W. Bush—but is this crossing the line? The Reagan family thinks so, and so does actor Joe Piscopo, who says while he’s a fan of Will Ferrell, this is an “initiative to take the great Ronald Reagan down. Will Ferrell is one of the great humans on the planet, one of the most talented humans on the planet, but I wish they wouldn’t go there,” he said during an interview with the FOX Business Network’s Neil Cavuto. The movie will focus on Reagan’s second term as president and feeds off suspicion that he has Alzheimer’s.

Families bear the brunt

A caregiver’s forum on Alzheimers.org serves as a stark reminder of the constant care that dementia patients need and the heartbreak it causes families and friends. The organization’s website says one in three seniors dies from Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia.

Before Ferrell’s camp responded, the media noted this is not the “PR buzz” that Hollywood looks for.

Matthew Belloni of the Hollywood Reporter said:

I think there’s a strong chance this film won’t get made now. The outrage and the president’s children coming out and saying that they don’t want it to be made, I think that could have a very detrimental effect on this movie getting the greenlight.

According to The Wrap, a private reading was held for the script with Lena Dunham and Josh Brolin, and it was well-received.

What do you think of the proposed movie and the backlash to it, readers? Please let us know in the comments section.

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What public speakers should know about facial expressions

What happens to your face when you speak in public?

A recent study rated people’s attractiveness after they demonstrated an emotion. It turns out that I will find you attractive if your emotions are easy to read. If they’re hard to read, on the other hand, I’m not going to be so ready to like you.

The finding has interesting implications for public speakers and presenters. Some speakers who, in normal conversation, are personable, friendly, open and relaxed will become emotional zombies when on stage.

What’s happening is that their fight-or-flight response to the stress of public speaking—stage fright, in other words—causes them to lose facial affect particularly, and overall demeanor in general. They become stone-faced, in short.

Further, they’re usually not aware of this shift in their behavior. When I ask someone how they think they did in terms of smiling, connecting with the audience, and generally looking conversational, they’re often convinced that they were their usual charming selves.

So, we go to the video—and they’re astonished. I don’t have to tell them; they can see it. “OMG, I look tragic!” or, “I never cracked a smile once!” are typical reactions.

[RELATED: Speechwriters, join our new LinkedIn group and meet the world’s best executive communicators. Get free tips and strategies, too!]

If you’re a speaker, get used to this idea. You think you’re being your normal friendly, affable self-but you’re not. You look like you’re acting the lead in a Greek tragedy.

What’s to be done? How can a speaker get those normal friendly feelings flowing again—and get them to show up in the face?

Basically, there are two ways.

First, focus on how excited you are to be talking to such a great group of people as the audience in front of you. Get yourself into emotional shape, and prepare your attitude as carefully as you do your content.

Once you’re in front of the audience, pick out a few people to talk to. That feeling of having a conversation (even though a whole bunch of people are listening in) helps you appear more normally animated.

Second, you can simply practice smiling, nodding and generally warming up your face at particular moments in your presentation. Make yourself a note in your speech text [smile here], as long as it’s not a place where you’re delivering bad news, and you’ll liven up your delivery.

Some people find working on their emotions difficult; others find it hard to work on manufacturing smiles. You should experiment to figure out what works best for you. If you do nothing about your affect, you could appear about as jolly as King Lear during his death scene, and you won’t even be aware of the tragedy you’re acting out.

It may seem odd to you to think about managing and practicing your emotions as you might manage or practice your content, but if you don’t, you won’t come across the way you think you do.

A version of this article originally appeared on Public Words.

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NCAA says locales with discriminatory laws can’t host major events

Faced with increasing pressure to repeal controversial legislation, North Carolina’s sports-hosting privileges hang in the balance.

On Wednesday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s board of governors announced a policy that requires cities and states to have nondiscrimination ordinances or statutes in place in order to host tournaments and championship games.

The announcement, made during the board’s quarterly meeting in Indianapolis, comes after North Carolina and Mississippi passed “freedom of religion” laws, which critics say are discriminatory toward the LGBT community.

The NCAA issued a press release outlining its stance, along with a video from Kirk Schulz, president of Kansas State University and chair of the NCAA’s board of governors:

In the release, the NCAA said the decision highlights the organization’s commitment to an “inclusive atmosphere” at its events:

The board’s decision reaffirms the NCAA commitment to operate championships and events that promote an inclusive atmosphere in which student-athletes participate, coaches and administrators lead and fans engage.

The Association considers the promotion of inclusiveness in race, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity as a vital element to protecting the well-being of student-athletes, promoting diversity in hiring practices and creating a culture of fairness.

The organization says the new requirements supplement policies that prohibit the hosting of championship events in cities and states that conflict with NCAA values:

Historically, the Association has used the opportunity to host its events as a means to make clear its values. The Association now prohibits championships events with predetermined sites in states where governments display the Confederate battle flag, and prohibits NCAA members from hosting championships events if their school nicknames use Native American imagery that is considered abusive and offensive.

The new requirement integrates appropriate protections against discrimination into the championships bidding process. Board members feel the measure will provide assurance that anyone associated with an NCAA championship event – whether they are working, playing or cheering – will be treated with fairness and respect.

ESPN reported that two cities in North Carolina—Charlotte and Greensboro—risk losing hosting privileges in 2017 and 2018 for the NCAA tournament’s first and second rounds. The threat is especially strong, as North Carolina has hosted 17 NCAA events in the past 20 years.

The NCAA gave ESPN the following statement:

Currently awarded sites must report how they will provide an environment that is safe, healthy and free of discrimination, plus safeguards the dignity of everyone involved in the event. The information must be reported to the Board of Governors Ad Hoc Committee to Promote Cultural Diversity and Equity, and full implementation is expected during the current bidding process.’

RELATED: How to eliminate corporate jargon and drive business performance with improved communications techniques.

On Thursday, Chad Griffin, president of Human Rights Campaign, issued the following statement supporting the NCAA’s position:

The NCAA has sent a very clear message that unfair and unjust discrimination against LGBT people will not be tolerated by the association, and we hope lawmakers are listening. In order for cities to even qualify to host these major sporting events, they must now have commonsense, LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination protections. We commend the NCAA Board of Governors for taking this critically important stand in favor of fairness and equality.

The NCAA is the most recent organization to take a stand against recent legislation in North Carolina and Mississippi.

