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Building Successful Connections in a Remote Working World

When I joined The Reis Group in September 2021, I was starting a fully remote job for the first time. As an introvert, the thought of meeting new coworkers and clients, networking with reporters, and trying to get the feel of a new workplace already felt overwhelming. Knowing that I would be doing all these things over video calls meant that I knew I would need to have a strong plan in place to succeed.

Now, more than six months into my role at this Washington D.C.-based public relations agency, I’ve found a variety of strategies that have helped build relationships in the remote working world, especially as someone who is naturally more reserved. The key lies in finding a balance between being prepared and professional, stretching past your comfort zone to connect with others, and letting your personality shine through.

Building connections with reporters

Successful earned media strategy and outreach relies on two things: a strong story angle and a strong reporter connection. Building and maintaining relationships with reporters depends on establishing their trust that you are a helpful resource. Most importantly, ensure that reporters associate your name with someone who is quick to respond, who will always follow up and follow through, and who is easy to work with. But if you’re going to be working with reporters strictly on a remote basis, you may need to consider additional ways to make your connection stronger.

Don’t be afraid to personalize communications with reporters who you find yourself working with most often. For example, stay up to date with their recent stories, and reference them in pitches. Taking a few extra minutes to show reporters that you’re paying attention and appreciate their work can go a long way towards them keeping you in mind as a valued source.

Building connections with clients

In my experience, trying to get to know clients over video calls still feels strange, even more than two years into the pandemic. I’ve found that one key to starting off right is to have a quick introduction prepared and ready in advance of meetings. That way, when it comes time to introduce yourself, you can jump in with a smile and communicate the most important things that the client needs to know – including how excited you are to be working with them. Practicing ahead of time never hurts either.

Finding time for meet-and-greets outside of regular meetings can also help build connections with clients. Getting to know the individuals that you’ll be working with most closely is important to establishing and maintaining a productive working relationship. Prepare a list of questions in advance to ask the client about their work and how you can best help them achieve their public relations goals.

Building connections with colleagues

Finally, it’s important to work well with the people on your internal team. The teammates that we work with day in and day out are the ones who have each other’s backs and make sure the work gets done at the end of the day. Let your personality shine through the webcam so your colleagues can get to know the real you – and then you can’t go wrong.

Water-cooler type conversations are hard to have over video, so make a point of asking colleagues how they’re doing whenever you have the chance. And stay engaged as meetings start or when they end a few minutes early. Find five virtual minutes to connect with colleagues outside of regular meeting times, and you’ll soon feel like you’ve been working together for a long while.

I was recently able to meet some of my colleagues in person for the first time since starting with The Reis Group, and was so happy to find that we were easily able to pick up in person where we’d left off over video screens. The effort that my colleagues and I had made to get to know each other virtually was definitely worth it.

It may seem intimidating to start a new job remotely, but remember that you’re not alone. If you’re prepared and have a smile ready for everyone you meet, you are well on your way to making a good impression and succeeding as a colleague and a public relations professional.

The Three Ps for a Successful Presentation

In the world of health care public relations agencies, presentations take on many forms – sharing findings from environmental scans and landscape analyses, presenting patient education and awareness programs, and providing updates on thought leadership efforts to name a few. This can be a daunting task for those of us who aren’t natural public speakers, but it’s an essential skillset you can build and improve.

No matter what the presentation is – big or small, internal or external – proper preparation is the key to ensuring your ideas are conveyed in an effective and confident manner and that the presentation is ultimately a success.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

Outlined below are the three Ps for ensuring a successful presentation.

Preparation

First and foremost, always know precisely what is expected of you going into any presentation.

From a content perspective, will you be responsible for providing an update or two? Are you owning specific PowerPoint slides as part of a larger presentation? Are you leading the entire presentation?

From a logistical perspective, for an in-person meeting, do you need to ensure a specific document is up on the screen in the meeting room or materials are printed and laid out? If the meeting is virtual, does your backdrop showcase professionalism and do you have the necessary documents open, with any distractions minimized?

Regardless of your role, arriving or logging on a few minutes early for any presentation is always important. Make sure you have your notes ready and get yourself a glass of water. This may seem obvious but taking those extra few minutes will allow you time to collect yourself and prepare mentally before the presentation begins. It will also provide a cushion should any technical difficulties arise.

