Archive for: Press and Bloggers

This is a guest post from Degreed’s Global Head of Comms, Content & Client Advocacy Teams Sarah Danzl.

As the saying goes, teamwork makes the dream work and it’s a priority for all team leaders. Especially given the past few months, when all of us were suddenly flung into unprecedented times and had to upend our working practices in a matter of days. Make no mistake, remote and hybrid working will remain a core part of our new reality. Indeed, 85% of people wish to continue working remotely some, or all, of the time post-pandemic. This poses unique challenges in fostering a close-knit team — especially when they’re based in different locations and time zones.

You have to be more intentional about work/life balance, sharing personal experiences, and building strong working relationships. But the benefits are tremendous. For starters, you can pick the very best talent from across the world. Geography is no longer a limiting factor in your recruitment. You also broaden your diversity of thought and experience. It can enable people to work who otherwise may not be able to access a workplace, like neurodiverse individuals or those with caring commitments. Finally, it offers greater flexibility and autonomy to your team.

This is something I’ve experienced for a long time. I lead a team of 14 people based in six time zones and four countries. Some of them have never met their fellow team members in person. Here are some of the ways I’ve ensured that they feel (and support each other) like a traditional team.

Have regular meetings
My personal preference is to hold a weekly team meeting along with one-on-one meetings with each team member. This way, you can update your team on everything they need to know and also get dedicated time to discuss their work, any blockers or concerns, and long-term career growth.

Key to a successful team meeting is having a structure that allows for team updates alongside social discussions, spontaneous questions, exchanging ideas and troubleshooting. Setting an agenda beforehand is a must, to focus people on the task at hand. I also recommend having 10 minutes at the start or end of each meeting for informal chats and to discuss how everyone is feeling that week.

Be results driven
In an office, it’s easy to equate performance with time at work. In a remote environment, people may not always be at their desks all day, or at the same time. Your measures of good performance need to evolve. Looking at output instead of time at work is an effective way to get the results you want, without micromanaging someone or setting specific working hours. Of course, people do need to be available to collaborate with their team members or answer questions. So there does have to be a way to asynchronously communicate (through a messaging platform like Slack, for example) or agreed availability hours that everyone knows about. In my team, we have ‘Slack’ hours when we’re available for quick chats and questions in real-time. As for results, we have team and individual KPIs (key performance indicators) that we update quarterly. Meeting these goals are more important to me than time at a desk.

Make your expectations clear
This links closely with my KPI point above. By communicating what you expect of someone in their role, you’re ensuring that they meet those expectations. If they don’t know what you want from them, they’re working blind. Write and speak clearly, so your instructions are not misunderstood. Because in a remote team, it can be easier to overlook a task or deadline.

Hire the right people
Being part of a remote team isn’t for everyone — and that’s okay! But make sure that the people you hire have the aptitude and skills to thrive as part of a remote or hybrid team. Good time and project management skills are a must, as is a self-motivating attitude as you won’t be there all the time to guide and push them.

Set time boundaries
Work/life balance can be a challenge when working remotely, particularly if your home computer is also the one you use to socialise and relax. It can be too tempting to answer one last email… at midnight. Let your team set their boundaries, when they are logging off and will answer any emails or messages in the morning. Ensure they know that they can disconnect. And let the rest of the team know when someone is and isn’t available. This is especially important when working across multiple time zones.

Socialise
All work and no play is, quite frankly, draining. Your team will work better if they socialise together too. This doesn’t have to be in-person. My team has recently done cocktail and cooking classes. The wider Degreed team have held virtual casino nights, workouts, yoga and more.

For more on working from home, read our previous guest post from Question & Retain’s Annabel Dunstan, featuring advice for balancing work and home life. 

Heading back to the office soon and feeling nervous? Check out advice from mental health professionals on how to prepare for your return to in-office working. 

This is a guest post written by Sharp Relations founder AJ Sharp.

Writing this article made me realise we’re extremely lucky that we genuinely don’t have any clients that I would describe as ‘difficult’. However, reflecting on the past few decades – working for London PR agencies and perhaps also, when I started my own agency Sharp Relations nearly 11 years ago – it’s fair to say that we had a few more difficult conversations back then. So, I started pondering the change.

I think the answer is that we have become a lot better at making sure we don’t arrive in a space where a client might feel motivated to become ‘difficult’. I don’t think a client ever starts off being difficult but perhaps they move into that space when they don’t feel that their needs are being properly met by the agency.

Let’s stop using the word ‘client’ for a moment and remember that all clients are business owners, founders and entrepreneurs. They are emotionally, physically and financially invested in the success of their business. They have clear goals, objectives, ambitions, and dreams for their business and the better you understand these motivations and drivers, the better you will be able to meet their business needs.

