Author: Colleen Troy

Summerville - or Flowertown in the Pines - is about 20 minutes from downtown Charleston, and we tend to spend a day or two a week there, thanks to client meetings. Lucky us. Summerville is a beautiful community filled with graciously appointed homes, a bustling downtown, and a burgeoning food scene.

And now, it’s offering free WiFi for all! Google has partnered with The Town of Summerville to provide free Wi-Fi for the entire downtown Summerville footprint. We had a great time celebrating at the ribbon cutting ceremony with Mayor Collins, and folks from Google and local businesses.

We’ll be back there tomorrow to “Meet, Greet & Eat” at Summers Corner.

Buffalo Lake House is a beautiful and tranquil community meeting place with wooden benches, docks and fire pits on the lake. We’ll be there to host a few activities for guests who arrive to experience the community and meet its builders. Hint: if you see clusters of wild flowers pop up over the Lowcountry in coming weeks, credit Kerry and her compost-driven seed bombs!

And we’ll hope to see you there on June 10, for the town’s Record Smashing Tea Party!

You can beat the summer heat at the Birthplace of Sweet Tea. Summerville is set to shatter the Guinness Book of World Record for World’s Largest Sweet Tea. They’re filling a 10-foot tall fiberglass container from Scout Boats with 198 pounds of tea leaves from The Charleston Tea Plantation, 2,100 pounds of sugar from Dixie Crystals and 2,800 pounds of ice. Plus, they are throwing a killer summer block party perfect for all ages. Join us to help make history and enjoy live music, specialties from local vendors, entertainment and more!

What a busy and eventful week it has been for the Touchpointers! We were all over town celebrating creativity, collaboration and new connections on behalf of clients (yep, that’s a lot of C’s!)

We were psyched to attend several DigSouth sessions, and to help align our client Nexton with the digerati who frequented dozens of sessions. We love our world of communications, but if we had it to do over again, we’d opt for coding. That’s where all the action is!

Meanwhile, The Southern C Summit kicked off its third year in the Holy City and we got the chance to meet loads of great people from near and far. The summit took place at the beautiful American Theater and the historic William Aiken House and featured delicious cuisine, specialty cocktails and an incredible lineup of presenters. Lasting connections were made - plus, we netted what has to be the best swag bag ever!

We believe – and are lucky to find clients who agree – that it’s important to support local artisans. We helped Summers Corner create a beautiful dinner party for local “makers”- from farmers to potters and quilters to chocolatiers, all in the gracious setting of the Linwood B&B in Summerville.

Just a few hours later, we were in the WCBD studio with client and Grammy award-winning musician Mark Bryant…who also apparently never stops. HE was just a few hours post the Hootie appearance on Late Show with David Letterman, Mark’s promoting Live at the Charleston Music Hall, which this weekend features American Idol finalist Elise Testone and music festival faves Stop Light Observations.

And finally, we’re bragging a little about our communications specialist! Cristy was chosen as the alumni judge for the College of Charleston Department of Communication’s Spotlight on Scholarship and Senior Celebration. She got the opportunity to meet graduating seniors and judge their capstone presentations ranging from social media to gender identity. Look out world: smart young people are on their way!

Our intern shares some lessons she learned this past semester.

As a college student, finding an internship is a top goal. Once you’ve landed the coveted position, you may find yourself wondering which aspects of your undergraduate curriculum are going to be useful in the “real world.”

Truthfully, some of the most challenging aspects of PR never crossed my mind, until I immersed myself in the office culture. Forget media calls and tracking coverage, two of the most important skills cannot be taught in the classroom: readiness and attention to detail.

Take Control of Your Email Inbox

Email overload is a real thing. If I thought keeping my school email inbox organized and updated was difficult, I was wrong. No one can prepare you for the amount of emails you will receive as a PR professional. Maintaining an organized inbox is crucial in the fast-paced PR world. The best advice: prioritize and file.

It’s Not Easy Having a Good Eye

In addition to being an all-star organizer, one also has to have a good eye when it comes to written communication. If you’re like me, you have been proofreading your own essays for years. Reviewing your work is an obvious necessity and almost second nature. When you are an intern, you are underprepared for the effect tight deadlines and high volumes of work have on your proofreading skills.

A large portion of my time as a PR intern is dedicated to drafting content pieces, such as blog posts, press releases, calendar listings, emails and corresponding with writers and vendors. Your work must be error-free. Always. Proofread it. Then read it again. Then have someone else read it. What you send not only represents you, but the company.

Ultimately, with everyone else’s reputation on the line, you have to be prepared to take proofreading to the next level.

Here are a few proofreading tips:

• Use automatic spell check in email – This not only applies to the body of the email, but the subject line as well.
• Style guides are your friends – Colleagues, reporters and clients will notice if you make an error, so exercise your eagle eye and utilize resources such as the AP Stylebook to ensure your work is error-free.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for a second set of eyes – You won’t be bugging anyone if you ask for them to review your work. When your work looks good, you look good.