Planning

Outlining your presentation and associated talking points is another way to ensure your success. The purpose of this exercise is not to provide a finished document to read from. Writing out your talking points will help you gather and organize your thoughts, as well as help you highlight important points you want to hit home. It’s OK to glance at your notes periodically and use them to jog your memory and keep you on track during your presentation, but don’t use them as a crutch. Your audience can tell when you are reading, and it takes away your credibility as a presenter.

Practice

Don’t underestimate the importance of practicing your presentation ahead of time – both on your own and with a colleague. Even if you are completely confident on the topic and have developed your notes to guide you, actually speaking your thoughts out loud is a different ballgame. Practicing your presentation will help you identify any sections that are causing you to stumble and will ultimately help you convey confidence on the day of your presentation.

It’s also important to rehearse with any technology, such as advancing slides or playing video clips, that you plan to use during the real presentation. This will help you avoid any unexpected mishaps and will be one less thing for you to worry about during the presentation.

Remember, building your presentation skills takes time and won’t happen overnight. Ask your colleagues for feedback after each presentation so you can use each opportunity as a chance to learn and grow. And keep these three Ps – preparation, planning, and practice – top of mind to ensure your success!

I’ve got too much on my plate! Lessons on Effective Time Management

At some point, we all find ourselves pulled in what feels like a million different directions at work. For me, working at a fast-paced, award-winning health care communications agency means a variety of clients to serve, supervisors to please, and constant deadlines to meet.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, and often, just when you think you can breathe, you get tapped for another assignment. How can you manage your time, when it feels like you don’t even have the time to figure it out?

Since starting here at The Reis Group a year ago, I’ve learned a lot from my colleagues. Not only have I absorbed media skills, but I’ve bolstered my time-management abilities as well. I would argue that this skill may be the most vital to our success. We all have competing priorities from a demanding set of clients, and without effective time management, we would not be the top-notch PR agency that we are.

Each of my colleagues has a unique way to manage their time. Who better to learn from than them? Here are the best lessons I’ve learned so far:

Ask for deadlines and prioritize your time. My teammates know that I like to ask for deadlines on all my tasks. Firm due dates help me to develop personal timelines for all my assignments. My various supervisors don’t know that I have X assignment due on Wednesday, so I have to compare due dates and determine how to prioritize my week.

Be flexible and realistic. Deadlines are important, but I must acknowledge when a timeframe may prevent me from delivering my best work. I have certainly been guilty of letting my drive to finish a task affect the quality of my work. Luckily, I have a supportive team who can catch my mistakes, but I need to be sure that I am checking my own work and providing high-quality deliverables that fit our high standards—even if that means taking an extra day.

Expect the unexpected and build in catch-up time. At the beginning of each week, I assess all the assignments I need to complete and take a look at the meetings I have. I build in time to complete and review my deliverables and block off time for assignments I’ve left on the back burner. This blocked time allows me to get ahead where I can and provides useful openings in my schedule to work on any unexpected tasks that arise.

Let others know when an urgent client need arises—and be empathetic when the same happens with your colleagues. Agency work is unpredictable, and it is inevitable that we will receive urgent requests from clients. It’s vital that we communicate with our team members when time-sensitive demands arise. We’re working with a variety of clients who each deserve our full attention, so we must be willing to pitch in to help our colleagues when they suddenly face an unexpected deadline.

If you ever feel you have too much on your plate, try some of these tips to make your work more manageable. Successful time management is an essential piece of The Reis Group’s ability to deliver high-quality service to leading foundations, medical societies, associations, health systems, federal agencies, coalitions and universities . The lessons I’ve learned from my colleagues have helped me grow as a communications professional and as a productive team member.

Message Testing: The Foundation of a Successful Communications Strategy

This article also appeared in PR News.

When our clients ask our team to help them grow their membership or reach a new audience, we usually begin with message testing. It’s a critical part of the process for a solid communications strategy. Unfortunately, it is often skipped due to tight deadlines or limited budgets. But message testing can be as simple as reviewing a core message platform with a small sample of people, or as involved as hosting multiple focus groups with your target audience. However it’s done, it should help you understand how to effectively communicate with your core audience, identify any crucial flashpoints or key issues that your campaign may stumble upon, and help you get buy-in from leadership on the current or new messages that you plan to use.

