This One Crucial Tip Can Improve Your Interview Skills
Always ask one more question One of the biggest mistakes many employee communicators make when developing stories and content is not actually interviewing anyone for the piece. We create content off of PowerPoint decks (I call people who do that, without at least picking up the phone and talking to someone, “Deckheads”). Or we do …
Play this game and win . . . knowledge!
People love contests. If you’re on Facebook, you know this. There are some of the dumbest quizzes in the world out there, and millions of people take them. They all say: Take this quiz to find out: What character from Game of Thrones would you be? If we can guess your real age What your …
Hold up! Energize your corporate photos in a flash
Welcome to the first installment of Motivational Monday! Every other Monday, we will offer our audience a short tip, best practice, or mini case study. Hand in hand with that, every other Wednesday, we will feature Wednesday Wisdom, another short piece of realistic advice. So you’ll get a little shot in the arm once a week! So away …
Did this headline stop you in your tracks?
We just spent a great couple of days with the communicators at a big utility company in Pennslyvania. Three two-hour, customized Zoom workshops over two days. When I build customized workshops, I ask the client to bury me in samples. For these workshops, I went through about 100 different articles, videos, leadership communications, and social …
Verbs are the engine of strong writing
Someone much smarter than me once said: “Verbs are the engine of strong writing.” Truer words have never been spoken. Or should I say uttered. Or screamed or shouted or declared? But in the corporate writing world, we don’t USE good verbs. We use verbs like “Implement” and “Leverage” and “Optimize” and “Impact.” It doesn’t …
From Corporate to Creative … how to get there!
For 25 years, I’ve been telling communicators they need to take the “corporate” out of corporate communications, and replace it with “creative.” And where is the most creative stuff happening? In the consumer world. Everything from Artificial intelligence and mobile to gamification and humorous videos. Our job, as communicators, is to make the important interesting. …
Data Gives You Power
This week’s tip on Low Hanging Fruit: Use data as power to communicate differently. My wife and business partner and MUCH better half, Cindy Crescenzo, is the queen of employee communication measurement. She speaks all over the world on the topic. And her favorite thing to say is: “You never want to walk into a …
Is it time to retire the term, “Intranet?”
In 1994, I launched a publication called The Intranet Report. It was a print newsletter! Remember those? The publication was all about this weird new “internal World Wide Web” that people were starting to call “Intranets.” I was working as the Editorial Director and VP of New Product Development at Ragan Communications, a publishing/conference company …
Is it time to publish baby announcements in employee publications again?
When I wandered into the weird, wonderful world of employee communications, back in 1994, I learned at the feet of the great Larry Ragan. Larry was, along with Roger D’Aprix and a few others, one of the founders of what we consider “employee communications” today. Just a brilliant man. And a wonderful mentor. Larry was …
What is holding communicators back? Take this quiz to find out!
Communicators, pencils ready! You have three minutes to complete the following multiple-choice question. Good luck! Why do most corporate communicators fail to reach the status of Strategic Counselor in their organizations, and instead fall into the “Communication Order Taker” role: a. Never-ending deadlines that suck your time away and leave you no time to be …