Also this month, PayPal canceled its plans to open a global operations center in Charlotte. Shortly after that, Deutsche Bank changed course on opening operations in Cary, North Carolina.

Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Adams, Mumford and Sons, Demi Lovato, Pearl Jam and other musical acts have canceled shows in North Carolina and Mississippi since the laws have been enacted. Executives at Salesforce, Microsoft and IBM have also issued statements protesting the legislation.

On April 12, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory amended the state’s legislation amid growing backlash but stopped short of reversing the statute’s controversial provision that requires transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding to birth-certificate gender.

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3 ways your small internal comms team can compete with the big guys

Are you an internal communicator with a small team and even smaller budget? Do you envy teams and organizations with seemingly unlimited resources?

It’s never been easier for your small team to achieve the same great results as large companies—even on a shoestring budget. Here are just a few tips for maximizing your impact:

1. Conduct a communications audit. Show stakeholders the value of your programs and get increased support.

2. Use low-cost research tactics. Get the metrics you need without wasting time and money.

3. Tap into your workforce for great stories. Use employees’ voices to boost the emotional impact of your messages.

Learn how to do the above and become small but mighty at our Best Practices for Internal Communicators with a Small Staff and Budget Conference, taking place May 11-12 in San Francisco. Find out how well-known companies such as Marriott and Mayo Clinic have made the most of their small internal communications teams.

Register today, and bring your team into the big leagues!

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Why a leader needs two speeds to communicate in a crisis

When Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, Rod West had to tell the truth and tell it fast. As Entergy’s operational executive he was on point to restore power.

When West faced his team after surveying the destruction from a helicopter, everyone had questions. What did you see? How bad is it? What about my neighborhood?

My response was: “Six feet of water; eight feet of water….”

“What about St. Bernard's—you know right where I live?”

“Nine. Feet. Of water.”

As tension grew …finally I said (slowly), “The city is under water. So for most of you, everything you left at home is destroyed.”

New Orleans would be lost without them—they knew that. Hard as it was for everyone, West’s honesty marshaled action. The raw truth called everyone to higher purpose.

Big lesson: Tell the truth, and tell it fast.

In doing research for our book, “Navigating an Organizational Crisis: When Leadership Matters Most,” we spoke with dozens of leaders who had weathered crises. The temptation to withhold bad news, soften the blow, or wait for more information is always tempting. We learned that delivering the truth pronto is the crucial first step toward recovery.

The second step toward recovery requires communication of a different sort. Having been jolted with the truth, people now want to make sense of things. The organization segues from asking, “What just happened?” to, “What do we do with what just happened?” People wonder about the meaning of it all, and the leader has to slow down.

When meaning is disrupted, people feel unsafe and out of control. Meaning—the expected relationships connecting all that we know and value—helps us to trust that we know what is going on. To restore meaning after a crisis, we recommend three strategies. They require thought and care—not breakneck speed.

1. Be the storyteller-in-chief.

Stories can restore meaning. They can make mind-boggling events comprehensible. When leaders act as storytellers, they create an ancient venue for communication—a campfire where the organization can envision a better future.

Yusufi Vali, executive director of the Islamic Center of Boston, was called to the role of storyteller-in-chief for the area’s Muslim community after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.

Once the suspected bombers were identified as Muslims, all eyes turned to the city’s Islamic community. Yusufi was asked by elders to take the microphone. Journalists were in a frenzy. Some reporters’ questions implied members of the community might be in cahoots with the suspects. Others asked about backlash against Muslims as if they were the victims. Either angle positioned Muslims as others, not Bostonians.

Yusufi realized he had to change the narrative. In indignation and growing self-awareness of his previous passivity, he began to reshape the story:

We are Bostonians first, and we speak from that perspective. We tell a narrative of what our institutions, our community is about: teaching and preaching an American Islam, an Islam that’s rooted in compassion, that’s rooted in our commitment to our community and to America.

Yusufi became storyteller-in-chief: “I feel like we are in a historic place in the Muslim community where we are pioneering what a mosque space in America can and should look like.”

Emulate Yusufi after your crisis: Patiently and persistently tell a story that restores meaning.

[FREE DOWNLOAD: 10 ways to enliven senior executives’ communications]

2. Tell the story, with you in it.

President George W. Bush stood at Ground Zero after 9/11 to thank firefighters and first responders. When someone yelled that he couldn’t hear, the president responded: “I can hear you, and the rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” The crowd erupted. Bush found his footing. He was in the story as the nation’s leader.

President Barack Obama reacted to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in 2012 “as a parent.” Feeling “overwhelming grief,” he addressed the nation: “This evening Michelle and I will do what every parent in America will do, which is hug our children a little tighter and tell them that we love them.” Parent, president, and mourner, Obama was fully in the story.

Leadership in a crisis requires narrating the organizational story as a participant—with emotion.

We are often asked whether leaders should display emotion in a crisis. We think the more profound question is how. Emotional tone matters—a lot. A leader’s credibility can suffer if sadness shows up as sobbing or anger becomes rage. Sometimes negative emotions are warranted; equally, positive emotions can seem superficial. The core issue is this: Are you expressing emotions that that you truly feel, and are you in sync with the situation?

Tell the story, make it yours, and don’t hide your authentic feelings. Slow down and honor your gut reactions, and you’ll get it right.

3. Listen to your listeners

Denise Hudson was responsible for quality and the supply chain in a pharmaceutical company when a vendor suddenly failed. She and her team worked “multiple and parallel paths” to produce the important drug in short order. Her ability to listen was crucial to their success.

Denise had honed her listening skills in a previous role as manager of a troubled factory. In a five-hour, confrontational meeting organized by her staff, where she was targeted and blamed, Denise listened and listened, and then they turned the plant around.

Leadership storytelling is much more than one-way communications. Organizational buy-in to a post-crisis narrative happens when a leader’s story achieves a life of its own. Story is told, heard, passed on, reheard, and modified along the way. Listen when your stories return home-and learn what people are really thinking and feeling.

Recovery and renewal are goals, not guarantees, after an organizational crisis. To recover and renew, first tell the truth and tell it fast. Then slow down. To accelerate the natural process of healing, adopt the slower cadence of providing meaning through story.

Harry Huston and Martha Johnson are the authors of “Navigating an Organizational Crisis: When Leadership Matters Most” (Praeger, 2016). A version of this article originally appeared on SmartBlog on Leadership.