Our team at The Reis Group ensures that every campaign begins with sound messaging. Here are three reasons why you should consider doing message testing before launching your next campaign.

Communicate Effectively

Whether we like it or not, we all fall prey to our own biases. Our experiences will inevitably color the kinds of messages we write and the means by which we communicate them. But messages shouldn’t be developed by an isolated group of people who don’t have direct insight into the experiences of the target audience. Those real-life experiences are critical in determining the true perspective and needs of your campaign targets. For instance, as a healthcare communications agency in Washington, D.C., we work on many campaigns to reach physicians. We are a team of communications professionals, but none of us have been to medical school. In creating campaign materials that will resonate with physicians, it’s important that we get input on the messaging that will speak most authentically to them and address the key issues that they really care about. And when writing for the general public, there are specific best practices around testing materials that can help ensure your resources are accessible and understandable for a more general audience.

Identify Issues Ahead of Time

Message testing will also help you determine which points will resonate most strongly and which will fall flat. It opens the door for conversations to identify issues you may not have even considered. Maybe the message platform you thought was solid, is missing a critical issue that your target audience is focused on at the moment?

Perhaps there are certain words or phrases that have a variety of meanings for various groups you want to reach. As shown in this recent poll conducted by the nonpartisan de Beaumont Foundation around the COVID-19 pandemic – words matter. Whatever language you use, it needs to quickly engage the broadest audience possible. And you won’t know what those words, phrases, and meanings are to various people until you speak to them. We are often surprised at the nuanced language or unintentional omissions that are very important to people and can make or break an effective message platform. More importantly, this part of the process can help you identify flaws with your current messages that may require you to take a step back, analyze the areas where you are hearing consistent feedback, and decide where to make changes before continuing with your testing. Taking this iterative approach ensures you are improving on your key points and that you are getting to a place of consensus before your testing phase ends.

Get Buy-in from Leadership

Testing gives you the support you need to defend changes to an organization’s long-standing messages. It can also help in convincing leadership to adopt the new messages in any public-facing speaking opportunities. But leaders must be brought along in the process – from start to finish. As many public relations practitioners know, it can be challenging to get leaders to avoid reverting back to the old points when you’ve given them new ones. But when they are brought along in the process, understand the methodology of how the messages are tested, see the feedback from their target audience, and understand the importance of the changes to the messaging, they will be more likely to accept it and even enthusiastically put it into practice.

Message testing is a valuable and essential part of any communications strategy. Ensuring this step is a part of the planning process can make the difference between an effective communications campaign and one that doesn’t deliver.

Be Your Own — and Your Team’s — Best Editor: Six Tips for Editing Like A Pro

This article also appeared in Bulldog Reporter.

Everyone needs an editor. In our world of public relations, everyone is a writer and an editor at some point. Here are some tips for being a better editor, whether you are reviewing the work of a colleague or giving your own first draft one last look:

Read it first — All of it. When you are editing someone else’s draft, always read it all the way through before you really try to edit it. Don’t try to edit sentence by sentence. Absorbing the entire piece, without stopping to edit anything, will help you understand where it is going, how it is structured, and how the transitions work (or don’t work) before you dive in to make edits. You show respect for the original author and ensure cohesion when you edit the piece as a whole.

Read it out loud. When you review something that you have written, repeatedly retooled, and refined, it’s easy to skim past phrases or whole sentences, assuming that they say what you think they say. It may seem odd at first, but try reading it aloud. This helps you see (and hear) more clearly what is actually written on the page. Saying the words gives you a feel for the flow and a sense of how transitions work. As the words flow — or stumble — from your mouth, awkward phrasing and construction become more obvious.

Change the layout. Changing how the copy looks on the page by resetting the margins or choosing a two-column layout can help you see it in a fresh way, especially after you’ve spent a lot of time on revisions. Narrow columns are easier on the eye than a wide page and can help you more readily spot errors and weaknesses.

Walk away. A short walk or a good night’s sleep can help you see the world — and your writing — in a different way. Make time to step away and come back to your copy fresh, even if time away from the screen is brief.

