Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in LEAD San Diego’s EMBARK program – a five-day leadership development program focused on improving the skills of San Diego’s emerging business leaders. A few minutes into the first session, I quickly realized this was more than just a professional development program – it was a personal development program.  Sure, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test confirmed my love of list making – no surprise there for anyone who knows me.

But the self-awareness exercises we participated in also taught me more about who I am, how the things I do affect others, and how I can improve my interpersonal communication and relationships. The rest of the personalized leadership assessment program was just as impactful as it included knowledgeable and interesting speakers, small group breakout sessions, and interactive team-building exercises.

Here are just a couple of my key takeaways from a phenomenal program:

Sometimes you have to follow to become a better leader. 

Jeff Balesh of Jeff Balesh Consulting encouraged us to lead interdependently, “with intention despite uncertainty.” In other words, it’s ok to have a plan, but it’s important to be flexible and willing to let others help when necessary. Akshay Sateesh of Ziksana Consulting, through a number of quick-thinking exercises, re-emphasized this for us by forcing us to get outside of our comfort zones. His on-the-spot improvisation lessons taught us that good leaders “live in the moment and listen.”  Doug Holman of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce stressed that it’s ok, and sometimes better, to refer colleagues to someone else competent when you’re crunched for time.  You don’t always have to do everything yourself and you can position yourself as a resource in the process.

Small actions can have a big impact.

Throughout the EMBARK program, I was reminded great leaders always find ways to say, “thank you” and that those two words can go a long way in enlightening and inspiring someone. Small actions, even if you don’t remember them, can leave a lasting impact. It’s important to take the extra step, make a follow-up call or write a letter – you never know who could be watching or how you may meet again. First impressions are made all the time, whether you know it or not.

San Diego businesses are uniquely connected.

A benefit of the EMBARK program that will have a lasting impact on me is the people I met through the program. Many of San Diego’s largest and most impactful companies, business groups and nonprofit organizations were represented in my cohort, and interacting with such fun-loving, insightful and driven individuals was exciting and energizing for me. Hearing stories about clients NST has worked with throughout the program also made it clear for me San Diego is a big city that feels like a small town, led by a close-knit group of visionaries.

I truly hope I get to work with each of my fellow EMBARKers again one day and look forward to becoming part of the next generation of San Diego visionaries together.

At NST, we value each other’s unique backgrounds, interests and ideas, and one of the traits we all share is a passion for learning. In fact, learning and exploring is a core value at NST, and we continually push ourselves, our clients and our profession to explore. In support of this value, it is common practice for our team to share the industry-related articles we are reading in meetings, via email and in conversation, to stay on top of the latest news and trends impacting our clients and their industries.

The information we share comes from numerous publications covering a wide range of topics, including public relations, marketing, business, social media, digital, agriculture/food, and other news making local and national headlines.

So what news is making the rounds this week at NST?  Check out the articles below. After all, “[R]eading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”  -Sir Richard Steele

• Amazon is launching brand pages. Registration is free and this Facebook-type page is more product-focused: http://bit.ly/S8lUN8 (PR Daily)
• Did you upload a picture of your Thanksgiving meal to Instagram? Congratulations – you helped the photo sharing site break all its records with more than 200 photos being uploaded every second during some hours: http://lat.ms/V8SKSB (Los Angeles Times)
• Meet your newest management headache: the co-branded employee. A growing number of professionals are using social media to build a personal, public identity—a brand of their own—based on their work, and employers need to start preparing for the ever-greater challenges they pose for managers, co-workers and companies: http://on.wsj.com/S8m3Aa (Wall Street Journal)
• Thought leadership is more than having a point of view. If done properly, it can be the foundation for an entire, multi-channel communications campaign, and provide the opportunity for a company to set the industry agenda and showcase its depth of knowledge: http://bit.ly/TfJENL (PR Week)
• Facebook is rolling out HTTPS to users in North America. While this is a more secure connection, HTTPS tends to load at slower speeds: http://on.mash.to/WSHrOE (Mashable)
• A new location-based augmented reality app developed by a San Diego startup hopes to gain traction with marketers. CacheTown seeks to marry an augmented reality scavenger hunt game with a daily-deal style platform for marketers to enhance their campaigns: http://bit.ly/Sp6ggk (U-T San Diego)
• Just in time for holiday shopping, Google Maps provides indoor floor plans for more than 10,000 locations around the world, including retail stores: http://lat.ms/U7X5AU (Los Angeles Times)
• Shoppers beware: More and more mannequins are equipped with spy tech that’s helping retailers relieve you of your hard-earned money: http://nbcnews.to/Sp6lk0 (NBC News)
• Digital shopping predictions for Black Friday and Cyber Monday shared via a detailed Infographic: http://bit.ly/U7X8g6 (Social Times)
• Pumpkin Pie is the hot flavor of the season for everything from coffee and ice cream to marshmallows and beer: http://nyti.ms/TqxZP4 (New York Times)
• Don’t fall for the fake privacy notice spreading on Facebook. It won’t protect your personal data from unauthorized copyrighting: http://on.mash.to/S8muuh (Mashable)