Persuading, presenting and public speaking are all necessary components of communications, especially Public Relations.

But what about when you are the Media Buyer? How do you articulate to a class of college students what media buying is? Well, I had the pleasure of figuring it out and presenting Media Buying 101 this week to bright, young marketing students at the College of Charleston School of Business.

While prepping the materials and mapping out my talking points, I realized I had a lot of interesting things to tell the students.

I focused on the following three key messages:

1. What is media? Describing the different mediums that encompass media.
2. Determining the client’s demographic. This is key because you need to know who to reach and how.
3. Planning never ends. Even when you have a completed media buy, you have to be prepared for date changes. Always be prepared to re-do the plan and tweak as needed.

Teaching was fun and exciting. I enjoyed sharing all of my knowledge and case studies with the students. I’m not sure they found media buying as exciting as I do, but I might have gotten an intern out of it!

We recently celebrated a milestone around here: Touchpoint’s 10^th anniversary.

And since we know everybody loves a listicle (thank you, Mashable!), we thought we’d create one.

So here’s our summary of the most amazing trends to sweep PR and communications in the past 10 years:

10. The world is flatter, and that makes it better. One outcome of the Great Recession was a loss of corporate hierarchy. As a result, people at every level are expected to step up and contribute. Minus all those layers, there’s nowhere to hide. We live life that way, so we think this is a fine change.

9. Content is king, but not everyone should be producing content. Sure, anybody can update their status, but that doesn’t mean just anyone should update yours. Organizations must recognize that good communications requires good content created by thoughtful practitioners. Reminds us of one of our favorite book critics’ lines: “that’s not writing, it’s typing.” Don’t just type.

8. The walls came tumbling down. We remember the days when “integrated” communications meant a bunch of different disciplines shared an office space. Now, they share a single brain. The morphing of disciplines has torn down the walls dividing them. So … great social media and advertising ideas can come from a PR pro (and vice versa!)

7. Lunches eaten at one’s desk are more delicious than they used to be. Really. Google it.

6. Clients want to collaborate. With the decline of hierarchy, we’ve also seen the death of the Wizard’s wall of obfuscation. Clients enjoy knowing what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and how it’s working. Smoke and mirrors frustrates good clients.

5. Analytics rock. It used to be nearly impossible to judge the value of a PR campaign. So we counted potential eyeballs. But today, you can see an immediate impact on your brand, thanks to web analytics, social engagement and more.

4. Personal skills win the day, every time. While we counsel young pros against saying they want a career in PR because they “love people,” we do agree that to be successful, one must “get” people. This business is a mix of overt and subtle signals. Understanding both matters.

3. Multi-taskers need to apply. Modern communicators are necessarily jugglers. Make that: jugglers who also play several instruments at once, while pulling several rabbits out of a single hat.

2. Media pros are more important than ever. The scarcity of reporters has had a profound impact on our industry. With fewer employed reporters/producers to pitch, every relationship is heightened in importance. And their flat organizations mean PR people are more important to the media than ever. Let the symbiosis begin!

1. There isn’t a better business to be in, period. Yep, after years here (and decades in total) we can’t imagine a bigger thrill than an amazing national hit, an event that goes off without a hitch, or a well-negotiated ad plan that delivers more than we bargained for. We’re smitten with this business, and looking forward to whatever the next 10 years bring!

It’s getting warmer outside, it keeps raining and flowers are starting to bloom. These signs are all pointing to one thing - spring is finally here! With the season comes spring cleaning.

“The spaces we occupy shape who we are and how we behave,” says Dr. Christian Garrett, a psychologist turned writer. “This has serious consequences for our psychological well-being and creative performance. Given that many of us spend years working in the same room, or even at the same desk, it makes sense to organize and optimize that space in the most beneficial ways possible.”

Organizing and optimizing is especially appropriate for an open concept office space. We have vowed to de-clutter and reorganize to improve our productivity during this busy work season (and, ahem, hopefully everyone around us will catch on! ).

Here are 8 spring cleaning tips for around the office:

1. Organize and de-clutter. Make a second-quarter resolution to keep your desk clean and clear. Take three minutes a day to go through all of the paperwork and newspapers on your desk.

2. Chunk it out. Any task can seem daunting if you do it all at once. Deal with it in sections. Even if you only clean a little bit of your office space each day, you’ll feel better than if you don’t clean at all.

3. If It’s Empty, Toss It. Non-working pens seem to outnumber the working ones. Go through that overfilled pen cup.

4. Sort your papers. Your email inbox isn’t the only one that’s overflowing. Go through any stacks of papers that have been accumulating since the last time you cleaned your desk. It helps if you create a system and stick with it.

5. Clean your Electronics. We use computers and other devices everyday and you might not know how dirty they are. Grab yourself a pack of special wipes for screens and keyboards. This will preserve your devices and clear any winter cold germs that are lying around.

6. Organize your emails. We all receive crazy amounts of emails that demand our attention. Sometimes it’s hard to navigate. Get in the habit of “foldering” your emails as they come.

7. Create a to-do list. Use your email as a communication tool, as it was originally intended, not a to-do list.

8. Keep or delete. Purge all papers on and around your desk that are of no use any longer.

It’s been an eventful few weeks here at Touchpoint, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. We live in this world of “work hard, play hard,” although usually we find ourselves weighted more toward the working end. But we always manage to find time for a good laugh, a great meal, and a delicious cocktail.

Here at 522 King Street, we have a collaborative workspace with some other boutique companies. It’s inspiring to have this “open concept” working environment where we can collaborate and let our creative juices flow.

“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing,” said Dale Carnegie and we agree. Luckily, we pride ourselves in partnering with companies and organizations that make the work, well, fun. (Plus we like to believe we have a pretty cool company culture.)

In the last two weeks, we were grateful to be recognized by peers for our PR efforts, helped a client execute a beautiful garden space at Wine + Food, saw our favorite chefs cook up a buzz-worthy brunch, assisted with a groundbreaking and celebrated our Irish roots to the fullest. (And that was just the stuff we took photos of!) It’s clear that we’ve been having fun in what we’ve been doing.

Check out some of our recent adventures:

- BB&T Charleston Wine + Food Festival with our client Summers Corner

- Charleston Grill’s Executive Chef Michelle Weaver at the Southern Betty Brunch

- Charleston American Marketing Association Spark Award for Best Public Relations Campaign for Gotcha Ride

- St. Patrick’s Day celebration with our friends at 522

We keep hearing about this idea of “third space,” and we’re on board! We’re all about rediscovery, especially when it comes to community – and even more so now that our client Summers Corner is knitting such spaces into its community.

Interestingly, this idea has become a movement, where home and work are distinct from community spaces. Both indoors and outdoors, these places are meant to spark creativity and encourage collaboration. Urban Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third space” and believes these are the heart of a community.

We’re lucky that we get to be a part of the creation of this cool, new community. At Summers Corner, a new community in Summerville, you will experience such spaces from the Corner House at The Commons to Buffalo Lake, on bike and walking trails, in parks and community gardens, beside lakes and fire pits – all designed to create tight knit neighborhoods.

The BB&T Charleston Wine + Food Festival is here, and we’re excited to be on site with Summers Corner. If you were one of the lucky ones to snag a ticket to this year’s event, come visit The Third Space sponsored by Summers Corner in the Culinary Village. (summerscorner.com). And kudos to Two Forks Collective and Gathering for terrific event activation!

So as we all draw to the end of another wonderful year here in Charleston, SC, it seems apt to think about happy endings. Thanks to wonderful clients and vendor partners, we’re closing the books on a successful 2014. We grew in lots of ways: we added new talent and energy to the team. We amped up services that clients asked for. We shed some things that just didn’t gel. And we got to do the work we love. Can’t beat that.

But there are lots of ways to achieve a happy ending. We don’t mean the kind Cinderella sought. We mean the kind business owners experience when they look at a healthy balance sheet. The kind we see when we review an annual PR plan and realize we hit most of our expected highs.

Over the weekend, we worked a big event that reminded us that success isn’t just about a great start..it’s also about finishing strong. That was true for racers of the Nexton Cocoa Cup, and it’s true for just about every aspect of life.

After all, you can do everything right, but if the end is bumpy, that’s what everybody will remember. Or if you fail to pre-plan, you won’t know if you were epically awesome or otherwise.

We love the old saw that you must start with the finish in sight. Imagine from the launch of any endeavor what success will look like: is it a big national PR placement? Is it a smiling client (and a clean parking lot?) post event? Is it truly measurable, or will you just feel it? And how do you build in opportunities to achieve that outcome, every step of the way?

Didn’t plan to measure the success of your most recent plan? Doh! Failed to debrief and learn how to make the next round even better? Shame. Failed to take the time to ponder what worked - and what didn’t - over the past year? Do it now.

Here’s to happy endings, and new beginnings this, and every day!

It is that magical time of the year when company leaders confront two realities:

Many customers have waited, and now need orders turned around fast - surely before 12/31.

and

We’re all working hard on our own company plans. We’re assessing 2014; what worked, what didn’t, what we should try in 2015.

Since our business is all about helping people tell their stories, we thought it might be helpful to provide a little year-end gift: a tool that can help steer them to strategy, and ultimately fleshes out their story.

As you plan your operations, HR, finances, etc. for the new year, be thinking about your communication strategy. By thinking hard about communication, you could be well on your way to a fantastic ’15. We like this blog post, which articulates the important question every leader should ask…before they start thinking about ads, or videos, or social media management: