Archive for the ‘Communications’ Category

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Terry Prone and her 5 Business Tips for women

June 6, 2016

Terry Prone

Quite recently I had the pleasure of being in Terry Prone’s company at a Business Awards night for the Galway branch of Network Ireland.

Terry is one of those character’s that we have all heard and read about so it was really interesting to finally meet her in person. I’m not sure what or ‘who’ I was expecting but I met a really engaging, down to earth person who was very open about her fascinating life including tales from her days as an actress to the successful business woman and public speaker that we all know today.

She loved telling me that her son Anton, is now her boss!

She was at the very earliest days of media training and PR in Ireland, initially grabbing all of her acting tips and applying them to the business and political world. She set up Carr Communications with the well known Irish TV personality, Bunny Carr and her husband Tom Savage.

Terry was the guest speaker at the event and I watched as she diligently took notes during the evening in between our chats and listening to the other speakers. One of the things that impressed me most was that she was a great listener – she was as interested in my, not so interesting story as I was in hers. I hate when some people show no interest in you – I always think its a sign of a good person when they listen to you.

She finally took to the stage – actually she avoided the stage totally and took to the ‘floor‘ and immediately grabbed the attention of the audience with a humorous, down to earth, no messing talk and delivered her “5 Business Tips for Women”

  1. Tell your Story – Stories are powerful ways for people to remember you, so make sure you tell yours
  2. Forget about ‘tricks’ – Just be the honest you, and don’t rely on any gimmicks to grab attention
  3. Stop Multitasking – While women are supposed to be blessed with the ability to multitask, Terry advises to do the opposite. Stick to what you are great at and get others to do the other “stuff“
  4. Keep the fight to yourself – This was a simple piece of advice about not washing your dirty laundry in public. Being right does not matter as people remember the fight and then always associate you with it
  5. Drive on, even when things go wrong – Terry shared a story about the Irish actress May Craig who she admired greatly. Her motto was “the show must go on“, and she did just that after personal tragedy in her life

Terry’s speech was perfect – not too short and not too long, designed expertly for the audience with a gorgeous blend of personal vulnerability and real stories that connected with everyone in the audience, even the few token males in attendance.

These were great tips but I think we could all use them, not just the gals!

Thank you Terry!

Terry Prone is the Chairman of Communications Clinic.

Note: Think Visual did a great post after a talk Terry did for the Network Cork branch with some gorgeous visuals and a few extra tips – well done guys!

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Communications, Media, Personal development, Presentation Skills, Speech writing | Leave a Comment »

About us

June 2, 2016

About us -

I was working on a proposal for a prospect and I wanted to find out more about the people behind the business.

Who started the business, who is involved now, what are they like, what is their background, what is their journey that brought them to today, is this a passion or just a way to make money?

I looked for the “about us” section on their website and like so many other websites these days I got nothing other than some generic “blurb” about what they do, which was just a variation of their homepage.

Who you are. your “story”, is an essential part of your brand. If I don’t see it here I may never bother trying to find out more.

I hate that – go on tell me about you and what makes you special.

I always get a little suspicious when people don’t. Is there something to hide? Do you not want people to know who is behind this enterprise?

The “about us” section of your website is one of the most important parts of the site. For me it is the “trust” section and the part of the site that convinces me why I should be comfortable dealing with you and explains why you are different to every other provider who offers similar products and services.

Go on, take the time today and fill out the “about us” section properly.

Share your genuine story with us, let that passion and authenticity for what you do shine through and please tell us about you and your fabulous team and the journey that brought you to today.

About us….

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Branding, Communications, Marketing, Reputation | Leave a Comment »

The “nice” Twitter Tip

May 14, 2016

twitter

What is the right thing to do when someone mentions you or your business/organisation in a complimentary, “nice” manner on Twitter?

Let’s take a simple example:

“Well done to @FuzionPRIreland for helping us above and beyond with our product launch” … a nice tweet by a client (it does happen!) that makes us look good in front of their followers and anyone who might spot the tweet.

Take a second before answering and forget about Twitter and think about what you would do in the real world if this happened?

Would you ignore the person who complimented you? Nope!

Would you thank the person who gave you the compliment? Probably

Would you like as many people as possible to know that a client was happy to go “public” with their satisfaction about your service? Probably

Now let’s look at Twitter and the do’s and don’ts in this scenario and consider how the ‘tweeter’ feels in each case.

Don’t ..

Ignore the positive tweet – “I said something nice and Fuzion didn’t even acknowledge me. I’m sorry I tweeted them!”

Or

Retweet the positive tweet adding no comment – “Fuzion never acknowledged me but just retweeted the nice thing I said to make themselves look good”

(From my experience this is what most people do)

Do …

Thank the person/organisation who tweeted Fuzion by replying to their tweet “thank you so much for the kind words, it’s great to work with great people” – this way you have acknowledged them publicly and now all your followers will see a tweet that had some positive element at its source

And 

Retweet their tweet but this time add a comment that both acknowledges the tweeter but also shows you are not being self serving: “It’s great to work with special people” – this way everyone sees that you are nice but also they get to see the original ‘complimentary‘ tweet

There you go … That’s my “nice” twitter tip!

You can tweet me at @GregCantyFuzion and thank me and see what happens!!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

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Posted in Communications, Social Media, Twitter | Leave a Comment »

Macho politics and the need for femininity

April 8, 2016

Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin

If you mention gender quotas to me you will probably sense my temperature rise and start to notice the steam emerging from different parts of my body!

I want the best person to get the job but I do absolutely believe that we need to do everything to make sure this can be a woman or a man with no disadvantage to either.

However (this is huge coming from me!) watching the political standoff between Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, the independent candidates and the other parties as Ireland struggles to form a government reminds me of some of the key messages I heard recently at the Network Ireland, International Women’s Day event.

At the conference Gabrielle Motolla (a very impressive American photographer who lives in Iceland) spoke about the worldwide economic crash and a profound comment that was made at the time that “the banking systems lack of femininity caused many of the problems”

It wasn’t that there were too many men involved but the point was there was too much “masculinity” in the mix – too much testosterone, too much macho stuff, too much bravado, too much risk taking, too much ultra competitiveness and too many egos recklessly driving the banking system off the cliff.

All of these characteristics can be demonstrated by men or women but they are typically masculine traits so a gender balance could provide some protection against the potentially dangerous excesses of these traits.

This point really impacted on me – I understood exactly what she was saying and I can see the danger myself of too much of any particular trait in an organisation.

I met a Canadian woman at the same conference who operates a large energy company in Canada and we spoke about this issue. She’s not in favour of quotas but she explained that in her business it would be virtually impossible to manage a team of all men and it would be just as difficult with a team of all women.

In her experience the guys are just too macho and the women are too passive and cautious – she reckons a balance works best and in her industry she reckoned 60/40 works best and this is what she strives for when assembling teams.

With our political impasse at the moment I notice that nearly all of the posturing, which is getting us nowhere is very masculine.

We desperately need to sort this out and get our country back on track – maybe we should introduce some femininity and get this process moving?

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Communications, Equality, Gender equality, Irish Politics | 4 Comments »

Snapchat and feeling like a dinosaur

April 7, 2016

feeling like a dinosaur

My two buddies were all excited about Snapchat and insisted on enthusiastically showing me how it works.

You take a picture of your face you press this button and then you choose an effect … Open your mouth and a tongue flies out, raise your eyebrows and water gushes out of your eyes, click here and you are wearing shades and a cop uniform. This is very strange ..

Ok …..What then?

Well you can put that out as a story for “all your fans” to see or you can send it directly to a chosen few.

How do I find people to follow, how do they find me…?

They show me posts by people they are following and it all seems a bit odd.. Most people seem to be messing around with nothing at all decent going on. Some of the people that I followed seem to be convinced that they are celebrities and keep talking to the camera about their day. You are not a celebrity!!

I must admit I quite admire the guy who records himself jogging…try taking a selfie mini movie while running! I’d like to see that on the claim form – how exactly did you fall into that pothole?

One woman I know quite well keeps posting from her bed, telling us how tired and sick she is (this is done with full make up by the way!) and moaning about all the married men who are coming on to her. Really (I feel like calling her and having a quiet word)??

snapchat-headphones

I find one US politician, Cory Booker who seems to be using it in a semi intelligent way and of course Kim Kardashian is offering us another version of her reality TV life. Social media guru and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has effectively become an actor and this is another platform for him to do his thing – he likes eating bananas, I’ve discovered!

When you open up Snapchat the camera on your phone is automatically looking at you….Ok, you can take a picture or film yourself. What do you say?

Is it like Facebook…not really, Twitter….Definitely not, Instagram…The most like it but the posts just stay for 24 hours.

I don’t like it, it seems incredibly egotistical and I’m really uncomfortable because I don’t really know what I’m doing and I haven’t quite figured out how to use it..but I will!

This is good … I train and advise people on using social media all of the time so this is a really great learning for me.

I now know how they feel – I had forgotten what it was like to feel like a dinosaur!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

 

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Posted in Communications, Personal Marketing, Social Media | 4 Comments »

To whom it may concern…

March 29, 2016

Caysi Deviant Art

I’m busy clearing down a mountain of emails after a long weekend.

