CFA18 Jane Kneebone: What to do when your brand is on the front page and reporters are chasing you

Welcome to the #CriticalFewActions™ to improve your business podcast. I’m John Downes and I’m here to help you cut through the overwhelm and prioritize what matters most to improve your business. Let’s get started and discover the #CriticalFewActions™ that have the biggest impact.

Our next #CriticalFewActions™ interview is with Jane Kneebone. A specialist in protecting organizations brands and helping them present their best corporate image. Jane has over 25 years experience in marketing, public relations, issues and reputation management, strategic communications, media management, and internal communications in Australia, Hong Kong, and the Asia Pacific region.

Her clients have included the Cancer Council Victoria, Diabetes Victoria, Winston Churchill Trust and the Victorian Local Governance Association after 20 years with Deloitte. I have fond memories of Jane helping me raise my public profile, which led to articles published in the Australian Financial Review, The Age, Business Review Weekly, and 60 articles in Herald Sun.

I assure you, it was no small task to promote this meek and unassuming character. Jane, I owe you a debt of gratitude. Welcome.

Thank you, John. Nice to be here. 

Excellent. So, Jane, how did you get involved in the communications profession?

Yeah, it was an interesting start, John. I actually studied economics at university, which I still am interested in, and I enjoy following the economists at the Gratton Institute, etc. And then I did marketing. And so that led me into marketing roles to start off my career. I worked for a manufacturing company that produced tiles in Australia.

Then I went to the travel industry in a marketing role, looking after the Jet Set travel group of, travel agencies. I thought, Oh, the next career move would be to marketing. So I stayed in that and went to Deloitte and worked in their business development and marketing team.

And then I thought, the next step would be either stay in marketing and go back into a product management role or try something different. So I was given the opportunity to work for Deloitte in Hong Kong, in a communications role. And that’s where I thought, Oh, this is what I like doing.

It really suits my personality. And I really liked the work. So since then, I’ve always worked in media and communications, and it’s really suited me very well.

Yeah, I wasn’t aware of the Hong Kong experience. That must have been fantastic.

I was working for Deloitte in Hong Kong the Deloitte Asia Pacific office was based in Hong Kong, but we looked after a lot of the Southeast Asian countries. They had their own Deloitte offices, but we went through a branding exercise because they were often named after the owner of the family business.

So it’d be like John Downes and Deloitte. We were trying to convince them all to become Deloitte, which was quite challenging when working with some really big family owned businesses. But, it was a great experience. And I reported into somebody in New York as well. So I often had to go to the Deloitte New York office, which was a long way from Hong Kong, but a fantastic experience.

And I did learn a lot about the region while I was there.

Speaking about the communications professional, I guess there are two dimensions to this. One is to make an organization look good and the other is to protect it when things don’t go so well. Can you tell me, how can you help promote a brand?

Yeah. So I think with promoting a brand, it’s all about the organization and the brand looking good. So it’s sharing your news, training and promoting your good people, producing good content. These days, it’s all about content and your content has to be, up to date, relevant, and, newsworthy.

You’ve got so many broad platforms where you can put your content. You know, you’ve got video, blogs, podcasts, websites, EDMs, you know, electronic direct mails, newsletters, your media strategy as well. So you really need to find ways to develop good content. But another thing you need to do is find advocates.

It’s really to get someone else to say that you or your brand are good because anyone can say their brand’s good. So find someone else to say that your brand’s good and that’s really a great thing to do. So what are the keys to being successful. If you’ve got a case example, you might take us through it.

The keys to being successful, well, I’ve got a few examples here. I’ve got, things to do when things don’t go well and I’ve got a case study of, with the Optus data breach of not what to do if you’re interested to hear that.

totally. 

Yeah, so how to protect yourself when things don’t go well. I think the key thing there is to be up front and available.

