How to Write More Effective Emails — Part II: Main Content

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Karen

In my last blog post I shared some tips learned during a recent presentation by Liz Danziger of Worktalk, who spoke about best practices when using email for business communications. Part I focused on how to create more compelling email subject lines. Today, in Part II, I’ll discuss how to create more effective content in the body of your email.

Convey Your Purpose
Be very clear about the reason for your email. Every document has at least one main purpose – to request, persuade or inform:

  • Request – you are asking the recipient to do something. Be sure to clearly state the request and include a deadline if there is one.
  • Persuade – you are attempting to motivate your reader to act or think a certain way (e.g., register for your webinar or purchase your product). You may use logic, reasoning, or in some cases, emotion to present your case. Remember to include the specific action desired.
  • Inform – you are sharing particular facts, but don’t go overboard. Assuming that more information is better may mean your reader has to sift through too many details to discern which facts are relevant. Busy readers lack the time or the patience to do this.

Keep It Brief
Write short sentences where possible and stick to your point. This makes reading faster and content easier to absorb.

Beware the Double Entendre
When choosing the words to convey your ideas, watch for unintended double meanings:

Example: She ate the doughnuts with relish.

Did she delight in the experience of eating tasty treats?  Or did she have some pickle relish along with her doughnuts?

Proofing
Always proofread your email. Make sure your tone comes across as intended. Check for errors of omission, misspellings, incorrect grammar or poor sentence structure.

Other Email Cautions

1)   Forwarding – Remember that your email may get forwarded. You may think only your intended recipient will read the content, but emails frequently get forwarded to others, including managers or executives. Keep that in mind when composing your message.

2)   Wrong Recipient – We all work on multiple projects at once. Always review the recipients you have designated to ensure you have selected the correct individuals. This will save you from the embarrassment of sending to the wrong party.

3)   Attachments – Look closely. Did you remember to include the attachment(s) you mentioned? Are they the right version?

4)   Reply All – Ask yourself if it’s truly necessary to reply to all recipients. You do not want to send extraneous messages to already overloaded inboxes.

Use these tips every time you compose an email. They will help you communicate efficiently, productively and professionally.

Posted in Communication, Email, Guidelines, Messaging, Tips | Leave a comment

So You Want To Get Acquired? … PR May Be The Answer

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Lynn

I find this topic very interesting mainly because I work at a PR agency with a client base that includes several tech startups. In the past, we’ve seen some of our clients get acquired and others are still mapping out their future plans. I wanted to share what I found on the topic and how the acquisition process may have a lot to do with how companies conduct their public relations initiatives.

One interesting article I came across on PRNewser discussed a recent Ragan PR Daily story on how investing in PR can boost a company’s likelihood of being acquired. I’m not suggesting that every startup wants to get acquired, but if that’s your company’s long-term goal, then investing in PR might be a good idea.

Ken Gaebler, author of the Ragan PR Daily article, shared his experiences with the first tech startup company that he co-founded. It was eventually sold for $10.5 million, one year after attaining a $750,000 venture capital round. Prior to sharing his story, Gaebler talks about calling some of his contacts in investment banking and corporate acquisitions, asking them how they go about finding corporate acquisition targets. He was given four key points:

  1. We track industry news, searching for companies with potential.
  2. We attend industry and networking events.
  3. We talk and get in contact with industry analysts.
  4. We keep our eye on, and know, key players in our space that might make sense to acquire.

After gaining some insight on how companies are scouted out for being bought, Gaebler came to three conclusions:

  1. The people who might be interested in buying your company are most likely learning about you through your marketing and PR efforts. If they don’t hear about you, they don’t know you exist.
  2. Public relations is a great way for your startup to build solid credibility. A positive press-related endorsement from a credible third party lets people know your company isn’t a fraud.
  3. Lastly, PR can score you a higher valuation price on your exit. Think about all the awards and different recognitions your company has received. That all gets factored into the sale price – if you’ve created value for your company, acquirers will pay extra for that value.

