The books range form $30 – $70 depending on how many pages

A religious leader for a large church organization told his communications team to not produce slick well-polished pieces, because then folks will think we have too much money and not give.  We want to look like we need help.

What is sad is that it probably costs more money to produce poor quality than great quality work.  If the work is not of a certain caliber then no one in your targeted audience will digest the content and then it was a total waste of money.

I have been producing two to three minute multimedia packages that range from $2,000 – $5,000 to produce in addition to the cost of travel expenses.  The companies I do this for are used to paying $10,000 to $250,000 for similar length video projects. Since they are so much less to produce the client was doing more of them.

This can cause a problem for the client with the rest of their corporation.  They think based on previous expenditures they are spending lots of money, when in reality they are spending less.

This was also happening for books we did as gifts.  People thought these were tens of thousands when they are often only $30 a book for 10 books.

If you are in charge of projects and you are not aware of this political reality of quality of your products you may be in for a rude awakening in a budget meeting. 

As communication specialists we help tell stories effectively. You also have another role to play of educating your organization about what you do.  They need to have you help them understand the strategy of the communications and the costs.

I would recommend getting someone to help you tell your story.  This could be one of your colleagues in the industry to help you.  I think one of the strangest things I have discovered over my career is how communications folks need someone to help them with their PR campaign.

First of all the PR you do for yourself is not necessarily the same thing you do for others. 

1. Take your analytics or get some to show how many folks you reach with your messaging.
2. Show where you are getting placed—tear sheets
3. Create a notebook/PowerPoint of these talking points that you are ready to now present to a person or a group.
4. Identify those persons in your organization that you need as your allies
5. I suggest taking them to lunch and sharing with them some of you material showing how you are being more strategic than in the past and how you are being more cost efficient in doing this.
6. Create a comparison chart.  What we used to spend on something vs. today what we are spending. 
7. Maybe give them a framed picture and copy of the story you produced for them or coffee table book and include with it a cover letter talking about the number of hits and responses you have gotten to it.

A strange thing may happen after you have done this with a few folks—you will get more work.  You may also get a larger budget next year.  People are drawn to folks who show business acumen. 

While I have given just some suggestions you may want to help those reading this blog with your tips.  I would love to hear your comments and suggestions.

This is what Nikon listed as what this firmware fixed:

Virginia Adams, Pam Bonser and Alfreda Thompson all have been very important clients of mine through the years.  What you need to know is why they are important to me.

All three of them were the administrative assistants at places I worked or did work for that processed my invoices and expenses.

The most important thing for me at the end of the day is that I was paid for the work I did.  If I do an excellent job, make the client very happy with my work, and I do not get paid, then tomorrow I have to go and find another job, because I must pay my bills somehow.

How quickly you get paid has a lot to do with your paper work.  All of these administrative assistants were my contacts.  They interfaced with the accounts payable department and not me. 

They taught me to document all my expenses like: meals; transportation; hotels; mileage; tips for couriers; and miscellaneous items.  By having a scanned copy of each receipt attached to the invoice will insure payment in a timely matter. 

Their role is to look at the expenses and evaluate each expense.  Most companies have limits for meals for example and any unusual expense needs an explanation to forward to the next person in the process.  These notes are there for when they get audited.

Why is this necessary?  Well there are a few scenarios where having your papers in order will help the client in the long run.  I hate to bring this up, but there are times when your client could be in a political battle for budget planning.  Other departments can put pressure on the accounting department to audit them and see if they are being good stewards. 

If you have done a great job with providing receipts and explanations on your invoice for any abnormalities then when questions arise with the auditors they will give them a clean report.  However, if the books are sloppy this will be enough to not only affect their budget requests going forward, but may get your client fired.  When this happens you have to start all over and hope the person replacing them will use you.

If your papers are the reason the person lost their job, then the replacement will most likely not use you.

If you are passionate about a topic and are a communicator–I challenge you to create a blog. The whole process will make you a better communicator for your clients. Let me tell you how I came to this conclusion.

I enjoy making connections with people.  While I struggle with the social skills to connect with folks, my wife thrives in making connections.

Over the years I have discovered my gift of telling stories and teaching. Teaching seems to be my best gift.  I am not sure if I am a good teacher because I know how to get the message across (from years as a journalist) or my obsessive-compulsive behavior. 