Make sure that your spokesperson is well briefed and available to speak to their key stakeholders. And that’s not just the media, that’s also their internal people and their board. So they need to apologize and fix it and say what they’ll be doing to fix it and to take that responsibility. A CEO is paid to do that, to take responsibility.

So they need to do that and they should not shy away from any problem. They really need to own it. So with, I’ve got an example there with the Optus data bridge. This is how not to communicate in a crisis. It was never going to be reputationally good given the size and the actual reported circumstances of that privacy breach.

That was always going to be a really hard one. The first thing you have to remember, you know, it’s Like Crisis Communications 1 0 1 is that the stakeholders need to hear from you first, no matter how bad the news is. They need to be offered the information straight up front. So that includes all the employees, the customers, they need to know that you’re onto it that you care, and that their best interests are at heart. But Optus didn’t do this. They waited a bit too long and they had other people advised that those who were an Optus customer that there’d been a breach you would have thought as a telco they had the capacity to tell their customers directly but they took too long they should have given more convincing general and reassurances at the time of the initial announcement. They should have done it a lot quicker.

Wow,

So then the more you delay it, John, it becomes speculation fest. There’s theories, gossip and scuttlebuck exploding in online forums and even in the mainstream media. So it’s better if they came out straight away and, really own the problem.

Yeah, otherwise it just looks like you’re trying to cover something 

up.

You’re trying to cover it up. I think Australians aren’t that unreasonable, and we’ll forgive a corporate mistake if we feel that the, organization takes responsibility. So apologies are good and are often a critical component of any crisis communications response. This is where the legal advisors often don’t like that they become involved and worry about the fear of creating liability, but you can still, structure an apology

that’s not an admission of a liability issue. So I think you have to make sure you as a crisis communications advisor really work well with the legal team because the organization will bring in the heavy lawyers. The Optus data breach shows us how incredibly hard it is to recover reputational lost ground when bad early decisions and actions feed the media and stakeholder distrust and hostility then happens. 

In some ways, Mediabank private have probably learned from that.

Yeah, because data breaches are going to continue to happen, I think people are getting a bit more experienced in how to deal with it. And Medibank and the government were on the front foot straight away. So I think they’ve handled that a lot better.

And I think people have been a lot more forgiving about it too, even though in some ways people say that data breach about their personal health, records, is in a lot of ways, even more serious.

It can be anything related to health and data breaches makes people very nervous. So when we had the electronic, we could opt in or opt out, a lot of people did opt out to have their medical records available. 

Yeah. And so, what does the CEO really need to do? Is it just a matter of jumping on the front foot? 

They need to jump on the front foot and apologize and say what they’re going to do next, but they actually need to be available down the track. It’s not just jump on the front foot and it’s all over within a day or two. They need to keep updating everybody what’s happening. But they also need to update their other stakeholders and often forget to do that and the most important ones are their internal staff because they can be their biggest advocates or not.

So they need to keep everyone in the organization know what they are doing to fix the problem. Also need to brief their board as well and all their key stakeholders. There may be government people they need to advise, etc.

Yeah, so that can then be regulators, the staff, possibly their suppliers

A lot of people. And of course the lawyers.

Yeah, well, the lawyers will probably be very strong willed about how they want them to present their case because of fear of liability.

Yeah, which is exactly what the lawyer’s responsibility is. But, there’s no point, protecting the liability if you don’t have business left afterwards.

That’s right. And you can apologize in a way that’s not making you liable as well. So can you give an example of perhaps a successful experience.

Sure. I’ve got a couple here in the not for profit sector and one at Deloitte. I’ll give the Deloitte one. When I was working in Hong Kong, one of the Australian partners who was chair of the Red Cross in a pro bono capacity, was sent up to Thailand, during the Asia Pacific recession in the late 90s.