What do you think about PR and acquisitions? Is it important to invest in PR if you intend for your company to be bought out?

Posted in Acquisitions, Industry News, Networking, PR, Public Relations, Tech Startups | Leave a comment

Out With the Old – Is it Ever Appropriate to Delete Blog Content?

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Amber

This blog is a collaborative effort by the entire DJA team, from interns to the managing director. But as with any company, sometimes team members move on to new opportunities. One question the DJA team often discusses in staff meetings is when, if ever, is it appropriate to remove old blog posts?

Pamela Seiple at HubSpot thinks it’s a bad idea to delete blog posts and provides an excellent list of reasons:

  1. You’ll lose all that coveted SEO juice you built.
  2. You’ll sacrifice a whole lot of inbound link love.
  3. You’ll miss out on valuable lead generation opportunities.
  4. You’ll be retroactively wasting a lot of time (and burning a library of resources!).
  5. You’ll limit social media mentions and content sharing.

While Pamela makes some great points, I don’t think this applies to every blog post. What about blog posts that had very few views? Or what about blog posts that include SEO terms that are no longer relevant? Although I agree with much of what Pamela said, I think there are definitely some exceptions to the rules.

Steve Rubel, a VP of digital strategy at Edelman, went to the extreme and deleted all of his old posts when he moved his blog to Tumblr. His reason – he believes Google “is increasingly focusing more on social cues and information as part of search” and he didn’t want to have multiple sources of content if he left the old blog up.

Whether or not deleting outdated blog content is appropriate still seems to be up for debate on the web – what do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

Posted in Blogging, Branding, Communication, Guidelines, Lead Generation, Marketing, SEO, Social Media | Leave a comment

Agency Survey: Tell Us What You Really Think

Posted on April 16, 2013 by David

Every year we do a client survey to determine where DJA is exceling and, yes, where we could improve.

Our 2012 end-of-year survey was 17 questions long, with quantitative responses and places for comments. The results are not scientific, but there were enough client responses for us to feel confident that the feedback is valid.

We take the input very seriously. Each year, we discuss it at staff meetings. We use the feedback to plan and implement staff training programs. It even impacts my own goals for the agency. And, this year, I’m writing a blog post about it.

So, how are we doing at DJA?

The agency scored its best marks on the question: “How would you rate the service you received (from DJA)?” I’m very glad to see such positive results here, because the DJA team works hard on being responsive to clients and proactive behind the scenes.

We also scored well on the question: “How would you rate the agency team’s understanding of your business?” High scores here are also important because this plays a big role in the value we add to our clients.

On the other hand, the area we showed a need for most improvement in is the reporting of PR program results. This has been an area of concern for me as well. The impact of PR has spread beyond just media relations, to include web traffic and social media prominence. The challenge is to find the right balance of metrics to show the impact of various campaigns, without the reporting costs dwarfing program costs.

There’s a lot going on in this area that we’re tracking, including the Barcelona Principles, but a lot of its seems to be too much for our core B2B technology client base. We’ve made some changes in the way we report results to clients, but the search continues in 2013 for an even better way to measure and report the business value of specific campaigns.

Perhaps, an even bigger surprise to me was that “blog writing” was the top answer to our survey question: “What new services would you like to see this year?”

In fact, the agency already manages many client blogs – from blog writing to managing editorial calendars. We’ve also developed social media contests, and work with client Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn postings. Everyone on the team is a professional writer and all are trained on WordPress. Clearly, we’ve got to get the word out that writing and social media management are in fact, a large part of the core services provided by DJA.

I’d like to finish here by looking back at the many positive open-ended client responses we received. One client said DJA did a “great job dealing with the multiple product lines and their respective stake holders.” Another liked our “follow up, attention to detail (and) strategy.” And finally, this client said, “…the team provided thoughtful advice and energetic initiative throughout the year.”

And with that positive reinforcement, we’re off to do even better this year.

