CEOs are fired or forced to resign. It happens, as in business, as well as in private life, some relationships are not bound to last forever. Even Steve Jobs, who will always be one of the archetypes for CEOs for a long time from now, severed his connections with Apple at a certain point.

Being fired or having rumors spread about having been forced to leave a company is a crisis for a professional’s personal brand. Other potential employers will be influenced by some other player’s decision to fire their CEO and not want to hire that very same person to lead their company. So how one handles their personal brand while and after being fired is not something that should be taken lightly.

I had a conversation on this topic with a CEO that left a tech company very suddenly, and the details of the event were never fully talked about. At least not in the open! The person in question was commenting on the Yahoo – Carol Bartz breakup and said that was the way to do it: let everyone know what’s going on instead of protecting the interests of a company that just got rid or you. I asked why they had taken a different approach and the answer was that immediately after the event, they were unable to separate their own interests from those of the former employer. 

My opinion is that once you are fired, your interests and goals are the only ones that count. You have been fired and when word gets out, you will have a reasonably hard time finding a new job, unless you have a good explanation, backed up by somewhat verifiable facts to back you up. Taking a strong stand and explaining your reasons would certainly help your brand of a competent professional.

But there are caveats, as in everything that has to do with communication. First of all, it does matter who has the stronger voice and who’s got more trust. In most cases, the media is one of the sources of information, but actually your ex-team, your partners and clients are as good of a reference. If they believe you, they might vouch for you and help spread the information you need to ensure your brand is still bright and attractive in the end. Secondly, the tone is paramount. A fired CEO having they say on a matter needs to appear honest, smart and with a good sense of business. If the opposite happens, you’d be labeled vindictive and getting a new job will be worse. Third issue you need to keep in mind is that the audience you’re addressing needs to be thought of as a small world. Not all companies will hire hot shot CEOs and the medium and big ones in a market and those connected to it are not so many. They are a handful and their opinion is the one that matters, the rest of the world might be buzzing about you, it still does not matter.

So should a fired CEO take the stand and speak their mind? They should certainly give it a try if they are not at fault in any way. If their performance was less than impressive and they cannot prove it all happened despite their inhuman, best possible effort, it’s better to lay low and let it all pass. In most cases, companies don’t make a fuss about it, they just announce a new CEO and move on to the next order of business. So if the beehive is quiet and relax, one needs to carefully consider their actions before taking a stick and poking it. Also true, a company would not have much to gain from a public scandal involving a former CEO, so their retaliation to your attack might not be strong or might not come.

If you’re still wondering what to do in such a situation, the road to your answer is simple: remember your interests and objectives. See how you can best go about obtaining everything you want. If exposing the short mindedness and errors of your former employers helps, then do it. Talk to the audience that interests you – potential employers or the whole world. Then get ready to face any storm that might trouble your personal brand.

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Languages evolve. New words appear, we start using them, they eventually make their way into the dictionaries, and are thus vouched for. Until that point, new words are o sort of mambo jumbo for a lot of people. We all remember when the very common verb ‘to google’ first appeared in the dictionary. It then continued with blog, blogger, tweet, woot, sexting, bromance, and other words that have recently made their way into our every day chats.

PR professionals and communication experts have an interesting position when it comes to these new words, especially when they focus on the online part of their profession. On one hand, we have netizens who expect us to address them in their own manner of speaking and writing, on the other we have serious business people that expect the utmost professionalism when being reached out to, which includes correct use of language and grammar. Officially, until they are introduced in the dictionaries and accepted as real words, what we’re using is not clean English (or what ever other language you address them in). 

So what is there to do? Use quotation marks or italics when using an unconventional word? Promote new words and lobby to get them accepted faster? Go the way the media and journalists go? They are easier to handle as they do adopt new words soon after their audience starts using them.

The truth is there is no right choice. A PR professional will always have to adapt their speech to the audience they are addressing at one point or another. You won’t be strict about choice of dictionary approved terminology when addressing a group of online youngsters that expect you to translate everything to include the specifics of their always connected virtual lives, with all the smiley faces that entails. You won’t put a ton of the same smiley faces in an email to a General Manager of a company you want to land as a client. When addressing teachers and professors who are particular about word usage, you might be careful about your own linguistic choices.

But no matter what, a PR pro needs to quickly and constantly adapt to new words and trends. Because you will ‘plus one’ something, you will tweet and skype and google and that’s not all that you will do!