And his role was to liquidate a sugar mill. That was family run just out of Bangkok, and he was tragically assassinated by a local person in Thailand because he was liquidating a sugar mill and the family felt that he shouldn’t be doing that. So he was shot to death and it was absolutely tragic because it’s not something that often happens in Thailand that can happen in other countries in around the world and in the Asia Pacific region, but quite unusual for Thailand. The way that was handled was a good example because we had the Asia Pacific CEO, who I worked with, and the Australian CEO from Deloitte straight away, met with the media and explained what happened. Also worked very closely with the Thai police. The Australian police were involved because it was an Australian citizen.

The CEO from Australia met straight away with the family of, the person who was assassinated or murdered and, kept all the staff involved. HR had a massive role because there were staff who were in the van when he was shot. So there was a whole lot of, psychological trauma that had to be addressed immediately.

And then this was a big police case that took about six years to resolve. The, CEO of the Asia Pacific region and Australia did keep everybody up to date for a good couple of months after this had occurred. And even years down the track when, it does appear in the media, which is sometimes still does, they’re still prepared to discuss it.

So, that was an example I felt, having worked on it that did, in a tragic perspective, did work well. And it was because people took responsibility and were upfront and honest and kept, communicating with the key stakeholders.

It’s amazing how important transparency is.

Yeah, that’s right. 

Remember that time when we were both at Deloitte, and I recall how much internal communication there was back in Australia, 

That was provided to the staff that had worked with him for many years.

So that was a terribly tragic situation that, in terms of a communications case study, I felt was like an eight to nine out of 10. Now in the not for profit sector, there was a good one at Diabetes Victoria, where there was, a potential of some diabetes medication shortages.

If you’re living with diabetes with type one, your pancreas doesn’t produce insulin. If you’re not taking your insulin, you die, basically. So occasionally there would be shortages of some of the type one diabetes medication. We would really have to communicate about that to all the people living with type one diabetes and to which is one point eight million people in Australia live with diabetes, not all with type one, but all of them.

We’d have to advise the people who currently live with diabetes not to stockpile because there will be enough medication eventually, just buy and use what you need. We’d have to advise people, let them know what was actually happening, offer if there’s any other alternative medications they could take that would work the same way and where they could go and what they could do and where to go for further information.

So that was another example where you’ve got an issue taking place, but, you need to make sure that people living with diabetes, their friends, families, and supporters understand what is happening with that medicine. And it’s also liaising with the pharmaceutical companies as well.

They’re weren’t often as good as telling us exactly what was happening because sometimes they wouldn’t know it could be a supply chain issue. We’d always have to liaise with them and try to find out what was going on so we could advise our stakeholders.

Right. 

Hmm.

Okay. so there are three very good case studies of crisis management. 

Hmm. Yes,

Can you also tell me a little bit more about, a case study of, successful brand management in the public sphere? 

Yeah, so good one there. I had another one I had as a wrong one was Qantas. That’s been interesting of late, but we can get to that later. But it’s successful branding comms is Quit. The Cancer Council of Victoria run a one of the areas in the prevention area is Quit, which is providing support for people who want to quit smoking now, I can say, and or vaping.

So, Quit have done a terrific job. They’ve been around for a long since the 80s and provide facts about the harms of vaping and smoking. They provide access to support services and a free quit line, you know, support number where there’s free counselling for people who want to give up smoking or vaping. Plus a huge array of resources to help people quit smoking or vaping. You know, that can include fact sheets, academic research, medical research. And they’re always in the media. The director of QUIT, who I worked with for a year, is always in the media talking about the harmful effects of vaping and smoking.

But they don’t blame the people who vape or smoke. They take the blame away. They actually offer solutions and support to help them change their behaviour. So I think, it’s obviously been successful because smoking rates are now below 10%. They’re around 9%, but back in the sixties and seventies, and before the plain packaging legislation came in, they were up around 30, 40%.

So we’ve done a terrific job with, reducing smoking rates in regional and metropolitan Australia. And I think quit have always been being at the forefront, people know their logo, they know what they do and they know that they’re there to get help and not feel judged or stigmatized. I think that’s an example of a wonderful, case study where they’ve worked very well to really reduce health harm.

