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Archives for April 2011

How to deal with setbacks in your corporate communications

I invited Graham Price, a psychologist and executive coach, to write a post for us about dealing with setbacks. Of course, this isn’t only relevant to corporate communications, but to all aspects of life…

A newsletter has gone out with a glaring, and rather embarrassing, error. Someone has decided to set the cat among the pigeons with internal gossip and morale is dropping. A major communications plan has failed to deliver and now you have the fall out to deal with. How do you deal with such setbacks?

Are you immobilised by regret, disappointment, stress or worry? Or are you the resilient type who can quickly shrug off disappointments and refocus on action to build the future?

Chartered Psychologist, development trainer and executive coach Graham W Price teaches his clients how to become more resilient so they can focus on action rather than dwelling on past or present losses.

Some coaches and development trainers argue there’s no such thing as failure, only learning opportunities. But Price believes it’s usually unrealistic to expect us to review setbacks in a positive way, and the problem with trying to ‘reframe’ setbacks into something positive, is that it reinforces the idea that situations can only be accepted if they’re positive.

Price advocates acceptance rather than ‘reframing’, viewing the latter as a bonus if we can do it. The key to resilience is to be able to accept negative situations and events, at the same time as focusing on action to change them or otherwise improve the future.

Almost all negative thoughts, such as regret, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, disappointment, upset, stress or irritation involve wishing something were ‘already’ different. In other words we’re wishing something that’s happened hadn’t happened or we’re wishing that a situation that exists right now didn’t exist right now. Both are wishing for the impossible.

And yet that’s precisely what people want whenever they’re dissatisfied about anything.

Wanting things to be already different is called ‘resisting what is’. The opposite is ‘accepting what is’, which simply means not wishing things were already different. Being able to ‘accept what is’ is the basis of resilience. It allows us to focus only on action to improve the future.

Price developed a technique to train himself to ‘accept what is’ all the time. It’s called Positive Acceptance and is now widely accepted with thousands of people trained to practice it. Positive Acceptance is a simple four step process:

  1. Create a habit of noticing whenever we’re wanting something to be ‘already’ different (easy enough as this is almost always what we’re doing whenever we’re dissatisfied about anything)
  2. Recognise this is irrational as we’re wishing for the impossible
  3. Drop the thought (surprisingly easy once we’ve carried out the first two steps)
  4. Re-focus on action to improve the future, to the extent this is practical and worthwhile

Price suggests we initially practice on small things (burnt toast, red traffic lights, missed trains) and then build up to bigger things. With practice it becomes more automatic. With further practice it becomes more unconscious and negative thoughts eventually stop arising. Once the negative, panic thoughts are cleared – then we can get on with the real business of sorting out the communications issue we’ve been dealt.

Feelings or emotions can get in the way of ‘accepting what is’. It’s hard to engage in any type of rational thinking when we’re upset, angry or anxious. Price suggests we wait for feelings to subside before engaging in Positive Acceptance. It can also be useful to deal with uncomfortable feelings using a similar acceptance-based approach.

Price encourages his clients to refuse to maintain irrational thoughts that involve ‘resisting what is’ (or what will be) and to instead focus on action to change the future. He claims by practicing these techniques his clients become hugely resilient and much more satisfied and effective.

Learning to ‘accept what is’ all the time removes dissatisfaction from our lives. Most of the time dissatisfaction is debilitating and de-motivating. It can be replaced by much more effective motivators such as having clear preferences about how we want the future to be and making a contribution to others. These motivators don’t detract from resilience and taking action and they’re not debilitating.

Once we’ve developed this level of resilience setbacks can be taken in our stride, while we focus on any lessons learned and taking action to rebuild the future. Remember setbacks happen – the most important thing is dealing with them and moving on with the job of corporate communications.

Graham W Price is a chartered psychologist, CBT specialist, coach, trainer and professional speaker. He is an accredited member of the British Psychological Society (BPS), the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) and the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) and a registered practitioner psychologist with the Health Professions Council (HPC).

