Presenting to Community Organizations

I’m currently the interim Program Chair for my Rotary club. I offered to help because I know quite a few people in Eugene who represent the type of agencies and organizations that we usually hear from at Rotary. Many of those people are my clients, former clients and friends.

Presenting to civic and fraternal organizations like Rotary clubs is a great way to reach business and community leaders. I often recommend it as part of a communication plan. Part of doing the “animal circuit” (as one of our clients calls it), is that you need a succinct 15 or 20 minute presentation that gives enough background, yet still allows time for a “how you can help” message. Rotary clubs may be informal, but there’s no excuse for not being professional.

Here are some tips for presenting to organizations like Rotary or Lions or Kiwanis.

1. Know your audience. Your local Rotary club might not be what you’re thinking. Our club, for example is younger and more female than the average Rotary.

2. Be clear about your objectives. What is the purpose for your presentation? Even if it’s to inform, consider what you want your audience to do when it’s all over. What should they want to do with the information? Maybe it’s to volunteer or maybe it’s just to take the info and share it with someone else.

Or in the case of United Way’s Success by Six initiative, maybe the objective is to encourage people to support young parents, whether with a kind word or just a smile or through policy decisions.

3. Deliver your key messages. These are messages that you’re not coming up with for this presentation, but ones that should infuse everything in your organization. Every press release, every employee training, every brochure (you get the point) should reinforce your key messages.

4. Be passionate. Care about what you’re talking about. If you don’t find someone who does. Passion is contagious.

5. Be prepared. Be prepared not just for the presentation with an outline, a nice powerpoint or some kind of visual, etc. But be prepared for questions. If you’re part of a community organization that’s had some recent controversy or press coverage unrelated to your topic, don’t think that subject is off-limits. And one poorly thought-out answer could damage your organization’s (and your) credibility.

For more tips:

Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen blog

Fast Company: Now that We Have Your Attention

Transparency is Important

I was talking to a client today specifically about some new competition in our community. This new business is engaging in some practices that it’s unlikely its clients are aware of. The intentions don’t seem malicious, based on what my client knew, but the potential implications should their customers become aware could be damaging to say the least.

I obviously can’t reveal the details of this particular situation, but I’ll offer this advice… be transparent. Be crystal clear with your customers, be see-through with your employees, be vitreous with your vendors and suppliers. No exceptions. No “it’ll be taken out of context” or “they just won’t understand.” Take time to explore the context and to explain.

When you reveal your company or your organization’s motives, you become accountable to the public. You must do as you say.

Transparency is self-regulating. You cannot choose practices that you cannot justify publicly. If you’re a business leader, you’re not only putting your organization’s credibility on the line, but your personal credibility.

Five tips for you:

• Make your ethical decisions now: think through how you and your company would react under a situation likely to occur in your industry. A few minutes brainstorming will help identify potential ethical quandries.

• Develop empathy: What would want to know if you were a customer? How would you want to find out? Put yourself in your customers’ shoes.

• Take time to think:When faced with a difficult decision, take the time to think through what you will do and explore the potential consequences to potential actions to the best of your ability.

• Call it what it is: stealing and lying are, by any other name, still stealing and lying. Call it what it is.

• Every action & decision has an ethical component: Think through intended and unintended consequences.

Creativity… on demand!

The creative process can be perplexing, elusive and difficult to duplicate. Some days, I sit down and the ideas just flow. Other days, it’s like pulling teeth just to string a sentence together. I don’t know what variables have to be in place or which planets need to align for one situation to occur and not the other. But I’m always looking for ideas to spark the little creativity hamster in my head and get him running around his little wheel.

The Verve team brings you these tips, plus a few from the www.
From Amy:

• Don’t look at just other designs to get ideas – look at fabrics, furniture or fashion
• Use tools like Kuler for great color inspiration (maybe set a timer first, you can look for hours)
• Go shoe shopping

From Devon:

• Step away for five minutes
• Read part of a book or magazine
• Catch up on blog reading or emails that don’t require thinking

From me:

• Catch up on gossip – celebrity blogs are my dirty little (no so) secret
• Spend time outside with one adorable toddler
• Work on something unrelated for a while, maybe grade papers

Some ideas I’ve found trolling the Internets today:

• Get your box of crayons back. Hugh at Gaping Void says we’re all born creatives and we all get a box of crayons in kindergarten and we need to get those crayons back. This is tip 6 of 30. (I’ll add that subscribing to Hugh’s blog via email or a feed reader is also a nice creativity boost. Thanks for the inspiration, Hugh!)
• Listen to Bach? I’ve not tried this one. I have heard about the research that you think better when you’re listening to music with a beat.
• Try mind mapping. My favorite tool is Bubbl.us if you’re doing it online, or crayons (see tip above) if you’re doing it by hand.
• Look at what others are doing. What can you learn from the best designs, the best campaigns, the best ideas around. At Verve, we’re always interested in learning from the master’s in our fields. We read voraciously, participate in networking groups and talk at length about how we can apply industry best practices to what we’re doing in our day -to-day work

Anything you’d add?  What’s your favorite tip for creative sparkage?

Thanks for the idea for this post, Tamar. See? Another creativity idea – give and ye shall receive.

Enjoy a Clearview on America’s Roadways

Likely you don’t think much about typography, especially when driving on the highways and byways.

But you’re not Don Meeker. This New York Times article talks about how America’s roadsigns are slowly, but surely changing for the better. (Be sure and catch the slideshow, too)

Even if you’re not producing roadsigns, it’s important to pay attention to what your typography and font choices are saying about your organization.

Five Great Reasons to Jump on the Social Media Train

Tomorrow evening, I’m doing an informal presentation to a local group of music industry professionals about social media. My part of the talk will be on the benefits of social media.

Music and social media seem to go hand-in-hand. Having a MySpace presence, for example, is just the cost of admission these days. Music is, by nature, such a collaborative industry so it makes sense that these tools would work well.

The major benefits to jumping in with both feet:

1. Make Deeper Connections

Social media can build deeper connections with customers, clients and fans to complement the broad reach of advertising and one-way promotions like community calendars, posters, etc.Social media allow your customers, clients and fans to talk back, giving you the opportunity to listen to what they are saying.

2. It’s a Small World, Join the Conversation

You’ve gotta be on MySpace. It was made for musicians. In addition, there are hundreds of artists participating in blogging, podcasting, videocasting, etc. Why aren’t you? It’s cheap (or free), easy and has measurable benefits.

3. Be Human

The “voice” you use in your blogging, podcasting or social networking interactions should be your authentic voice and should give your oganization personality. If you represent a venue, find someone who can create that voice to drive your social media efforts.

4. Be findable and create Web site traffic

Google loves fresh content. Blogging, podcasting, participating in MySpace or Facebook allows you to produce content quickly and easily without any technical expertise. It also creates the “currency” of social media (links!) that allow others to share your content quickly and easily.

5. Meet your marketing objectives

Social media are not a strategy, they are a set of tools to complement and supplement what you’re already doing. Blogging is one tool to increase attendance at an event, for example. But it’s not the only tool. A blog can work hand-in-hand with posters, event calendars, street promotions and MySpace and a podcast.

These tools present terrific opportunities for small business because of the extraordinarily low production costs.

Need more info? Just ask!

Photo by Jason Miller Photography