And that’s actually really interesting from the point of view that it must have been really well thought through as to how an organization that’s designed to help people quit could communicate that in a supportive way. That didn’t stigmatize the smoker or the vapor, and not saying to them, well, you’re a dud, it’s your fault.

You just need to give up, and take an approach which was very non judgmental.

Look, I’ve learnt a lot in health communications and actually, being non judgmental and anti stigmatising, if that’s a word, you have to do that really carefully and well and put the responsibility in the case of vaping and smoking back on Big Tobacco. Not on the people who vape or smoke because waving a big stick at them won’t change their behavior.

People with diabetes feel stigmatized, so you need to make sure they don’t feel stigmatized and are happy to work to reduce their if they’ve got type 2 diabetes to change their lifestyle, for example. Or to prevent them having to go on insulin if they’ve got type 2 diabetes by just trying to monitor where they’re at with their diabetes. So smoking’s the same, you really can’t judge them or blame them. Blame is a terrible thing to do in health communications. It’s all about support and providing resources, et cetera. Yeah, and with Quit, there’s the Quit Line, 137848. That’s on all of the communications that we did from video, media release, web, everything. And then people start to use those resources and hopefully reduce the smoking rates.

Yeah. And I guess that sense of accessibility of the support really important as well, particularly when it actually seems to be quite difficult to find anyone to call and talk to.

Oh, yeah. that’s right. It’s really good. The Quitline you can request for a call back at a time that suits you and you’ll actually get a person on the phone. They did try a bot for a while and found that was too hard people who want to quit smoking, want to talk to somebody face to face.

Yeah.

Yeah. And the diabetes, Victoria were part of the NDSS and there’s helplines there for them as well. And they’re real people at the end who can offer them support around living with diabetes or when they’re first diagnosed or when a family member is. And so you were going to mention the Qantas debacle.

Qantas has been interesting, hasn’t it? We love Qantas as Australians, and we always feel safe with Qantas. But lately, they’ve been outsourcing key components of running the airline. And that’s led to, a lack of trust. And you know, the CEO salaries come into the media a bit and people are cross, and there’s beenservice issues, cancellations, et cetera. So I think Qantas didn’t do that very well. I know that Alan Joyce apologized, but it was pretty lame. People were annoyed. They haven’t handled it well. He needs to fix it now and faster and with meaning giving people $50 bucks back, just isn’t going to cut it.

I’m not sure what he should do but I don’t think the way he’s handled it was good at all and he needs to rethink how he can do that because people now when you hear the word Qantas everyone just bags them. And you know it’s a shame it is the national carrier that’s always done a great job. Yeah. Well, the apologies probably only the starting point and it probably needs quite a lot of repetition, but also solutions.

I guess that also leads us on to not just external communication. It also is the internal communication that’s that

really important.

Look, it’s often overlooked as well, John, we find, and it’s very important for any organization from small, medium to large. And now in the current job market, where talent is scarce, businesses need to, involve their staff and make them feel included and valued. 

People don’t want to work for an organization where they don’t feel part of that organization. They don’t feel they understand what’s going on or that they add value and that they’re appreciated. So I think a CEO and senior management teams need to really look at how they can communicate better and more often with their own people.

And there’s so many tools to do that. You’ve got, state of the nation meetings, video, Yammer, weekly voicemails, even a weekly email, newsletter, blogs, et cetera. So your staff can actually be your advocates as well, like I mentioned before. I think internal comms is now more important than ever.

I’ve always found that interesting because, when I’m speaking with mid market and large organizations and talking with staff about what they want and what they understand about where the organization’s going as I’m working with them on their strategies.

The one thing they constantly say is we want more communication. We don’t know what’s going on around here. And,to their credit or their chagrin, you know, quite often I see the leadership teams going Strewth!, we’ve seen it, we sent out a newsletter every four weeks and we don’t think it actually, it’s clear that no one’s actually reading this thing.