Enhancements drive more business. Doing something better, smarter, faster makes current customers happy and attracts new ones. An improvement to your website, a new system in your store, a new customer care infrastructure, easier online buying programs, it all is implemented to help grow your business.

While the intention is commendable, many companies fail to cash in on their improvements because they fail to communicate what’s going on properly. What some business owners don’t understand is that in most cases, people don’t like changes. They require time to learn, adapt and create new habits. In some cases, failing to show them the benefits, but most of all, to explain how things work, turns your efforts into a big hassle that only generates frustration, anger or the sudden desire to go to the competition.

Before you make the change, make sure you announce it. Then setup tutorials, videos,  FAQs or dedicated personnel to help your customers through the change. Pau extra attention to explaining clearly what the benefits are: how does the new system you’ve implemented help them? How does it solve their problems faster, how does it make their lives easier? Make the change about them, not you or your future profts.

No matter how much you prepare for it, no matter if you believe your communication plan for the changes you are about to implement, there will be issues you haven’t considered. Therefore you need to have someone appointed to addressing them.

Renenber! No matter how good, change is still a nuissance for your customers. Communicate your intentions and the newprocess to them and welcome their questions, xoncerns and suggestions. That’s the only way to make sure your efforts pay off and you don’t invest time and money in annoying your customers.

A few days ago, I was walking with my mom on the streets of my home town, Ploiesti. Out of nowhere, it poped in front of my eyes: QUICK! The name of a very particular shop that used to make all my money disappear since I was in 8th grade. They soled notebooks, pens, pencils, anything someone with a passion for writing would definitely be into. They retailed foreign brands that I was addicted to: Schneider, Parker, Staedtler, Rotring with their very suscessful Tikky pencils. I used to save everything I got from my parents and grandparents, along with the money I got from school for being such a good student, and spend it all to enlarge my pen, pencil, marker and notebook collection.

When I rediscovered it, I couldn’t help smiling and being extremely happy it was still in the market. They had changed locations a few times and I thought they had closed down years before. I did not love Quick just beacause of what they sold. I loved the shop’s smell, how the items were displayed, the fact that most of the staff was nice and probably the fact that I had to work hard for every little treasure I got from there. 

I haven’t been so happy at seeing a brand I know in a long time. I had a similar smile when I saw a Booking.com office in Amsterdam, but it wasn’t quite the same joy. I outgrew Quick, but I still remember it fondly, and the next time I need a pen or pencil or notebook in Ploiesti, I will buy it from there, just to show my appreciation.

It then hit me that that’s how we should define brand success. Our clients or customers should smile with pleasure when they see our logo. They should want to drop by, just to say hello, and remember the fun times they had. Or at least they should feel satisfaction when thinking of the products or services they bought from us.

It might be a lot to ask to yield genuine happiness when they see or hear of our brand, but a goal set to only triggering positive feelings in no way means aiming to high!

What do you hope your customers think when  they suddenly see your logo?

Guest post by Carol Wilson

One of the most important aspects of your company is its image in the public eye. Branding has become an integral part of marketing and public relations. Today, companies create brands through their social media and internet presence. Developing a brand that is both memorable and unique could become the key to your success as a small business or company. Any successful brand has a notable image associated with it. This image must be clear and simple, but also engaging and remarkable. Building a brand and image is a difficult process to master, particularly in a society completely driven by branding. Oftentimes, a brand will outgrow its image. In this case, an unsuccessful, misleading, or outdated brand image with bog down a company’s marketing strategy. While branding is all about consistency, the time may come that you’ll need to reinvent your brand image. Follow these three tips to creating a new and exciting image for your company or product that is fitting, current, and potentially profitable. Your image is your greatest asset. Use it right.

Evaluate Your Audience

This is one of the most basic and most difficult steps involved in creating a brand for your company. Your brand should speak directly to the audience you seek. If you do not know exactly who your audience or customer base is, there is no way that you can create a brand, image, product, or service that they will be interested in. Being able to read your customer base is one of the most valuable skills to master. Explore your various clients or customers to get a feel for who they are and what interests them. Once you have identified your customers and various stakeholders decide what kind of image would appeal to them. Use questionnaires and interviews to have your audience evaluate your image. You can then design or edit your image to better fit your audiences’ interests.