It’s no secret public relations professionals aim to create content that elicits an action, especially through social media channels. It’s called “social media” for a reason – we want people talking about, engaging with and sharing our client’s content and messages.

Nuffer, Smith, Tucker co-hosted the “Content Marketing Insider Secrets” webinar last Tuesday with Social Fresh, a social media education company, that discussed content creation in-depth. The webinar gave attendees a glimpse of the dialogue that will take place at the Social Fresh WEST conference in San Diego on September 27-28, and featured conference presenters Anna Lingeris of Hershey’s and Zena Weist of Expion along with NST President Bill Trumpfheller.

The lively discussion focused on the importance of knowing your brand’s voice, prepping your content with appropriate research, and being an engaging participant and curator. Here’s a recap of some key points:

• Content shouldn’t repeat your traditional ad copy. Figure out what voice will resonate with your target audiences and tailor it accordingly per social media platform.
• Identifying a focused brand voice helps all employees within your company understand social media goals and activity. It also makes it easier for people to participate.
• Listen and respond to the needs of your audience.
• Create content, but also let others’ (your audience) voices and opinions come through.
• Metrics and data are available – use statistics and data to create a plan, and see what’s resonating with your audience.
• Cross-pollenating content per platform can increase the shelf life of your campaign.
• You want people to trust your brand – engagement helps build trust.
• Listen first; talk later.
• Create content that your audience can easily share on and offline.
• Engaging content must have a personal relevance. Find out what matters to your audience and create content that sparks a discussion around those topics.
• The top three types of engaging content are: personal questions, loyalty questions and call-to-actions with photos or links.
• Figure out how to make a local tie to your audience for increased interaction.
• Content marketing research is critically important and should be a large part of the resource pie.
• What experience are you trying to deliver? Use this to drive content creation, but realize in the end it, your content may not be all brand focused.
• Don’t succumb to “shiny object syndrome” each time a new platform emerges. Do your research before diving in.

Did you join “Content Marketing Insider Secrets?” What were your takeaways?

We are excited to announce several new additions to Nuffer, Smith, Tucker’s award-winning team.

Derek Danziger is joining NST as vice president. Derek brings more than 17 years experience in public relations, marketing and public affairs to the firm. He most recently served as vice president of marketing and communications for the Centre City Development Corporation (CCDC). At CCDC, Derek acted as the organization’s spokesperson and managed media relations, communications and community outreach programs relative to downtown San Diego’s redevelopment efforts. Prior to CCDC, Derek worked in the education and public relations departments at SeaWorld San Diego, and coordinated international media relations activities for the grand opening of LEGOLAND California. He also served as director of media and public relations for the Super Bowl XXXII Host Committee in 1997, working directly with the NFL, international media and the San Diego community to implement a variety of Super Bowl-related events and activities.

Derek received his bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of California, San Diego and served two terms as president of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) San Diego/Imperial Countries Chapter. He is Accredited in Public Relations (APR) and is also a LEAD San Diego graduate. In 2006, he was honored by PRSA San Diego as Public Relations Professional of the Year.

We have expanded our interactive team with the hiring of Sean Masterson as digital strategist. Most recently, Sean served as web and e-commerce manager for iProlog, Inc. Prior to that he was principal at SMB Studios, a San Diego-based web development and social media firm. He also previously served as global marketing coordinator for Prestige International, Inc. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University and has completed certificates in graphic design and web design from University of California, San Diego.

We also added Jazmine Allen to our account services team as an account coordinator. Jazmine graduated from San Diego State University last year and has been serving as an intern at NST. She has done a great job on behalf of many of our clients, and we are excited that she joined us full-time at the beginning of May.

In addition, many of you have probably heard that in January we added Mark Olson to our team as a government relations and public affairs specialist. Mark has been doing a great job managing government outreach programs for the California Citrus Research Board.

Prior to joining us, Mark worked as a press secretary on Capitol Hill, and most recently as a top policy advisor to San Diego County Supervisor Pam Slater-Price. He received his bachelor’s degree in political science from California State University, San Marcos, and a master’s degree in communications from San Diego State University.

Please join us in welcoming these new members to our team! We look forward to continuing to partner with our clients and other colleagues to provide exceptional service.

My transition from intern to full-time account coordinator at Nuffer, Smith, Tucker required much more effort than the average stealthy operation. While I failed to refill the candy dish my first week, I did take away a few important lessons in office warfare. First thing to note is there may be a secret preference in smartphone brands and also their color and what kind of phone cases the office considers as “cool” and “not so cool” like team mascots and battery packs, respectively. I also discovered that Saturday Night Live videos make for great conversation starters when seeking classified information and that I am definitely in for a tricky but hilarious challenge when the next team building retreat rolls around.

While all of these are equally important, my favorite lesson is one I think applies for most new graduates/agents. I realized that for most of us, soon after we are handed our diplomas we move straight into Mission: Find A Job (any job). While this is an admirable assignment, I discovered that the mission I was on had a special target. Not only was I on a search to find a job, I was on my way to finding a company with people who made me want to work harder, learn as much as I can and form relationships that moved beyond, “tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

Finding a job after graduation is very important, believe me, I know. However, finding a place to learn, grow and prosper was the reason we embarked on this mission in the first place. To all of my current covert agents infiltrating agencies and offices, keep going, work hard but remember your job needs to be just as good a fit for you as you are for it.

Good luck my friends,

Agent Jazmine Allen

P.S. Having the most recent AP Stylebook in the office makes you a prime ally.

NST's Young Influential Teresa Siles

She’s young. She’s influential. She’s NST’s very own Teresa Siles! Recently named a Young Influential by the San Diego Daily Transcript, Teresa was recognized for her knowledge in social media and her efforts to ensure our agency plays a leading role in the industry.

Teresa joined NST more than 10 years ago as an intern and worked her way up to become a vice president of the firm. In fact, she’s the youngest vice president in NST’s history! Through the years, Teresa has developed a well-deserved reputation of being a leader in public relations and social media. She is creative and is constantly pushing not only her clients, but also her colleagues, to try new things and stay on the edge of change.

In addition to managing client accounts, Teresa leads NST’s social media practice. In 2009, she created the San Diego Social Media Symposium, which is now an annual one-day conference that brings together leaders in public relations, marketing, academia and the business community from across Southern California to talk about social media and how it is impacting our respective industries. The most recent symposium was held March 1, 2012 and drew more than 200 attendees.

Teresa is also a two-time graduate of WOMM-U or “Word of Mouth Marketing University,” and received her bachelor’s degree from San Diego State University (SDSU).

In her spare time, Teresa also finds time to give back. She leads a monthly social media workshop for SCORE San Diego, and serves on the marketing committee for LEAD San Diego and the advisory committee for the Digital and Social Media Collaborative at SDSU. As if all this was not enough, Teresa has also recently returned to SDSU as a student in its Executive MBA Program.

Please join me in recognizing Teresa for all her hard work and dedication not only to the profession and her clients, but also to NST and her colleagues. She is a true influential leader.

How many times have you heard “We’ve got to tell our story to the public. We need to make them understand our position. If they could only see the ‘big picture’”? The assumption is that if we can just get our target public to understand, they will do what we want them to do.

But there’s a big flaw in that assumption writes Kerry Tucker and Bill Trumpfheller in the recently released second edition of McGraw-Hill’s “The Handbook of Strategic Public Relations and Integrated Marketing Communications,” edited by Clark Caywood of Northwestern University.

For the most part, people don’t care about an organization’s problems. They’ve got enough of their own. And simply communicating information to obtain a desired behavior rarely works. More than 30 years of research across a wide range of disciplines and issues have shown providing information alone on an issue, product or service will not significantly change the behaviors of a given public.

While people naturally resist change; communications strategies and messages (and tactics) can be organized to increase the odds of breaking through the information clutter we all face daily. They can do so by contrasting existing behavior, facilitating discomfort with existing behavior and offering help in adopting a new action.

Nuffer, Smith, Tucker’s proprietary framework to evaluate communications against behavioral principles is organized around four basic questions (internally, we call this “The Model”):

1. What is the need, concern or interest for the target audience?
2. Is the desired behavior clearly packaged as a credible solution to the need, concern or interest?
3. Have you presented the benefits of action and consequences of inaction to create discomfort for the current behavior?
4. Have you helped the target audience mentally rehearse the desired behavior? Have you included a call to action?

Public relations campaigns systematically strategized, packaged and delivered to target publics with specific, supportive behavioral outcomes stand a much better chance of breaking through today’s clutter and moving the proverbial needle, writes Tucker and Trumpfheller.

Order a copy of the book for your bookshelf.

In December, many publications, analysts, reporters and columnists rush to put together their “top 10,” “best of” or “worst of” lists recapping events in the past year and making predictions for the next. We’re all about lists (Come on, we’re PR people. We can’t help but love concise delivery of a message.), but instead of creating our own, we thought we’d share some of the lists that resonated with us, as well as some views on what to expect in 2012:

The Top 10 Best and Worst Communicators of 2011

http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/44113.aspx

Social Networking Lessons of 2011
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222413

Top 10 Viral Videos of 2011

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/12/09/the-top-10-viral-videos-of-2011/

Top 7 PR Disasters of 2011

http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/Top_7_PR_disasters_of_2011_44046.aspx

Marketing’s Biggest Social Media Blunders of 2011
http://adage.com/article/special-report-book-of-tens-2011/marketing-s-biggest-social-media-blunders-2011/231503/

#PRin2012: 12 Trends That Will Change Public Relations

http://prsay.prsa.org/index.php/2011/12/19/12-trends-for-public-relations-in-2012/

8 Social Media Trends for 2012
http://spinsucks.com/social-media/eight-social-media-trends-for-2012/

5 Things PR Pros can expect in 2012

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/10255.aspx

We’d love to hear your comments/additions to this list.

The NST team will be traveling “over the river and through the woods” to visit our family and friends for the Thanksgiving holiday. While we will be spending this time with each of our personal friends and family, we want to pause for a moment and give thanks to the friends and partners of NST.

We are lucky to work with so many wonderful and caring organizations on a daily basis, including our clients, community and industry partners, media partners, and people we simply call our friends. Collectively, these groups give each of us a reason to come to work every day with a smile on our face.

From our Thanksgiving table to yours, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!

Nuffer Smith Tucker Wins Heilbron Award

At the recent memorial service for NST’s co-founder, Dave Nuffer, Mayor Jerry Sanders said he thought no one cared about San Diego more than Dave Nuffer.  It’s true – Dave loved America’s Finest City (and its neighboring cities south of the border) and was happy to provide communications counsel to anyone helping to make it a better place to live, work and play.

Following in Dave’s footsteps, we at Nuffer, Smith, Tucker believe it’s important to give back – it not only helps those in need and sets an example for other organizations, but it also makes us a better team.  On June 23, 2011, NST was honored at the inaugural Heilbron Awards, presented by San Diego Rotary Club 33 and the San Diego Business Journal to companies that exhibit high ethical standards, a commitment to community service and a willingness to utilize its professional skill sets to help others in the community.  We were among a group of outstanding San Diego organizations recognized and are very grateful to be included in such great company.

Whether you’re a plumber or a PR practitioner, we all have something of value we can use to help those in need.  NST’s team members serve on a variety of non-profit boards, regularly volunteer for local non-profit organizations and provide pro-bono counsel to clients, to name a few things.  What type of things do you or your professional team do to “pay it forward” and make your community a better place?