How To Be A Leader

From the time we’re kids in school, people are encouraging us to “be a leader”. Many respond by joining a club or taking a job and trying to get promoted. That’s not a leader. So what is?

A leader is someone who has a vision for a better future and the ambition to make it happen. Visions like a country with no homelessness, or a city vibrant with culture, or an organization that’s making a global difference. Even on a “smaller” scale, like a school with no cliques, or a publication that truly gives voice to the community, or a church with a family-like congregation.

So what is leadership? Leadership is organizing a community around a central goal. Leadership and leaders are two very different things. A true leader has a vision, while someone who is simply leading is good at organizing people. Good leaders have leadership skills, but not everyone with leadership skills is a leader.

Why is this important? Because I know you have an idea. You have a vision. Whenever you notice that something was done half-assed or you feel like you could do it better, you’re creating a vision. You aren’t leading in that direction yet, but it’s the seed of a movement.

If you feel passionate about this idea, then take some initiative to talk to others about it. Don’t trash the current way, because you won’t make friends (or at least, not friends who will be an asset to the movement). Talk about your vision for the future. Express how it will have a positive impact.

Finally, direct those who are also passionate toward that common goal. It is said sometimes that the best leaders are behind the pack, directing and encouraging. However, it’s also important to be willing to get dirty in the trenches with your community.

Good leadership is tough. I guarantee that you will want to give up. But I can promise that once your goal is reached and that better future is realized, you will forget all of the strain and stress of the journey and will enjoy the new present. Of course, you’ll start dreaming of a newer even better future, but all good leaders keep dreaming.

The world will never be perfect. But if you can dream it, you can do it.

Hey Gen Y: Just Give Up, Okay?

In a recent issue of Business Week,  Gen Y (ages 18-30) is called “The Lost Generation”.  The articles goes on to say that Gen Y is “unable to grab even the first rung of the corporate ladder” and paints a dreary pictures of an entitled generation finding that the world is no longer handing them trophies. Which is true.

However, many young people see this information and give up. “Oh, the economy sucks and I’m not going to get a job, even as a waiter, and so I better move back in with my parents asap!!” they think.

I’m hear to say: Gen Y is capable of achieving. The job market is there for those who have made themselves into the person that companies want to hire. Who wants to hire an inexperienced college students with no previous jobs or internships, no skills to speak of, and no demonstrated leadership? Why not just hire a monkey instead?

If you’re seeking a job and you’re new to the industry, get an internship. Serve a good 300 hours in a company for free to gain experience. And if you can’t find a job still, do another internship. And another. As many as it takes to open the door to a paid opportunity. You might have to be a waiter or cashier to pay the bills while you intern, but at least you’ll be getting experience.

If you can’t find an internship, volunteer. There’s lots of nonprofit organizations who would love free help.

Clean up your social media profile. No tequila shots or cigarette-smoking pics, no matter how old you are. No skanky outfits or major PDA pics. Remove your political and religious affiliations from your profiles. Don’t post about being depressed or hating school or work. Even if your profile is private, it’s becoming more common for interviewers to insist on seeing your profile during the interview.

Whether you’re in college or not, get involved. On campus, try to get a leadership position in a student organization. Off campus, join a professional organization.

Go to networking events – but don’t just have something you want, be prepared with something of value to others. Maybe it’s a restaurant recommendation or a good book or something else exciting.

Show you know your stuff by teaching classes through your local adult education project and answering questions on LinkedIn, and even writing a blog or articles.

Opportunities are waiting for those who are working hard. If you can show an employer previous experience as an intern, a volunteer leadership position, and proof of knowledge in the community, you will stand out of the crowd. Your future is your hands: seize it!

How To Make A Journalist Happy

HelpAReporter.com

Help A Reporter Out (or, HARO for short) is a free email list sent several times daily with 25+ requests for sources from the media. These can be anyone from a blogger who started writing this morning, to a veteran New York Times writer. Not every query (request) will be something you’re interested in, but you’ll probably find one every few days. Some of my best media clips have come from responding to HARO queries. And a media appearance is worth more than gold – in fact, it’s priceless.

It’s really important to compose a good response to these queries, so you can stand out above the crowd. I never truly understood how wild pitches could be until I started using HARO as a member of the press. I collect quotes for articles in local media, and let me tell you – there are some really bad responses out there. If you can look past the blinding colors and weird attachments, there’s usually something decent. But it’s not likely for most writers (or even me, sometimes) to look beyond it – they’re on deadline!

