“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” The great gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson said this many years ago, and it certainly holds true today. During these disorienting times of COVID-19, in the year 2020, things are inarguably weird. And scary. And uncertain.
And in the midst of this chaos, those of us who are still fortunate enough to have jobs need to keep pushing along. It should not be lost on any of us who are steadily working through this era of social distancing and self-quarantining that an insane number of people have lost their jobs since COVID-19 began to run roughshod through every aspect of our lives.
It also should not be lost on any of us sitting at home typing away on a laptop (as I am right now) that there are exhausted doctors, nurses, first responders, hospital janitors, etc., on the front lines battling this virus every day. Delivery drivers, Amazon warehouse employees, grocery store stockers and cashiers, waste collectors, and many others are showing up to work everyday and putting themselves at risk because it’s either work or join the millions who filed for unemployment last week.
Strange and scary times indeed.
I don’t say all of this to sound preachy. Most of you don’t need to be told anything I’ve written so far. But it’s March 30, and I have a blog to write. And what else am I supposed to focus on?
During the head-spinning month of March, enough happened to pack years. Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays at this point we can just call them all “day.” Bleary-eyed neighbors walk their dogs for the third time in 12 hours and binge-watching the Tiger King reminds us that things can, indeed, still surprise us with their craziness.
And those of us in the PR world still need to work. But how? And on what?
At our PR firm, we are fortunate to exclusively represent healthcare and healthcare IT clients who work directly with providers and insurance firms. These companies offer population health management solutions, telemedicine, and air ambulance services (to name just a few). Work will continue at a break-neck pace for them. And that means we must make sure the public is aware of how these companies can help during this pandemic.
Our clients can allow patients to video chat with doctors on their phones or computers; they can enable providers to identify patients more at risk with respect to COVID-19 and zero in on who needs immediate outreach; they can provide life-saving air ambulance transport to patients in rural areas.
But many other companies don’t have such a direct connection to the conversation that is dominating the world. And those companies and their PR/marketing/advertising agencies might feel like they have nothing worthwhile to add to the conversation that doesn’t seem like a stretch or, even worse,
exploitive.
The best thing you can do as a PR professional is listen. Listen to the news. Set Google Alerts that have keywords related to both your clients’ specialties and news about COVID-19. Listen to your clients. Find out what they are doing for their employees during this time that could set a good example for other companies. What are they contributing to the battle against this virus? What are some innovative ways they can help all of us get through this?
The more you discuss these elements with your clients, the more angles you will find that add to the conversation in a constructive way. Creativity, now more than ever, is key.
The going is weird, friends. And it’s going to be weird for a while. So, we need to be the pros.
For attendees, a user conference is a little like a mini-vacation.
It’s an opportunity to bask in the luxury of being a valued customer, perhaps with a stay at a beachside resort with catered meals and evenings of receptions with open bars. Not a bad assignment if you can get it.
For the marketing and communications team tasked with seamlessly pulling off a sparkling, well-attended event that woos customers new and old while simultaneously showcasing the best of the organization’s product and service offerings, it’s a whole other story.
From planning a pre-conference messaging strategy to identifying an appropriate venue to staging informative and engaging presentations, there is a seemingly endless list of tasks that go into conducting a successful user conference. No one blog post could cover all of the best practices and important steps, so this post will serve as a brief summary of simple tips and observations from personal experience that virtually any organization can follow.
There’s an app for that: Event apps, such as AttendeeHub, can be customized with important conference information such as schedules, maps, agendas, wifi connectivity, speaker background and more. An event app’s push notification feature is particularly useful when sharing information on last-minute schedule and location changes, ensuring attendees have a source for all the latest news and announcements about the event. At a recent event, I consulted the app several times per day to plan my own activities around agenda items and was happy that I didn’t have to bother the event’s organizers with every little question that popped into my mind.
Go easy on the sales pitch: The beautiful thing about a user conference is that the vast majority of attendees are already your users. They don’t need a “Come to Jesus” moment of conversion that changes them from skeptics to believers. That’s important to remember so your customers/attendees don’t feel like they’re being beaten over the head with constant sales pitches over the course of the entire event. Certainly, it’s ok to mention new product features or service offerings, but as always, keep the focus and orientation on what you can do now and in the future to solve customers’ most pressing problems.