He is author of What Is, Is! The Power of Positive Acceptance published by HotHive, outlining the above tools and others needed for achieving satisfaction, resilience and success.

For more information about Graham see www.abicord.com/graham-price

7 Strategies For Employee Communication via Social Media

A guest post from Mitch Thompson for you this morning; I invited Mitch to write for us on using social media for internal communications.

Social media has come a long way in the last five years. Once used to kill time and stay entertained, the social web is now deeply ingrained in the day-to-day operations of businesses large and small.

Communications is no exception – in fact, it’s one of the premier uses of social media in the corporate environment. Instead of relying on outdated bulletin boards and impersonal memos, tech-savvy executives are now using online tools to communicate more quickly, more personally and more effectively.

Here are seven strategies for implementing social media communication in your company.

Establish Clear Ownership

One of the biggest problems companies have when implementing social media at the corporate level is that no one department has clear ownership of it. Who’s responsible? Is it marketing, HR, senior management, or perhaps a newly anointed person/department? There is no one ‘right’ answer, but the old saying applies: when it’s everyone’s responsibility, it’s no one’s responsibility.

When a company’s social presence is run by different departments, it invariably falls short of its full potential. Each week sees the birth of new ‘initiatives’ and experiments, rather than the continuation of one solid direction or approach. As a result, social media fails to become the rich communication channel it has the potential to be. Pick one person (or department) to be in charge and give them authority over the channel.

Protected Twitter Accounts

One of the quickest ways to immediately leverage social media for corporate communications is Twitter. But there’s a twist: established businesses shouldn’t sign up for the same public Twitter accounts that individuals use. Rather, executives will want to use what’s known as a ‘protected’ Twitter account.

Basically, a protected Twitter account is one where only approved followers (employees and colleagues in this case) can see your Tweets. Once established, your protected Twitter account can be used to share anything of company importance: memos, reminders, event invitations, etc. You can even go a step further and establish protected Twitter accounts for each department. This way, everyone gets tweets that are very pointed and relevant to their job duties without getting overwhelmed by things outside of their purview.

Corporate RSS Feeds

RSS feeds offer another way to rapidly disseminate information across the company. RSS (which literally stands for ‘really simple syndication’) enables executives to create ‘feeds’ that employees and co-workers subscribe to via tools like Google Reader. What can you syndicate using RSS? Actually, just about anything you wish.

Today’s RSS technologies permit you to syndicate text, videos, audio files and virtually anything else you can send along in an e-mail or instant message. The benefit of using RSS instead is that you can create the content once (say, a reminder or memo) and effortlessly blast it out to everyone in a completely streamlined and trackable format.

Internal Company Blog

If you aren’t ready to experiment with Twitter and RSS yet (or even if you are) a much simpler way to bring social media into your communications program is just to set up an internal company blog. This is distinct from any customer-facing blog you might have. Rather than publishing PR stories about the company, your internal blog is meant to convey information that’s meaningful to employees and executives.

A major plus of having an internal blog is allowing employees to comment on each post and paying attention to what they say. This is a priceless form of feedback – encourage people to freely and candidly share their thoughts on company blog posts. Furthermore, use these responses to drive new initiatives or employee programs based on what you learned.

Bring Social Media Reports To Regular Meetings

For some companies, social media (whether in the form of blogs, Twitter, RSS or Facebook) is an island unto itself, a hermetically sealed, back-room ‘experiment’ that no one else in the company interacts with or hears about. This is a mistake! The whole point of corporate social media is to improve communication and performance throughout the company.

Whoever is in charge of corporate social media should be bringing reports to regular company meetings and contributing insights based on what was learned. This can be employee tweets, blog comments, shared stories – literally anything that sheds light on how the company can change or improve in some meaningful way.