Each of these emails was sent with some purpose .. a work request, keeping me in the loop of something, providing me with valuable information or hoping that I will be prompted to do something.

Each of these emails was sent with a plan..someone decided on the content and the format and hit that ‘send’ button.

In the middle of all of this I get a “to whom it may concern” email from someone who is looking for Fuzion or one of our clients to sponsor their event in some way.

Technically they have done their job.. they compiled a list of people/companies to target, they gathered their email list, they worked on the ‘copy’ for their email and pressed ‘send‘.

When I get a ‘to whom it may concern‘ it makes it really easy to hit the ‘delete’ button.

‘Hi Greg‘ will work much better..go on… I’ve said it before, personalise – it” easy!

(the cool image I found online is by Caysi)

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

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Posted in Communications, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Marketing | 2 Comments »

What do you do with Mr and Mrs Toxic?

March 25, 2016

Mr and Mrs Toxic

I am working on a really interesting project at the moment and because it is quite complex there is a diverse team made up of very talented individuals from different organisations working on it.

We had a full day session, which included a meeting with the client group and instead of being the enjoyable experience I was expecting it was a horrible, draining one.

There is one characters (who happens to be really talented and super valuable) on the team who is just plain rude, arrogant, dismissive and being honest a little nasty. This has led to a testy atmosphere with team members trying to give their opinion but being dismissed in a rude manner.

Everyone witnesses the ‘put down’ and are waiting to see how the person who has just been insulted reacts …. he feels bad, he feels small and he feels weak if he keeps his mouth shut or does he decide to react and let the whole thing bubble over? To be fair to him he decided to bite his lip and eventually other people jumped in and supported him. I’m not sure if my lip would be that resilient.

At the end of the day I was totally wiped out and demotivated and a potentially great project had now disintegrated into something that was hardship. I can’t wait for it to be over is now my main thought but there is still a lot of work to be done with this crew.

I have made an effort at addressing this with this group of people who I don’t know that well .. I did it by email the following day (lets’ see if it makes any difference?)

Team spirit – At times yesterday a horrible, testy atmosphere crept into our team meeting – this makes the work very draining and we have to mind ourselves. The team leader has assembled a talented bunch together for this task – lets get the best from this collective talent and synergise. This is a team folks …lets support each other and make this job a enjoyable one.

Life is way too short!!

What do you do with Mr or Mrs Toxic?

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Bullying, Communications, Teamwork | 8 Comments »

Dreaming Big is banned in Ireland!

March 21, 2016

Conor McHregor, Budweiser advert banned by RTE

Our state broadcaster, RTE has just banned the Budweiser commercial featuring UFC fighter and Irish hero Conor McGregor.

The banning has already led to newspaper articles, much discussion and a huge curiosity and will inevitably have everyone googling just to see what this “offensive” advert was all about. I suspect they will be left scratching their heads wondering what the fuss was all about.

In many ways this could be deemed as a huge success for the brand because it will now achieve a level of visibility and notoriety that it previously didn’t have, without having to pay the advertising costs.

While it sends out a big message from RTE you would like to think that this is a good, sensible one because we do want there to be watchdogs to protect us from danger. It is important that ‘banning’ makes sense, that it is rational and that it is fair.

The advertising guidelines around alcohol are very strict in Ireland and all of these were followed carefully.

In the advert there isn’t a picture of a bottle of beer, there isn’t a pub in sight. There is just Conor tastefully captured in a scene walking around his home town, Crumlin in Dublin, which then transforms into a street in LA.

This 27 year old apprentice plumber has achieved huge success by dedication to his sport and the advert demonstrates this with the help of these scenes and the voice over by Conor:

Never give up on your dream

Be your own inspiration, a beacon of self belief

Keep proving others wrong

If your dream doesn’t scare you, then its not big enough

So dream, as big as you dare

Only at the very end of the advert do we see the Budweiser logo and the usual drink responsibly message at the bottom of the screen.

For me the message from the advert is a very inspirational one, delivering a powerful positive message. Yes, it does come from a beer brand, which I think is more than ok. It shows you how the guidelines are keeping alcohol brands in a very responsible place and forcing a communication about positive values.

The message coming from RTE in banning this advert?

According to the newspapers they issued a statement to the Sunday Business Post that the advert breached advertising guidelines because Conor McGregor is considered a “hero to the young“, which will in turn encourage them to drink alcohol.

I don’t get it..

In my view banning the advert will achieve the wrong thing (besides totally confusing an industry that is trying to be very responsible) – viewers will definitely seek out the inspirational advert and could instead conclude that we are living in a censorship state that in some way has an issue with people from working class backgrounds having and achieving their dreams.