Find Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Sit down and carefully evaluate your brand image. What does the image say to you? How does the image make you feel? What kind of an impression does the image evoke about your company? It is impossible to remedy something if you don’t have a clear understanding of what is wrong with it. Even if your audience or customer base is communicating to you that your image is bad, if you do not believe them there is little hope. Sprucing up a tired image does not mean that you have to completely scrap everything you have. Find the aspects of your image that work and the aspects of it that do not. Because so much of branding relies on the publics’ ability to recognize your image, it is wise to keep as much of your original image as possible. Remove and redesign the parts of your image that do not work and keep everything else that you can. Sometimes even the slightest changes can make a huge improvement.

Get Professional Help

Thankfully, there are several professionals who specialize in designing brand images. Seeking help from one of these professionals may be one of the best investments your business makes. Let this expert help you create an image that communicates the exact things you would like about your company and services. These experts can determine which aspects of your image are successful and can remedy the aspects that are not. After your image is redesigned to your liking, follow up on it. How are sales doing? Are you attracting more customers? Are the customers you are attracting ones that are in your customer base?

About the author
This is a guest post from Carol Wilson who writes for business insurance. She contributes articles about a variety of marketing, business, stock market, small business topics. She can be contacted at: wilson.carol24@gmail.com.

Global brands need to promote themselves in different markets and sometimes the same campaign that’s translated in every language they need to address audiences seems like a great idea. But good translations – when good means you use the correct equivalent in a given language – is not enough to effectively communicate brand values, a campaign’s quirky message or a product’s benefits.

The next step to render a campaign local and to make it work for a certain culture is to adapt it. Translate, then adapt. It’s a two step process, but the latter seems to be forgotten way too often. Sometimes it’s budgetary constraints, sometimes it’s because people think it would sound cool and trendy, other times it’s just because people lack the experience of localizing global campaigns.

Words can often fool you. They sound and look close enough, the even express the correct meaning. But how different cultures use them in day to day expressions and phrases is worlds apart from one country to another. There’s a very good example for that and I have written about it in Romanian as well. Legendary vs. Legendar. The first word is in English, the second is its Romanian counterpart. They are spelled almost identically, they sound quite similar. The meaning is close. But Romanian usage of legendary is not the same. Surprisingly or not, very few things are legendary to us.

So remember, no matter how smart, cool or trendy a certain idea or message sounds in the language of origin, do your best to also adapt it after translating it!

As taste, needs and standards differ from one person to the next, having everyone appreciate a company or product or person is impossible. At a point or another, negative comments are about to emerge, via email, via the phone or publicly as comments to web sites, blogs and articles about a certain business or business person published on outlets allowing readers to post their opinions. Some are caused by something we did, others just come from differences of opinion.

There are many ways to address negative comments, depending on what triggers them, who and where posts them and each and every company’s strategy. But regardless of how we respond to negative comments – explaining a situation or its circumstances, challenging the person who authored the comment, apologizing or trying to change the subject, knowing when to just let go, be the bigger person and move on is also very important.

I personally believe that negative comments should only be ignored when they are a lie or exaggeration from a source that no one would trust and on a relatively invisible website or blog. Even then it is risky, as no one knows when a certain web page might become an Internet hot spot, boosting the credibility of the negative comment. The general rule is that you should not suddenly validate negative opinions that most people would ignore. Otherwise you risk turning a passing rumor into a viral debate.

But if comments are easy to find and would make your potential customers consider the stand and the arguments, they should also hear your side of the story. Responding is important, but sometimes a certain negative remark takes over the conversation. It all revolves around the author of that less than positive opinion and the company representative, with several exchanges that make the issue bigger than it is.

Other people wanting to express their opinion might be put off by this long debate, which might not even be on the core issue currently discussed. Moreover, by posting reply after reply to one person’s thoughts and negative comments boost their relevance and credibility. If you give it so much time and effort, maybe there is something to their arguments.

A rule of thumb of mine is that a company’s take on a matter can be explained in one or maximum two replies unless other game changing information is introduced or other persons join the initial debate. People can turn a simple issue into a two-day conversation with comments longer than the initial article, piece of news, blog post, video or photo. But most of the times it’s the same arguments and examples in new clothes, so it’s really wasted effort and time. And it’s not only your time, it’s that of other readers and potential buyers.

Of course, the temptation of making the final, undebatable argument is sometimes very powerful, even for seasoned communicators. But you have to remember: it’s OK to disagree. Also, you should review your reply through the eyes of smart and relatively objective readers, not submit it to the train of thoughts and arguments of the initial commenter.

How have you dealt with negative comments? After how many replies did you put an end to the conversation?