How to prevent clients from becoming difficult in the first place.

From the off, it is imperative to understand the intrinsic motivations for a business to employ a PR agency. What problem are you helping to solve? No one wakes up one day and decides, ‘Gee let’s get a PR Agency, that seems like fun!’. There’s always a challenge the business is experiencing. Understand the challenge, and you will be able to design and deliver a brilliant communications plan which will drive the business towards its goals.

Secondly, you need to agree Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which could relate to reach, pieces of coverage, industry sectors, time spent, shares on social media and so on. It’s crucial to agree and discuss these KPIs up front. Show some examples of previous work you’ve done so they can envisage how it will look and feel for them. Get all KPIs agreed in writing from the outset, then you know you’re on the same page.

Thirdly, you need to manage expectations. This can come in so many forms:

Results: A client is happy if they understand exactly what is happening, how long it will take and when they can expect to see results. Lead times for specific stories are always a conversation that needs to be had, no matter how experienced they are with PR. What is obvious to you is not necessarily at the forefront of their mind.

Contact: They also need to know how and when they can contact you. You cannot possibly be available between anytime 9am and 5pm every day, you have other meetings, other clients and of course, the work itself. A regular virtual meeting and ad hoc on email works well. Explain this up front. Collaborative documents can also work for some teams.

Input: What are you going to need from them? And how often will you need their time? This is so important; some business owners can be surprised at how much input is required from them to get great PR pieces.

Under promise and over deliver: This is my favourite technique. If you’re sure you can do it by Wednesday, tell the client Friday. If everything goes to plan you deliver early and you look good, if you get a curve ball from elsewhere in the meantime, you have ‘fudge-factor’. Believe me, giving your clients increasingly unrealistic deadlines to deliver work to them, does not make you look good especially if you don’t always hit your deadlines. They’d rather have the realistic deadlines and for you to be reliable and consistent with them.

By managing expectations properly from the outset, you won’t face any difficulties. It’s much harder to justify your way of working once it’s been flagged as a potential issue than it is to say from the outset ‘this is how we work’. Be open, honest, and transparent. You don’t have to justify it or explain your processes, it is simply how you work.

What if you already have a difficult client, how can you change the dynamic?

I would assert that fundamentally one of the above factors has probably not been fulfilled to the level that is required. In the past, if I suspected that a client was starting to become ‘difficult’ I would ask for a call with the client straight away and open a dialogue. I would go back over their intrinsic motivations, KPIs and, if necessary, spend more time managing expectations.

Consider the impetus of why a client might have decided they need to be ‘difficult’. Difficult usually looks like unrealistic expectations, not listening to advice or micro-managing.

It’s important to get around their side of the table as it were and really listen to what they need and the pressures they are facing. You are their ally; you are there to help them achieve their objectives. What is it that isn’t going the way they hoped? Sometimes it’s not the PR work, but a change in messaging from the board level, or a new focus within the business. Are you still following the old PR plan, or have you reworked it to reflect the new changes? Work smarter not harder – make sure you’re doing the right activities to deliver the results the client really wants and needs.

AJ Sharp is the founder of Sharp Relations, an award-winning food, drink, hospitality and travel PR agency. AJ is a judge for the Great Taste Awards and a member of the Guild of Food Writers. 

Need tools for managing your stakeholders? Demo Vuelio’s Stakeholder Engagement products. 

This is a guest post from The Media Foundry’s associate director Kat Jackson.

We work in a sector where buzzwords and acronyms fly around like crazy. Some of us have the distinction of having come up with the terms. So, PR professionals can be forgiven for looking at the latest acronym being bandied about with a cynical eyebrow raise.

But ESG is not like that.

It is here to stay, and here are six reasons why comms should care.

1. ESG is influencing the top table
Environmental & Social Governance is getting a lot of traction from the investment market. That doesn’t mean it will just stay contained there. In a nutshell, it means that increasing numbers of investors want companies to be scrutinised for their green and socially conscious credentials. One of the biggest names in the space, BlackRock, even issued a stark message to investors at the start of the year including phrases like ‘a tectonic shift is coming’ and ‘climate risk is investment risk’, under the banner of the pandemic triggering such a ‘stark reminder’ of human fragility that it will force us to confront climate change. They are backing it up, ensuring their clients invest in businesses with proven environmental action.

2. Its already impacting your clients. And you, even if you don’t know it
The biggest businesses in the world are being forced by the markets to have a good look at their green processes and initiatives. This involves a root-and-branch review of their organisations, their sustainability and social policies. They are then rated on a changing set of criteria (depending on who is doing the rating – there is no standardised criteria at the moment). Most critically, they also need to conduct this review of their suppliers. This is already evident in physical supply chains for goods, but it will soon apply to service industries as good ESG standing becomes less ‘nice-to-have’ and more fundamental. Sooner or later, it will become something agencies are asked for on appointment.

