by Caroline Leach | May 30, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Social Media
How can you get your message into the first three to five words?
If the recipient read nothing else, would they get the main message in those first few words?
And how you can grab their attention right away?
These are the questions I’m asking when I’m reviewing materials my Comms team or others have drafted.
Is the main message in the subject line? Or the slide headline? Or the blog post title?
It’s in those first few critical words – or increasingly, images – that your audience will decide if they should engage further or move on to the next message.
Your subject line and preview text may be all your reader ever sees of your email, so make ’em count. Check out some great email subject lines to inspire the ones you write.
And make sure you’ve included keywords, “an informative word used in an information retrieval system to indicate the content.”
Even The New York Times, long known for its lyrical headlines, is now including keywords.
And there’s a bigger goal as well.
“What matters more than a story’s ‘searchable’ factor is how ‘shareable’ it is on social media,” the article by Margaret Sullivan goes on to say, “so headlines need to serve that purpose too.”
And what makes something interesting and shareable and interesting echoes the themes in 4 Questions to Transform Your Elevator Pitch.
So how can you say it in a subject line?
by Caroline Leach | May 24, 2015 | Change, Corporate Communications, Social Media
This week, I’m preparing to give a one-minute elevator pitch.
This should be easy. I’ve done personal branding sessions. I’ve defined my unique value proposition. And I’ve drafted a pitch, complete with words like strategy and collaboration and results.
But somehow, those formal statements are things I would never say. They wouldn’t feel natural. They wouldn’t sound believable. They wouldn’t be interesting.
And as Tim David says in his HBR post, Your Elevator Pitch Needs an Elevator Pitch, they wouldn’t be authentic.
So what should I say? What should you say the next time you’re on an elevator or at conference and someone asks you to tell them what you do?
In one minute, you have about 120 words to pique someone’s interest and spark a longer conversation.
Being in the TV business, pivotal scenes or compelling narratives often come to mind. As The Wall Street Journal reported in a tribute to Mad Men, elevators have been described as a neutral zone where “time, physical space and tension get neatly compressed.”
So how can use use that to your advantage?
First, who are you pitching to? As with any communication, consider your audience. Who are they and what’s important to them? What problems are they trying to solve? And how can you help? Answering these questions will help you tailor your pitch.
Second, why are you pitching to them? What do you want to accomplish? Your general objective should be to generate interest in a follow-up conversation, not to close a sale or land a job. Think of your elevator pitch as opening the door to more dialogue.
Third, what do you want them to know about you? If the person were to remember just one thing about you, what would you want it to be? Focus on that area and edit out everything else.
Fourth, how can you say it authentically? Translate corporate jargon into real words that anyone could understand. Could your parents understand it? How about a kindergartner?
Here’s the start of mine for this moment in time:
Hi, I’m Caroline Leach. I help people learn to love change. Whether it’s winning customer loyalty, working in new ways or creating a culture of volunteerism, I use communication to lead change. And involving people makes them more excited about the future.
Best-selling author Daniel Pink has great ideas about creating an elevator pitch for our digital world. One is having a one-word pitch. If, according to Pink, Google equals search and MasterCard equals priceless, what one word defines you?
I chose “transform.” I also considered “change.” But while many people are inspired by the idea of transformation and its possibilities for reinvention and growth, people resist change, as Rosabeth Moss Kanter summarizes so well on ten different levels.
People don’t always like to change. But they would eagerly transform their lives. And communication can connect the two in a powerful way that ultimately leads to sustainable change.
Pink also suggests summing up your pitch in a tweet. In 140 characters or less, what’s your Twitter pitch?
My tweet is I help people learn to love change.
And that’s what I’m exploring right now in my work and in this blog. And as that changes and evolves, so will my elevator pitch.
by Caroline Leach | Mar 15, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Leadership, Learning, Social Media
What are the questions – asked and unasked – you’ll encounter in an interview for a corporate communications job? Here are mine.