There are many ways in which a company can end up looking bad in front of customers, the press, or just about everyone. And it seem that this week I am prompted to explore many of them.

Finding the right companies and the right people to help your business grow is always a great idea. Hiring a great HR manager to make sure your staff is top notch, hiring the write PR and marketing agency, these are complicated tasks that not all companies get right.

But once you hire someone that’s really good at what they do, make sure you are familiar with the campaigns they run for you! Imagine this: one of the sites I sometimes write for gets this great targeted email proposing a very interesting contest . The message is well written, it’s clear they did some research before and you can’t wait to get started. Unfortunately, you want to have the story published by the end of the day and the person contacting you did not answer. You pick up the phone and call the company behind the campaign – they don’t know who the person is, what the campaign is about and their marketing officer is not in.

Such lack of communication within the company shakes both your credibility and that of the campaign you’re running. Maybe the news outlets and blogs you’ve contacted will wait around to see the situation resolved and explained, maybe they just think it’s all a big scam (you might have hired someone to build links, but there’s no contest or prize involved!).

Even if you run an online campaign, people are still likely to actually call your land line and ask for details. They might actually pay you a visit to find out more about your company and see what it’s all about. So everyone should know a.what those looking for details are talking about and b.who to direct them to for information.

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When trying to reach a global market, many companies (with enough relevant examples in the IT&C industry) rely on strategic and local partners and resellers to place and sell their products and services. What they sometimes tend to overlook is that promoting the product or service is as important and can become a shared task. While initially new partners might need guidance to understand the overall strategy, your product’s top selling benefits and the type of customers you are targeting, over time then can turn into strong regional allies.

Think of a big release of a new product or service. You might draft the communication plan, have the new literature, press and blogger pitches, press release and special offers ready and then share them in due time with your partner network. They might, in turn, reach out to their customer base, press contacts and enthusiastic evangelists, boosting your promotion effort.

Of course, some will be more savvy when it comes to PR and Marketing, others might need some ongoing guidance. You could suggest how they can reach out to media outlets, how they can identify where the potential customers who need to be informed about the product or service are. If they need convincing, you need to focus on their benefits: properly communicating with customers, audiences, the press means more business coming their way. That does also mean a share of the income goes to you, but the main beneficiaries are the partners.

When considering a successful partnership, businesses need to stop thinking in terms of sales alone. Yes, how much a partner makes by selling your product is important. But can you also collaborate on increasing brand awareness, spreading the word about your product and getting more revenue for yourself and the partner in question? Can you collaborate on getting feedback from their customers to help improve your products and services and subsequently sell more, maybe even for a better price?

Do you really listen to those around you? Family, friends, employers, employees, clients, acquaintances, bartenders, would you say you actually know how to and can really listen to them? I’d say that theoretically, a lot of us know how to. Everyone who had a few college classes talking about active listening, please raise your hand now! But I think we phase out our knowledge, the very same way as we tune out commercials, product placements in movies, people we’re not interested in, things that bother us. And I also believe we sometimes overlook and downright forget the benefits of opening our mind and souls to those around us by listening.

It took reading a great book, Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone by Dr. Mark Goulston – to remember the benefits of listening, the techniques and the investment it takes to make it all work. I know what some of you would say! All shrinks think they know how to listen and help you, but what does it have to do with business? I for one know for sure you can pretty much find valid business advice almost anywhere, so a psychiatrist that gets hired by businesses to get them to work better sounds like a sweet deal to me.

Just Listen has got it all, explanations, how it all works scenarios, tips, tricks and you can take it all, learn it and apply it in both your business and your personal life. Reading the book will make you a more effective listener, that meaning you’d also be a more effective communicator, problem solver and basically you’ll lead a happier life. As an added benefit, it will also help you rid yourself of all the toxic people in your life.

What most captured me while reading this book was the wide range of applicability in business: sales, negotiations, motivating employees, getting through to unresponsive clients, getting audiences on your side, getting noticed by powerful people or by the trend setters in your field, it all can be eased into by listening first and then knowing what and when to say it. Because you see, knowing how to listen is one thing, knowing what response would be best at a certain time, that’s something else and mixing the two skills can be a little tricky.

Dr. Goulston is great at explaining why things happen in a certain way in a language that’s easy to relate to for those of us lacking proper medical training (and who weren’t listening during a few anatomy lessons). While the book is divided in a way that allows you to skip to the  juicy recipes and overlook the explanatory part, I advise you to go through all of it. It will make up for a complete, wonderful experience.