innovate communication for innovative communicators

• Norton 360
• easi-speak podcast microphone
• Online Public Relations by Phillips and Young (KoganPage)
• Tactical Transparency by Holtz & Havens – a must buy!!!!!

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Sona Hathi from Melcrum’s London office has blogged a great video interview with Abi Signorelli, Director of Internal Communication at Virgin Media.

Sona also shares some video tips from Debbie Davies (former tv producer and private investigator!), including:

8. Think about lighting, background scenery and noise – even things like air conditioning can be disturbing. Put up a do not disturb sign if necessary.

9. Avoid fancy shots – zooming in and out can be distracting and also waste battery power.

10. Remember to get permission! Look on the internet for downloadable contracts of agreement. As a last minute option, get the interviewee to say on camera "My name is xxx and I am being interviewed by xxx about xxx and am aware that this will be broadcast on xxx," and then keep this as a record.

I strongly recommend you check out the full list of tips, and of course check out Abi’s video interview about how Virgin are using social media internally.

Great stuff!

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Can you give a tweet for charity this week? There’s less than a week left before @wonderwebby’s fundraising for a microfinance program ends.

Gratefully, over the last several months over $5,000 has been donated online towards a 2 year microfinance program in the Philippines, helping women to work their way out of poverty.

This week is her final fundraising week for an Opportunity International Trust Group and I hope you don’t mind me asking you a very simple favour for this important cause.

Jasmin still needs to raise a further $5,000 (US$4,000) by June 30th to create this microfinance program for up to 30 women in poverty and I’m simply asking for ‘a tweet’ on Twitter this week to help raise awareness about this fundraiser: http://wonderwebby.chipin.com

You can see examples of tweets and find out why she’s asking for help on Jasmin’s blog.

You might enjoy these slides which include links to the online fundraising activities held so far and pictures of Opportunity’s clients. Remember, there less than one week to go so please give generously before June 30th and donations made by Australian residents are tax deductible.

Thank you for your support and for helping to improve the lives of Filipino women living in poverty.

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I have spent the better part of a day wrestling with a printer issue. My trusty office-strength Lexmark  Optra T614 laser printer wouldn’t print double-sided, even though every ‘flag’ in the entire universe told it to.

I even went and somehow corrupted the print spooler so that no printers showed at all and I couldn’t add any. Grrrr…

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth here at BetterComms Towers as our entire IT staff (me, Boof and Ratbag – my two trusty and faithful killer attack labradors) laboured long and hard to get things right.

In the end I did the unthinkable – I visited the Microsoft Help site.

Thirty seconds later I was reading an article that claimed it would solve all my problems. Devotees of mid-period Rolling Stones will remember the girl with far-away eyes and how Country Mick ran a succession of red stop signs because of a tangentially-similar claim.

So I clicked on the ‘fix this problem’ button which came with the following promise:

Fix it for me

 

To fix this problem automatically, click the Fix this problem link. Then click Run in the File Download dialog box, and follow the steps in this wizard.

Fix this problem

Note The Fix it solution can be run in either Light mode or Full mode.
Light mode makes changes to the spooler that should not require you to make any additional changes. Full mode will restore the print spooler to default settings and require that you reinstall your printers.
Note This wizard is temporarily in English only. However, the automatic fix also works for other language versions of Windows.
Note If you are not on the computer that has the problem, you can save the automatic fix to a flash drive or to a CD, and then you can run it on the computer that has the problem.
Now go to the "Did this fix the problem?" section.

I am joyously delighted to report that it bloomin’ well DID fix my problem – well, almost.

I decided to take the radical step of turning my printer off and on and trying my double-sided printing again.

Chuffin’ Nora!

Printer compliance once again reigns in BetterComms Towers.

As Country Mick said, “Thank you Jesus, Thank you Lord.” To which I add, “Thank you, Microsofties”

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I recently gave a two-hour workshop presentation to a fabulous group of HR pros at the AHRI 2009 Conference in Sydney.

Here’s the presentation; I strongly suggest you download the slides (they are PowerPoint 2007 format) as there are some key slides at the end of the slide deck that I ran out of time to give justice to, and that don’t show on the slideshare presentation.

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Three incidents recently confirmed my decision to stick with Qantas as my airline of choice around the world, despite Virgin Blue having more comfortable seats*.

• Tricia Langdren and the Business Class Toilet Shuffle
• James Langanke and the Sydney Airport Kerfuffle
• Debbie Richards and the Personal Journal
  De-commissioned Plane Scuffle

Tricia Langdren and the Business Class Toilet Shuffle

Firstly, on a recent flight I was travelling in Business Class and the Customer Service Manager on the flight, Tricia Langdren, shortly after takeoff announced over the PA that the toilet at the front of the plane was for Business Class passengers only; should passengers travelling in Economy class wish to use a toilet theirs were located at the rear of the plane. Why was this so important to me?

[click here to continue…]

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O kay, so I was going to take down the report and put it up for sale for $49, but I’m about to move webhost, so there’s another week or so of jiggery-pokery that I need to do.

The good news is that with all the other stuff I have to get done I couldn’t be bothered jiggery-pokerying with putting a ‘lite’ version of the ebook up in place of the ‘full flavoured’ version.