Keep it moving: Freed from the pressures of having to convert nonbelievers, conference organizers should extend this collegial feeling toward the event’s programming. In other words, create a tone for the event that feels light and engaging to attendees. Focus on sharing successes and problems that your solution has helped clients overcome, rather than getting bogged down in minutiae. The last thing you want is roomful of slack-jawed, bored attendees staring at their phones (even if they are just consulting the event app!) while speakers drone on during endless presentations.
Give me a break: Keep individual sessions to an hour or less. Schedule frequent breaks, and why not end programming on one afternoon at 3 or 4 p.m. to give attendees some time to enjoy their surroundings? The more you make your conference feel like a mini-vacation for customers, the more likely they’ll be to return year after year.
There is no shortage of books on communication in the workplace to improve collaboration and maximize teamwork. Harvard Business Review also provides wonderful, well-researched articles that can help one improve communication and leadership capabilities.
But one book that I’ve read and re-read over the years stands out: “Crucial Conversations.” Perhaps the book stands out as much for improving communication and resolving differences in the workplace as for resolving issues in personal relationships.
Over the years, I’ve leaned on this book to help navigate difficult situations. For example, how do you tell someone trying really hard to do a good job that he isn’t cutting it? Or explaining to people that they have poor hygiene? Or telling your client CEO on a media tour that half of the six interviews canceled while you’re on the tour with him?
The authors explain what happens to our brains when conversations go from casual to crucial that is, when emotions grow heated, the stakes are high, and people are entrenched in their opinions. Let’s just say the blood flowing to the reasoning part of our brains gets detained.
An important element of a crucial conversation is making sure that those involved feel safe to share their opinions. If they don’t feel safe, they will flee to silence (not sharing information crucial to a problem and toward a decision) or to violence (making personal attacks that exacerbate the situation).
The authors say average communicators make a Fool’s Choice. They either choose to be brutally honest or silent. Great communicators, on the other hand, avoid the Fool’s Choice; they share absolute candor but with deep respect.
In the healthcare field Amendola Communications serves, nurses and other care team members often fall silent during critical situations that affect patient safety for fear of doctors and other authority figures. It’s situations like these, the authors assert, where none of us can remain silent.
While there is much to be gleaned from the book, here are some key recommendations:
Don’t “wing” crucial conversations. “Perfect practice makes perfect”
Fill the “pool” of meaning in a dialogue by making sure information flows freely
Start with heart and stay focused on what you want for yourself, other people and your relationships (with emphasis on mutual purpose and mutual respect)
The best at dialogue look at themselves and ask how they can improve their communication skills; they don’t see others as the source of all that’s wrong with the world
Stay focused on achieving results and building relationships
The authors make an astute observation based on the hundreds of conversations they have studied or witnessed as communication consultants: The problem often is not the message (or bad news) delivered to people, but whether people feel safe hearing that message.
In my next post, we’ll learn about several skills tested by the authors to build mutual purpose.
In the wake of HIMSS20 being cancelled, many people whose HIMSS presentations were accepted for this year’s conference are lamenting the fact that the sessions that they worked so hard to get accepted won’t be given.
Let’s face it, there is a ton of work that goes into submitting presentations for HIMSS, including the process of preparing those lengthy and detailed applications.
As a colleague described in a previous blog, “the process is not easy and takes anywhere from 12-16 hours per proposal” and “HIMSS has a less than 30%
acceptance rate.”
So, you might be asking, what do we do now? For many it feels like that opportunity is lost, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are some different ways to take the content you were going to present and still get it out there.
Plan your own virtual conference: You can conduct a webinar with the information you were going to present at HIMSS, with both a live virtual presentation and on-demand access after the fact.
Use information from your HIMSS presentation to draft thought leadership articles and case studies. There are likely a ton of facts and statistics that were a part of the presentation that could be included.
Look at other conferences for speaking opportunities later in the year or in 2021 that you can submit these completed presentations to knowing that some of the stats may need to be updated and the submissions will need to be customized for each opportunity.
The cancellation of HIMSS20 doesn’t mean that all the hard work that you put into your presentations must go to waste. The show can still go on, just a bit
differently.
It isn’t often that we get a chance to see ourselves as our children see us. But I recently received that gift when my daughter Jackie wrote the post, “My Life Growing Up with a Powerful CEO as a Mom” for the Daily Californian blog (cleverly called The Daily Clog). For those who don’t know, the Daily Californian is the student-run newspaper at UC Berkeley.