 

Posted in Blogging, Branding, Communication, DJA News, Innovation, Marketing, Media Relations, Messaging, PR, Social Media, Surveys | Leave a comment

The Power of Branding at Xerox

Posted on April 10, 2013 by David

Engineers and branding often times don’t mix well. The value of branding activity is not always apparent and not easily measured.

When compared to spending money on a workstation, it can be hard to justify the cost of a brand-building project.

But listening to Ursula Burns, CEO and Chairman of Xerox – herself an engineer by training – talk about the value of the company’s brand in its turnaround effort, was refreshing.  She credits the Xerox brand with customer acceptance of a completely new Xerox.

Burns was speaking at The Anderson School of Management at UCLA as part of the Dean’s Distinguished Speaker Series.  Burns became chairman of Xerox in May 2010 and is spearheading the company’s shift from a maker of printers and copiers to a services company that is “enabling workplaces – from small businesses to large global enterprises – to simplify the way work gets done so they can focus more on what matters most: their real business.”

Her talk at UCLA was wide ranging – from the challenges of being an African-American woman business leader to the importance of mentoring to what a control freak must let go of to run a 140,000-person company – but she also touched on branding.

In responding to the dramatic changes that were impacting Xerox – namely customers not printing as much – she said the company decided to look at what had historically made it great, as a guide for how to respond.

At the outset this might have meant doubling-down on the copying technology that it was so good at.  But the discussion led to Xerox’s role in helping companies change document-intensive processes.

In fact, Burns said, Xerox got into printing when a patent lawyer was trying to simplify the patent submission process, which at the time required seven copies of the application that ran up to 50 pages each.  There was a huge expense associated with copying the applications, having someone review and compare them to the original and then fixing the inevitable mistakes.

“What if,” said the lawyer, “we could just take a photo of the document and print it seven times?”

So the strength was not in the technology, per se, but rather in the re-engineering of the business processes.  They followed this course in their restructuring and have reshaped their $23 billion business from mostly hardware to now mostly services.

Burns said: “Xerox has a brand that people like and that gave us entry.  The brand gave us permission” to come into other businesses with new services designed around making business processes more efficient.

Corporate branding builds trust with customers.  Xerox’s brand, built around quality and innovation, helped customers transfer that trust to new services.

Posted in Branding, Communication, Innovation, Marketing, Messaging | Leave a comment

Our Favorite Internet April Fools Day Pranks

Posted on April 2, 2013 by David

April Fools Day pranks have taken over the Internet this year.  Using social media, press releases and video – gags were everywhere you looked yesterday.  Some (like Google Nose – the new scentsation in search) fooled a few people on Facebook.  Others (like Scope bacon-flavored mouthwash) were just funny.

From a PR perspective, it turns out that publicizing your corporate prank can be a bit of a sensitive issue.  Social media is a good way to share, but some journalists were complaining on Twitter about having to sift through so many April 1 press releases.  One commentator cautioned about the possibility that reputations – and bottom lines – could be damaged by a joke release.

April Fools Day started in 1582, according to one common theory, when a new calendar was introduced and New Years Day shifted from April 1 to January 1.  Some diehards continued to celebrate the old New Years and were shamed, becoming the very first April fools.

Here are our some of our favorite Internet jokes gleaned from our social media following on April 1, 2013:

Amber

My two favorites are:

Need a new microwave, then look to the Nokia 5AM-TH1N6 Constellation.  This new microwave is a “superfast, water-cooled 8-core high-voltage transformer, which brings a combined performance of 5,000 watts to end-users.”  It also features the “latest eye-tracking technology, which stops the food from rotating when you look at it, and it automatically adjusts the temperature depending on how hungry you look.”  Want to make sure it matches your décor?  Then you can pick from blue cheese cyan, lemon yellow and liquorice black.

Over on Facebook, Yossarian the Meerkat star of Meerkat Manor gets married at the Santa Barbara Zoo in the first wedding ever to be “covered by Animal Planet”.  The zoo stated, “Congrats to the happy couple… and April Fools from your friends at the Santa Barbara Zoo.”