A good rule of thumb for responding to HARO queries is to follow standard business letter format. Let’s say the query asks for nonprofits to speak on managing an organization during a recession. Here’s how you might respond:

“Dear (Mr or Ms) Smith, (use full name if you aren’t sure of their gender. Names like Pat, Chris, Jordan, Riley, Jess, and many others can be ambiguous.)

The first paragraph explains why you are writing, and who you are. “I saw your query about nonprofit recession tactics in HARO this morning. I am the executive director of Fresh Soup Kitchen in Kansas City.  [fictional organization, by the way]“

The second paragraph gives more details. “Like every other organization, we’ve been hit hard by the recession. But we’ve gotten resourceful: now, we solicit donations of vegetables from local farmers. We post fliers at farmer’s markets, and often get enough food to feed our patrons for two days. In fact, this ‘recession tactic’ is working so well, we’re going to continue it even when the economy swings back!”

The final paragraph offers your help as a source, and gives contact information. “If you would like to know more about our recession tactics, the organization, or any other questions, please feel free to contact me. You can reach me at exec@freshsoup.org or on my direct line, 816-555-5555.” (Giving multiple options for contact helps the reporter get ahold of you close to her deadline.)

Sincerely,

Judy Jones (use the name you want quoted)
Executive Director
Fresh Soup Kitchen
exec@freshsoup.org
816-555-5555

More helpful tips:

• Don’t include any attachments unless the reporter asked for them. In fact, some reporters won’t open emails with attachments at all!
• Don’t demand more information, like the size of audience that will be seeing it. This makes you sound like a snob.
  
• Don’t use wild colors or weird fonts – it makes you like an amateur.
• Don’t use objectionable language.
  
• Only send one email – two emails is annoying, three or more is obnoxious and will get you blocked.

Following these tips is simple, and once you get the hang of the format, you can knock out responses all day long!

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Where’s Your Aggie Ring?

Texas A&M University has a tradition. Upperclassmen students, who have completed 90 hours of coursework, receive a class ring. Those with school pride continue to wear their ring as alumni, and when one Aggie sees another class ring, it invariably starts a giddy conversation about campus life, teachers, and so on. They like each other and are loyal to each other just because they both earned a piece of jewelry from the same college.

People love to feel pride. People love to identify with a college, or a musician, or an organization, or any number of other things. People want to belong and feel exclusive. This idea of a symbol of exclusivity isn’t exclusive to colleges. You can build the excitement of an aggie ring in your own company, with your employees and customers.

First, you need to be excited. You need to have confidence in what you offer and the culture you are building. Help your employees and clients feel like they’re impacting the world with you.

Part of this is giving your clients and employees the tools to show their affiliation with you. Branded products play a large part. If someone is wearing a t-shirt with your name on it, they are proclaiming that they are happy to be affiliated with you. Think of the pride of someone wearing an Apple Computer shirt. Or a Lakers jersey. Or a Starbucks travel cup.

Take this idea into your own business. Show your community how your company is making a difference in the world, and how they’re helping with that difference. Make your organization worthy of being proud to be a part of.

Then, create your aggie ring.

Giving Back

On this blog, I like to write about how you can improve your marketing campaign and public relations skills so you can benefit from it. Today, I’m writing about something a little different: how you can benefit your community.

I believe that our world is only as strong as the community we have forged. If you go through life being super-involved in only the things that benefit you, then the community is lacking. You, no matter who you are, have something you could give back to the community. Even if this recession has hit you so hard that you collect welfare to feed your kids, you have something to give back. Not money necessarily, but something.

In fact, I believe that money isn’t always the most useful thing you can contribute. For example, I can choose a nonprofit (like my favorite, children’s theatre The Coterie in Kansas City) and I can send a check. Or I can donate a couple hours of time to writing a fundraising letter for them to use. Which one is going to go farther – my small check or my time?

There are so many great organizations in the world. Just in the last few months, I’ve fallen in love with several great local organizations. I can’t possibly write a check to all of them for any amount that would be helpful for more than a day. But if I give them a few hours of service, there’s the potential of so much more support for them.