Maybe it is a little of both.  I don’t like giving up and will work at being sure if a person wants to understand something I know about, then I will work at it until I find a way to help them understand.

I have been taking some time thinking about connecting with audiences. I bought an iPad this week because one of my clients has started to issue these to their people to use.  I found out that I needed be sure the work I was producing was working on it. 

This was a difficult buy for me to do. I would have rather bought a tablet that played flash files so that everything that is on the web would work on the device. But the reason I was buying the iPad was to ensure that my audience was getting the messages I was creating.

There are other things that I have learned to do so that I could connect with an audience. A few years ago I dipped my toes into blogging.  I learned how to post a photo, video and text. 

Just in the past few months I decided to dive into blogging.  I am posting three times a week and slowly building a larger audience.  I am using analytics to see how often my blogs are viewed.  I am using analytics to see how long someone watches a slide show.  Do they watch all of it on average?  I am doing the same now with videos.

The analytics show me that more and more of the audience is using smart phones and tablets to view my blog. 

As my blog continues to adapt by posting images that are viewable on more devices like the iPad and iPhone more folks are returning to read the posts.

I am also fascinated as to what things are more popular than others.  If I post a how to article with a list of points I know it will get a better audience than just a photo with a small caption on something I saw.  This is also true with the videos.

Variety is the spice of life               1,010 Pageviews
Jealousy, Selfish Ambition & Envy     760 Pageviews
How to be critiqued                        385 Pageviews
Good photographers play…              374 Pageviews
Three Stages of Composition      343 Pageviews

Learning to see light                     2,016 views
Café Justo (Just Coffee)                523 views

I like seeing how I am connecting to the world

Because I am blogging 3 times a week, I now understand things that I didn’t before.  I understand how difficult it is for my clients to connect with their audience. 

My challenge is simple for those involved in communications, if you are not creating content for a passion of yours where no one has to approve of your material how are you going to be able to help your clients?  I believe every professional communicator needs to create a blog.  The exercise will help you be more valuable to your clients.

I am always looking for interesting visual elements.  While this won’t win a Pulitzer it is different and I think makes you take a second look.

On our local TV station Channel 11, an NBC affiliate, they are promoting doing random acts of kindness. I get goose bumps when I think of all the mission projects our church is involved in. A good number of the mission partners we work with were actually started by members of our church.

One that I go to often is the North Fulton Community Charities.  We donate clothing and things we are no longer using to the Thrift Shop. North Fulton Community Charities (NFCC) is a non-profit human service agency dedicated to preventing homelessness of individuals residing north of the Chattahoochee River in Fulton County (Alpharetta, Johns Creek, Milton, Mountain Park and Roswell). NFCC assists families with basic needs such as food, rent and utilities, and clothing during short term emergencies.

The Roswell Presbyterian Youth group works on an older ladies home.  They scrapped the old paint off.  They have sanded the boards and also filled holes.

If you are a professional communicator you can create your own blog and tell the stories of those in your community.  You can help educate those around you about the needs and opportunities for others to serve in their community.

You can see the places they sanded and see how the new fresh coat of paint will help the home last longer against the elements.

The age of service starts young in our church.  The vacation bible school had a competition last week. The kids all brought in pennies and see which class raised the most money to help with a charity.  They raised over $1,000.  This was children as small as the toddlers.

I am using a flash off camera to be sure you can see the youth as they work.  If i didn’t the faces would be primarily back-lit and the flash helps you see their faces.

The other cool thing about this project to me is you don’t have to have money to get involved.  You can give of your time.  Volunteer your elbow grease and make a difference.

Bill Silzle, chemical engineer and member of Roswell Presbyterian, donated his time to replace a garbage disposal on the same house they are painting.  I think he maybe over qualified.

I believe my gift in these project is creating compelling images that helps tell the story and inspires others to get involved.  This fall our church is going to have a display of photography up in what we call “Main Street.”  it is the major hall of our church that folks walk through where we will hang large prints (20″x30″) to help tell the story of our mission projects around the city, nation and world.

We will have captions to tell you where the photo was taken and what the church helped with the charity. After the exhibit runs for a couple months we will then take the prints down and put them in other locations through the church.

What are other ways you can use photography to help charities?  Leave your comments below.