Category: presentation

Hitting the books for PR School 2.0

I’ve been busily working on thinking about my upcoming presentation for the Higher Ed Experts webinar I’m presenting as part of PR School 2.0: How to survive and thrive in the new online world of Public Relations and Communications, to be held in about a month. My session is titled “Upgraded story pitching: Do’s and Don’ts to keep your clip book fat.”

I’m not sure how many PR folks keep a clip book these days. (We don’t, unless our online del.icio.us version counts as one.) But the concept behind the webinar is simple: new media is gaining prominence as a distribution outlet for institutions’ stories. I’ve got a lot of ideas in my head about this session. I just need to get them down on slides.

Anyway, I hope you’ll set aside some time and budget to catch at least one of the three webinars in the PR School 2.0 series. Here’s a rundown, lifted straight from the site (sans the HEE graphic):

Webinar Series – PR School 2.0: How to survive and thrive in the new online world of Public Relations and Communications: October 21, 22 & 23, 2008

“PR School 2.0” is a 3-webinar series that will bring you up-to-speed on the new higher ed PR practices powered by Web 2.0 technologies. It will show you how you can put the online monitoring of your brand on autopilot at almost no cost, upgrade your story pitching with best online practices and cross over to online news publishing. Designed for seasoned PR practitioners as well as new comers, this series will give you the tools necessary to do your job in the conversation age.

October 21, 2008 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: October 28, 2008 1PM-2PM ET
Monitoring 360: how to make sure you hear it and see it before they do
Responsible for the Web and Social Media initiatives at Texas A&M University College of Engineering, Matt Herzberger will guide in the maze of free and for-a-fee monitoring tools to help you set up an effective system that works but doesn’t require hours and hours of your time. By sharing best practices and good tips, he will help you monitor your brand online without any information overload side effects.

October 22, 2008 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: October 29, 2008 1PM-2PM ET
Upgraded story pitching: Do’s and Don’t’s to keep your clip book fat
Andrew Careaga, director of communications at Missouri S&T, will share creative strategies and techniques to help you keep your stories and your institution in the old and new media. With his list of do’s and don’t’s, you will make the best use of the Web and other online tools to successfully pitch reporters, editors and bloggers.

October 23, 2008 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: October 30, 2008 1PM-2PM ET
Online news publishing 101: how to go beyond online press releases with a dedicated news website
Geoffrey Mock, manager of internal communications at Duke and editor of Duke Today, will explain why and how his institution launched Duke Today, an online news website serving the community. He will also share lessons learned on covering, writing and publishing news for an online daily publication and how to drive readership to the site.

* * *

I hope to see you there!

Clutter vs. clarity

Question of the day: How do you deal with clutter?

I’m not talking about physical clutter — the piles of work on your desk or the boxes of stuff shoved underneath it. I’m talking about the verbal and visual clutter, the stuff that creeps into your articles, publications and web designs like weeds in your garden.

How does that clutter get there? After all, we’re the communications pros, right? We’ve all read Strunk and White (“Omit needless words!” is the mantra there), and we’re all schooled in the less-is-more aesthetic of design.

So we’re not the problem, right? It’s those other guys. Those professors who insist on cramming into your tidy news release an extra paragraph that describes the research in excruciating, scientific detail. That administrator who insists the announcement about a new research grant or faculty appointment includes a quote from every vice-something-or-other or every funding agency big-wig who was involved in the process of obtaining said grant or hiring said faculty member. The development officer who insists that the design include a crappy 72dpi photo of the donor — “Sorry, it’s the only picture we’ve got” — on the cover of the scholarship brochure. The Executive Council members who insist that your website design has omitted links to at least two dozen vitally important offices or departments, and they insist those links be retrofitted into the design.

They insist, insist, insist.

Desist!

How do we resist?

Then there’s the other issue: dealing with the designs and prose of other departments who come to you for help. (Those are the good guys. The renegades just do their own thing and you find out about it however you can.) As our department assumes more responsibility of “managing the brand,” we find ourselves dealing with more of these issues. Well-intentioned department admins and the PR chairs of student organizations come to us with their logo designs, newsletters, etc., and most of these items are cluttered. (And cliche-ridden. But that’s a topic for another day.)

From my experience, the student groups and admins usually appreciate our advice and guidance to cut the clutter. We dole it out as tactfully as we can. With other customers, we have to be blunt. Sometimes that bluntness comes across as arrogance. Other times, when it’s a political dilemma (often the case in academe), we offer our advice, then hold our nose and do what the customer wants.

But I digress. (Talk about clutter.) Back to the question of the day: How do you deal with clutter?

P.S. – I didn’t even touch on PowerPoint. But here’s a slideshow that presents the case against clutter quite well.

Presentation Zenhttp://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=presentationzen-1207581045216575-9&stripped_title=presentationzen

View SlideShare presentation (tags: howto powerpoint by zen)