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Infographic: How to turn raw survey data into a compelling infographic

The corporate communications world is full of surveys.

Communications pros survey everything from employee engagement to how many people learned about a certain initiative to whether staffers like receiving the cafeteria menu via email. There’s always something new to measure, which means there are always findings for you to share.

An interesting way to do so is with an infographic.

Though it might seem difficult to transform endless spreadsheets of data into an appealing visual, this infographic from Venngage condenses the process into four easy-to-follow steps. It will help you determine which charts are best for certain types of information, how to color-coordinate findings so your audience can understand the story behind the numbers, and more.

[WEBINAR: Learn visual marketing tips from the New York Times and Goodwill.]

Take a look:

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30 jobs in the PR and marketing world

Petite marketing firms are attracting immense talent.

LinkedIn data show that advertising and marketing execs are flocking to smaller organizations—but not for the reasons employers might think.

“People joining small organizations want challenge, impact, vision and culture, but not necessarily [higher] pay,” LinkedIn’s Job Switchers Global Report states.

Almost half of respondents said they wanted to join a smaller organization (fewer than 500 people) because there’d be more challenging work. Forty-seven percent said they were looking to make a greater impact on their organization’s success, 36 percent sought a better culture fit, and 24 percent simply wanted a change of pace.

To retain talent, a few well-known agencies are expanding their employee perks.

“Agencies are hoping chill vibes and happy hours will keep people from quitting,” Bloomberg reports. “Some recent additions to offices include: a barista at New York marketing agency Deutsch, beer at Ogilvy & Mather, and the ever-present ping-pong table at Interpublic’s McCann subsidiary.”

[RELATED: Learn the best new strategies for improving PR results, influence and value.]

Although larger agencies might have a greater capacity for offering enticing perks, LinkedIn data show that most professionals aren’t taking the bait. Instead of unlimited vacation and free food, marketers and advertisers say they want job security and advancement opportunities.

From LinkedIn’s marketing solution’s blog:

Among nine industries that compete directly for the same talent, ad agencies ranked last when it came to perceptions of its “work/life balance” and “long-term strategic vision.” The agency sector ranked next-to-last in “compensation and benefits,” “strong career path,” “job security,” and “values employee contributions.”

If you’re an executive who’s thinking a smaller outfit might better suit your needs, consider an associate producer position with “experimental marketing agency” MKG.

Candidates for the Los Angeles-based job should have two or more years’ experience in product, project and campaign management. Applicants for this client-facing role should be prepared to manage and execute events, projects and partnerships on behalf of the client and communicate with team members across in-house departments.

Not the job for you? See what else we have in our weekly professional pickings:

Performance marketing supervisor— Essence (Illinois)

Digital marketing associate— Curious Notion (California)

Content manager— Institute of Culinary Education (New York)

Senior client manager— Landor (Germany)

Editor— Adweek (New York)

Heart online content editor— Global (United Kingdom)

Media planner— Ogilvy & Mather (New York)

Social media manager— Brandtailers (California)

Digital communications associate— Artisan Talent (Illinois)

Senior product marketing manager— Gorkana (United Kingdom)

Outbound sales and marketing intern— The 7^th Chamber (New York)

Copywriter— Red House Communications (Pennsylvania)

Social and digital marketing specialist— Corporate Ink (Massachusetts)

Assistant project manager— Unitcom Eesti (Estonia)

Social content director— Laundry Service (New York)

Freelance senior data strategist— Deutsch (California)

Digital experience manager— Aspire (United Kingdom)

Marketing management trainee— Iron City Acquisitions (Alabama)

Social media supervisor— Socialyse (Massachusetts)

Marketing associate— Zeta Interactive (New York)

Marketing project manager— Yodelpop (Illinois)

Digital marketing research analyst— KTBO (Mexico)

Digital media buyer— Fluent (New York)

Marketing analyst— Aon Hewitt (Canada)

Copywriter— The Integer Group (Colorado)

Brand manager— Tarsh Lazare Marketing Recruitment (United Kingdom)

Performance marketing manager— Spotify (New York)

Digital producer— Avid Design (Georgia)

Lead copywriter— Allstate (Illinois)

Public relations manager— Hogan Lovells (New York)

If you have a position you would like to see highlighted in this weekly jobs listing, please email me at clarel@ragan.com.

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7 steps to accelerating your writing

Ask a bunch of journalists or professional writers how many words they can produce in an hour, and you’ll get a dog pile of half-answers and creative guesses.

I know, because I did that recently.

I surveyed more than a dozen friends—all of whom I know to be reasonably fast writers—and none of them could answer my question with any certainty. Their responses ranged from 200 words (Peter, I know you’re way faster than this) to 1,500.

Most of them observed that editing or revisingtakes much more time than writing—a sentiment I echo heartily. A few had amusing comments. One said: “Give me an hour until deadline and then the answer is ‘as many as you need.’” Said another, now retired: “I wrote the articles in my head before typing them. It saved on white-out.”

A third said: “I—or anyone—can write crap as fast as I can type…” (I don’t think she realizes how many people struggle with producing a crappy first draft, for all the reasons I outline here.)

We all have our own grounds for wanting to write faster. For some—freelancers and contract workers—it’s a question of money. The faster they can write, the more they can earn. For others, employers expect them to be fast or to do more with less. For still others, it’s because they have a book burning a hole in them and they want to produce that 80,000-word manuscript in their “spare” time.

So, if you need to pick up your writing speed, here is my seven-step guide for writing faster:

1. Know your word count before you start. If your boss or client won’t give it to you, give it to yourself. The difference between 50 words and 500 and 5,000 is the difference between being chilly on a sunny day in March in Portland, Oregon; being in New York on Jan. 5; and being in the Arctic in winter. You need to know what gear to bring to prepare yourself. Writing is no different. If you don’t know your goal, how can you possibly understand how much research you need to do?

2. Don’t start by sitting at your computer or by researching. Instead, begin with thinking. Get away from your desk, and do something that keeps you physically busy but your mind free. (Walking, running and cycling are all good ideas.) Don’t expect the thinking to happen by magic. Instead, give yourself an explicit “writing assignment” before you head out on your walk, run or cycle. I’m an inveterate walker, and before I leave for the bank/library/grocer/post office, I always give myself a piece of writing to ponder.

