Welcome to the blog written by Sue George Communications. Here’s where I share with you communications and marketing tips as well as samples of work done.
Have a question you’d like me to answer or an idea for a topic you’d like me to discuss? Email me any time.
March 8th is International Women’s Day. That got me thinking about a podcast I listened to the other day on NPR’s On Point radio program with Tom Ashbrook. The podcast specifically talked about how to build a smarter team and one of its suggestions was to add women to your team.
As many of us know from direct personal experience, working with teams can range from incredibly frustrating to incredibly awesome. It all depends on the team and how well team members interact.
The podcast discussed recent research about how the involvement of women generally improves teams, making them smarter and more effective overall.
It wasn’t an issue of intellectual horsepower. It’s not that women are more intelligent or have higher IQs than their male counterparts.
What the podcast’s guests argued was that teams which have better social and emotional awareness generally do better. And it happens that based on a few objective tests, women tend to score well on ability to read the feelings of others. That often makes them good at understanding what’s happening socially within a team and fostering better communication among team members.
An ideal team member, male or female, will be able to read the emotions of others and take them into account during the team’s time together. With more social intelligence, a “smart” team member can make better decisions that consider a bigger picture and how everyone on the team fits in and contributes. That same team member might be better at eliciting input from the shyer, but brilliant people on the team while preventing those with the more dominant personalities from taking over. They can also better assess any social impacts that will be made by the of the team’s decisions.
So next time you’re part of a team, look around and see how many men and how many women there are. If your team is predominantly or all men, maybe it’s time to suggest bringing in some women?
Contact me any time at Sue.George.Communications@gmail.com to discuss your organization’s marketing and communications needs.
News of a new team as posted on the website of co-title sponsor Stan’s NoTubes
Have something to say? It’s important to not only know what you’re saying, but also to target your message to the proper audience.
Imagine you were seriously injured and in need of urgent care. Would you pick up a piece of paper and write a letter to your grandmother for help? While Grandma might be able to offer lots of comfort and support at some point in your healing process, you’d get help far more quickly and effectively if you picked up your phone and called 911 for help.
When you have something to say – urgent or not – it’s important to not only craft your message well, but also to send it to the right audience using the most appropriate method of communication.
For example, it’s not worth your time to market an expensive new luxury car to poor college students on a budget. Likewise you would not market cheap beer to successful, wealthy business executives.
News of the same new team as posted on the website of co-title sponsor Niner
Now let’s take a look at a real world example from Sue George Communications.
I recently helped a client, Stan’s NoTubes, spread their news about two elite women’s cycling teams for which they are title sponsors. One team was brand new while the other was an existing team that had just had its title sponsorship renewed.
It wouldn’t have made sense to send press releases with this kind of news to magazines and websites about money, housekeeping or even other sports.
Instead, we specifically targeted online and print cycling industry publications that run related kinds of coverage. We also made use of an audience we already had by virtue of posting the news on the client’s website.
And finally, we used the client’s social media outlets and that of the team members to help get the word out.
News of the new team as posted on industry news website Dirt Rag Magazine.
Through all those channels, we were able to successfully get the word out where it need to go.
Contact me any time at Sue.George.Communications@gmail.com to discuss your organization’s marketing and communications needs.
2014 was a big year for me, with lots of changes. It all started with an intention to make some professional changes. What followed were months of communication and networking and good old-fashioned hard work. In October, I resigned my editorial position as the Global Mountain Bike Editor at Cyclingnews.com.
It had been eight whirlwind years of chasing breaking news, writing in-depth interviews and bringing the cycling world timely and high quality race and new product coverage. I learned a lot, worked with wonderful people from around the globe and enjoyed some incredible opportunities to travel, including reporting on races in Europe, Africa and North America.
What I took with me was my love of a good story and communicating it to others. While I wear a different hat now as the self-employed owner of Sue George Communications, I still tell stories. Every day. Often they are the stories of my clients or of their clients. Sometimes I simply tell the stories of my own adventures.
The best part about the transition thus far has been getting to work on diverse projects. Yes, there is still plenty of writing and editing to be done, but there is also more strategic thinking and lots of communication, coordination and project management to help my clients realize their goals.
A year after kicking off my own new professional journey, I kick off this blog, with the aim of sharing with you tips for how you can communicate and market better. I’ll also share examples of what Sue George Communications does.
Contact me any time at Sue.George.Communications@gmail.com to discuss your organization’s marketing and communications needs.
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