PRESIDENT’S CORNER:

Time Flies While You’re Having Fun… By Linda Sanders

Remember when you were a child and the school year lasted forever? Months seemed like years! Meanwhile your parents would say… Read More>

DIVERSITY: Why It Matters to Communicators

By Carol Grabowski Recent news reports present interesting facts about the changing face of America… Read More>

How to ‘Paint with Numbers’ with Randall Bolten By Sarah Cruise

As communicators, we’re often tasked with taking complex information and presenting it in a way that is both clear and compelling… Read More>

LOCAL EXPERT SERIES: SUZANNE MCDONALD Planning Your Social Media Editorial Calendar

So are you wondering what day your post will get more clicks? Or speculating on what topics your employees want to hear about? Or just looking for a better way to manage all of your social media channels? Read More>

ACCREDITATION: Are You Ready for ABC?

By Pat Masterson, ABC Professional communicators can demonstrate to employers, colleagues and themselves their ability to understand and manage the responsibilities and perform the skills needed for effective organizational communication. Read More>

WELCOME to Yankee IABC

Chapter membership is holding steady at 188 as of late April. In March and April, three new members joined Yankee IABC. Read More>

UPCOMING Events Read More>

May-June 2012

Quick Links

Upcoming Events

Yankee IABC Website

IABC Website

Connect with Yankee IABC

© 2012 Yankee Chapter of the International

Association of Business Communicators. All rights reserved.

PRESIDENT’S CORNER: PRESIDENT’S CORNER:

Time Flies When You Are Having Fun… By Linda Sanders

When I started my presidency of Yankee IABC last summer, I thought June 2012 was SO far away and that we had months and months to work on projects. Unfortunately, I have a grown-up’s sense of time now—where did it go? My goals at the beginning of the year weren’t lofty: Hold a member event every month

Communicate with you regularly via our social media channels and EDIT

Update the Yankee IABC website

Considering how life, jobs, families, and other commitments pull at us daily, the all-volunteer Yankee IABC board has done pretty good job completing that list. A calendar full of events

September: Oops. This one turned into early October.

October–Waltham: Membership Mixer.

November–Boston: Holiday party with guests from across the country who also

attended a marcus evans communications workshop (two of our members

attended the workshop for free)

December–Framingham: Local Expert Series—Tom Curran, ABC, spoke about

volunteering and how it can help your professional development.

January–Cambridge: Local Expert Series—Art Stewart introduced us to

Corporate Social Responsibility.

February– Dedham: Local Expert Series—Karen Papa gave us tips on boosting

managers’ communication competency.

March–Boston, Cambridge, and Burlington: Four Restaurant Week dine-arounds.

April–Dedham: Local Expert Series—Suzanne McDonald guided us through the

social media landscape.

And coming up… May 22–Lexington: Local Expert Series—Tom Roux shows us how to become

LinkedIn networking lions.

June 13–Waltham: Wine tasting and Membership Mixer.

CONTENTS

PRESIDENT’S CORNER: Time Flies When You’re Having Fun…

DIVERSITY: Why It Matters to

Communicators

How to ‘Paint with Numbers’ with Randall Bolten

LOCAL EXPERT SERIES: SUZANNE MCDONALD

Planning Your Social Media Editorial Calendar

ACCREDITATION:

Are You Ready for ABC?

WELCOME to YIABC

UPCOMING Events

Remember when you were a child and the school year lasted forever? Months seemed like years! Meanwhile your parents would say things like, “Where does the time go?” You thought they were weird. (No doubt for reasons besides their odd sense of time, but school lasted forever.) Like school, the Yankee IABC board year runs September through June and during that time we try to accomplish a lot.

If you’re part of our Member’s-Only LinkedIn group, follow us on Twitter, and have friended us on Facebook, then you’ve received updates throughout the year about events and news. If you haven’t joined us online, what are you waiting for? We aren’t done yet! New season, new Board, new look…

Updating the Yankee IABC website is turning into a full-fledged renovation. Instead of changing a few words, what we REALLY want to do is give the chapter a modern look. We have homework to do over the summer, but it will be worth it when we debut a new website and new look in the fall.

We’re getting a jump on fall events: October 23, 8AM-12PM: Diversity Communication Workshop

co-sponsored with Global Novations and being held in Waltham, this event will

feature discussions about diversity and inclusion, as well as a moderated panel

of chief diversity officers and communication professionals

November 8: Randall Bolten will talk about his new book Painting with

Numbers: Presenting Financials and Other Numbers So People Will Understand

You. [Note: We are seeking a location for this event. If your office has a

conference room for approximately 40 guests, please email me.]

We are also in the process of updating our board of directors: Election ballots will be emailed later in May or early June, and Sarah Cruise will take over as President in June. Thank you for your participation and support this year. You make the chapter what it is. It has been great seeing new as well as familiar faces at events and online this year. IABC truly brings our community together, and I am honored that I can be a part of it. With regards, Linda Sanders President, Yankee IABC Linda Sanders is Yankee IABC President and Senior Content Manager at IHS CERA

DIVERSITY:

Why It Matters to Communicators By Carol Grabowski

Recent news reports present interesting facts about the changing face of America:

Between 2000 and 2010, more than half of the population growth in the United States was because of the increase in the Hispanic population.1

With almost 70% of baby boomers planning to work past traditional retirement age, there could be three generations of employees within many organizations.2

The percentage of women between the ages of 18 and 24 enrolled in college or graduate programs exceeds men of the same age by a margin of 36% to 28%.3

Please help us restore our Facebook family!