3. Do your research. If you’ve done your thinking carefully, you’ll be like Goldilocks—able to do the “just right” amount. Research is like porridge: You don’t want too much, because this means you’ll have wasted your time. Nor can you survive on too little, because then you’ll get frustrated when you try to write. To get exactly the right amount, you have to know your word count and to have thought about your approach. (See steps 1 and 2.)

[WORKSHOP: Learn advanced techniques for corporate storytellers and writers in this event hosted by Mark Ragan and Jim Ylisela.]

4. Create a mindmap. I’m a zealot on the topic of mindmapping. To make your mindmap even more effective, be sure to put a question—rather than a topic—in the middle of the page. For example, if you’re writing about a new product your company is manufacturing a topic-oriented approach might have you writing “XYZ product” in the center of your page. Do you see how dull that is? Surely you’ll get better results if you ask yourself: “Why is XYZ product so important to our company?” Our brains love questions like this, because they challenge us and demand answers.

5. Batch your work. If I’m cleaning my office (which, shamefully, I seldom do), I know I achieve more if I do all the dusting at once. Then all the vacuuming. Then all the scrubbing. Like attracts like, and you enjoy certain efficiencies when you do the same types of jobs at the same time. Writing is no different. Don’t turn your writing into a gigantic hairball of researching, writing and editing all at once; madness that way lies. Instead, after you’ve finished researching, write your crappy first draft. Know that no one else should see this draft; it’s for your eyes only.

6. Record your writing times. I shocked myself when I learned how few of the professional writers I contacted had any idea how many words they could produce in an hour. Yes, it’s true that every piece of writing is different, but if you time yourself regularly, you’ll soon be able to determine your range. For example, you might learn that you can write something “easy” at a rate of 750 words per hour and something “hard” at 350 words per hour. The actual number doesn’t matter; knowing it is what’s important. I’ve started keeping a spreadsheet in which I note the following metrics: name of the story, date I wrote it, how many words I wrote, how long it took me to write, how long it took me to edit. Having this sort of detailed information makes it far easier for me to make accurate and realistic bids on future jobs for clients.

7. Stop editing while you write. Many people seem to be addicted to editing while they write, and I teach a lot of clients how to break the habit. Here are the six most useful ways I’ve found:

• Cover your screen. If you can’t see what you’re writing, you can’t edit it. If you’re on a PC you can turn off your screen, but if that feels too drastic, then just cover it with a dishtowel. If you’re writing a long piece (such as a major report or a book) that’s taking days, weeks or months to complete, I suggest you keep the manuscript in a master document and simply copy the very last sentence to a fresh one. If you use that fresh one for your daily writing, you won’t be tempted to go back and start editing.
• Use the pomodoro. This little bit of magic, developed by Italian inventor Francesco Cirillo, asks you to spend 25 minutes focused on a single task-no email, no Internet, no phone, no talking with co-workers. For me, said task is almost always writing, but I also use the pomodoro when I’m trying to finish anything I dislike doing, such as getting my accounts to my bookkeeper. I believe the pomodoro works because the unit of time is so small. Even if we’re faced with something we dislike, who can’t do it for 25 minutes? (If even that seems daunting, try a five-minute pomo.)
• Use a noisy timer. The pomodoro calls for using a noisy timer so you hear the tick-tocking sound in the background while you write. At first I thought that idea was counterintuitive and crazy, but a friend who started pomos at the same time loved it. When I asked her why, she said, “I find it a comforting wall of sound.” I found her phrasing so poetic that I resolved to try it myself. Now I, too, am addicted to the tick-tock. Perhaps you think I jest? I do not. I always write with a clicking clock in the background, and I believe Pavlovian conditioning has taken control of my mind. I mean this in a positive way. As soon as I hear the ticking, I feel like writing.
• Use promissory notes. Like many writers, I frequently encounter questions as I write. Does Jenni Brown spell her last name Brown or Browne? Is Malcom Marongo the VP of marketing or of new product development? How much did it cost the company to develop XYZ product? True, all these questions are important, but you don’t have to answer them when you’re writing. Instead, put a note or a blank space in your story and check the facts when you’re doing your editing. For example: Jenni Brown [sp?]. Malcolm Marongo [job title?]. XYZ product [cost of development?]. Do you see how quickly you can write yourself a note and avoid getting pulled down the time-consuming rabbit hole of fact-checking while you’re writing?
• Practice with Write or Die. You can put the prod in your productivity by practicing with a great online app called Write or Die. (Free online or $20 to download to your desktop.) Simply enter your desired word count and your time-writing goal, and then click “write.” Start composing in the blank screen, and notice that it starts to turn pink when your fingers fail to move on your keyboard. The longer you don’t write the pinker the screen will become until, finally, it’s a deep rose. Then, suddenly, your computer will emit a loud unpleasant sound. It might be a car alarm. A crying baby. Disco music. I still use Write or Die several times each year just to remind myself—a relatively fast writer—how much time I waste staring off vaguely into middle space.
• Acknowledge the nasty voice inside your head. We all have unpleasant self-editors and internal second-guessers just dying to tell us what we’re doing wrong. This piece is too boring. My boss is never going to be happy with this. I’ve never been able to write anything that’s any good. Do not ignore this voice. Instead, tell him or her that you’ll be willing to listen when you get around to editing. If you’re as tough with this voice as s/he is with you, then you stand a better chance of extracting your crappy first draft with less pain.

The ancient Greek aphorism"know thyself" applies to many areas of life, though perhaps none so acutely as writing. If you know how much you can do in a given block of time, you will be better off than the vast majority of other writers.

Further, if you measure your writing time, you’ll have taken the first step toward improving it.

This article first appeared on LinkedIn.

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Final deadline is May 11 for PR Daily's Nonprofit PR Awards

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Why content marketing is more challenging than ever

If you’re a marketer, the phrase “content is king” is probably already a motto of yours.

More and more companies are turning to content marketing to share their stories, build brand image and drive traffic to their websites and stores. However, the proliferation of online content has created an array of challenges for communicators.

1. Audiences are overwhelmed. There’s simply too much content for them to pay attention to it all.

2. Algorithms are changing. Getting your social media posts seen is hard to do without paid support.

3. New platforms keep emerging. How do you integrate trendy websites into your content marketing plan when they appear almost daily?

Get the insights you need in order to overcome these challenges at our Content Marketing Summit on June 7-8 in Atlanta.

You’ll discover how to tell stories that set you apart, amplify the reach of your content and boost your ROI. Register today, and develop a content marketing plan built for success in today’s media landscape.

