Presentation Skills Every Professional Should Have

Giving a presentation is similar to being in an interview. In both cases, you need to pay attention to how the other people in the room perceive you. I have decided that this week, I would like to address some basic presentation skills that every professional should have including:

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• Body Language
• Filler Words
• Audience Engagement
• Visual Components
• Appearance
• Awareness

Body language. When speaking before a group, your posture and stance directly correlate with your confidence level. Crossing your arms and hunching your back can make you seem small, which subconsciously is our goal when we are nervous. Embrace the attention and stand tall with your hands at either your side or holding your notes at waist level. By adjusting this one thing, you can already have a significant impact on the away you are received.

Filler words.  When giving presentations, often time’s people become afraid of silence because they think that it will appear as if they are not prepared. To combat silence, we insert “Um,” “Uh,” and one I heard just recently: “And so.” Instead, consider embracing the silence. When you need to think of a word, or lose your train of thought, simply take a moment to do so without trying to fill the gap. What you will discover, is that there is a lot of power in silence and these moments can help to enhance your overall performance.

Engage with your audience. A high energy level and good eye contact will go miles when trying to connect to your audience. People pay the most attention when they feel like you are speaking to them personally. Another way to engage people is by including them in the presentation. Ask a couple of questions along the way, open with a funny anecdote, or tell relevant story. All of these things will keep their attention as well as their interest.

Visual components. Visuals cannot be overstressed. If you are giving a presentation with slides, make sure they are not all text. There is nothing more boring than looking at slides of text. Include pictures, videos or infographics instead. Of course, there will be some text you have to include, but try to keep all written information in short sentences or bullet points.

Appearance. In any presentation, your audience will judge you based on your appearance. They will not be focusing so much on how attractive you are, but how you dress yourself. Many professionals consider your appearance to be a direct reflection of your level of respect for the client or company. Be sure to dress conservatively and professionally, and take the time to practice good personal hygiene. This can also be a benefit to you. Many times the way we feel about how we look can affect our confidence level and our mood. Put yourself in your best mindset and prepare for your day.

Awareness. This is all about knowing yourself. Be aware of your nervous habits and come up with a plan to combat them. Do you have a tendency to stand on the side of your heels? wear flats. Do you play with your hands? Hold notecards. Figure out your weaknesses and how to prevent them. This will also make you feel more confident and in control throughout your presentation.

There are many other ways to help you succeed in front of an audience, but these basic tips will assist you in improving your presentation skills. As with most things, being prepared is half of the battle. When you come prepared, you are confident.

For a more in-depth look at presentations, check out the Harvard Business Review’s  article “How to Give a Killer Presentation.”

5 Suggestions for Tackling Media Relations

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1. Do your research. You should always research the journalist you are planning to contact and the publication that they write for BEFORE you reach out with a story. Knowing the types of stories they write and how they like to be contacted can help you tailor your pitch to the preference of the journalist. In the wine industry, you want to be sure that your stories are being pitched to someone that frequently writes about food and beverage, and would be interested in your ideas.
2. Know your talking points. Once you have researched and decided which journalists you are going to pitch your story to, it is important to clarify exactly what you are going to say. One way to make your pitch short and thorough is to convert it into bullet points. This way, when doing a pitch over the phone, you can be sure to hit the important details in a small amount of time.
3. Be honest and realistic. Being honest is kind of an obvious point, however, being honest also means being accurate with your story. You want your pitch to be interesting and exciting yet it is important to be careful about how much you build your story up. If you try to over-promote your company too much, you run the risk of inaccuracy, therefore damaging the reporter’s reputation. This will hurt your relationship and could possibly prevent you from getting stories published in the future. In addition to honesty, it is imperative that you do not make promises that you can’t keep. The last thing that you want is to disappoint a reporter when you can’t deliver.
4. Follow up often. When communicating in any professional setting, especially in media relations, you should follow up emails or phone calls consistently with new or updated information.
5. Exclusivity. The best thing that you can offer a reporter while working on an interesting story is access to “insiders” that they normally would not have. This could serve as a relationship building tool as well. If you help a reporter with a story that is not related to your company, they will be more likely to give you their time when you need it.

For information regarding who to pitch your story to, visit Rock The Status Quo‘s Blog written by Carrie Morgan.

Creating a Personal Brand: Things to Consider

Filter your online presence. Before you can present yourself as an expert with your own brand, it is important that you take the time to edit your social media accounts to ensure that you appear professional. You can never have too much class, whereas drunken tweets or Facebook rants will only make you seem immature and contradict the professional image you are trying to create. This applies to pictures as well. We all have the ability to report, or at the very least untag a photo that could hurt our credibility. There is no excuse for an inappropriate media profile.

