If I knew all the words

“Great presentation… just don’t be so selfish next time.”

Leo Bottary, a PRO at Hill & Knowlton received this comment above after giving a presentation. The commenter meant that Bottary shouldn’t be so nervous when giving his presentation, because the presentation is about the client, not him.

It is easy to be consumed by your nervous feelings when speaking in public, but you have to shake it off and put trust in yourself and your knowledge of your client and the service you are providing.

As a college senior I have seen my fair share of text heavy slide show lectures. They are BORING! It wasn’t until last term that I realized when a lecture is being given with a visually pleasing slide show it helps your audience pay attention.

So here are a few tips on how to give a good presentation:

• Make your point in 3-7 words. If you have text heavy slides your audience is going to get caught up reading your text, rather than listening to you
• Start with a verb. What do you want to get out of this slide? What is the core? ex: Give better presentations. No more than one idea on per slide
• Keep the slide details simple. Avoid jargon, crazy busy slides. Keep it simple, clean and concise. Your slide should compliment your speech.
• Identify questions early. Put yourself in the shoes of your client. What questions are they going to ask? Try to answer their question in the presentation.
• Make your messages sticky. make your messages simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and use stories. (tips from Made to Stick by the Heath Brothers)
• Use eye pleasing visuals. Just looking at text won’t cut it. When there is a picture that has meaning related to the content on the page, your client will know you put time and effort into this, rather than throwing words on a colorful background. For example, look at the photo above, the pencils have “points,” which goes with my first point (no pun intended)

Put these suggestions to work and you will make your clients happy, as well as your students!

Thanks to Kelli Matthews for the inspiration and check out her Slide show here!

Tonight as I was browsing through my google reader I came across this interesting post from Advertising for Peanuts about using advertisements as a cover up.

This post discusses the value of the customer experience. Yes, an advertisement may get you to the restaurant, car dealership or department store, but if you have a bad experience, So Long Lasting Customer Relationships.

If you know me personally, you probably know this, if not, here is a lesson in Staci Stringer: I am a STRONG Starbucks supporter. Probably because I worked there (Check out my Portfolio, it has a presentation I did last term on Starbucks corporate social responsibility). Anyway, my point is Starbucks focuses on their customers experience and less on advertising.

Until just recently, Starbucks didn’t advertise at all. It was ALL word of mouth and their ability to make lasting relationships in their communities.

Advertising for Peanuts made four Key points:

1. Don’t use advertising as a cover-up.
2. Stop all your advertising until you fix the customer experience.
3. Think of your customer experience (shopping, test driving, browsing your website, etc.) as the most important and expensive advertising you have available.
4. Think of the dollars spent on advertising to attract new or repeat customers as coming out of the same budget as dollars spent on the customer experience.

These are BASICS of advertising and public relations. Word of mouth is the best form of persuasion. Customers believe in humans, not products. So this becomes a matter of good customer service over good advertising.

Clean up your act before you advertise. Hone in on your customer service skills before anything else.

The Public Relations Manifesto says:

“I am not a flack, a shill, a barker, a hustler, or a spinner. I do not stonewall, distort language, construct false images, or blindly follow directions in the interest of my organization or its leaders. I am a public relations professional, and what I do is serve my organization, society, and profession as a communicator, professional, advocate and activist,” (Berger, Reber).

The purpose of public relations is to help organizations make good choices and do the right things. It is a PR practitioners job to help organizations balance these needs and its social responsibilities.

Berger and Reber say, “Through communications we gain or lose trust, build or destroy relationships, include or exclude others, unite or divide. We make meanings through communication, which is the real bottom line in an organization.”

PR professionals don’t spin, they look at the WHOLE issue at hand and find the light at the end of the tunnel. Through our use of communication we find the best venues for our key messages. We use strategic communication to solve problems and maintain an open line of communication with the public and our specific publics.

We not only communicate, but we evaluate our messages through situation analysis. We believe that transparency, ethics and communication are the fundamentals to our practices and we strive to the best of our abilities to achieve our goals as communicators.

We write, edit, plan, program, place, produce, and evaluate communications.

I will leave you with this:

“The profession will be weak if we believe it is weak. It will be weak if we practice it in that manner.”

As I am finishing up my final term at University of Oregon myself and a team of my peers are conducting a campaign for the University of Oregon’s school of Journalism and Communication. We currently are researching graduate students and faculty of any university to gain insight on what they wish to gain from a strategic communication conference. If you are a faculty or graduate student (or know of any) please take the survey below it takes about 8-10 minutes and will help my group out! Also you can be a part of the making of a new conference!! For more questions about the conference and survey contact me at stringer(dot)staci(at)gmail(dot)com

Survey

When you’re preparing for a job (or internship) search, it’s time to be sure that you don’t have any “digital dirt” that a potential employer may uncover.

Currently, this is the topic of discussion on PROpenMic. I’m intrigued by this issue, because it has to deal with personal PR. You never know when an employer may look you up on Facebook or MySpace and find out a little more about their potential employee.

One member, a professor, said that in order for him to get his point across he searches for his students on Facebook before his first class and when he calls role he pulls up interesting photos of his students. He says, “If I can find it, your potential future internships and employers can find it, too.” This sticks with students, because it embarrasses the student.

I’ve attended leadership conferences where speakers have found photos of the participants, enlarged them and projected these photographs on a big screen in front of thousands of college leaders. The other thing students, need to clean up, is their email accounts. Employers don’t want to communicate with HOTCHIK69@hotmail.com or BEERPONGKINGXXX@aol.com, these are simply inappropriate email addresses. Sign up for a gmail account and use your name. Make it simple and professional.

Just ask yourself, would I like to put this email address on a business card to Bill Gates?

Also, think twice before you post inappropriate photographs of yourself on Facebook. We all know how powerful social media is, You cannot ignore the fact that the industry we are trying to dive into is constantly working with social media, you can’t hide.

Rule of Thumb: The Internet is an open venue. Clean up your act. Don’t let your digital dirt get out of hand.