Read backwards. Read your article one paragraph at a time from the bottom up. This is another way to provide a fresh view after you have toiled for too long.

Listen to your gut. If something seems off, but you are not quite sure why, don’t just let it go. Stop and re-read the troubling section until you understand what triggered your gut reaction. If it is a “fact” that seems wrong, take the time to look it up or ask questions. If the language seems difficult or confusing, take the time to understand why it bothers you and fix it. Common solutions are breaking one sentence into two, removing excess words, or using simpler, more direct language.

Take time to ask questions and look at writing in new ways to make your team’s copy shine.

Building Your Personal Brand

This article previously appeared in Bulldog Reporter.

Promoting the thought-leadership profile of our clients is a hallmark capability of The Reis Group and something that we do for our health care clients regularly. As the pandemic continues to threaten the health and economy of our nation, and social injustice issues still occupy center stage, it’s more important than ever to amplify the strengths of every organization’s leadership and to position the C-Suite as thought leaders to establish a credible and strong voice in the current climate, and bolster the relevancy of the organization and its issues.

But it’s also equally important to think about your personal brand as well. The old saying “the cobbler’s kids have no shoes” can ring true for public relations professionals. We spend so much time establishing our clients as thought leaders that we can easily forget to practice what we preach for our own public profile.

Establishing yourself as a thought leader will enable you to do four key things: build credibility for you and your organization, expand your network, develop your professional skillset, and create new opportunities for collaboration.

There’s no single way to successfully build your personal brand, but here are a few tips and tricks to get you started.

Social media is your friend.
While it’s fun to look at pictures and life updates on various social platforms, utilizing social media, particularly LinkedIn and Twitter, can help establish you as a thought leader and build your credibility and following. Try sharing relevant articles written by others and adding your point of view to provide a glimpse into your understanding and thinking. Or consider expanding the reach of your perspective by sharing posts, articles, and blogs you have developed, or media stories that you have helped to place. You can also engage with those in your network by “liking” and commenting on their posts. Social media also offers another opportunity to leverage your attendance at events by sharing relevant content and connecting with other attendees.

Share your voice.
Developing commentaries or blogs is an easy way to widely share your expertise on a particular topic. Look for opportunities in industry trade publications to share your thinking and experience. These placements will bolster your expertise around a particular topic, generate content you can share via social, and even create potential speaking opportunities on related topics.

Get involved.
While it may seem like yet another time-consuming commitment to add to your ever-growing to-do list, joining professional organizations can help expand your personal and professional development in important ways. Your membership may create networking opportunities with other like-minded professionals that may result in a connection to a new hire or a new business opportunity. It can also help to broaden your knowledge through courses, seminars, and lectures to keep you up to date on the latest industry innovations, research, and trends. Additionally, your membership may even provide opportunities to develop your leadership skills through committee and Board positions.

Don’t be afraid to speak up.
Finding opportunities to share your knowledge via speaking engagements at professional meetings, conferences, or local universities can further highlight your expertise on a particular topic or issue and build your presentation skill-set. It can also help you to make connections with fellow presenters and attendees and may open the door for future speaking opportunities.

So, as you think about the challenges ahead in 2021, remember that investing in yourself is important! You are your best asset, so make sure to carve out the time to do this–and have fun with it!

There’s No “I” in Team, but “Client” Belongs in Great Teamwork

One of the pleasures of working for a boutique health care public relations agency is the teamwork that is possible or, in my view, required, to do top-notch work for our clients. The Reis Group has small teams dedicated to each of our clients, but we readily reach outside assigned teams to tap the strengths and expertise of colleagues. For instance, I might grab a co-worker to brainstorm a subject line for a media pitch, and another colleague will ask me for feedback on a commentary or news release for another team. Or when there is an urgent deadline, we may pull a larger team together to get a job done.

This collaboration is even better when we work in this same team spirit with our clients.

Recently, a client asked us to expand a short article we had written with them into a substantial piece for a professional journal—with a deadline just three days away. Since the journal only publishes twice a year, this was the only chance to get their timely story and insights onto this forum for their peers.