Obtain Executive Buy-In

Social media will not go very far in a corporate setting without buy-in from top executives. Absent this key support, whoever is in charge of social media will constantly be fighting an uphill battle, struggling to make suggestions or changes on the basis of an initiative only they (or at most, a few non-senior managers) support. Left to continue this way, your social media communications program will stall and stagnate.

Don’t make this mistake. From day one, let it be known that everyone, from the CEO on down, is fully behind the social media initiative (both in spirit and in terms of resources allocated.) Only then will the company embrace social media as a lasting fixture instead of a passing fad.

Not For Entry-Level Employees

Finally, it must be noted that social media is not suited for entry-level employees or interns. Whoever is responsible for the initiative should be, if not a senior executive, then at least someone with a long history at your organization. Someone who thoroughly understands its culture and has interacted with all of the various departments in the past.

The reason this is so important is that the entire organization must be on board. If one or two departments are not committed to social communications and refuse to participate, the entire initiative has failed. Moreover, the job of running and monitoring your internal social media channels is very comprehensive – someone fresh out of college or with only a few months experience at the company will likely be overwhelmed.


Thanks, Mitch!

About the author: Mitch Thompson is a freelance writer who specializes in personal finances and small business. From car insurance to taxes, Mitch educates readers so that they can achieve financial success.

Web Email Provider Affects Email Marketing Response Rates

For most brands, email marketing is a critical component of the marketing plan and response rates and return on investment are scrutinized very closely. But are you analyzing response rates based on recipients’ email providers?  According to new research by Chitika, you might want to start.

Depending on the web email provider a person uses, that person may be more likely or less likely to click on links in your email marketing messages. Furthermore, that person might be more or less likely to stay on your website after clicking through to it depending on the web email provider he or she uses.

The top web email providers in North America in March 2011 Yahoo! Mail. The market share breakdown is as follows (via eMarketer):

  • Yahoo! Mail = 62%
  • Windows Live = 27%
  • AOL Mail = 7%
  • Gmail = 4%

Separate research from other companies has revealed that Gmail has a much larger market share than the Chitika study claimed (closer to 30% market share). However, the demographics and behaviors of Yahoo! Mail versus Gmail users does not seem to change from one study to the next.  Those demographics and behaviors follow:

  • Gmail users tend to be younger than other web email users.
  • Yahoo! Mail users are more likely to open and click on email marketing messages to visit the email message landing page.
  • Gmail users are more likely to click through the email message landing page when they arrive on it than Yahoo! Mail users.

These findings tell marketers a few important things that you should be watching in your own brand email marketing campaigns. First, Gmail users may be more tech-savvy and are more choosy about which email marketing messages they actually open. Second, when you can convince a Gmail user to open and click through to your email landing page, you’re more likely to convert that visitor to a sale or reach your goal. The Chitika research showed that Gmail users are three times more likely to click through when they arrive at an email marketing landing page than Yahoo! Mail or Windows Live mail users are.

It’s interesting to think of different ways that you can slice and dice the demographic profiles and behavioral profiles of customers and email marketing message recipients. There may come a time when you reach a point in your analysis that you can delete specific web email providers from your email marketing list entirely. It’s something to think about.

Image: stock.xchng

Corporate Eye Summary April 23, 2011

  • Which Brands are Engaging Fans on Facebook Pages?
    A new study of over 200 million Facebook page fans conducted by Visibli reveals some interesting findings about how well brands are engaging consumers on the most popular social networking site. Some of the highlights from the study tell us: Audi Facebook Page fans are highly engaged. The only other brand to rank in the […]


  • Planning Your CSR Content Strategy
    It’s one of those big givens in life: if you’ve bought flat packed furniture, READ THE INSTRUCTIONS before you even think about picking up a screwdriver. In fact, make sure there are instructions for understanding the instructions before you even buy that corner shelving unit which looks oh-so-lovely in the promotional picture. And also, be […]