The post was created in honor of International Women’s Day, but when I read it I have to admit I didn’t feel like the powerful, fearless woman she described. I was more a pile of mush. (Funny how our kids have a way of doing that to us.)
Why did her words have such an effect? Maybe this except will help explain it:
“While she has always amazed me, growing up with such a busy mom was hard at times. Not understanding why she was always working was difficult as a child when a lot of my friends’ moms were home more often. But as I grew older, it only impressed me even more that she could single-handedly run not only her own company so successfully, but also her family. I’ve learned so much from having such a strong and hardworking mom. While I sometimes struggle to voice my opinions, my mom tells it like it is and doesn’t take anything from anyone.”
Although there might be some debate as to whether that last sentence is a virtue or a liability (LOL), I am so proud that Jackie was able to see past the things she may have wanted strictly for herself in order to understand the bigger picture. I am also glad that she found inspiration for her own life in my story.
Isn’t that what we all wish for? That our kids will take the best parts of us and use them to become even better?
I was also touched by this statement:
“The greatest lesson she has taught me is to believe in myself, even if no one else does. Her mantra is, “˜think you can, think you can’t, you’re right either way.’ And while my dad and I make fun of her every time she says it, it really is true if you believe in yourself, anything is possible. If you don’t, you’ll have no chance of achieving whatever it is you want.”
Yes, I do say that a lot, but only because I truly believe it in my heart of hearts. Jackie is one more proof point that it is true.
As you can probably tell, I am one very proud and humbled parent. But it’s great to see, after all the trials, tribulations, laughter, tears and battles that go along with raising a child, that in the end our relationship not only came out intact but that she sees me in such a special light. All I can tell you is the feeling is mutual.
May you all have the opportunity to see yourselves through the eyes of your children, and may you like what you see.
When news came down the Thursday before HIMSS20 was set to begin that the conference had been cancelled due to Covid-19 concerns, it was tough to tell whether that loud sigh that rippled across America was relief or exasperation.
On the one hand, everyone who was on pins and needles waiting to see if their projects and presentations would be done on time were likely relieved to dodge a deadline bullet. Managers who weren’t sure whether it was prudent to send key staff to a potential covid-19 incubator (including me, quite frankly) were happy to have that responsibility taken off their shoulders.
Still, a lot of time, money and effort went into preparing for HIMSS20, and many health IT companies were counting on it to help them boost sales. They had to feel like Bluto Blutarsky (the late, great John Belushi) in Animal House after discovering Delta House had been expelled from campus, who famously said “Seven years of college down the drain.”
(I was going to share a video clip of that statement, but the only one I could find is definitely not safe for work. So you’ll just have to see it in your mind.)
Yet now that the initial shock has passed, it’s time to remember an even more famous Bluto quote: “Nothing is over until we decide it is!”
Yes, HIMSS is putting together virtual conference, which may be helpful. (I say “may be” because they’ve never tried it before so it will be a learning experience for all.) Regardless, however, there’s no need to wait for or count on the virtual conference to fulfill your HIT marketing needs. Because there is plenty you can do on your own to turn those frowns upside down. Here are a few examples:
Turn announcements and presentations into your own virtual events. Even if you’ve never done them before there is plenty of technology that makes creating webinars, podcasts and virtual roundtables even than ever. Especially if you have a great HIT-focused agency like Amendola to help.
Reschedule in-person demos and meetings as phone calls/online meet-ups. That time was set aside anyway. See if you can keep the appointment virtually.
Convert your HIMSS messaging into content pieces such as data sheets, infographics, white papers, case studies, videos, etc. Don’t forget customer presentations too. They can easily be converted into case studies, byline articles and sometimes even journal articles.
Take the effort you would have put into follow-up calls and emails after the conference and do them now.
Share everything you’ve created on social media. It’s probably the ideal time, because with more people working from home, or staying in rather than going out, social media is getting more attention than ever. Use all the channels available to you LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and wherever else you think your customers and prospects will be.
Yes, the cancelling of the live, in-person HIMSS20 conference may have seemed like a disaster. But it doesn’t have to be.
With a little creativity, and perhaps a little help from your friendly neighborhood PR and marketing agency, your final take will echo Delta House’s Flounder:
