Events - Future Events View

Technology and communication is evolving and the PR and marketing landscapes continue to shift. Please join us for a half-day “Digital Storytelling” Workshop featuring amazing local professionals who are finding success telling stories through digita

More details to come.

Is Diversity and Inclusion a part of your PR and communications outreach? The world is diverse and PR and communication professionals must also be intentional about their approach ensuring that their messaging is diverse and inclusive and that it speaks to a variety of difference audiences. Communications and government officials from the two most diverse cities in the state of Minnesota — Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park — will provide insights on how to understand cultural nuances in communications and reach diverse groups.

“Other writing coaches tell you what to do. Ann shows you how.”— Roberta Laughlin, vice president, mutual funds marketing, Northern Trust

Want to come up with fresher, faster, more inspired story ideas and writing insights? Welcome to the wonderful world of the writing process and creative process.

In our writing-process webinar—Write Better, Easier and Faster— you’ll master a five-step creative process that helps you produce more and better ideas. Specifically, you’ll learn how to:

Write while washing the dishes: Find out why taking a walk, a nap or a break is actually part of the creative process.
Treat writer’s block, procrastination and formulaic thinking: When you understand the creative process, you can end-run some of the common problems that writers and editors face.
Avoid “creative incest”: Stop creating communications that are dull replicas of the same thing you did last year—and the year before that.
Take five simple steps to a new idea. The more you understand how your brain creates, the more creative you’ll be.
Lead better brainstorming sessions. Help your group dream up more bright ideas with one simple trick.
Practice Papa Hemingway’s advice on the creative process. Find out what to do after you come up with your brilliant idea.
“I can use these tools right away, right now!”— Dorothy Tate, public relations manager, Iowa Soybean Association

As PR communicators, we great at counseling our companies and clients to re-think, re-frame or re-imagine solutions to their latest challenges. Problem-solving is most effective with others – especially over a cold pint of a local brew. Come join your Minnesota PRSA colleagues at our FREE “Pint-Sized Solutions & Social.”

Walk in with your challenge and walk out with many potential ideas and solutions! In your small group, you will network and brainstorm new perspectives, approaches and possibilities to your current PR challenge. Each small group topics will differ based on what the participants share. Some potential examples could include: career development/exploration, client strategy or tactics, advancing the PR profession, best practices, latest tools and techniques, or current market events.

Much like speed dating, this fast-paced speed-solutions event allows each small group member only 20 minutes to share and discuss her/his challenge. You can continue to network and brainstorm after the session with your new connections.

Pint-Sized Solutions & Socials
5-7 p.m. (Program starts promptly at 5:30 p.m. and registration is required) July 25 at Finnegan’s Brewery (87 S 5th Street, Minneapolis)

For questions or more information, please contact Lisa Hiebert at lisahiebert.strategicmktg@gmail.com or Halli Kubes at kubes.halli@gmail.com

Have you always felt you were a born entrepreneur? Maybe you dream about starting your own solo practice or virtual PR agency where you take the lead and growth is your responsibility. If you’ve already had that “Aha!” moment, but don’t know where to go from here, this webinar is for you.

You’ll learn about the rewards and risks of starting your own venture from the principal and founder of a virtual PR and marketing agency and PRSA Independent Practitioners Alliance member, and from the CEO and founder of a marketing and communications consultancy and adjunct PR professor at San Jose State University. They’ll help you estimate your financial and time investment, show you how to use networking, social media and online resources to find prospective clients, implement best practices for critical business functions and use your APR skills to think strategically while adjusting tactics on the fly.

Participants will come out of this webinar with 10 time-tested tips to develop a significant competitive advantage, recruit a loyal agency staff, expand service offerings by collaborating with contractors and other indies, attract top design talent, provide integrated marketing communications and brand identity, find and retain clients, become a valuable asset who helps clients meet organizational challenges like crisis management and corporate social responsibility, develop effective marketing and social media initiatives, and implement practical, real-world solutions to manage your thriving business while maintaining a satisfying work/life balance.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

Estimate the financial investment and time required to launch an agency or practice, and use networking, social media and online resources to find prospective clients.
Position and promote a virtual agency or independent practice using cost-effective marketing, websites and social media platforms.
Manage virtual agency staff and contractors to avoid turnove

Micro-influencers are everyday consumers who have a significant and engaged social media following of anywhere between 1,000 and 100,000, and are much more authentic and obtainable to work with to promote your marketing goals. Join Jenkins and Tischler of Simply Social Media as they teach you how to leverage micro-influencers in social media to build community, connections and brand advocates.

