New Camera / Oshkosh Stormur

Writing effective press releases

One of the oldest ways to disseminate information to the press is to use a Press Release. In order to have an effective press release you need to write in an inverted pyramid style. To do this make sure to have the most important fact or detail in the beginning and work down to smaller details. Give a broad overview in the title. Secondly, make sure to include the WHO, WHERE, WHAT, WHEN, WHY and HOW. Incorporating these two different techniques will ensure effective press releases for your on campus organization or for your business.

Communicating for Managerial Effectiveness -The KISS chart

Dr. Phillip Clampitt is known across the country for his expertise on employee communication, branding, public relations and information technology. He recently released a new version of his book "Communicating for Managerial Effectiveness". The new edition has many new concepts and practices for communication professionals, but the most important is the KISS Chart. This is NOT the KISS if public relations past however (Keep It Simple Stupid) but rather a sophisticated audience analysis tool.

The K in KISS stands for Know; what do you know about your audience who are they?, What are their demographics, psycographics? What are their activities, etc.

I stands for Infer; What can you infer from what you know about the audience, if they punch a time clock what will that tell you about their willingness to stay after work for meetings? If they are introverts what does that tell you?

The first S stands for So What? So what should you do? You know all of this information and can infer certain things, what do you do? How can you reach them?

The second S stands for So what NOT to do. If your audience is introverts and needs time to think about decisions it would be unwise to make them choose a new healthcare plan without first talking to other employees and their family.

Clearly the chart could have been call the KISN chart, but that has no where near the cache of KISS. This chart has been used by many consultants across the country and is an effective tool to diagram your expertise on a napkin at a cocktail party.