Dave

I have to give it to Google for sheer volume of pranks.  I had seen the Google Nose prank sneak up on Facebook, but was later using Google Maps and got sucked into the Treasure Map joke.  They also said that YouTube was a six-year search to find the best Internet video and now that they have it, it was time to shut down the site.  Then there is Gmail Blue: “Just like Gmail only bluer.”  And more.

I also liked the new Twitter service Twttr.  According to this gag, Twitter would cost $5, but people could use Twttyr for free –  they just couldn’t use any vowels (except y).  Joan Rivers posted a very funny tweet about this: “Twyttyr? Why byy vywyls whyn yyy gyt “Y” fyr fryy? Syckyrs! #nvwls.”

Lynn

Here are two I liked with a third one thrown in for good measure:

Chatting with emoticons — Words are so 2012.  Hipchat has a new service called Emotichat that translates your messages entirely into emoticons, complete with a passive-aggressive detector.  Check out their YouTube video.

What’s the dream trip for any world traveler?  Hobnobbing with celebrity politicians of course!  Travel startup AnyRoad has a Kim Jong Il tour for 25 million Japanese yen.  Just so you know.

Last but not least: Vimeo becomes Vimeow – a site dedicated to cat videos.  Their new slogan: “Because all you care about are cat videos anyway, right?”

Those are some of our favorites.  Let us know what pranks caught your eye.

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Tips on How to Write More Effective Emails — Part I: Email Subject Lines

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Karen

I recently attended an event with a presentation by Liz Danziger of Worktalk. She spoke about best practices when using email for business communications.

Liz provided some terrific guidelines on how to use email more effectively that I’d like to share with you in a series of blogs.

I’ll start today by focusing on how to create compelling subject lines:

Tip 1: No Blanks – The subject line is where you make your first impression. Use the space wisely and never leave it blank!

Tip 2: What’s Your Point – Think about the point of your email. Convey that clearly in the subject line.

Tip 3: Get it Read – Keep your subject line brief, but imply importance. Compel your recipient to open the email and read further.

Tip 4: Indicate Action Required – If action is required and/or a deadline is involved, say so in the subject line.

Tip 5: It’s OK to Change – If you are responding to a long email thread with a bland subject line or one that no longer conveys the topic of your email within – it’s okay for you to change it up. You can leave the original subject line and add on to it or you can change the subject line entirely.

Tip 6: Use a “Hot Button” – Where applicable, include a word or brief phrase in your subject line that is known to spur action.

Example: Let’s say your photocopier has a sharp piece of broken plastic that could cause an injury. You decide to email HR. You could use the uninspiring subject line “Equipment Needs Repair”, but it might take days for a response because the title doesn’t evoke urgency. However, if you instead use “Safety Concern – Dept. 18!” you may find that HR responds right away because this sounds more urgent and ‘safety’ is a known action-inducing hot button.

Apply these subject line tips every time you compose an email. They will help you create compelling titles that get your recipients to open and read your messages.

Next time, we’ll review some guidelines on how to write better email content.

Posted in Communication, Email, Guidelines, Messaging, Tips | Comments Off

5 Tips on Getting the Most Out of Your Trade Show Experience

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Lynn

Recently we’ve seen an increase in interest among our clients wanting to know how to attend, exhibit and speak at trade shows. For those not familiar with the way trade shows work, it can be a very complex process, especially if it’s your first time tackling an event like this.

My first attempt at planning and organizing a trade show was back in 2011 where I took the initiative to assist one of our clients at a show. Since then, I’ve been actively helping other clients attend, exhibit and speak at trade shows and conferences around the U.S. Through my experiences so far, I’ve learned both the best and worst practices on how to organize client participation at trade shows.

With trade shows and conferences becoming increasingly popular, I thought it would be useful to provide a list of my top five tips on getting the most out of trade shows based on both my experiences and from Brian Mahar who wrote a recent article in Renewable Energy World.com titled, “10 Tips for Maximizing Trade Show ROI.”