Recently Facebook made some changes and migrated our site.

Unfortunately, they did not migrate our membership! If you were a

member of our Facebook family, or would like to join us, please go to the

site now and sign up.

Just click on the link below and then the “Ask to Join Group” button near

top right of the page.

Our goal is to get all our members participating. Given our geographic spread, Facebook is a good way to

get to know each other without leaving our keyboards!

© 2012

Yankee Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.

All rights reserved.

What do these trends mean for communicators and their target audiences? Join Yankee IABC at the headquarters of Global Novations, a global talent optimization firm headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, October 23, for a half-day panel discussion on what communicators need to know about diversity and inclusion. Details are being finalized and will appear in the next edition of EDIT and on www.yankeeiabc.org. 1Source: U.S. Census Bureau, “2010 Census Shows America’s Diversity,” March 24, 2011. Hispanic is a term used by the U.S. Census Bureau and does not necessarily reflect how respondents would describe their ancestry in their own words. 2Source: www.forbes.com, “Workforce Trends and Your Job Search,” July 7, 2011. 3Source: www.pewsocialtrends.org, “A Gender Reversal on Career Aspirations,” April 19, 2012.

Carol Grabowski is Yankee IABC VP of Communications and an Editor with S&P Capital IQ Financial Communications

How to ‘Paint with Numbers’ with Randall Bolten By Sarah Cruise

As communicators, we’re often tasked with taking complex information and presenting it in a way that is both clear and compelling to the average person. When you hear the word “complex,” one topic that may immediately come to mind is financials. Randall Bolten tackles this topic in his new book Painting with Numbers: Presenting Financials and other Numbers So People Will Understand You. "In the case of financial documents, poorly understood reports could lead to mass confusion or even mistakes costing millions of dollars. But the right presentation of that same information could make an audience think aha! and motivate outstanding performance," writes Bolten. At a Yankee IABC event this fall, Randall will teach members how to present even the most complex mathematical information in an easy-to-understand format that will resonate with your audience – and how to do so by applying the same basic communication skills we use for writing or having a personal conversation. As an added bonus, all event attendees will receive a copy of Randall’s new book! Be on the lookout for more information on the Randall Bolten event in a future issue of EDIT and on yankeeiabc.org.

Sarah Cruise is Yankee IABC President-Elect and a Senior Internal Communications Specialist at Bose Corporation.

LOCAL EXPERT SERIES: SUZANNE MCDONALD Planning Your Social Media Editorial Calendar

Making the best connection Are you wondering what day your post will get more clicks? Or speculating on what topics your employees want to hear about? Or just looking for a better way to manage all of your social media channels? These are some of the issues that companies are grappling with to get the most out of their social media presence. For example, status updates can be put on LinkedIn, Facebook, Foursquare and other tools. Social media is permeating into the boardroom. According to a recent study by eMarketer, 51% of all employees trust their CEOs who use social media to communicate with them, said DesignEditor’s Suzanne McDonald. The question for businesses is which tools to use and how to use them so they get their message out to massive amounts of people. McDonald shared some tips and tools to help companies find effective ways to do just that. 1. Your audience and keywords According to McDonald, companies need to know who their influencers are. What are their characteristics and what are they looking for? What kind of language do they respond to? Companies must have answers to these questions to have an effective social media presence. Google Trends: Enter up to five topics and see how often they’re searched on Google over time. It also shows how frequently your topics appear in Google news stories and from where in the world people searched for them. Google Alerts: Receive email updates of the latest Google results based on your queries. Google Keywords: Create ads and choose keywords, using words or phrases related to your business. You can also create, launch and manage campaigns—including sweepstakes, contests and giveaways—in social networking communities such as Facebook and Twitter. Wildfire: Launch social media marketing campaigns. Twiangulate: Search, analyze and map connections between Twitter friends and followers. Technorati: Monitors blog traffic on websites your blogs link to, as well as searches blog activity by keyword to track current blogging trends. 2. Use the right strategic tools To get the most out of your social media presence, use strategic tools that fit your needs. Some areas you may want to focus on are editorial calendars, blogs (yours and others), email newsletters, and best practices in search marketing. Samepoint: Uses sentiment, analyzing whether a comment is positive or negative based on natural language processing.