So it’s obviously got to be more than just one channel.

I’ll need to go across different channels and I would have said before that the CEO or leadership people need to walk the floor and be present, but now in a hybrid working environment, they need to actually find other ways to communicate more regularly. And, they can do that because there’s so many online tools to do that.

But when they are in the office, to get people into the office, you need to, reward them for going back in. You need to make it make to go into the office. It has to be made worth it for people. So that’s where the leadership. Team can think, right, I need people back in the office two or three days a week.

How can we get them back in? the free coffee may do it, but it’ll only do it for a little while. Let’s make sure we have a regular forum or something where they can learn about what’s going on. Something that interests the staff as well. And when they’re not in the office, doing the hybrid model, which many organizations are doing, there are so many communications tools they can use now.

So that really is the responsibility of the senior leadership team and the, CEO to be communicating more often with their staff.

It sounds like they need to be more interactive. It’s not just a matter of sending out a broadsheet and hoping that somebody will open just one more email out of the hundreds that everyone seems to be getting every day. 

I think someone who does it well is Adam Powick, the current CEO of Deloitte in Australia. He does it well with videos that he knows are relevant to different groups of people. So you’ve got the people who love cricket or sailing or hiking, and he tries to target, his videos to people’s interests and the demographic in the organization.

Deloitte’s a very young organization, so he’s trying to make his communications a bit more quirky and interesting for that younger demographic as well, and getting to know people, know them by their faces first names, respond to them on LinkedIn and Twitter, really get to know your staff and develop a relationship with them.

I haven’t worked there for six or seven years now, but I reached out to him and he wrote back to me and, made it personal. We joked about when I was there last time working with him, he’d been running for CEO and hadn’t got it at that stage. It went to somebody else. 

I appreciated that he remembered that it made me feel, good. He remembers our, previous conversation. 

Yeah. Well, he certainly is clearly showing a very human face.

mm

For the organization in Australia,

That’s a good point, John. The human face. Humanize it more. 

Yeah, because it’s very easy to turn around and say, well, they’re a billion plus organization and they’re quite faceless the reality is, he’s a guy, tapping a cricket ball on a Saturday afternoon preparing for the cricket season 

Yeah,

It’s very Adam.

Yeah, and show your human side, which he does well. He likes cricket, so he can bring in cricket analogies, as long as you don’t overdo that. But, you know, he’s showing his personality and his true self, and that’s good. 

Is there anything else we need to be thinking about when we’re looking at promoting and protecting our brands that we haven’t covered yet?

I’ve got a couple of tips for dealing with traditional media and social media and I think remembering to use those platforms are good. So I think with your traditional media, you need to remember that that really does cover a broad spectrum. It’s from print television, commercial radio, or non commercial radio, like ABC Radio National.

Online media regional and local newspapers, which people still read. You need to provide newsworthy content. So it’s all about content like I’ve said, and if your content’s newsworthy, it will get a run in the media. 

And it’s good to include local, case studies or advocates, make it relevant as well. So if it’s a story that’s taking place in Mildura, make sure you have a Mildura business in it. There’s also the media pitch. A lot of people ask me about how do you pitch a story to the media?

So it’s not terribly hard to do. Just make sure you’ve got a good story and you rehearse what you’re going to say. Make sure you give it to the right journalist who covers your area of interest. Give a health story to a health journalist, and pitch at mid morning because later in the day, the journalists, you know, they’re often too busy with their stories and finishing for the next day’s paper or online news.

I often suggest a media release as well. A media release’s purpose is to provide information or an official statement or an announcement. So it’s good to write them with a newsworthy heading and a good opening paragraph. Remember we used to do that at Deloitte, John. The main part of the story is in your opening paragraph.

So then you get a spokesperson in that news media release to talk about, cite some statistics or evidence examples or paint a personal story or give a quote from an advocate or somebody relevant that will improve the story. ~And~ Make sure you have your contact details in the release.