1. Research the Trade Show or Conference – I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t do this. Take the time to go over deadlines, attendees and speakers, as well as jotting down other important show information. The last thing you want is to be caught off guard and then have your boss find out that you didn’t know what was going on.

2. Speak, Sponsor, Demonstrate – Great, you’re attending and or exhibiting, but now what? Don’t let a valuable speaking, sponsoring or demonstration opportunity slip through the cracks. Keep in mind that the deadlines for these are most likely a couple months or more before the show – so don’t wait! It’s important to make your trade show experience memorable to not only your company, but also your prospective customers.

3. Have Your Press Plan Ready to Go – Trade shows and conferences are perfect places to snag the attention of a much-desired editor or reporter. Do not wait until the last minute to put together meetings with the media. Everyone is short on time and making appointments with certain editors and reporters can’t wait. That’s why it’s important that you grab their attention in advance.

4. Have Fun and Network – Trade shows attract all types of visitors, not only potential customers and executives. This is the time to take advantage of meeting people face-to-face and establishing long-lasting relationships.

5. Be Social Media Savvy – Staying active on social media during a trade show is key. Think about whom you can try and connect with before, during and after the show through LinkedIn or Facebook. Be a part of the official show’s hashtag conversation on Twitter. Brian Mahar even talks about a memorable experience at a trade show walking past an exhibitor’s booth that was handing out t-shirts having to do with their Twitter promotion they ran. Be creative!

What trade show and conference tips do you have? Feel free to share, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Even Professional Writers Can Use a Refresher on Good Writing

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Amber

One of my clients, Exec-Comm, a business communication skills consulting firm, recently hosted its Action Writing public program and invited me to join as a participant. The program is designed to help business people write better to achieve action from readers.

As someone who has worked in PR for the past five years, I consider myself a good writer, but was excited to learn how my client trains its students. However, by the end of the course, I was shocked at how much I had learned to help simplify my writing.

The course was set up in a small conference room with a beautiful view of the city. There were about eight of us gathered around the table in a variety of ages and industries, from a branding agency, to a nonprofit to a personal trainer. We were given spiral-bound workbooks and marked up copies of our writing samples that we had sent in prior to the course.

Throughout the one-day course, we learned to eliminate zero words (unnecessary words) and weak verbs (have, to be, are), use up-front actors (he, they, we), use two “yous” for every “I” and how best to write an email to inspire action, as well as many other tips. Each time we learned a new set of skills, we applied that to our writing samples and could see our writing improve right away.

Exec-Comm Consultant, Doug MacKay, was the instructor and he shared this quote by Mark Twain “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”  

This definitely rang true throughout the course. I enjoyed the time I spent improving my writing skills at Exec-Comm and encourage everyone to at least research what little ways you can improve you writing each day.

Do you have simple writing tips of your own that you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments below.

Posted in Blogging, Messaging, Trip Report | Comments Off

What We’re Reading: The Science of Storytelling

Posted on March 4, 2013 by David

A semi-regular update of our staff meeting discussions of articles on the state of the art in using PR and social media to connect with audiences.

This week:  The Science of StorytellingLifhacker_logo: Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains by Leo Widrich on lifehacker.com.

Take away:  Storytelling is emerging as a corporate communications tool for many companies and this article tells you why.  Your brain becomes more active when you hear a story compared to getting information from bullet points or a presentation. To illustrate, Widrich opens with the story of John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, and how he wanted to eat and play cards at the same time. Thus, the sandwich was born. The story is memorable and the details of Montagu’s search for a way to multitask stick with the reader.  The article goes on to cite several scientific studies to show how stories engage a reader’s brain.  One interesting fact: Using metaphors, such as “the singer had a velvet voice” activate the sensory cortex – a part of the brain not engaged when a straightforward description was used.  It’s clear from the article that story works.  The science presented in the article to back up that statement should help to convince more business executives to tap into the power of narrative to help their communication resonate with listeners.

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