Register here to save $100!

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6 terrific platforms for bolstering employee engagement

It’s one thing to try to attract and retain customers, but have you ever thought about the importance of employee retention and how your workers relate to your marketing efforts?

With the help of some amazing platforms, organizations are amplifying their recruiting, retention and engagement efforts.

A more inspired workforce leads to increased employee retention, better morale, enhanced productivity, and heightened customer satisfaction, improving bottom line results.

Overall, the components of the employee engagement platforms below are very similar. Each includes an incentive or rewards program, real-time feedback and analytics on progress. Determining what will work best for your company depends on how many employees will be using the platform and what the long-term company goals are.

Employees are your most vital marketing tool, and internal engagement isn’t just the responsibility of HR; it’s essential for marketing success.

1. Spur employee engagement with HighGround.

HighGround is a mobile-friendly platform that focuses on peer-to-peer and top-down recognition in real time. Surveys, benchmarking and polling gather feedback from the entire organization more quickly, creating a more collaborative environment and helping employees to set and track quarterly goals that align with company goals.

This goal-setting process is transparent throughout the organization to get and keep everyone on the same page. It easily integrates with other business systems, so users won’t have to adjust their workflow.

[FREE DOWNLOAD: A step-by-step guide to assessing which internal communications channels are working for your organization.]

2. Develop a culture of employee sharing and social media activity with PostBeyond.

PostBeyond is a user-friendly platform where your employees can log in and locate pre-approved articles to share.

Administrators create and manage the content they want users to share, and they can even assign that content to be shared within specific groups, such as industry-related articles, blog posts, pictures from company events and newly created content pieces.

Once these articles are pulled together, internal employees can log in and, with just one click, review the preapproved streams of content for quick and easy sharing on social media.

After the content is shared, PostBeyond offers the ability to track reach, clicks, shares and more. There is a leaderboard that shows top performers and encourages engagement by making actionable results visible. The leaderboard displays which users are most active, who is generating results for your company and what content type is most effective. As with many social media tools, users can post instantly or schedule content for later.

3. Encourage employee feedback with WooBoard.

WooBoard combines social interaction, internal conversation and an incentive system called the Reward Store. As employees interact they gain points, which they can cash in for popular gift cards. Who wouldn’t love that?

Another feature focuses on reports and analytics that provide insights on engagement and culture adoption, while keeping tabs on internal talent.

4-5. Motivate and strengthen company culture with Pomello and TINYpulse.

Pomello focuses on determining what motivates employees. Its frequent surveys help you understand and identify engagement trouble spots. The analytics outline areas to improve employee experience, detailing job satisfaction and pinpointing gaps between personal and team values. The graphs help you see whether job candidates will fit the current team culture.

TINYpulse is primarily an employee feedback system. It provides a mixture of management surveys and “cheers” authored by colleagues to encourage frequent communication.

Each week management can send out questions asking employees to rate items or respond with their opinion. Responses can be anonymously sent to management, allowing employees to provide honest feedback about problems and preventing a buildup of frustrations.

The “cheers” aspect lets employees recognize a job well done or improvement of key skills. This peer-to-peer recognition can be more powerful than management recognition.

6. Encourage and facilitate mentorships with Everwise.

Everwise is software that identifies a mentor who fits a particular employee’s traits and aspirations. Content is curated around the employee’s focus areas. Interactive goal setting guides employees to prioritize areas for improvement. These elements contribute to a well-rounded career development program.

Do I need technology to engage my employees?

Selecting an employee engagement platform is no easy feat, but if you have more than 50 employees, it’s worth the investment. When a business grows beyond a few team members, it’s easy to lose sight of what employees experience every day. From a marketing perspective, that hurts the organization’s brand, because it decreases employees’ willingness to promote it.

By showing your employees that their voices are heard, you’re helping toturn them into advocates. Technology platforms are one important way for larger organizations to do this. However, only a true shift in culture will generate and increase natural engagement. Improvement on internal efforts produces better overall external results, better qualified leads and stronger talent that will improve productivity within your organization.

A version of this article originally appeared on the Weidert Group blog.

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How Cheerios stumbled into a social media firestorm

Social media can be tricky.

The recent death of iconic musician Prince unsurprisingly generated a tidal wave of social media buzz. Among the many heartfelt messages were tributes from big music brands such as Spotify and Pandora, and even unrelated brands like Chevrolet.

One Twitter post, however, stood out from the rest.

This seemingly harmless tweet by Cheerios went viral—the bad kind of viral. Many people shamed the brand and its parent company, General Mills, for taking advantage of Prince’s death to sell their product. The weird part, though, is that other companies posted similar tweets. Chevrolet even included he image of a Chevy in its tribute image but didn’t receive nearly the same negative response.

Where did the Cheerios social media team go wrong? What should it have done instead?

Here’s some advice for sharing branded content during times of mourning:

Be genuine.

Genuine respect for your audience is arguably the most important part of branded content. One reason branded content exists is that people grew tired of traditional marketing treating them like nothing more than wallets.

Cheerios’ tweet may have had genuine intentions, but it’s easy to see how people might think Cheerios was trying to pull a semi-subliminal marketing trick. Your content should never make your audience feel that you’re taking advantage of them.

Cheerios’ team members set themselves up for failure by inserting their product into a sensitive topic and not acknowledging it in any way. Instead, they simply included the hashtag “#prince”. A topic such as death deserves a sensitive approach, and Cheerios dropped the ball.

[RELATED: Keep your cool in a crisis with these 13 tips.]

Be relevant.

Wait, didn’t Chevrolet try to sell me a car in their tribute? Why did they get away with it? Honestly, a large part of that may have been pure luck; maybe Cheerios just got people’s attention first. Or maybe it’s because Chevrolet and other brands kept their content relevant to their niche.

Chevrolet’s tribute used a car, front and center. Spotify included the name of a Prince song. NASA showed a beautiful image of a nebula. Meanwhile, Cheerios sneaks in a single piece of cereal over a generic (albeit traditional) message. It was a halfway measure that seemed to trade risk for wide appeal.

Even when addressing a celebrity death, branded content shouldn’t appeal to everyone; it should appeal to your audience. If they wants to see pictures of cars, find a way to relate cars to that celebrity. If you can’t do that, stick with a simple “RIP” displayed in your brand typography.

Be careful.

