I recently sat down with MaryLee Sachs, Global Director of Consumer Marketing at Hill & Knowlton. We talked about how technology and social media is affecting the way H&K communicates internally with employees and externally with their customers.
Despite the economy, H&K had its best year ever in terms of generating top line revenue. But they’re still reorganizing their business to deal with the continuing financial maelstrom in 2009. My guess is New York will be the first to see cars set on fire.
Cisco recently announced new products to help companies deliver video to their customers and stakeholders. They believe that 90% of Internet traffic will be video in the next few years. That’s a lot of corporate video. Scary.
This got me thinking about an interesting conversation last week with a senior executive from a top security software firm. His team had conducted an internal survey to determine what employees and sales people wanted from their intranet. Most of the usual stuff came up, like refreshing the content, having a good search tool, better categories, and in general making it more user-friendly.
One of the questions asked was whether they’d like to have audio and video content on the site. Only 1 in 5 said they would. This was considerably lower than most any other category. So my customer said his team is now questioning whether to use video for communicating or for product training at all. It got me thinking. (more…)
We’re offering our customers free weekly Headliners during the months of December and January.
A Headliner is a two-minute, tactical audio message distributed via the internet and/or mobile device giving direction from the executive or director level. We launched this idea during the dotcom bust, and because it was so effective, we have continued to produce them for our customers.
Headliners take no more than 15 to 30 minutes to create soup-to-nuts, and they’re cost-effective. Whether communicating to a sales force, partners, customers, investors or the overall employee base, leaders find Headliners to be essential to effective leadership. (more…)
Good content, strong skills, and an understanding of what the audience needs to hear is the base of any good talk.But a number of other questions come up during our training sessions:
>>How do I maintain eye contact when I have to refer to my notes?The rule is only talk to eyes, but if you do need to refer to notes, always end your thought or idea looking up at a pair of eyes.Think in terms of punctuation and transitions.Look directly at someone as you come to a period, comma or transition.
>>How do I keep my volume up if I’m wearing a lapel mic or am forced to stand at a podium?First of all, do everything possible to get away from the podium.Secondly, keep your volume up because it keeps your energy up. Adjust the distance of the microphone or force the resident audio engineer to adjust it.
>> Can I walk around, and what do I do with my hands?Yes you can.But make sure you’re walking or moving your hands with a purpose.For example, draw visual ideas with your hands.But when there is no purpose, like when you’re listening to an audience question, balance your weight on your flat feet and put your hands by your side while holding good eye contact.And anytime you need to delivery a key idea or thought, stop walking and firmly direct it to a single audience member. (more…)