So if you haven’t yet taken advantage of my largesse, subscribe to this blog and grab the ebook. As a subscriber you get kept up-to-date on when new articles are added.

Subscribe now! and receive a free copy of my $49 report, "Twitter Mastery for Business".

It’s the first in a series of reports I’m writing on how to master the various key elements of social media.

Each report is an-depth, step-by-step process that explains in clear, plain English how to master a particular social media tool and help your business communicate better for better business results.

Each report is easy to read, easy to implement and easy on the pocket — just $49 per copy.

But as a new subscriber to my blog and newsletter, I’m giving you a free copy of the Twitter Mastery for Business report as a way of saying "thank you" for joining my community.

Please subscribe, then check for the email you will receive from me shortly after — in the email will be details of how to download the report [1.2mb pdf]

And tell your friends…

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M y very fine friends at Melcrum are running another of their superb, packed-out strategic communication summits here in Australia – 15-18 Sept in Sydney.

Well, the 16th and 17th are the summit ‘proper’, the 15th is a pre-summit workshop day with Melissa Dunn from Gallup Consulting and Bill Quirke (see below) and the 18th is a full day workshop on Social Media run by yours truly, but I know that you wouldn’t want to miss out on anything over the four days.

Here’s the line-up:

• Melissa Dunn from Gallup Consulting
  “The 12 conditions that matter – what leaders need to know” pre-summit workshop
• Bill Quirke of Synopsis Communication Consulting
  “Leading engagement: how to get buy-in from business leaders to drive engagement” pre-summit workshop
• Danielle Koopman from Tourism Australia
  “The best social and viral media campaign in the world? Outcomes of the ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign”
• Herna van Reenen from Siemens
  “A picture of the future”
• Jonathan Champ from QBE Australia
  “Delivering ‘strategic communication’ one tactic at a time…”
• David Miller from the ATO
  “The ATO’s challenge”
• Nigel Haworth from Westaff (Australia)
  “Exploring engagement as an emotional state”
• Shannon Kliendienst from Leighton Contractors
  “Communicating effectively with a hard-to-reach workforce”
• Mike Tancred from the Australian Olympics Committee
  “Communication challenges – the Beijing Olympics”
• Alison Brown from IBM Australia
  “Hitting the restart button: Redesigning communication systems to reflect the reality of today’s working environment”
• Emma Rugge-Price from GE Australia & New Zealand
  “Meeting customer needs during rapidly changing times”
• Sam Werner from Zurich Financial Services Australia
  “Reconnecting: Getting the Chief Executive back in the room”
• Justin Gehde from the Department of Justice, Victoria
  “Effective compliance communication CAN change behaviour”
• Brian Giesen from Ogilvy PR, Ogilvy 360° Digital Influence
  “Yamming it up! Internal Comms & Web 2.0”

and the must-not-miss keynote speaker is Bill Quirke, a master communicator and highly respected communication strategist from the UK (he’s worth the admission price alone, let alone the other speakers!). Bill is one of the IABC’s six “All Star Speakers” and a regular on the international speaking circuit; he’s also the author of numerous books on communication strategy and how to turn strategy into action.

Then on the 18th I’m running a full-day workshop on Social Media, wherein you can find out how to harness social media and do more with less.

Look, if you really just want to see me and not attend the full Summit you can, but I reckon you’d be a mug to miss out on the others…

You can download the summit brochure as well as find out more about each of the speakers and their sessions on the Melcrum site.

FREE MELCRUM MEMBERSHIP WHEN YOU ATTEND THE SCM SUMMIT
At the SCM Summit not only will you hear two days of best-practice case studies and receive practical tools to immediately help you, but you’ll also become a Melcrum member FREE (usually $845 + GST) — which means you’ll get 12 months of help through Melcrum’s Strategic Communication Management Journal AND the Internal Comms Hub member-only website!

Go on, click on the link and find out more… you know you want to! See you there!

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That Glaswegian Melbournite and angry middle-aged PR practitioner Gerry McCusker has co-created a superb video on the similarities and differences between social media and punk rock.

For your humble aging rock star whose words you are currently reading, Gerry is absolutely spot on.

Like Gerry, I presented at the recent #iabc09 conference in San Fran (“man”), and I can certainly concur that punk rock and my presentation met in a holocaust of violence:

• I had several people spit on me
• One kicked me in the shins, then threw up on me
• The majority of the audience (all seven of them) swore at me afterwards.

But, in the tradition of all good punk rockers, I had my revenge: on the flight back from LAX to SYD (on a A380 no less!) I had the pleasure of spitting on an infant that exercised its lungs rather vociferously for many hours on end.

To add delight to piquancy, I then flicked the ears of two separate toddlers on the SYD-ADL leg who belted out their frustrations at a volume level that even Barnesy at the height of his powers would have been proud of.

At the risk of causing a torrent of abusive comment and email, I wonder why airlines allow toddlers and infants to fly, seeing as how the vast majority of them suffer excruciating pain in their ears as a result of the changing air pressure. I honestly do feel sorry for the poor little rug rats. The fact that their screaming also causes excruciating pain on all surrounding passengers is inconsequential; it is massively cruel that parents inflict the cause of the pain on their offspring.

Perhaps there is another one of those senseless and futile Facebook groups in the offing…

And, like Gerry, I wish I could shake this damn jet lag!

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