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Be purposeful with content. The information you create on the internet is traceable and infinite. Even if you think something is private or removable, often times it can and will be found. For this reason, it is important to ensure that you are aware of the content you are posting, and that it fits within your personal brand. As an example, I am writing this blog as a component of my efforts to create a personal brand involving communication and public relations experience. All of the content posted within the blog is well researched. The reason for that is because I want each of my readers to know me as a credible source for industry related information. If I were to post an article about how social media is irrelevant as a communication platform, I would likely be injuring my reputation as an aspiring public relations professional.

Be authentic. It will do you no good to create a killer personal brand if it is not true to who you are. Be real and be honest. The point of creating a personal brand is to advertise your professional personality and make it easy for someone to see what you’re about. If this brand is fabricated, then you will be targeting an audience that does not fit within your goals. In my case, my current goal with my personal brand is to find a job after graduation in June. If I invent my interests or abilities, it would only make it more difficult to find a position I am qualified for and comfortable in. I would likely spend a large amount of time trying to live up to my imagined brand instead of learning and excelling in a position that is a better fit.

Find your voice. At this point, you should have a clean and intentional personal brand. The next step is to find your own voice and personality within your professionalism. Whether it is in your vocabulary or the way you present yourself, all of your writing should be an extension of your character. At this point I have to add a slight disclaimer, as my motivation for including this piece is because of my own fault. It has been brought to my attention recently that my writing, while professional, has been missing the color of my personality. A detail I will be paying special attention to from this point on.

For more tips and ideas about creating a professional presence, check out these 26 tips for creating a powerful personal brand online.

Six Tips for Effective Crisis Management

This week I wanted to switch gears a little bit. I thought I would go over a topic we recently discussed in my Strategic Communication class: Crisis Communication. I have researched tips and combined them with the information we covered in class to establish this list of six important steps of Crisis Communication.

1. Inform your team members of the problem. It is important that every member of your relations team knows about the issue, especially any team members that deal with the public directly. All team members should know what the issue is and how they should be responding.
2. Research the issue. First and foremost, you should never make a public statement until you are sure that you have fully researched the issue and know the whole story. You should be aware of how employees will react and how your consumers will react. You should also know how this issue will impact your company and how immediate that impact will occur.
3. Pay attention. The entire time you are in crisis you should be monitoring the conversation.
   

   Photo Credit: 451 Marketing

   Hopefully you will be doing this already, with your regular public relations tactics but it’s worth a mention just in case.

4. Make a plan. Create a strategic plan to combat the crisis and execute it on the appropriate platforms. Where is the conversation? In my Strategic Planning class we talked about a crisis in which observers were live-tweeting an accident. In that case, I would say that in addition to your original tactics, it is necessary to have a response on twitter as well.
5. Monitor and react. Again, keep an eye on the conversation. Once you have a plan, you should be monitoring the issue and reacting accordingly until there is no more conversation on the topic.
6. Learn. Use this opportunity to improve your relations. Evaluate the issue, did you see it coming? How can you better prepare for the future? Discover what you did that was successful and what was unsuccessful and adjust your plan to accommodate your findings.

There are two other steps that I did not list above. First, you should never be caught off guard by a crisis. You should always be researching possible crisis situations. Second, stay calm. You cannot help your company maintain their reputation if you cannot keep your cool. Take a breath and plan it out.

For more tips on effective Crisis Management, visit 451 Marketing‘s post outlining their experience at a panel about reputation and crisis management and the key points that they took home.

Data Visualization-The Art of the Infographic

I want to talk a little bit about data visualization this week. Data visualization is essentially the use of images to express numerical data. These images are often called infographics. In my experience, the best infographics illustrate their information in a clear and simple manner. They are clean, easy to read, and offer a call to action. I will use an infographic of my own making to explain exactly what I mean. In my strategic public relations communication class, we were given the assignment to choose a client and pretend that they hired us to create an infographic on their behalf. I chose to produce one for the Silicon Valley Bank Wine Industry research division. It is designed to express a need for wine professionals to have a social media presence. All of the numbers presented in the infographic were taken from the 2014 “State of the Wine Industry” report.

Explaining infographic tips will also serve as a bit of a rationale for the decision making process I went through to end up with this final product. To start, I used a program called Piktochart to create my infographic because the program is easy to navigate and provides you with an easy foundation to get started. I would like to point out five specific features of this infographic that allow it to be clean and easy to understand.

The font. The font is primarily sans-serif. This is because it allows a uniform look that is readable no matter what the size is.

The Colors.The colors of burgundy and tan are commonly found in the realm of wine, however, I was a little bored with the dullness of the colors so I added a pop of blue to break it up a bit.

The Symbols.The symbols used to illustrate the data are relevant to the content that they represent. This is important because it allows the viewer to visually understand the information and create an automatic method of committing the data to memory.

Links. You will notice that the social media recommendations at the bottom are each a link that leads to the setup page of each site. This provides engaged and interested viewers an opportunity to take action in the moment, when they are the most passionate about the topic.

Call to Action. The point behind an infographic should be to educate someone and persuade them to do something. This could be attending an event, making a personal change, or taking action on behalf of a cause. My infographic encourages wine professionals to join social media and participate in the conversations that are already happening about them.