When in doubt, stay quiet. If your brand has nothing to do with a recently deceased celebrity, your fans probably won’t fault you for not addressing his or her passing. However, everyone will notice if you advertise your product when most people are paying their respects.

This brings up a related topic-the dangers of automated posts. Many brand managers have learned this lesson the hard way. You never know what tomorrow will bring. There could be an unexpected opportunity for fun branded content, but there’s always the unfortunate opportunity for disaster.

If you can afford it, always have a person post your content manually and in real time. That way, if a sensitive topic arises, the worst thing that can happen is that nothing gets posted.

When handling celebrity deaths, always err on the side of sensitivity. If you know your audience well enough, though, you should be able to judge what will be offensive and what will be appreciated.

A version of this article originally appeared on LinkedIn.

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Infographic: 'High achievers make great managers,' and other workplace myths

Anyone who has ever had a bad boss probably knows that a person’s talent as a marketer or salesman doesn’t mean he will be good at managing other marketers or salespeople.

Managers might have earned their promotions by being high performers, but being a great supervisor and leader requires an entirely different set of abilities.

“High achievers make great managers” is just one workplace myth this infographic from the O.C. Tanner Institute disproves. Others include:

• “Employee engagement is the goal.” A study from Accenture found that 43 percent of highly engaged workers have only lukewarm feelings about staying with their companies.
• “Remote employees are less engaged than those in the office.” Workers who telecommute are slightly more engaged than their office-bound counterparts, Gallup reports.
• “Résumés indicate the best hires.” CareerBuilder says 47 percent of college-educated workers say their first jobs were not related to their majors.

What other workplace myths would you like to see refuted? Please sound off in the comments, and check out the full infographic below:

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5 LinkedIn groups for PR pros

LinkedIn is a lot more than just a place to look for jobs or new recruits.

If you’re looking to stand out as an expert in your business, stay on the top of PR news and events or just get to know what PR is all about, LinkedIn is a good place to start.

Plenty of people use the platform to meet fellow professionals, get tips, exchange ideas and join meaningful discussions. Thanks to LinkedIn’s “Groups” feature, there’s much that PR pros can do to expose themselves to millions of like-minded professionals worldwide.

When it comes to PR, Linked offers many options for those looking to join a group. Here are five that communicators should consider:

1. Innovative Marketing, PR, Sales, Word-of-Mouth & Buzz Innovators:

Gerald Haman—who says his middle name is “Solution Man”—has gathered an unbelievable following with this group. Currently, there are more than 395,000 members; it’s one of the largest groups for PR pros that you can join.

As a member, you can network with professionals that have experience and background knowledge in sales, innovative marketing, PR and promotions. You can also get tips, advice, solutions and links to resources on a wide variety of topics.

2. Public Relation Society of America:

PRSA is one of the world’s largest PR organizations. It is comprised of both professionals and students and has tons of branches nationwide.

Its LinkedIn group is one of the best places to get news on the latest PR events, information on potential job openings and advice from PR pros.

[RELATED: Executive communicators, join our new LinkedIn group and get FREE tips and strategies to improve leadership communications.]

3. PR Professionals:

As the name suggests, this group is an excellent place to network and connect with PR pros and digital marketers from all over the world.

The group has over 85,000 members and with membership rapidly increasing. There’s intense activity among its members, making it one at which you should look.

4. Sport Marketing and PR Pros:

If you think sports and PR is an unusual combination, think again.

PR pros with a love for sports—like its 35,000 members—will find this group hard to ignore. If you’re a person who would love to get to know people while you have a chat about the latest sports news, this is the group to join.

5. Public Relations Professionals:

This is another fabulous group full of PR professionals who love to share ideas, network and discuss the changes in the PR industry. It has more than 53,000 members and seems to be gaining a lot of momentum.

If you’re looking for some diversity, join this group: Its membership ranks include marketing professionals, press officers, food and beverage managers, PR and corporate communications strategists, healthcare professionals, realtor associates and more.

Christina Matthew is a blogger as well as the marketing executive at Groovy Essays.

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Facebook shifts algorithm to emphasize ‘meaningful content’

Facebook’s algorithm is evolving…again.

Users can soon expect to see content in their news feeds that Facebook anticipates they’ll spend more time reading, instead of what was shared most recently. The shift aims to give precedence to content that users will commit to. It’s not just an article’s length, though, that factors into whether it’ll show up in your feed.

Here’s an explanation from Facebook:

We are adding another factor to News Feed ranking so that we will now predict how long you spend looking at an article in the Facebook mobile browser or an Instant Article after you have clicked through from News Feed. This update to ranking will take into account how likely you are to click on an article and then spend time reading it. We will not be counting loading time towards this — we will be taking into account time spent reading and watching once the content has fully loaded. We will also be looking at the time spent within a threshold so as not to accidentally treat longer articles preferentially.

The algorithm change promises to bring a greater diversity of posts to news feeds, ensuring that you don’t see several posts in succession from the same source. From a marketing standpoint, sharing an in-depth article or more explainer pieces could push your content to the top of friends’ feeds.

[RELATED: Get the scoop on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram developments at Facebook headquarters.]

Facebook expects some publisher pages to see “minor decreases” in referral traffic, although most are not expected to see significant changes.

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7 tactics for new grads seeking to break into PR

I recently spoke to a slew of PR classes and the PRSSA chapter at my alma mater. The school had asked me to talk about job search strategies for senior and juniors.

I spent weeks thinking about creative and effective job searching tips for today’s college senior. Here’s what I came up with:

1. Don’t just look for a job—look for the job.

One huge mistake I made coming out of school was that I just looked for “a job.” I just wanted to break in and didn’t care how I did it.

At the time, jobs were tough to come by, so I really just wanted to get that first job in communications. I wish instead that I had identified and pursued the job I really wanted.

2. Polish the areas of your LinkedIn profile that your friends are neglecting.

Most students will be polishing up—or just creating—a LinkedIn profile by their junior or senior year. That’s mere table stakes in today’s social media and job-searching environment. Why not focus on polishing those areas of your LinkedIn profile that your competitors might not be addressing, such as:

• Recommendations. Folks to ask include professors, fellow students you’ve worked with on projects, and intern supervisors.
• Personal info/interests. This might seem irrelevant, but it might be a conversation starter for that first interaction with a recruiter.
• Experience. If you have relevant experience through internships and student work, consider ditching your part-time jobs (waiting tables, etc.). Focus on work you’ve done that is relevant to your chosen career.