Banning the advert is also bad for the RTE brand as in my view it shows them as being ultra conservative and this is not good when they are up against such stiff competition. Leaving the censorship to the advertising authorities might be a much better policy.

It’s a great thing that we are seeing extra vigilance about alcohol advertising but we need to make sure that the brands that are working really hard to get it right aren’t punished.

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

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Posted in Advertising, Branding, Censorship, Communications, Ethics, Motivation, Passion, Positivity | 15 Comments »

Acknowledge and Engage with your audience

February 17, 2016

Stephen Donnelly - Social Democrats

Stephen Donnelly of the Social Democrats did really well during the General Election Leaders Debate on RTE this week. He comes across as an articulate, intelligent and impressive individual and his performance was one of the things that many people were talking about after.

He won over some of the audience!

While he is very impressive it is very hard to buy into a manifesto that wants to keep taxation high and let the state use those funds. If I thought the public service was capable of spending this money wisely and efficiently there might be some merit in his arguments but this just isn’t the case.

Also this high personal taxation philosophy is a huge deterrent for human talent to work and live in Ireland. Sorry Stephen – people want to be able to enjoy the spoils of their labour and will move to more favourable regimes such as the UK to make that possible.

However, Stephen did impress..

My other half, Deirdre Waldron said as much on Twitter (I would consider her to have a lot of influential followers) and effectively she gave his performance a big ‘thumbs up‘ publicly. She wasn’t the only one who did this I noticed.

The Golden Opportunity

While this online endorsement is great for Stephen it leaves a huge ‘Opportunity‘ door wide open for him to walk through. Of course it’s up to him and his team to grab this opportunity.

What if he could do something really simple to grab this tangible goodwill and take it to a higher level?

What if he could do something really easy to take this positive feedback and convert it into a supporter or a fan even?

What if he could take a few little seconds and grab a simple chance to show an online audience that he is a really great and very popular guy?

What if he decides to do nothing?

Do does nothing ..

Dee is thinking …hmm, I said something complimentary and it wasn’t even acknowledged. That’s not very nice, I won’t do that again.

That positive impression has wilted a little

He likes the post..

Dee is thinking…hmm, It’s nice to see that he acknowledged the positive thing that I said. He is one of the good guys.

That positive impression has been reinforced and she might even repeat the positive posts about him in the future.

He engages with the post..

This is the ‘Holy Grail‘ of social media and it is the big prize, the gift, the one thing that is waiting there to be easily plucked from the tree.

Stephen tweets back: “thanks a million” or even better “thanks a million Dee, I appreciate the positive feedback” or even better again “thanks a million Dee, our campaign is really connecting with people”

Dee is thinking..hmm, this guy is the real deal, he would be a great person to have working for us in Dail Eireann. I’m going to follow him and listen carefully to all of his proposals and arguments and I might take his local candidates more seriously.

Now Stephen has won her over and one vote turns into two and so on..

Why is it not happening?

Maybe this very sharp and intelligent guy who is out there giving it everything, just doesn’t get this simple trick? Maybe he just doesn’t have the time? – I’m sure he doesn’t but he can surely get someone who understands his message intimately enough to assist him with his Twitter account.

These are easy wins for Stephen and so many of the other politicians who have positive momentum. If they are serious about getting each of those precious votes then grab the golden opportunities by jumping in – Acknowledge and Engage.

For the rest of us the argument is exactly the same with our online communications:

  • Acknowledge your nice posts
  • Don’t be afraid to have a conversation
  • Say thank you!

The opportunities are there …grab them!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Communications, Irish Politics, Personal Branding, Personal development, Personal Marketing, Politics | 3 Comments »

Friend or Foe?

January 18, 2016

Gladiator - Greg Canty

I found myself in the middle of a series of emails back and forth with a business colleague (I hate that word) who I have a really great relationship with.

There was some confusion about an issue and we clearly had a different interpretation of the ‘facts‘ and as result our explanatory emails to each other were not helping!

What I was saying to him was clarifying nothing and vice versa and as a result a little tension and frustration had crept into our communications.

You could see an edge creeping into the tone and the language both of us were using…. this was heading to a bad place. It would have taken very little at this stage to drag the tone lower and raise the tension and before you know it we both would have our swords and shields out ready to do ferocious battle.

In the blink of an eye a great and very productive and enjoyable relationship could be ruined forever.

Both of us thankfully avoided the awful trap and we picked up the phone recognising that an actual conversation was the best way to sort out the issue.

Step back, take a deep breath and make a decision to be a friend and not a foe… It’s s much better place to be.

Greg Canty 

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion PR, Marketing and Graphic Design, with offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Communications, Personal development | 2 Comments »

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