Improve Your PR Productivity

There are number of free software tools on the market to help improve your PR productivity.

The ones I'm currently using are:

• Evernote to clip and store material from the web including images, websites and documents.
• Drop Box to share files and folders between desktops, laptops and mobile phones.
• You Send It to email very large files such as videos and hi-res images.
• Audio Boo to record an audio file to the web and then distribute it.
• And of course, Facebook and Twitter to share ideas with other communications professionals.

So what are you using to save time and effort in your communications?

The PR of Climate Change

The threats posed to Earth by a changing climate are real and far reaching. 

So you would think it would be easy to tell people about the problems we face, what part they can play in helping the planet to adjust and then stand back and watch them take action.  If things were only that simple.

The recent Copenhagen Conference showed even governments armed with the latest, most compelling data cannot agree on what should be done. So what hope is there in convincing  Earth's six billion people to act for the common good.

Last month Columbia University's Centre for Research on Environmental Decisions released the Psychology of Climate Change Communications report. Meant for use by governments, scientists and environmental groups, it provides a framework to recognise the barriers to communicating climate change and recommends strategies and tools to convince people to act. These include:

• Know your audience and appreciate their current level of knowledge about climate change. If there are misconceptions in their mental frameworks, replace these with facts and fresh information.
• Get your audience's attention. Frame information in a manner that is comfortable for them and talk about the here and now rather than some abstract, imperilling future. People tend to discount environmental (and financial) consequences with every year they are delayed so add immediacy to the conversation and talk about the present.
• Put the dire global situation into a local context and bring the message close to home.  Most often local leads because people show more concern with events in their neighbourhood than in far-off places. Tap into the desire people have of avoiding losing something and make them aware of the potential for current (as well as future) losses if  we fail to act.
• Translate scientific data into concrete experiences, avoid using technical jargon and rely on simple language.  The goal for scientists should be to help their fellow citizens to quickly absorb information rather than spend time trying to decipher vocabulary.  Sure there is a place for charts, graphs and carefully worded text but these work far better when supported by vivid imagery, film, real world examples, personal case studies and simple analogies.
  
• Avoid overusing emotional appeals.  Continually trying to scare people into action strains  our finite capacity to worry about things.  Our minds concentrate on what concerns us right now and too much long term fear can lead to emotional numbing.
• Acknowledge the uncertainties surrounding climate change.  People will understand incomplete information better in a group where they have a chance to discuss it rather than as individuals trying to understand an issue alone.
• Tap into social affiliations. Appeal to the various roles a person plays (parent, farmer etc).  Focus communications on the small group rather than the larger body and use local messengers who are more likely to be listened to than some distant authority.
• Encourage participation because people are more likely to act if they have had a part in shaping an action.
• Make it easy to take action.  Give people simple things they can do in the first place  that can build into a more extensive program.  Offer incentives and default options individuals can easily accept. 
  

The Pyschology of Climate Change Communications is a must read for those involved in environmental issues, community relations and critical social behavioural issues.  

Download the full report.

Community Relations Will Be The Emerging PR Discipline in 2010

In 2010 and beyond our communities will face significant, planet altering issues. And the irony is that right now often we can't even agree on the causes of these issues let alone articulate their solutions.

Climate Change, the Global Financial Crisis, Terrorism and other problems demand an response now. Yet at the same time we know that their solution will involve all of us for generations to come.

That is why in 2010 we are likely to see community relations emerge as a distinct PR discipline similar to how investor relations emerged in the 1990s. Community relations is the art and craft of sharing information and talking to communities to solve problems that affect people with common interests. In the future it will involve:

• Actively listening to our communities through research, face to face discussion and what people say on social media platforms.
• Educating people on the key dimensions of issues because the ones we face invariably are complex and have more than one dimension.
• Presenting a vision for the future with a mix of facts, figures, case studies, projections and other data and communicating with logic and emotion in language and imagery that are easy to grasp.
  
• Adjusting corporate behaviours and responses when the wisdom of the crowd, the state of the economy and the health of our planet tells us that things plainly are not working.
• Persuading our organisations to have the courage to take a leadership position on the tough issues and continuously communicate what we must do with conviction and clarity.
  

This new breed of community relations is more than assembling media relations, social media, direct marketing and other traditional channels into yet another PR or marketing plan. Rather the new style community relations is likely to involve a whole new way of thinking, strategising, listening and delivering our communications.

Communicators hang on. Not only are the channels we use changing, the philosophy of what we do is about to undergo a tsunami-like shake-up.

Happy 2010

Happy 2010.

Best of success and every peace to you and your loved ones in the coming year.

Holiday Greetings After a Year of Crisis Communications

What a strange communications year it has been. It seems it was the Year of the the Crisis Communicator as we watched communicators over the past 12 months grapple with crises such as the:

• Devastating Victorian bush fires
  
• Global financial crisis
• Climate change
• Rapid fall of Tiger Woods and a myriad of local and global dramas our communities faced.

On the other hand we saw the rise and rise of social media, the continued dedication of volunteers and the passion and persuasion of communicators doing campaigns and projects that truly make a difference for the rest of us.

Thanks for reading Traffic on Maine in 2009 and for those I encountered during workshops, seminars and other byways of life ... it was a pleasure to meet you.

Enjoy a safe and happy Christmas season. May you and your family have a well deserved break over the Australian summer and then return refreshed in 2010 to communicate with your community.