Think about your business and your industry. What skills do you have that could help a local nonprofit? Accountants could help balance the books. Lawyers could help with contracts. HR consultants could draft an employee handbook or volunteer orientation for a new organization. Wedding planners could help plan a benefit event. Nearly every industry has useful skills.

If you can’t think of any industry skills, think about hobbies. Maybe you’re really good at art, and could volunteer your skills at an after-school program. Maybe you love basketball. Or maybe you love writing, and you could write letters to politicians and decision makers on behalf of the charity (with permission, of course).

If you serve the community for a couple hours a month, you’re making the world a stronger place. It doesn’t need to take over your whole life. And you can have the satisfaction of improving the place you live! It’s incredibly rewarding to volunteer. Once you start, it’ll be hard to decide which organizations you want to help the most!

What is your favorite nonprofit organization? Let me know in the comments!

It’s Not A Meme Just Because You Say It Is

Internet Meme [meem] : noun. (1) a phrase used to describe an email that spreads around the internet, peer-to-peer, via “forwarding”.

We’ve all received a meme. If you’ve only been on the internet for a day, you’ve probably already received one. Some people excessively forward LOL Catz, urban legends, and warnings of all varieties. These are memes. Weird news stories, funny websites, and actual good advice sometimes become memes. It’s many marketer’s dream to create a meme.

There’s another word for it, a big buzzword in marketing: going “viral”. It’s the same thing as a meme, it just sounds cooler.

But, like any buzzword, people try to use it to convince others to do the action. They label a blog post “meme” in hopes of spreading it. “This is a really viral post!” they claim…. Yet, you haven’t seen it anywhere else.

This is a bad marketing technique. People know what’s popular and what’s not popular. It’s hard to convince a group – especially an internet-savvy group that knows what “meme” means – that they just haven’t heard of this wildly popular thing.

If you are trying to create “buzz” with a “viral” “meme”, then don’t use any of those words. Instead, ask your readers to pass on the post (or the email, or whatever) to their friends. It’s not a meme until it’s out of your control.

Creating Community, College Style

I’m in my sophomore year in college. I just transferred to a new college after discovering my first choice wasn’t as good of a fit as I thought it would be. But both colleges have something in common: the sense of community.

My first college created community through school pride. Reminders were everywhere about impressive alumni, the history created on campus, and upcoming sporting events. The community was a created with a sense of honor and nobility, with each person believing she was a pillar of the community.The students often come from a rich heritage of movers and shakers with advanced degrees.

My second school is much more homey and less based on pride and history. The community here is created through personal connections made in the dorms and activities. Notices on campus are about ways to connect with fellow students – religious fellowships, language cafes, and clubs in the majors. Students here do not tend to have pride just because of their enrollment in this school, but because they have accomplished getting to college. The students here are almost all on scholarship, and many are the first in their family to be in college.

Both communities have something to offer. Both inspire loyalty in students to stand by their peers. And both offer lessons to businesses.

To have a successful business, you need to create a community around your brand. Your customers should be able to bond over what you offer. One good example is the yoga community. Yoga studios can easily build a community of yogis (those who practice yoga) because those people come together often and spend time together. However, many studios fail to engage the students as a community. They let each person walk out the door without personal connection.

To create community with your customers, first create community with your employees. Passionate, engaged workers leak community all over the place. They create connection with each other and with customers. Try hosting a board game hour during the work week. Post riddles above the coffee machine. Allow for a few minutes of chitchat at meetings. Create a vibrant workplace that your employees look forward to coming to each day.

Next, invite your customers in. Offer to treat a few top customers to dinner. Let them test-drive new products and blog about their findings. Ask for their ideas. Make them feel like their opinions matter to the company and it’s a place for them to have an impact.

Let your customers create the community. Facilitate picnics and pot lucks. Host a tweet-up. Invite everyone to an end-of-the-year party. Offer branded prizes for YouTube contests and tweet drawings. Give your customers a voice.

Look at rock musicians. They have intense followings of people who wear their shirts, blog about their new albums, and talk about them as an “inspiration”. The Apple brand has a die-hard community who make “Are you an Apple person?” a more loaded question than “Are you a cat person?” or even “Are you a Democrat?”

Help your customers define themselves by being a part of your brand. Remember as you cultivate this loyalty that you’re no longer spreading a brand – you’re creating a family.