3. Use the “new grad” label to your networking advantage.

Here’s the thing about being a new grad—everyone wants to help you. We were all in your shoes once.

Being a new grad wears off quickly, though, so take advantage while you can. As a new grad, you’ll find very few people will turn you down for coffee. It’s a little bit of guilt, and a little bit of, “We’ve all been there, so I should help this person out.” Invite people to coffee you probably wouldn’t think of asking. You might be surprised who says “yes.”

[RELATED: Learn the best new strategies for improving PR results, influence and value.]

4. Identify 10 people you want to meet—and use social media to achieve that.

The big secret most guidance counselors don’t tell you about that first job: You’re most likely to find it through your network—not on a job board—so you’d better start building that network.

Begin by identifying 10 people in your desired industry or who have jobs you might want. Find those people, and figure out how to connect with them via social networks. Do they have Twitter accounts? If yes, look for ways to engage them there; common interests are a good start. Look them up on LinkedIn, and think about asking for a meaningful connection; again, target connection points.

Do they have a blog? Comment on it, but look to add value. Are they involved with PRSA? Go to a PRSA event, stick out your hand, and introduce yourself. With so many ways to meet people through social media, you have no excuses not to do so.

5. Strive for at least two in-person coffees or meet-ups per week.

Continue to build that network by scheduling two coffee meet-ups per week. Get that momentum going by leaning on other young alumni—they’re most likely to say “yes” to a random coffee invitation.

Once you start meeting with these alumni, ask each of them for a few people they can introduce you to. Voila! You have a quick list of eight to 10 people you can meet for coffee. Keep asking for those two or three introductions, and you’ll be surprised how many people you can meet in a summer.

6. Identify at least one volunteer opportunity where you can meet people in PR.

Find your local PRSA chapter upon graduating, join (it’s cheaper as a recent grad), and volunteer. Good committees to join are programming (to meet a ton of people), student relations (to coordinate student events) or membership (to meet PRSA members).

You might also look at: IABC, AMA, social media breakfast or, in Minneapolis, MIMA. They key is not just to join one of these organizations—it’s to volunteer. It might be uncomfortable at first, as you won’t know a single person, but it’ll get a lot easier as you go. Trust me—I’ve done this on more than one occasion, and it’s paid off every time.

7. To stand out from the crowd, market yourself creatively.

Finding that first job in PR is an all-out battle—against your friends, your fellow grads and everyone else who is applying for PR jobs nationwide. How many résumés do you think agencies in Minneapolis receive from new grads each year? Hundreds, for sure. So, creativity is at a premium. How is yours going to stand out among 250 résumés?

Start by doing something no one else is doing. Consider the ingenuity of Dawn Siff, who allegedly created the first-ever six-second résumé on Vine:

What about Katie Briggs, who used an infographic as her résumé to land a job in advertising:

Now, do all these creative approaches lead to dream jobs right out of school? Of course not, but they definitely get noticed, and they undoubtedly lead to some kind of job, as well as a steppingstone to bigger things down the road.

A version of this article originally appeared on Communications Conversations.

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12 nonverbal ways to improve speeches and interviews

When Jenna Cooper was a TV anchor, her news director let her in on a key secret of how he hired his on-air staff.

He would cover up the bottom half of the candidate’s face to see whether his or her eyes told the story, says Cooper, founder and president of Gratia PR.

“If the anchor used the same eye expressions while reading a car accident script versus the proverbial water-skiing squirrel kicker, that anchor didn’t make the cut,” Cooper says.

It’s the same thing with giving a speech, shooting a video or answering questions in a town hall. The eyes tell all.

When senior leaders speak publicly or sit for an interview, they usually understand the importance of using the right words and phrases. What fewer have mastered are nonverbal tools that help in delivery-from posture to gesturing to the expression of the eyes.

Here are some tips for your senior executives:

1. Rehearse.

When leaders prepare, they should practice in order to “develop the kind of muscle memory of the speech, of the rhythm of a speech,” says Jeff Shesol, founding partner of West Wing Writers.

“Even if you’re a naturally a good speaker, simply the act of having said it out loud even just once, but ideally more than once, really without any guidance, will improve your delivery,” he says.

This helps them determine where the pauses and emphases are. They also might sense where the speech drags and should be cut.

[FREE DOWNLOAD: 10 ways to enliven senior executives’ communications]

2. Relax.

“Some people talk with their hands; some don’t,” says Drew Keller, president of StoryGuide.net and an Emmy-nominated PBS writer and editor. “Typically, the more anxious they are, the more stressed they are, the stiffer they are.”

Keller reminds interview subjects that in his medium—video—he usually isn’t recording live. If they don’t like the way they said something, he can start over.

3. Pace yourself.

When people get nervous, they talk more rapidly, says attorney James Goodnow, who regularly appears on CNN and on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Your audience must process what you are saying. Effective speakers talk at a rate of about 125 words per minute. Record yourself to find out how fast you’re speaking.

Also, pause before and after a significant point.“Let it simmer with the audience,” Goodnow says. “What seems like a horrible awkward silence for you is actually giving your audience time to reflect on the point you made.”

4. Maintain eye contact.

We’ve all heard it, but few speakers do it effectively, Goodnow says. Eye contact conveys sincerity and helps you connect. Scan the room and hold your gaze for no more than three seconds. Too long, and your audience gets creeped out. Not enough, and people think you’re not interested in them. If you’re connecting via satellite or on Skype, look at the camera. If you’re being interviewed in person, look at the interviewer-notthe camera.

5. Practice hand gestures.

When people are uncomfortable, their hands feel cartoony, twice their actual size, Cooper says. Practice using your hands to underscore points (one, two and three takeaways). Don’t cross your arms—that makes you look closed off.

“Also for men—be careful of the hand in the pants pockets,” she says. “There’s a tendency to jiggle change, which can be distracting.”

6. Scale your gestures.

When addressing a gathering of 10,000 associates in an auditorium at an annual sales event, feel free to throw your arms wide when talking about “all of us here.” If you’re on live TV, your gestures must be smaller, contained within the frame of the screen, says Terence J. Murnin, communications specialist with Fennemore Craig.

Gestures should be consistent with the content they are reinforcing, adds Ronald Kaufman of the Ronald Kaufman Consultancy. Examples:

• Move your hand up or down to indicate rising or falling profits and expenses.

