Tips

"The communications audit Gonder Public Relations conducted for Making Connections-Denver gave us important insights and guidance on how we could improve our communications with our grassroots constituents, our partners and funders. They helped us transform our web site and produced annual reports that achieved our strategic objectives."

Susan Motika
Former Site Coordinator
Making Connections-Denver

Tools for illustrating presentations

Tableau Software provides tools to create infographics from an Excel spreadsheet or customize an interactive visualization to post on the web. You can download a free trial with tech support. The company also has a tool for bloggers to create graphics from data that can be posted on the web: www.tableausoftware.com.

Low cost royalty-free media for illustrating web pages, publications and PowerPoints can be found at www.istockphoto.com. Their library includes stock photos, drawings, video, audio and flash. You establish an account and deposit funds for purchases. The istock "currency" is credits with xsmall photos costing 1 credit and small costing 3. Depending on the amount you deposit, a small photo costs just under $5. Photos can be stored before purchase in "Lightboxes" that you can share with clients who do not need an account to see them.

Free tools for brainstorming, trends

Google offers 8 tools that can help you brainstorm, including Google Trends. You can enter key words and see activity. For example, I typed in "autism," since my client Brain Balance Colorado helps children with autism. Up came a graph with spikes keyed to news stories going back to 2004.

Thanks to Journalistics blogger Jeremy Porter for listing these 8 tools, including Google Trends:

Google Reader - a convenient place to subscribe to blogs without cluttering your inbox
Google Alerts - Can be used to collect ideas as well as search for client names
Google Docs - a tool to capture ideas in a single place that can be accessed anywhere
Google Images - Go to Google and select "images" to come up with ideas for illustrating a blog or story
Google Scholar - Limits your searches to scholarly literature
Google Books - can search for complete (older) books and excerpts of newer ones
Google Zeitgeist - a virtual yearbook for web searches, compiling top searches for the ear, including the fastest rising and fastest-falling searches.

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Marketing Your Business Online

Is your company web site bringing in new customers? Be sure your site offers useful, free information, not just promotion of your products or services. You can start a tips section or just include helpful information on the home page. Even small changes will be picked up organically by search engines.

Content should focus on helping your customers solve business problems. Non-profits can profile success stories of persons they’ve helped, which increases confidence among donors that their gift is making a difference. Consumer products and health-related sites can offer tips for improving appearance and well being. We can help you evaluate your web site and add content that can bring more people to your site. Contact us here.

Productivity Tips

A cost-effective solution for bringing together people from multiple locations is www.freeconference.com. Up to 150 people can call into your dedicated number and access code at no cost other than the long distance charges. Organizations can use an 800 number to call in for a nominal amount per caller.

Browsers that are slow to open may be weighed down with temporary files. The website, www.ccleaner.com, offers a free download of software than deletes temporary files.

When you want to share something on social media, www.Addthis.com offers a free download that is easy to use.

Communicating Strategically in Tough Times

With news of unemployment and layoffs filling the airwaves, don’t forget that your employees are an important audience. Communication is especially vital if you operate in a vulnerable industry. It is important to reassure employees what your organization is doing to stay strong economically. If funding is uncertain, as with governmental organizations and non-profits, let your employees know a timetable when the economic picture will be clearer. Show appreciation for employees who have taken on more duties with downsizing. Low morale and fear of losing your job definitely affect productivity. Employees are also your ambassadors to the community. Make sure you are giving them messages to reinforce your brand and reputation.

Protecting a Valuable Asset: Your Reputation

A company’s reputation is part of its brand – a precious asset that is strongly linked to its success. Research has shown that customers prefer to shop and invest in organizations that operate in socially responsible ways – towards their employees, the environment and their neighbors. All organizations have a vested interest in knowing how they are perceived by their “stakeholders” – those key audiences that have a relationship with them.

The way to plumb these perceptions and develop strategic responses is through a reputation audit.

There are five basic steps in the audit:

Determine the objectives to be fulfilled by the research
Identify the audiences to be surveyed
Collect the data
Analyze gaps in reputation or problems to be addressed
Create a strategic plan to better manage the organization’s reputation

Depending on the goals of the audit, a survey of employees provides valuable feedback on information gaps and issues to be addressed. The focus group is a tool that can probe more deeply into the attitudes of customers, employees, volunteers and community residents.

Media coverage of the organization can be analyzed in terms of positive and negative content and the degree to which its strategic messages are being communicated. The organization’s marketing materials and communications vehicles, such as Web sites and newsletters, can be analyzed to see that important issues are being addressed.

A company’s reputation is built over many years but can be destroyed in days. Companies and non-profits should safeguard this asset by periodically assessing the perceptions of various stakeholders. With this information, they can act strategically to correct misperceptions or change practices that are damaging the group’s relationships with its publics.