Search Professional Development

This session will explain the power of the written word and illustrate how, with just 10 easy tips, you can significantly improve your writing and the reader’s understanding of what you are trying to communicate. The most respected professionals know that writing well is imperative to effective communication.

Participants in this session will learn why writing using AP style is important if your primary audience is the media, and how to use the AP Stylebook as a standard reference guide.

The PESO model takes the four media types — paid, earned, shared and owned — and merges them together for an integrated — and measurable — communications program. Most of the industry had adopted the model, but not many truly know how it all works together and drives business results. Join Gini Dietrich, the founder and author of Spin Sucks and creator of the PESO model, to learn how to implement it within your organization.

This comprehensive e-learning course teaches communicators how to use integration as a powerful tool in any communications practice. This five-hour course provides a review of integrated marketing concepts, followed by ways to learn about your specific audiences, develop integrated strategies and tactics that work together to boost results, and effectively manage your work in a planned, synchronous fashion.

Most PR pros send pitches that are destined to fail. If your pitch arrives like everyone else’s, it’ll be treated like everyone else’s — it’ll be ignored. In this course, you’ll see how to craft a pitch that gets noticed and gain tools to become a master of the cold email pitch. Discover skills that go beyond the reach of an average PR pro. Effectively measure what you do so your client/employer knows what they’re getting from your efforts.

Gaining the Certificate in Principles of Public Relations differentiates you from other new college graduates in public relations and related majors who have not passed the Certificate examination. This course helps you prepare for taking the computer-based examination.Note: The Certificate is only available to students at participating schools.

This comprehensive e-learning course offers in-depth approaches to leveraging key components of marketing, media and advertising to accelerate PR campaign results. Divided into five learning modules, this course will position you to lead integrated marketing communications campaigns from start to finish.

The Measurement and Analytics Certificate Program goes well beyond simply measuring the effectiveness of communication. You will learn how to build research into the beginning of your communication planning process in ways that are fast, easy and inexpensive. At the end of resource-intensive communication campaigns that involve audience behavior changes, you’ll be able to calculate the marginal ROI on your organization’s communication investment.

Too often, measurement is considered at the end of what we think was a successful campaign or project. However, in order to make sure the project plan addressed the right messages and used the right channels, research needs to precede planning. This module will cover different ways you can incorporate audience research into developing a plan that will be more likely to help achieve your organization’s goals.

Messages don’t exist in a vacuum; they’re carried through channels we choose for them. But there are ways to measure how well messages get through to stakeholders regardless of the distribution medium. We can track the quality/quantity of content we generate, and measure to what extent messages were read, understood and accepted by audiences. In this module, participants learn ways to conduct these measurements, from less resource-intensive approaches to highly quantitative ones.

Channels don’t exist in a vacuum either; they’re loaded with message content. But there are ways to measure how effective channels are overall with your target audiences. We can track how many people have access to those channels or find them useful or easy to use. We can identify the type of topics they prefer finding through various channels. Module 3 covers ways to conduct these measurements, from less resource-intensive approaches to highly quantitative ones.

Measuring messages and channels is invaluable in improving the quality of our work. But executives ask if it’s helping get bottom-line results. They want to see a connection between the communication we do and the way it changes how employees work and how customers and other publics interact with the organization. Module 4 demonstrates ways to either tie our work to business outcomes or prove a cause-and-effect link that lets us discuss credible ROI as other business functions do.

This module will focus primarily on measuring earned media and earned social, two channels that offer unique opportunities for measurement. Participants will hear examples of how the most meaningful metrics to track can be consolidated into a scorecard that helps communicators keep their eyes on the key analytics and share the results with executives.

All the preceding modules focus primarily on the “what” to measure. Many of the case studies included use a variety of research and measurement techniques. This final module provides best practices to follow and pitfalls to avoid when using the most common research methods — the “how” of evaluating success. The two methodologies we’ll be covering will be focus groups and surveys.

The Communicating to Manage Performance (CMP) Certificate Program is a dynamic skills-based certificate of completion course designed to empower managers, team leaders and supervisors to build performance every day, through effective, consistent workplace communication. This online course will enable you to take advantage of emerging management best practices that focus on day-to-day behavior and tangible high-performance results.

Describing Behavior enables you to communicate clearly and objectively. This course will discuss the necessary reasons why describing behavior is beneficial for both you as the manager and your direct reports. You’ll also discover when to describe behavior and through the online learning application you will learn how to polish your language with this imperative technique.

Using I-Statements enables you to express your viewpoint in a way that promotes personal accountability for speaking, listening and collaboration. I-Statements build personal accountability for your management voice and enhance your level of professionalism in providing feedback both positive and corrective.

Giving Positive Feedback helps create the best possible performance by noting and reinforcing effective behaviors and results. In a world where "good job" makes up most of our positive feedback to employees, you’ll see how to provide feedback that’s informative and useful for your team. This builds tremendous trust when others communicate with you, and combined with the skills of Using I-Statements and Describing Behavior allows your professionalism to build in greater ways.

Active Listening enables you to gain information, engage employees and build trust. Participants will discover how to listen in new ways, how to gain information they aren’t hearing the first time and how to support and develop their teams. Utilizing this skill as a thinking process instead of a hearing process enables you to strengthen your relationships at all levels in your organization.

Acknowledging Ideas promotes creativity and innovation by creating a climate where people’s input is valued and encouraged. This skill application will allow you to learn how and why your team is — and is not — offering ways to improve day-to-day tasks and develop innovative approaches to change the scope of your department or organization. Participants will also find it beneficial to merge other CMP skills with this technique for stronger use and application.