Communicators Guide
chapter one
Keeping Current

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
— Arthur C. Clarke

Latest Communication Trends
The new information highway runs right through your backyard. With Internet resources and online news services, every word ever written or broadcast about your agency is readily accessible to everyone. The Internet breaks down old barriers to information.

Americans have an ever-expanding appetite for new technology. In 2000, more than half owned a cell phone, up from 24 percent in 1995. One in five Americans (18 percent) has a satellite dish; 5 percent own a Palm Pilot or other PDA—Personal Digital Assistant. This revolution in communications technology is not only changing the way we live; it has created a highly competitive environment for those in the news business who are providing information to the public.

The Changing Media Landscape
In June 2000, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a report that found that only 48 percent of Americans follow national news closely most of the time, a new low. Although daily newspaper readership was down slightly from 68 to 63 percent since 1998, TV network news viewership dropped from 65 percent in 1995 to 50 percent in 1999. One-third of adults now regularly get their news online; among those younger than 30, some 46 percent go online for news at least once a week.

News resources are dwindling. Media mergers and cost-cutting means that there are fewer reporters who have the luxury of doing detailed, in-depth stories. Many times, the reporter doing a story about your agency is not familiar with what your agency does. This provides you with a golden opportunity to fill the information void.

But, because our society is experiencing information overload, it is crucial that you get your information out—in plain language—in easily digestible chunks and in a form that will be used. And, you have to do it using the very latest technology that works. Because of the immediacy of the Internet, reporters and writers no longer have daily deadlines—stories are often posted as soon as they are written.

Get Your Point Across
We communicate every day. Every time we smile at another person, say “hi” to them, have a conversation with them, or even ignore them, we are communicating. Getting your point across is very important to successful business relationships. Good communication is difficult because it requires a lot of effort, time, and patience.

Tips to help you get your point across:
• Be prepared.
• Be confident.
• Stay focused on your conversation and your listener.
• Maintain eye contact with your listeners.
• Make sure your listeners are following you by asking them for questions or feedback.
• Don’t lose your temper or get over-emotional.
• Speak slowly and calmly; don’t raise your voice.
• Speak clearly and concisely.
• Get to the point; don’t ramble.
• Be kind, compassionate, and empathetic.
• Be honest. Don’t play games.
• Be assertive, but tactful.

Networking
Today’s workplace is a lot different from yesterday’s. And, how you do your job is different, too. One big change is networking. By branching out, you can form relationships with colleagues who have information that you need to do your job or you can give them the information they may need to do theirs.

Networking is a dynamic process often resulting in outcomes that far exceed what you as an individual communicator could generate. You can come up with novel and unusual ideas and techniques by brainstorming and partnering with communications professionals outside your institution or agency. Networking is:

• A way to connect people.
• The open asking for and sharing of ideas, experience, and information.
• A working approach to get things done or to get things done better.

Networking can:

• Help you collaborate on projects of mutual interest and exchange information, taking full benefit of everyone’s expertise.
• Foster supportive relationships that contribute to the increased quality of services or products.
• Broaden impact, both in terms of reaching more people and/or new audiences, and as a way of getting more for your investment in both time and money.
• Create a means to more effectively and rapidly pursue communications objectives, respond to changing communications practices, and solve problems.
• Provide access to expert guidance on skills, including writing, editing, design, marketing, Web design, distance education, and development of electronic products and audiovisuals.
• Provide remote access to technology and other information resources, such as databases, e-mail, bulletin boards, and shareware.
• Enable collaborative communication on the often complex range of subjects and issues packaged for your target audiences.
• Provide a springboard for marketing and distributing communications products, increasing visibility of your products and services to new audiences.
• Foster collaboration and create awareness of potential funding sources.
• Create opportunities for cost savings through choices to buy-in to press runs of products useful to your institution and clients, but developed by others.
• Help to achieve project success more readily. An indirect, but welcome, benefit is that your work might get recognition through various award programs.

Tips for Successful Networking

• Identify people who have what you want, such as mentors and experts, and those who need what you have. These relationships will enhance individual communications skills.
• Think locally; act globally. Sometimes it is easier to network on a local level—local chapters of professional communications societies, campus communications groups, one-on-one communication with colleagues in other departments. It is also important to branch out beyond your local resources to consult with communicators on a regional or national level. Serving on committees or on boards of national/regional communications associations can connect you with valuable future networks. You will likely earn trust and respect, and once you’ve done that, you will not only have business associates to call on when you need help or advice, you will also have good professional friends.
• Share information through e-mail, listservs, Web bulletin boards, and newsletters—all good networking tools.
• Keep up-to-date on the latest developments in communication technologies.
• Use computer networking to involve more people with diverse skills in problem-solving and innovation. New technologies help break down barriers between groups.
• Check the Internet to find out what others are doing. Information on the Internet is a constantly updated wealth of useful, timely, and sometimes in-depth material. Also, the Internet offers a forum through which you can raise questions, solve problems, and share your work. Check out Web-based video libraries and photo and graphic image archives.
• Create opportunities for collaboration among researchers, outreach specialists, and educators when networking activities make us aware of similar projects occurring in other geographic regions.
• When initiating projects, identify collaborators with whom you have a common mission or goals and build this into your implementation or action plan. Think proactively!
• Because networking can give you so many new opportunities and approaches, try to avoid getting derailed from your initial quest for information. When you are working with others to share information, try to avoid conflicts of demand and priority. This will help you avoid stress or work overload.

Where You Can Network

• Government or university settings: Formalized communications networks, informal gatherings of communications professionals, and professional development workshops.
• Local settings: Local chapters of professional communications societies; communications businesses in your community—public relations, information technology, marketing, and design firms, and fellow attendees at local workshops/seminars.
• Statewide, regional, national settings: Professional communications conferences and seminars, electronic listservs, bulletin boards, and discussion groups on Internet Web sites.

“I don’t care what is written about me - so long as it isn’t true.”
— Katherine Hepburn

Make Your Job Vital—How to Market Your Work
Public affairs folks are dedicated to promoting their agencies—using the best resources available and working hard at the job. However, it is a good idea to make sure your boss and your boss’ boss know about all the work that you, your co-workers, and your staff are doing. Don’t assume they already know. Here are some tips you can use to help demonstrate the value of a public affairs program and how vital communications work is to your agency:

• Collect your recent communications success stories in one place. That way you can share them with your boss or other influential associates. This file is particularly useful when you and your boss do a yearly evaluation.
• Submit “How I Did It” articles about your successful projects to an outside trade magazine, or write a column for your in-house publication. Pretend you’re describing what you did to a friend or a relative. Use plain language.
• Keep copies of your articles in your success file.
• Get involved with—and regularly speak before—professional, civic, and social organizations about your work.
• Have a speaker’s introduction ready for others to use before your presentations or an about the author note that editors can use with your articles.
• Record the speeches you or your staff makes. Use the tapes to help improve and as promotional tools.
• Give free communications advice to community groups.
• Teach an adult education class or offer to teach a class for another instructor. Encourage your staff to do the same.
• Get nominated for awards. Check the Internet to find out what awards are available. Offer to help a co-worker or your boss nominate you for the award by drafting it.
• Publicize the awards you and your staff receive. Don’t forget in-house bulletins, your home-town weekly, your alumni magazine, and your society/association newsletter. Keep a copy of the clipping in your success file.
• Develop and distribute a newsletter with professional tips or a marketing newsletter that tells about the work and services you and your staff provide.
• Create a marketing kit for you or your staff that includes—among other things—bio sheets, photos, testimonial letters, copies of professional articles, a newsletter of professional tips, and a marketing newsletter. Be sure to keep it up-to-date.
• Start a focus group of professionals who meet periodically to share information and to help each other with career advancement.
• Add a personal promotional note to your voice mail message. It is OK to be humorous.
• Keep a reference list of people who are willing to give testimonials abou your work, or that of your staff. Be ready to give testimonials for others.

Distance Learning
Technology has radically altered education in our country. Today’s students may not interact with their teachers at a specific place or time. In fact, they may not even be in the same city. Because we tend to change careers and relocate more often than our parents did, our educational methods are becoming portable and flexible enough to provide life-long learning opportunities for everyone.

You can adapt these new distance learning techniques for internal training projects, as well as to help get information about your agency out to the public. Distance education gives you more freedom and flexibility because you can deliver your product both in the workplace and at home.

To use distance education, you’ll need to:

• Define your overall goal in broad terms.
• Define your audience; choose one primary audience.
• Develop learning objectives—include audience characteristics and define what they will do once they master the objective.
• Develop the content.
• Select the instructional method or strategy.
• Develop ways to evaluate and make changes to your program.

A number of new technologies are available:

• Compressed video, which uses digital technology to compress video images to save transmission bandwidth. With this technology, you can have video conferences over telephone lines, using two-way video and audio.
• Satellite transmission, which uses uplink transmitters to send a broadcast signal to an orbiting satellite that returns the signal to downlink sites.
• Audio-conferencing, which uses telephone lines to transmit audio. In this way, many people can participate using a teleconference bridge. CD-ROM (Compact Disc-Read Only Memory), which lets your students and customers interact with educational material via the CD-ROM player in their computer. CD-ROM supports multiple media, including text, audio, sound, pictures, graphics, animation and video, which can be linked to other programs and sites on the Internet.
• The Internet, which lets students or customers connect through Web sites to explore topics through various multiple media resources, including text, sound, pictures, graphics, animation, and video.

About the Internet: The Internet is rapidly gaining popularity as a distance-learning delivery tool because it can incorporate text, sound, pictures, animation, and video into instructional packages. Students or customers can access the material on their own schedule via a personal computer.

• However, this technique does require your student to have a high-speed connection to the Internet and browser software.
• If you are using a Web page to teach, make certain it loads quickly, displays in all Web browsers, is well-organized, and is easy to follow.
• Learning on the Web is not much different from learning in more traditional environments. However, to engage students, lessons must have a clear purpose and be tightly focused.

New Digital Technologies
New digital technologies will impact the viewing and listening public over the next few years because they will fundamentally change the way broadcasters program, produce, market, and distribute their programs. New in-home receivers will have more variety and the display devices will continue to get bigger, brighter, and sharper. Traditional TV programming will be enhanced with greater levels of interactive information and activities. The difference between TV sets and computers will become increasingly blurred and irrelevant. We can expect that new ways of advertising and marketing will emerge to take advantage of these new opportunities.

High Definition TV (HDTV)
While HDTV isn’t taking off as fast as many expected, it is definitely making inroads. It will affect how we all watch TV in the future. Quality is the major factor that most likely will cause consumers to spend up to several thousand dollars for a wide-screen TV. The image on the HDTV screen will also be a third wider than conventional TV. It is capable of delivering high-quality sound and other data hundreds of times faster than conventional TV. By 2003, all stations are required to be HDTV ready and by 2006, stations are to return their analog licenses to the FCC.

Satellite Radio
As of late 2001, there were two major satellite radio stations—XM Radio and Sirius. XM Satellite Radio began offering 100 channels of music, news, and talk in November 2001 for about $10 a month. Sirius Satellite Radio expects to launch its service early in 2002 for about $13 a month. Both satellite radio stations beam signals up to satellites, which then bounce signals back to ground receivers. The first application for this new technology will be cars. A palm-sized receiver dish on the back window of your car currently costs around $300. One unit can plug into your home stereo.

The advantage is that you can listen to the same station as you drive across the country. But, that means there won’t be any local programming on satellite radio—and local programming is considered to be one of radio’s unique strengths.