There is no solid formula for what an infographic should look like, but using these five features could serve as a general outline and give you a decent start.

Why Engagement is Important

Last week I talked about ways to successfully use social media to build a relationship with your publics. I mentioned the word “engagement” a lot and I would now like to address what exactly “engagement” is, and why it is important for communicating not only with your publics, but with your employees as well.

ENGAGING WITH YOUR PUBLICS

Engagement is defined as getting or keeping someone’s attention or interest. This is a crucial part of connecting with your publics. Having interactive communication with consumers and creating a dialogue allows for the company to “control the conversation” or essentially monitor their reputation. If your company is participating in the dialogue, you have the opportunity to respond to any negative feedback and prevent a public relations crisis. It is important that you always take the opportunity to participate in a conversation about your company.

Another reason to interact with your publics is to create an emotional connection to your brand and build a loyal customer base. Consumers are more likely to support a company that they feel a connection with. As I mentioned in my previous post about online communication, an easy way to make that bond is through social media. Social media can make even the largest companies seem personal with the ability to communicate one-on-one.

ENGAGING WITH EMPLOYEES

Engagement is also important among employees. In the wine industry, many wineries are small, and therefore naturally have that personal bond between leadership and employees. Some however, are much larger, and need to find alternate ways of creating a close team environment. Employee engagement is important because it boosts morale which leads to overall higher performance. People are generally more motivated to work hard and set high career goals when they like the environment they work in.

Check out this infographic that connects employee engagement to Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs that I found on the SoapBox Blog, and visit the blog for more information about the importance of employee engagement.

How to Communicate Online Effectively

As with any business, the importance of consumer engagement cannot be overstressed. One way to create and maintain a dialogue with your publics is through online communication. I have pulled examples of wineries in Washington that use popular social media forums to highlight what a successful business account would look like. For the purposes of this post, I will focus on the three most common online platforms: Websites, Facebook, and Twitter.

 WEBSITE

Starting with the basics. Having a creative website is a stepping-stone to establishing an online following. A website should be inventive yet clean and easy to navigate. Abeja Winery in Walla Walla, Washington has a well designed website that is easy to follow.

An important characteristic for a website is that your content is not too lengthy and verbose. Readers want something they can skim and absorb quickly without becoming bored or distracted. Abeja does this very well especially in their “The Wines” sections.

This section lists their wine by the season of their release and gives a short description of the environmental conditions of the ripening season. It also provides information on what you can expect from each bottle. The text is short and easy to skim, which is important for holding the reader’s attention.

 FACEBOOK

Another common form of online media is the use of Facebook to gain a following or fan group. Waterbrook Winery in Walla Walla, Washington does a remarkable job with their Facebook page. In order for a Facebook page to be successful, it has to be visually appealing and interactive. There should be text and pictures, as well as active engagement with your public.

Waterbrook’s Facebook is filled with consistent posts on various topics including events, updates, and Waterbrook in the media. One thing I really enjoyed about their Facebook page is that it did not focus solely on the winery, but also included posts that would be interesting to their targeted public such an article on how to reuse corks to make Christmas ornaments.

Waterbrook also takes the time to reply to questions or concerns on their page, creating a dialogue that they are a part of and helping them shape their own image.

 TWITTER

Twitter is another social media platform that is common among businesses. Twitter is wonderful because you can directly engage with your public in a more personal manner. Matthews Winery out of Woodinville, Washington does a great job of balancing photos and text as well as implementing hashtags and maintaining a consistent dialogue with their followers.

 Matthews uses their twitter to create engagement among their followers with relevant specials such as “free wine tasting for all 12s” referring to the common 12^th man title given to Seattle Seahawks fans. Matthews also regularly responds to follower tweets about their wine, answering questions or just being a part of the conversation. Matthews Winery’s Twitter is exceptional on the basis that they understand their public and how to appeal to them.

To summarize the information above, here are a few tips for communicating your brand online:

• Use clean, easy to navigate design
• Keep text short and easy to read
• Be visually appealing (use pictures!)
• Engage with your following-respond!
• Don’t just advertise, post relevant information or ideas
• Respond to negative criticism (join the conversation)
• Take advantage of hashtags and local culture

For more information on building social currency and the importance of consumer engagement, visit Millenial CEO’s blog on Marketing and Social Media

Blending Wine and PR

Welcome to my blog, The Social Grape! This blog is designed to tie together the worlds of wine and public relations. Each week I will write a new post about various public relation tactics and how they can be applied to the wine industry. I look forward to sharing my knowledge with you while taking this opportunity to do some learning of my own.

On another note, I recently had the opportunity to go wine tasting for my 21^st birthday with my parents and some really close friends. At dinner that night, we had the opportunity to drink a wonderful Georges de Latour from the year of my birth! It was such a special night that I will always remember.

For more information about me, visit the About Me section of this blog, or check out my LinkedIn profile.