  • Foreign Brands Hold Strong in China
    China is a hot spot for brands around the world as more and more companies focus on the huge audience of consumers there. For example, just last month I was interviewed about how the Playboy brand can position itself for future success in Asia, particularly in China, based on my research about the brand in […]


  • Corporate Eye Summary April 16, 2011
    Addressing the Corporate Website Wouldn’t you want to keep all roads open to your website? I visit many corporate websites a week, and am frequently surprised when brought up short by an error message, or by ending up somewhere unexpected, requiring me to rethink my route to the website. Usually it’s a browser error message: […]


  • 2010 Online Ad Revenues Jump to $26 Billion in the United States
    If there was any question as to whether or not online advertising is doing well, a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) gives the answer. In 2010, online ad revenues in the United States grew by an impressive 15% to $26 billion. Clearly, online advertising is a key component of […]


Corporate Eye Summary April 23, 2011

  • Which Brands are Engaging Fans on Facebook Pages?
    A new study of over 200 million Facebook page fans conducted by Visibli reveals some interesting findings about how well brands are engaging consumers on the most popular social networking site. Some of the highlights from the study tell us: Audi Facebook Page fans are highly engaged. The only other brand to rank in the […]


  • Planning Your CSR Content Strategy
    It’s one of those big givens in life: if you’ve bought flat packed furniture, READ THE INSTRUCTIONS before you even think about picking up a screwdriver. In fact, make sure there are instructions for understanding the instructions before you even buy that corner shelving unit which looks oh-so-lovely in the promotional picture. And also, be […]


  • Foreign Brands Hold Strong in China
    China is a hot spot for brands around the world as more and more companies focus on the huge audience of consumers there. For example, just last month I was interviewed about how the Playboy brand can position itself for future success in Asia, particularly in China, based on my research about the brand in […]


  • Corporate Eye Summary April 16, 2011
    Addressing the Corporate Website Wouldn’t you want to keep all roads open to your website? I visit many corporate websites a week, and am frequently surprised when brought up short by an error message, or by ending up somewhere unexpected, requiring me to rethink my route to the website. Usually it’s a browser error message: […]


  • 2010 Online Ad Revenues Jump to $26 Billion in the United States
    If there was any question as to whether or not online advertising is doing well, a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) gives the answer. In 2010, online ad revenues in the United States grew by an impressive 15% to $26 billion. Clearly, online advertising is a key component of […]


The Quantifiable Value of Return Policies for Brands

In a recent study by Northwestern University and MIT researchers (reported by Neuromarketing Blog), a quantifiable value was placed on retail return policies.  While it may seem like the real value of return policies comes from the positive brand perceptions they create, there are now hard metrics that prove return policies are important and should be well promoted

In the study, researchers determined the specific value that customers put on having the option to return items they purchase online.  As you might expect, the value was closely tied to the perceived risk of a purchase.  However, the study also reveals some specifics about how much more customers are willing to pay for a great return policy.

The study determined that the value of a return policy on men’s shirts equates to $3.19. For women’s shirts, the value is $5.00. However, the value of a return policy on women’s shoes is $15.81. These valuations make sense when you consider the fact that purchasing a man’s shirt is less risky than purchasing shoes for a woman. Without actually trying the shoes on, it can be difficult for women to find the right fit. Men’s shirts are more likely to fit without trying them on than women’s shoes are. It’s a riskier online purchase making the value of a good return policy five times higher for women’s shoes than men’s shirts.

Of course, a good return policy can mean different things to different people, but offering comparisons between your return policy and competitors’ return policies can demonstrate to consumers that yours is more valuable (assuming it’s better than your competitors’ return policies). If your return policy is great, make sure your customers know it, too. They need to understand its value in order to see it as an important benefit to them and differentiator of your brand from others.

You can follow the link to read the complete Northwestern University and MIT study findings. It’s filled with statistical analysis and information you can take to your leadership team to help you sell the need for your brand to have a great return policy.

Image: stock.xchng