3. This goes deeper than CSR
This is not greenwashing. It’s not brand purpose. It’s also not community outreach. This is a rigorous assessment of a business’ impact on its social communities and environment. It’s early days for ESG, and as we’ve seen, set universal criteria are not yet set. But this is more than paying lip service to an entity’s carbon footprint. This is an extra set of criteria by which the markets will assess the success of a business, beyond its balance sheet. It’s also currently where the money is – and money talks. Investments into businesses with proven sustainable credentials are booming. According to one study by the University of Oxford, also found that businesses focusing on ESG areas were operationally more effective.

4. ESG as a USP (for now)
Clearly, this is a major focus for financial and corporate PR. But there is an opportunity sitting there waiting, for many businesses, before everyone jumps on the bandwagon. Getting ahead of ESG assessments, taking a deep dive look at green and ethical policies within a business, and pulling away from the pack before it becomes widespread will help frontrunners to stand out. The shocking findings from the IPCC report earlier this month with dire predictions about climate change shook a lot of people, but action is hard to quantify at a personal level. If companies can show they are already taking steps to help customers to make a difference, they will grow as a result.

5. ESG will seep down to the SME
It’s just a matter of time. This means focusing on PR’s own business operations and getting ahead of the curve so we can advise clients in turn. It also means small businesses will need to get organised themselves, especially if they trade with much larger entities. Expect the RFP process to get greener. Start asking the questions to clients now about their plans.

6. It’s the right thing to do
Climate change complacency has led to 20 years of little tangible progress. Finger pointing is everywhere. If the biggest countries in the world and huge businesses aren’t doing anything about their emissions, what difference can I make? This argument isn’t going to stand much longer. Think of it as reverse incremental gains. If everyone commits to making small changes, habits form, processes change over time, and together the effect can move the needle in the right direction. Companies who start now will set a direction for people power. Most do want to make a difference, it just feels too large and overwhelming. Companies that assist that process are already winning business. Those who ignore the issue will slip behind.

This is a guest post from Espresso’s Stacey Jaffe, who co-founded the agency with Lisa Fox.

Espresso is an agency that works predominantly with start-ups and growing businesses. Our approach focuses on getting under the skin of the brands we work with to fully understand the business founders and their background as a means to tell their story and build a brand personality. We seek to understand our clients’ business objectives in order to utilise PR to help achieve them.

Each client is unique with their own aspirations, story to tell and objectives. Our passion and proposition is to help start-ups achieve their business and personal objectives through the means of PR.

The PR landscape has changed significantly over the last year, the boom of exciting new businesses and innovations supported by the British public has resulted in new forms of media and new opportunities for growing businesses.

Here are five top tips from us on how to approach PR for start-ups:

1. Work with clients you want to work with
The beauty of having your own agency is working with clients you want to work with. Working with clients who you fully understand or consume on a personal level is a massive benefit. If you are not the target consumer, make sure you do your research and understand your target consumer, what makes them tick and what/who influences their spending habits.

2. Reserve budget for the must-have opportunities
Start-up businesses don’t always have additional budget to spend – every penny spent must be accounted for and result in conversion. Rather than using the budget on big campaigns that undoubtedly have a risk factor, we focus the majority of budget on fee allowing us the time to fully immerse ourselves with the brand using our experience and contacts to deliver maximum results.

3. Know your target audience
The media landscape continues to evolve. Think hard about media targets, whilse some coverage/publications may look impressive, they may not reach your audience. Start-ups usually seek PR with a purpose. Whether that be ahead of fund raise, to help enter products into retail, to build the brand and audience or to kick-start sales, we concentrate our efforts on the desired results and depending on the specific objective the media focus will change. For example, if a start-up is prepping for a retail meeting, a meaty business feature in a broadsheet is useful to have up a client’s sleeve. If we’re focusing on pushing sales and building a brand identity, we’d opt for a targeted influencer programme.

4. Work with the right influencers
It’s not all about the numbers; take time to investigate engagement and followers. When we started out in PR, social media was not on the table. We’ve had to evolve and learn and now truly see the value of working with the right influencer. We tend to focus on up-and-coming influencers with a genuinely engaged following. Don’t be afraid to spend reasonable budget on influencers if they can deliver well thought out, well executed content that impacts brand reputation, drives awareness and sales.

Got big ideas for your start up or start up clientele, but working with a small budget? Take advice from The Wildlife Trusts and Tiny Tickers on their successful (and tightly-budgeted) campaigns.