This was a significant effort in a short time. We told the client that to meet the deadline, we needed answers to a list of questions and links to supporting research by the next morning. Internally, my team cleared the decks for me for a day and a half so I could dig into the background, do additional research, and draft an article that would meet the standards of the target journal.

We feared the client would be discouraged by the timeline, but instead, they responded, “We’re on it!” By morning, we had detailed responses and great links to additional research to support the main points of the article. They had divided and conquered with their own team effort on this part of the project.

The client’s can-do enthusiasm jacked up my motivation. Eager to make this a win for them, I doubled down and completed a draft ahead of schedule. My team covered for me in meetings, helped juggle other projects, and created endnotes, a cover letter, and bios required for the journal article submission.

Our internal editor cleared his schedule to give the article some final tweaks, and we had a well-researched and well-written 1,300-word draft that was enthusiastically received by the client in plenty of time for them to review and submit.

Positive attitude and enthusiastic teamwork changed a daunting project into a fun and rewarding effort.

5 Tips for Health Care Public Relations During COVID-19

COVID-19 is overtaking news coverage and overturning every aspect of health care public relations. This unique environment presents new challenges, as well as new opportunities. As the account manager for two health care clients directly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, I have learned first-hand that navigating clients through this atmosphere requires taking risks, being flexible, and savoring the small victories.

With that in mind, here are five tips for managing health care PR in the time of COVID-19:

1. Take Risks, but Be Realistic

This is a time to try something new and not be afraid to get creative. Every organization is wondering how they can break into the news cycle. One good step forward is to host a brainstorming session with your full account team (and then client) to rethink your strategy and pull out the biggest ideas you can think of. Don’t let reality hold you back when thinking up new media angles or even large shifts in messaging!

After getting all the ideas on the table, take some time to think about what’s possible in this environment. Given the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, not all good ideas are going to shine. Think about how the ideas might land with your key audiences before taking them to the next level.

2. Make the Shift to Digital

Whether you are inside an organization or agency, communications professionals can proactively encourage our peers to get ahead of the curve by moving health care events and traditional meetings online. One of The Reis Group’s clients quickly organized an online policy briefing to increase awareness of an important issue that drew more than 300 virtual attendees—for an event they were hoping to attract 50 people to when held in person.

Thought leadership platforms can also work well digitally. Many media outlets are offering digital events and speaking engagements online. This increases the pool of possible engagements that will build credibility, with no worries about time and money for travel.

3. Share Expertise

Many of us in the health care industry have expertise to share. By exploring what an organization can add to the current public conversation, communications professionals will find new avenues for growing their organization’s voice. Perhaps your organization wanted to promote telehealth previously but couldn’t get any traction. Now is the time to re-engage. This is the time to capitalize on sharing expertise that can support good health.

4. Enjoy the Victories

Let’s support our clients and our colleagues when we have a victory, big or small. Keeping morale high is challenging these days but encouraging others can help produce better results for everyone. Perhaps your organization traditionally has been shy about entering the media fray, but they finally are engaging. What a great reason to celebrate and encourage a new behavior!

Perhaps you successfully modified a communications strategy based on the current environment—all from your kitchen table while homeschooling. Good job!

Or maybe you’ve seen cultural transitions in your organization such as remote working or flexible hours. Let’s celebrate those too. Staying positive will help our mindset during difficult times.

5. Lead with Grace

We’re all under a lot of stress, clients and organizational leaders included. While some states are lifting stay-at-home restrictions, we still have a long road ahead of us.

My final guiding principle for health care public relations is that we should lead with grace. When we start to feel like we’re struggling, trust that everyone is doing their best to answer their emails, join video conversations, and meet deadlines. And, of course, this means giving yourself some grace too. You’re doing great! Keep it up!

Working—and growing—during a pandemic as a newly minted health care PR professional

COVID-19 has upended office life and we are all living with a new normal. As a young PR professional working in health care communications, I’m looking for ways to learn new skills and break through the pandemonium to continue to grow. When we began working remotely full time, I was worried that my professional development would be stunted, but I quickly discovered three ways of continuing to grow–and maintain sanity–during this chaotic time: getting face time with mentors, setting goals, and taking time to breathe fresh air.