OMGili: Scans millions of online discussions worldwide in more than 100,000 boards and forums, differentiating between discussion entities, such as title, topic, answer and post date. Icerocket: Searches blogs, images, Twitter and Facebook and other popular social networking sites from one page. In addition, apps such as the WordPress editorial calendar plug-in will help companies keep track of blog posts. 3. Integrate multiple social media platforms Companies need to identify the platforms—such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare—to use, as well as the social channels that are most relevant. In addition, organizations need to find the best way to monitor and integrate these platforms, identify the content that is working and weave that content across all of them. Whathashtag: Allows you to find the most-used Twitter hashtags for the keywords you want to search. Twilert: Enables you to receive regular email alerts of tweets that contain your brand, product and service. Twitrratr: Helps distinguish positive tweets from negative ones about a brand, product, person or topic. 4. Social media optimization and metrics The last element of a successful social media presence is being more efficient and effective with your social media, optimizing your performance, and figuring out your return on investment. Hootsuite: Manage your social media profiles, such as Facebook, Foursquare and LinkedIn, from anywhere. Send and schedule updates, track click states and set up tracking columns to monitor keywords, #hashtags and lists. Google Analytics: Generate stats about visitors to a site. Bit.ly: Share, track and analyze links. Twittercounter: Offers a variety of widgets and buttons to add to blogs, websites or social network profiles to show recent Twitter visitors and the number of followers. By planning their social media presence, companies will increase their understanding of their clients, relate to them more effectively, build awareness of their brand, and reduce customer service costs. Contributed by a member of Yankee IABC

Scenes from our LOCAL EXPERT SERIES…

Right: Suzanne McDonald

with YIABC President Linda Sanders

Photos by member John Klingenstein

At Buca di Beppo in Dedham in April

McDonald tells us about the cornucopia of social media tools available to companies to

ACCREDITATION: Are You Ready for ABC?

By Pat Masterson, ABC

Professional communicators can demonstrate to employers, colleagues and themselves their ability to understand and manage their responsibilities and perform the skills needed for effective organizational communication. IABC offers an Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) designation for members who can identify problems, set objectives, develop workable solutions, implement, execute and evaluate a communications program. The ABC designation is a personal and professional achievement. Those who successfully complete the program have been judged against strict professional standards and can take pride in their recognition as competent, well-rounded communicators. Many candidates have found that going through the accreditation process itself - preparing their portfolios, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses, reviewing the principles and practices of organizational communications - is one of its principal values. You meet the requirements for accreditation if you: understand the goals and philosophy of organizational communication; comprehend the role of the communicator and communication in modern

organizations—including a knowledge of what communication can and cannot do;

have the knowledge to plan and implement a broad range of communication programs; and

have the skills and abilities to apply that knowledge to practical, real-life situations.

To start, you must have five years of experience in the profession and a Bachelor's degree, or a total of nine years of combined post-secondary education and experience. IABC has more information about the process on www.iabc.com or you can contact Pat Masterson if you have questions.

WELCOME to Yankee IABC!

Chapter membership is holding steady at 188 as of late April. In March and April, three new members joined Yankee IABC.

Welcome!

Bridget Burke, Pfizer Courtney DeGraff Bruce MacDonald, Accion International

And Congratulations! to members celebrating anniversaries of over 5 years in March and April:

9 years

Sheila Donahue, Unum Douglas Bonarrigo, Raytheon

10 years Kathleen Hjorth, GE

11 years Susan Hamilton

12 years Tracy Zimmerman, GE Christine St. Jean, Comcast

17 years Carl Mueller, Liberty Mutual

24 years Allan Kunigis, Kunigis Communications, Inc.

UPCOMING Events

SIG Lunches: MetroWest, Wednesdays, May 16 and July 25, noon, at Papa Razzi in

Framingham. RSVP to Chris LaFontaine.

MetroProv, Friday, May 18, noon, at Joe’s American Bar & Grill in Providence.

RSVP to Kim Hanson.

Downtown Boston, June 12 in Back Bay, time and place TBD.

RSVP to Manya Chylinski.

Local Expert Series: Tom Roux tells us how become networking LIONs on LinkedIn. May 22 at Ixtapa Mexican Restaurant and Cantina in Lexington. See side panel for more details. Register Here.

Summer Membership Mixer: Join us on June 13 for wine tasting and networking at Gordon’s Fine Wines and Culinary Center in Waltham. Registration will be open soon. Check our Events Calendar for more details!

LOCAL EXPERT SERIES: TOM ROUX May 22, 2012

Are you a Networking Lamb or a LION? Maximizing Your LinkedIn Experience

Would you consider yourself a LinkedIn lamb… you’ve got a basic profile, but don’t have many connections? Or are you closer to being a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker), with a robust professional network, strong online presence, and access to valuable intelligence? In this presentation for LinkedIn lurkers and lambs alike, IABC leader and LinkedIn enthusiast Tom Roux will help you take advantage of the many features of LinkedIn by sharing his Twenty Tips for Maximizing your LinkedIn Experience. This session will help you:

Put your resume online (on steroids) and stand out among other job seekers.

Build a virtual Rolodex that updates itself.

Tap into millions of connections shared by people you know professionally.

Get business intelligence on competitors, clients, or your next employer.

Acquire research to help you solve work challenges.

Establish an online presence so people can easily find you.

Tom Roux is a professional writer, editor, and internal communications consultant with more than 12 years of corporate communications experience. He currently serves in the joint role of Director on the IABC International Executive Board and Trustee for the IABC Research Foundation.