Can you write? This really means, “can you think?” As acclaimed historian David McCullough said, “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That is why it’s so hard.”
Good writing is the price of admission to corporate comms. That’s why I’m often surprised by the number of people in the field who aren’t strong writers.
How do you become a good writer? Read voraciously. Write frequently. Edit liberally.
Are you smart? While you don’t have to be Mensa material, you need to have common sense. You need to possess a pragmatic, practical intelligence to navigate our VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous – world.
How do you solve problems? This is where I ask people to tell me about a train wreck. A project gone wrong. A major mess-up.
I want to see what early-warning indicators they observe. How they take accountability. How they turn things around. And how they analyze and fix the root cause so it won’t happen again.
Essentially, can they figure it out?
Do you have grit? Psychologist Angela Duckworth says grit is the key to success.
What is grit? It’s “passion and perseverance for very long-term goals . . . having stamina . . . and living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
It’s never giving up. And according to Duckworth, it’s more important than talent or IQ.
This is why I’m looking for candidates with passion and dedication. People with a relentless commitment to making something happen, whatever it takes.
Will you thrive in this culture? Every company has a distinct culture, or the way work gets done. Is it formal or informal? More structured or less structured? Conservative or innovative?
I ask candidates to tell me about the environment they most enjoy working in. Then I’ll ask why and for a few examples. As they speak, I picture how they might interact at a meeting or with various leaders at the company.
Are you savvy? This isn’t a question I’ll ask directly, but I’ll listen for signs that someone knows how to navigate an organization. That they know how to articulate their point of view appropriately, at the same time that they’ll listen to and consider their colleagues’ points of view. That they know how to resolve conflicts with professionalism and poise.
Will you add a diverse perspective and skill set to our team? The more diverse the team, the more effective it will be. Research bears this out.
I’m looking for people with a different take, a fresh perspective or a novel twist on doing things. This is part of always striving to improve and get better.
How flexible and agile are you? Can you quickly see when change is needed? And if so, can you pivot? Do you remain calm and unruffled when the best-laid plans need to be scrapped or redirected?
Are you social? A communicator has to be active in at least a few social media platforms. This is no longer optional. It’s a requirement.
When I’m preparing to interview a candidate, I start with a Google search and the person’s LinkedIn profile. Then I see what they’re tweeting. And how they’re communicating visually with pictures, videos, infographics and more.
Great story: A candidate flying in for an interview with my team tweeted about the great DIRECTV service on his flight, complete with a screenshot. We hired him.
Bad story: A candidate who tweeted “nailed it” after an interview. A fellow USC Annenberg alum shared this on a career panel we were on last year. That tweet ended the person’s candidacy.
What kind of a leader are you? In one word, how would your team describe your leadership style?
Here I’m inspired by my DIRECTV colleague Jen Jaffe who leads talent development. We were recently on a leadership panel at our company’s Young Professionals Network. She asked her team for input on her leadership style, so I did the same.
It’s an instant 360 feedback activity. Try it with your colleagues sometime.
How much upside career potential do you have? As candidates tell me about themselves, I’m listening through the filter of our leadership competencies.
Are they a strategic thinker? Someone who can innovate? Lead change? Deliver results? Build talent and teamwork? Establish productive relationships? Act with integrity? And build a deep understanding of corporate communications, our business and our industry?
What are you looking for in your next career gig? Life is too short to work in a job where you aren’t learning, contributing and making progress toward your most important goals.
That’s why I’m eager to learn what the candidate wants to get out of the job. It has to be a great fit for the company and the candidate as we work together to transform TV and entertain the future.
And lastly, one of my favorite bloggers, Penelope Trunk, offers a great course on reaching your goals by blogging. She advises people in each post to “write and write until something surprises you.”
My aha moment was seeing the relationship between heading off a train wreck and acting with grit. The Little Engine That Could did exactly that.
And it’s what each of us needs to do every day. Because we’re all capable of far more than we think we are.
Recent Comments