Getting Facetime with Mentors

The pandemic has thrown schedules into disarray, canceled events, and suddenly shifted focus for our health care-focused clients. For me, it also means that working closely with mentors to get feedback and improve my skills is more difficult than ever. I’ve quickly learned to provide my team leaders more time to review my materials and to schedule time to discuss changes. Being more proactive about asking questions and seeking out new tasks is key to maintaining the vital momentum of learning.

Working at a PR agency allows constant interaction with coworkers, and I usually can just walk into someone’s office whenever I have questions. Now, it’s limited to emails and video chats. The video gives me important face time for a richer mentorship experience that helps me understand a boss’s revision and master a new skill.

Setting Goals

Before COVID-19, setting goals helped me plan my days, understand what areas I need to improve on, and think about how I can achieve those goals. With all the chaos and extra time, the first week working from home felt somewhat empty and directionless. Working at home reveals many distractions in my apartment, not to mention those in the outside world. But setting some personal benchmarks has helped me keep on track with my daily work and my broader professional goals. These benchmarks have included checking in with team leaders to get feedback and give updates on my work, make progress checks to meet my deadlines, and dedicate myself to learning new skills such as crafting new business proposals and mastering best practices for writing commentaries. I’ve also applied this goal-setting to my personal life to make the best use of all my unexpected free time.

Breathing Fresh Air

Among my new daily goals is to get outside whenever I can. It’s no secret that fresh air and exercise are vital for a healthy life, but it’s not easy when you’re locked down. Invigorating yourself and promoting mindfulness—while self-isolating—can be as simple as going for a walk or run, or just opening a window. I count myself as particularly lucky because I live on the top floor of a building with a beautiful rooftop for quick breaks when I feel cooped up. I can re-center my mind and come back to work feeling relaxed and refocused. You can too!

Your professional development doesn’t have to be put on hold during quarantine. You just need to work around these new barriers and, with your mentors, find new ways of growing. Being organized and mindful of your mental and physical health will help move you forward in learning new skills and proving yourself as a PR professional.

Think Like a Thought Leader

Our high-speed, media-saturated digital world sometimes feels like a dense, dark jungle with huge shadowy trees and thick tangled vines that block out most of the sunlight and leave us in darkness.

Our job in health care public relations is to shine a light to cut through this darkness on behalf of our clients and highlight their work, their mission, and their values. In the health and science field, we have the ability—and the obligation—to build our clients’ credibility and elevate their reputations so that their key achievements and messages do not get lost in the information wilderness of social media.

“Thought Leadership” has become the mantra for this type of work. At The Reis Group, we represent a wide variety of clients who are doing cutting-edge work in specialized areas such as integrative health, epidemiology, pediatric health, Alzheimer’s prevention, cost containment, and much more. We can effectively promote the value of our clients’ work—if we do it the right way.

In the worlds of health care, science and medicine, the key executives, scientists, and researchers have the ability to become recognized leaders in their fields through op-eds, broadcast appearances, speaking engagements, letters to the editor and other opportunities. After 40 years working in the media, the last seven in public relations, here are a few of my tips on how to help make this happen.

Be ready to respond quickly: In the Twitter universe, the news is non-stop, so at any moment, we have to be poised to act immediately. For us, the COVID-19 pandemic is the most vivid recent example of the need to be constantly aware of how events move so rapidly that we must always be ready.

Be ready to respond smartly: We try to know all the potential outlets that might be interested in hearing from our leaders. Whether it’s a short, quick letter or a substantive commentary, we cultivate contacts with journalists and publishers who may be most receptive to our messages.

Know the message: Our clients have devoted their careers to representing specialized populations and the targeted audiences who care deeply about their issues. We have to be in a position to know how any breaking news event may relate to the specific topics that are our clients’ major areas of interest.

Know the messenger: Our leaders have carefully nuanced positions on issues. We need to talk with them as often as possible, interview them on major topics of the day whenever possible, and keep up on their published writing and research.

Speak in their voice, not yours: Our thought leaders are passionate about their issues and have distinct ways of expressing themselves on the most vital topics. We should be able to virtually memorize the language that they would use. Then, when the client sees the message that we are planning to put out, they feel that the voice is authentic.

This kind of work is competitive and difficult, but it’s definitely worth the planning and the effort.