So the journalists can follow up if there’s any further questions.

I remember having spoken to a few journalists that you put me in touch with one of the things they really want to know is that you’ve looked at the articles they’ve written in the past and the organization they work for. 

Make sure you know your journalist well and be prepared for that interview. I always suggest you read their last week or two stories so you know what they’ve covered and make sure you have your three key messages clearly articulated. Repeat them in the interview because hopefully they’ll be part of your story.

If you tell the journalist you’re going to send information or data make sure you do. Once you’re in the newspaper or online, share your wins with your team and across your social media channels as well. Why not? Yeah, you’ve worked hard to get the media mentioned.

So why not promote it?

Yeah. And the journalists appreciate that as well. They want to see that you’re doing something with it as well.

That’s right. 

Yeah. Jane, if you were advising a medium business in that sort of five to a hundred plus million turnover range, what critical few action if they did nothing else, should they do tomorrow if they want to improve their profile?

Yeah, definitely.

The first thing they need to do is media training, make sure that their media trained. The second thing would be to have a good media strategy to know how often they want to be in the media and which type of media they’d like to be in. And the third is to understand social media. Which parts of social media they want to engage with and on.

They would be the key three thing and look at an internal comm strategy as well. Excellent. 

Media has really changed our world. My job’s changed enormously, even in just the last couple of years, but I think the social media platforms can’t be ignored. CEOs really need to understand the different platforms and which ones they want to use and develop some guidelines internally as well.

Yeah, that will really change based on who their target audiences are, whether they be, shareholders, customers, or the people who actually work for them.

Yeah. So with Facebook, it’s good for an audience over 30, whereas Instagram is more about images and younger people. LinkedIn is good for, business connections and reaching out to professionals and other stakeholders that you want to work with or who you want to contribute in your organization.

And I like Twitter. Twitter is good for following and participating in specific conversations and sharing quick thoughts and ideas. But I think Organizations need to have some social media guidelines to empower their people, how to use it and engage in social communities at a level they feel comfortable with, while protecting the interests and reputation of the organization. 

Yes. So I’ve got a couple of points with that. They need to be compassionate. You know, it’s a place to have a conversation, social media, and it’s a place where you engage with others. You build connections on social media. So you need to show compassion. It’s a way to build your brand and engage with communities, but do that compassionately and with respect and integrity.

present yourself and your organization with the highest level of integrity and be respectful to your audience. You know, you need to be mindful how you present yourself and how you treat your audience. Also be transparent. You’re representing your organization if you’re on social media.

So that’s not just during business hour, its a 24 seven thing. I think you need to be truthful as well and honest and have a vested interest in something and you’re discussing and really be honest about that. And, also that sort of aligns with your values of your organization as well. So bring them across to how you communicate on social media.

And back to what we’re saying about Adam, be yourself, be your honest, articulate self. Make sure you stick to your level of expertise and write about what you know. Don’t go into other areas that you don’t feel really are your expertise. And I think we have to understand with social media, we’re mixing our professional and personal lives as well.

So there’s a blur now, particularly with the hybrid model and post COVID, people were finding that their work and private lives were meshed together. And I think that happens more with social media. So remember when you’re posting something, it’s your staff, suppliers, stakeholders, your members, if you’re a member organization and colleagues will have access to the online content that you post.

So keep that in mind. If you created the content, you own it, be responsible for it. Be responsible for what you put on social media sites. So make sure they’re not harmful or, leading to any branding issues down the track. And the last thing is to stay calm on social media.

It’s good to write different points of view without inflaming others. Be careful and considerate. It takes time patience and commitment to learn social media. But just remember, quality is more important than quantity. Yeah, because your name is attached or your organization’s names attached to whatever content you post.

So make sure it’s well researched and accurate. If you’re linking to other, organizations or, other references, make sure they’re all accurate as well. And don’t steal other people’s information as well. Make sure it’s your information or you reference it if it’s somebody else’s.