The word “Influencers” has been a buzzword in the social media marketing world for years. Influencer marketing uses key leaders or individuals to help drive the message of your brand. Micro-influencers are everyday consumers who have a significant and engaged social media following of anywhere between 1,000 and 100,000. Social media is increasingly becoming SoLoMo: social, local, and mobile, and micro-influencers can help tap into that market as a trusted source. Santa Fe-based social media strategy company Simply Social Media knows how to utilize micro-influence on a macro scale. They’ve been leveraging their grassroots, local-centric Instagram micro-influencer social media accounts to introduce their clients to a fresh new demographic through both public and private social media events called InstaMeets. Join Jenkins and Tischler of Simply Social Media as they teach you how to leverage micro-influencers in social media to build community, connections and brand advocates.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

Understand why micro-influencer marketing should be implemented in their marketing campaign.
Define how to determine their objectives when working with micro-influencers.
Describe how to find micro-influencers and make sure they are a good fit for their objectives.
Summarize how to measure success when working with micro-influencers.

Does your content feel stale? Does it feel too corporate? Too fluffy? Can’t think of any new ideas? Learn how to leverage the power of customer conversations to re-energize content such as social media posts, websites, blogposts, enewsletters and email blasts, and make your content more relevant and more authentic.

By the end of this webinar participants will be able to:

- Learn how to connect with customers (or other stakeholders) to gather insights and stories to generate more ideas for content
- Learn how to gather stories from customers to create more relevant and authentic content
- Learn how to use customer conversations to understand if your brand is "on message"

Current events can assist in providing a talking point for a specific issue or PR campaign you are building. It is critical to understand the landscape surrounding a current event and its larger themes in the news in order to remain in front of your communication messaging.

In this webinar, the Associated Press will discuss ways to strengthen your communications strategy through anticipating current events. Guest presenters will share ideas for PR and communication professionals who build campaigns to maximize their planning efforts and stay ahead of current events by using tools and research techniques you may not expect.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

Discover and make authentic connections with awareness days.
Address current events to provide insight for your communication team and clients.
Leverage celebrity birthdays and events to highlight partnerships and products in a genuine manner.

he shift to online media has given PR pros new metrics – surprisingly easy to acquire – that illustrate more deeply the impact of their earned media outreach. Learn how to take advantage of that activities that work, and how to measure and report your results to get the respect you deserve.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

Understand how to make your media outreach efforts work.
Plan and report media relations results that demonstrate real impact.
Define word-for-word, real-world examples of successful media relations for you to mimic.

This is not a “preaching to the choir” webinar, but a webinar to educate and equip organizational change. We encourage white males to attend, short of saying, “Hey you, white man, come to D&I.”

In “What it’s like to be Black in PR,” a short documentary released by PR Week, participants vocalized their opinions of representation and engagement in a PR agency, and called for a response by corporations to insist on diversity within the contracted PR teams. This video highlights the struggle of inclusivity that is difficult to measure and understand without having a conversation with underrepresented populations. However, research and data exist that can help management and leadership build the basic foundation to nurture an inclusive environment.

Following the Arthur W. Page Society benchmark study on diversity and inclusion practices for recruitment and retention of talent, this presentation will provide organizational strategies that leaders can adopt to build engage team members and build an inclusive team environment.

Fundamentally, we have often divorced the personal from the business; however, as the landscape of organizational visions and missions change, the business sphere that has often been described as amoral must engage questions of morality, philosophy and psychology to ensure the longevity of firms and agencies. Viewers will be challenged to respond to diversity and inclusion mandates and a future that calls for action in the face of moral injustice.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

Construct one of the basic models of minority experience within organizations.
Understand the best practice responses to diversity mandates.
List initiatives used to build inclusive environments.

What is Accreditation in Public Relations (APR), and why should it matter to you? Join us for a discussion of the APR process and the value this designation brings to you and to your career. Two communications professionals who have earned Accreditation will lead the webinar and share their personal experiences.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

Know the potential of Accreditation to advance their careers.
Describe the value of the Accreditation process.
Understand how to pursue Accreditation.

Move People to Act
It’s counterintuitive, but true: The product is never the topic. The program is never the topic. The plan is never the topic. The topic is never the topic. The reader is always the topic.
Indeed, the secret to reaching readers is to position your messages in your audience’s best interests. (Most communicators position their messages in their organization’s best interests. Which is fine, as long as you’re talking to yourself.)

Move readers to act with a four-step process for giving people what they really want.

In this webinar, you’ll learn a four-step process for moving readers to act by giving them what they really want. Specifically, you’ll learn how to:

Take advantage of the formula readers use to determine which messages to pay attention to (and which to toss).
Tap two rewards of reading you can use to boost audience interest in your message.
Answer the No. 1 question your reader is asking, regardless of your topic, medium or channel.
Make a two-minute perspective shift to focus your message on the value to readers — not on “us and our stuff.”
Use a three-letter word that magically makes your message more relevant to your readers.

“I learned more about writing in two days than in four years of college and six years of practice.”— Samantha Jorgensen, public relations and social media manager, Charles River Labs

Anything you write will read faster and be more compelling after this webinar. Whether it goes directly to your audience or to media gatekeepers, your work will get more engagement after you apply Michael Smart’s tips for tightening it up and adding flair. This webinar will take you through real-world examples of every point.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

Replicate formulas to make any type of writing more succinct and accessible.
Transform boring corporate monotone into fun and engaging copy, while still respecting your brand voice.
Write copy that gets easily approved, faster, with no erro