• Place one or both hands straight out in front for stop, like a traffic cop.

• Make a circular movement for continuing to do something such as being a team.

7. Maintain good posture.

“Listen to your mother—stand up straight,” Cooper says. “Picture a piece of string at the top of your head pulling you toward the ceiling. It opens up your lungs and diaphragm and makes you look more confident and approachable.”

8. Move around.

Get out from behind the lectern, Cooper adds. This is more interesting visually and keeps your presenter’s blood flowing.

9. Carefully plan your visuals.

PowerPoints fail when you treat them as essays or overload them with text. Carefully consider the visual story you’re telling through your PowerPoint, says story strategist Justina Chen, author of “The Art of Inspiration: Lead Your Best Story.” Think metaphorically when you select images.

“If you’re telling people that we’re actually in a precarious situation right now, show a picture of a slack line right behind you,” she says.

Emphasize a point with an image or a few short words in large font, Goodnow says. Anything more, and it will detract.

10. Punctuate the script.

Depending on your speaker, stage directions in the script can enhance nonverbal communication, Shesol says. If your speaker finds it helpful, punctuate the script as people speak it. Writers often place ellipses or bracketed directions in scripts, such as “[pause]” or “[pause for applause].”

“A lot of speakers just don’t need that, because they understand it intuitively and they pick it up when they’re rehearsing it,” Shesol says. “Others really like to have the stage directions there.”

11. Sip warm water.

Avoid the ice water on the table and drink warm water prior to speaking, says Lynne Curry of The Growth Company. “Ice water chills the vocal cords and makes your voice sound harsher and more strident, while warm water loosens your vocal cords,” she says.

Also, take a short walk around the room to greet people prior to speaking. Walking helps your body to process the adrenaline in your bloodstream, which helps you stave off nervousness.

12. When all else fails, call in a coach.

“If you don’t know the basics, bring in a trainer,” says speech consultant Rob Friedman. This is particularly true if you have an executive who does a lot of public speaking. It’ll be worth the cost.

@ByWorking

This article was created in partnership with Kollective.

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How to transform employees into brand ambassadors

Consumers no longer trust the marketing content that brands release into the world.

Recent research found that only 55 percent of consumers considered a company’s marketing materials to be a trusted source of information when making a buying decision.

Fortunately, you can get your marketing message in front of the right person at the right time and in the right way.

How? Employee brand ambassadors. Employees are well positioned to act as the bridge between a company and potential customers.

Benefits of an employee brand ambassador program

Although company employees will have a perceived bias for their company’s product or service, employee brand ambassadors from outside the sales and marketing teams will come across as providing a more authentic point of view. Additionally, their willingness to endorse a product and personally vouch for an organization validates the brand.

When cultivating employee support and advocacy on behalf of your brand through a formal employee brand ambassador program, the extra training provided to brand ambassadors—including ensuring they are kept up to date on the latest content and product enhancements—can benefit established customers as well as prospective clients.

The same cues that employees watch for with prospects can help them provide exceptional service to existing customers, including providing new tools for software adoption, adding a module to address a customer’s new business focus, or even delivering a hands-on refresher session on your product’s functionality.

[FREE DOWNLOAD: Not all staff sit at a desk all day. Here are 10 ways to reach them.]

The more employees know about the resources available to them, the better they can create a personalized and curated experience. This personalization can, in turn, strengthen and increase the longevity of their customers’ brand relationship.

Launching your employee brand ambassador program

Although employee brand ambassadors can be a successful part of marketing, you must do some groundwork to ensure success. Start by conducting an engagement pulse check.

If your employees are unmotivated, a brand ambassador program is unlikely to take off. Given that, according to Gallup, only 32 percent of U.S. employees were deemed “engaged” in 2015 (a number that’s been flat since 2000), it’s likely that most companies’ uninspired workers won’t support a brand advocacy effort. Disengaged employees are not ideal brand ambassadors.

However, once you’ve identified a core group of engaged employees, a small pilot program with internal brand advocates would probably bring others onboard. Pinpoint the natural leaders, regardless of title, who consistently drive collaboration on their teams. Gather their input on what a compelling brand advocacy program would look like, and put their suggestions into action on a small scale.

For example, you could start with a weekly email highlighting a few key pieces of content and provide click-to-share links that can quickly populate a message on the social channel of the employee’s choice.

The easier you make it for employees to share content and engage with prospects, the likelier it is that they will participate.

Common pitfalls

You have an engaged employee base and an outstanding product, so the employee ambassador program is guaranteed to be a raging success, right? Well, that depends on its execution.

I worked with one leader whose point of view around employee advocacy was, “If they (employees) don’t want to share our content, then they shouldn’t work here.” If that’s your point of view regarding employee brand advocacy, you should take a step back.

Is there significant value in an entry-level customer support employee’s sharing your sales analyst report in his Facebook stream? Possibly, but it’s more likely that he’s annoying his friends with irrelevant content.

Instead of having an expectation that employees are sharing all your content across their channels, ask them to share the content that most resonates with them. Some may choose to share projects they worked on and are proud of; others might share job listings or the latest blog posts. Allow employees to take on only what feels like a natural fit.

Avoid the cookie-cutter approach

Although employee advocacy platforms have the benefit of making it quick and easy for employees to share corporate content, they may also result in a deluge of status update spam. There’s nothing authentic or compelling about a prospect seeing four of your employees posting the same canned message and link in lockstep across several social media platforms.

Even worse is a company leader whose “set it and forget it” approach means she’s shared the identical generic pitch for the annual customer conference every day for a month on her social channels.

There’s a fine line between automation helping and hurting your brand. Whenever possible, make it easy for employees to customize their social media messaging when sharing content, so you don’t fall into that trap.

Last, but not least, make sure there’s something in it for the participating employees—above and beyond corporate profits. Reward the most active champions of your brand with a symbolic award or with something more enticing. Use a leaderboard to make each employee’s contribution transparent and to encourage friendly competition.

In these small ways, you can integrate brand ambassadorship into the company culture and increase its effectiveness.

Currently vice president, head of content for tech communications agency Highwire PR, Erika Heald has spent the past 15+ years helping technology startups and Fortune 500 organizations define content processes to drive lead generation and customer loyalty by leveraging compelling, shareable, targeted content. A version of this article originally appeared on the Meltwater blog.

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