I guess that brings up two thoughts. In the past, and I don’t think it will have changed terribly much, organizations were really quite concerned about who was actually empowered to actually make conversational comment about an organization.

And quite often there was a media policy or may well have been in the HR policy. The employment policy that talked about whether people were able to talk about their organization or not. The reality is, with so many social platforms available to employees, that ability to constrain them is pretty limited.

Yeah, I agree with that, John. So I think the comms team, the first thing they can do is have a social media policy, which explains some do’s and don’ts, and then a social media guidelines sheet as well. And it should come from the comms team, rather than HR, because if it comes from HR, people then will feel they’re being told not what to do.

Whereas if it comes from comms, and they can train people how to use social media as well, and how to get the most out of it. But by telling your staff or your suppliers or your members not to comment on social media, it’s not going to work because people will do it. There’s so many platforms and they’re all highly utilized now.

So if they’re going to do it, show them the best ways to use it. This is, really clear rules. Don’t overshare. If you’re using other people’s materials, make sure that you obtain permission first. Things like that. Don’t just copy and paste.

The reality is the other side perhaps often the ugly side of social media is you’re going to get, people who think what you’ve said is fabulous, others who think it’s not so fabulous, and then there’ll be those who react violently towards it.

The phrase, haters are going to hate is an interesting idiom, that’s quite common across social media now. What would you suggest with regard to people who either take offense or umbrage at social media comments made by the organization or their employees?

Yeah. So if people are criticizing your posts or a very negative, I think it depends on the extent of how negative they are. So if there are some comments that you feel completely offensive, I think you actually should block those people because they are going to continue to behave like that. But if you’ve got other people who are just commenting on your posts.

That’s not in an overly positive way, engage with them, communicate respond to their comments, explain what you’re doing to rectify it, thank them for their opinion and explain what you’re doing to change it. So it could be a bit of a behavior change there, but anything that’s offensive, rude, you know, you really should start to block those people.

We had a lot of them in the Quit because a lot of people believe vaping is a cessation aid for smoking, whereas the research shows that it’s actually not. People who vape three times are more likely to go on to smoke. So, we had a lot of pro vapers really criticizing what we were doing with our campaigns against vaping.

So we would try to respond to them, but then some of them were so vitriolic, we’d just have to block them. Okay, that’s really helpful. That’s a really good example. Jane, this has been hugely helpful and certainly for me, really educative. Are there any resources that you would recommend that people look at?

Look, there’s a lot out there and they vary in how good they are. But the Public Relations Institute of Australia has some good resources. I’m a member of that and the International Association of Business Communicators. So they have some good resources. But on LinkedIn, there’s some really good groups as well, like the internal communications, best practice, women on boards and leaders and directors, and there’s marketing and media professional groups as well on LinkedIn, which are good for sharing resources.

I read the daily media, check out new social media with your competitors or with organizations you admire and see what they’re doing and how they respond. You can actually, try to emulate some of that. I find Twitter is very good for news and commentary once you wade through it, and it’s good for liaising with journalists as well.

The National Press Club has good speakers, and you can watch them on iView, which is terrific. And when something happens, ABC does have some good commentary. Uh, Twitter has good commentary

and I think you’ll find that if you follow admirable people, my example there is Adele Ferguson and the Medicare rorting that she’s been covering and that’s on Four Corners, you can really get up to date and up to speed very quickly just by following some very good people. But you do have to wade through it a bit.

Jane, thank you so much for your time. It’s been, a delight to work with you on this. I’ll be able to provide links to those resources, but also to how people can contact you.

Thank you, John. Thanks for the opportunity. 

It’s been great speaking to you.

Thanks for listening to the #CriticalFewActions™ podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe where you listen to podcasts. Follow us on LinkedIn for more insights and share the show with other business leaders. Stay focused, take action.