How To Market Like Nigerian Scammers (Legally)

It’s amazing how many people in Nigeria and Ireland who want to give you money. I get a few dozen business propositions per week from people who are in a bit of crisis and need just a little now, but will give me millions later. Then there are those long-lost European relatives who remembered me with billions in their will.

As annoying as these emails are, they keep circulating for a reason: they work. The scammer sends a few thousand emails and gets a couple bites. But why do people respond? Doesn’t everyone know these are scams?

The scams have a few qualities that makes them irresistible to some targets.

• Addressing the prospect by name. This helps personify the email and make each target feel needed.
• An emotional appeal. In scams, this is usually a civil war, a parent with cancer, or a soldier trying to get home.
• An incentive for you (money).

Luckily, these attributes can be applied to your email marketing without coming off as a scammer! This stuff is around because it works. Of course, you will have legitimate uses for this information (I hope!).

• If you are using an email marketing program (like Constant Contact), include each contact’s name. Don’t get too happy with it – just once or twice will suffice.
• If you are soliciting money, be sure to include a personal story. (See Creating Your Nonprofit’s Story)
• Include the benefit for the prospect. Saved money? More time? Better family life? Make sure the customer knows what they get out of it!

Have you tried the secrets of Nigerian scammers? How did they work for you?

How To Get More Participants In Your Classes

People don’t like to commit. Period. Not just cold-footed lovers on the day of the wedding, not just fickle teenagers. This is unfortunate for those who make their living off of events people have to commit to, like workshops and seminars.

These can be some of the hardest “products” to sell, because your product is intangible. In essence, your product is you. However, there are some things you can do to make your future participants become comfortable with the idea of committing to the event.

The process:

1. Offer them a free taste. When you go to the ice cream shop and ask to sample the good, they hand you a tiny spoon with a dab of ice cream. You barely taste it before it’s gone. Your marketing should be the same. Offer a small event that is just a taste of the real deal. If you offer a weekend-long event, do a free one-hour event a few weeks beforehand. (This gives them time to save up some money).

2. Collect their email addresses at the free event. Send them a follow-up email with a short video or MP3 file, to offer just another taste. They get this taste in the comfort of their own home, which disarms them.
Tips for improving your email marketing

3. Send a final reminder the week of the event, with some benefits listed. Stress that space is limited, and this is their last chance. Perhaps offer something free for first-time participants, like the recordings of the event or the book by the speaker.

4. If they still don’t come, send a post-event email outlining all the wonderful things that were taught at the event, some photos of people participating, a short video of the speaker, and an offer for advance registration for the next event.

5. Quick and easy ideas for post-event publicity

Here’s how the process would look for a weekend yoga workshop (with the fictional instructor Judy):

1. Judy hosts a free one-hour yoga class several weeks before the workshop. She hands out fliers for the weekend event and offers advance registration.

2. Soon after, Judy sends an email to her list (including the free class participants) with a video of a few yoga poses for the office. She mentions the weekend seminar again.

3. The week of the weekend event, she sends another email explaining what weekend participants will learn. A bullet-point list is good for this. She adds that first-time participants get a free yoga mat and yoga bricks.

4. Judy brings in a professional photographer to take photos during the event. She uses those pictures in her post-event email, and includes a video from the event – maybe a wake-up yoga routine.

With this process, Judy gives her potential students a taste of her events. Some of them will never come to a weekend event. But some of them will, with Judy’s persistence.

How can you adapt these tips for your own events? Leave your ideas in the comments!

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Using Publicity To Get More Publicity

Once you have some media coverage, you can snowball it into a lot of publicity. It’s actually fairly easy!

When you have confirmed that you have coverage – whether local or national or online – draft a simple letter to other media outlets. You’ll personalize it for each one, but you need a somewhere to start. Tell them about your media coverage and how they can benefit from covering the same topic. For example, let them know if the topic is a national media trend and you’re the local angle.

Next, look through your media contact list (you have one, right?) and pick out some media outlets that might be interested and fix up your letter to include details that each media outlet might be interested in. For example, you may personalize your letter to mention that you’re a woman for women’s magazines, young for alternative weeklies, GLBT for allied publications, a grandparent for baby boomer papers, a dad for parenting magazines, etc etc. Let them know that you’re not blasting the exact same pitch to everyone.

Next, mention any other media experience you have. Mention any national coverage for sure, and impressive local media.Be sure to mention your contact info, too!

Send it off and stay near your phone and email for a few days!