July 2016 - Adventures in Marketing

Rob and I along with the rest of the Relay For Life Committee

A couple weeks ago, Felber PR & Marketing participated in Twinsburg/Nordonia Relay For Life. One of the great privileges of working at a small business is being able to give generously to charitable causes and to the community. While giving back to causes near and dear to you feels good, it also has some business advantages as well. According to a Cone Communications and Echo Research study, 82 percent of U.S. consumers consider corporate social responsibility (CSR) when deciding which products or services to buy and where to shop.

Here are four things to consider when incorporating charitable work and community involvement into your business plan.

Create Relationships Within Your Community– When deciding where to invest your company’s efforts, take a deep look at your community to see what is important. Does the local animal shelter need donations? What are the major pain points people are talking about at your local chamber of commerce? Is the school district struggling? Our blog on community involvement gives tips on ways to identify areas to donate your time or ways to create a community involvement program. Choosing to volunteer our time to Relay For Life Twinsburg-Nordonia was second nature, as Rob’s twins we both co-chairs of the entire event (at just 16 years old), and we both had many family members affected by cancer. We were happy to take the time to give back to a great cause and volunteer in the community that has been so good to us!
Get Employee Buy In- Providing employees with the opportunity to give back is important to boost morale and build a stronger and more collaborative team. Instead of having employees meet for drinks after work, it’s better and more fulfilling to give employees volunteering opportunities during work hours or the option to participate in service based activities after work. Involve your employees in brainstorming fundraising ideas and ways to give back! Volunteering also has the added benefit of providing leadership opportunities for employees, which can lead to increase staff performance, fulfillment and overtime, increased productivity and sales.
Customize Your Volunteer Plan Based on Employee Strengths- If you read our blog Why You Need StrengthsFinder for Employee Engagement, you’ll have identified yours and your employee’s strengths. We recommend when creating a volunteer plan for the business owner to look at employee strengths and select volunteer activities that draw upon those strengths. Really take the time to review your employees’ strengths and the strengths of your business as a whole. Identify how much time your employees are able to volunteer annually, taking into account your operational demands.
Team Cures R Us show their spirit at Relay!

I was the Online Chair for Relay For Life, and managed social media and email communications. Rob was the logistics chair and was excellent at on-boarding people in the community to volunteer and getting vendors to volunteer their time. We both used our unique skills during Relay and felt great giving back to a cause near and dear to our hearts, as well as the community in which we do business!
Tell Your Customers How You’re Giving Back- Once you’ve implemented your volunteering plan, tell current and prospective customers know what you’re doing. Share it on social media and blog about it! Your customers and prospects will appreciate that you’re the company that “pays it forward”. Also, when potential employees are scrolling through your company’s website, social media, and blog, they will be impressed by the fun features on your company giving back, rather than pages filled with typical sales messages about how ‘great’ your think your company is. Giving back to the community is not only a great way to highlight your company’s culture, but also separate your company from your competitors!

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During college — a time when myself and my peers were trying to “find” themselves and realize their true career potential — I was required to take an online personality assessment in my senior capstone, called StrenghtsFinder. Over the years, I’d taken a fair amount of these personality assessments– Myers Briggs, The Five Love Languages, The Colors Tests, you name it. Although I enjoyed taking personality assessments, I always felt like they told me what I already knew about myself. To my surprise, StrengthsFinder was entirely different and allowed me to view myself in an entirely different light. It was by far the most valuable book I read during my college career and is one that has helped me tremendously, both personally and professionally. Below are the top 5 reasons you and your colleagues should take the Strengthsfinder assessment.

Focuses on Talents Not Tendencies– StrengthsFinder, was developed by Gallup’s team of scientists and positive psychologists to help people “uncover and develop their natural talents.” While it’s an assessment you can take in 10-15 minutes and a book you can read in one sitting, it is a tool that you can use for years to come. Most personality focuses on your personality tendencies (introverted/extroverted, thinker/feeler.) This assessment is different because instead of focusing on your basic personality traits, it focuses on what makes you unique and special. Once you take the assessment, it will list your top 5 strengths in order (Gallup has identified 34 strengths.) The assessment not only focuses on “typical strengths” like “analytical” or “communication” but also on strengths most people don’t focus on in work and educational settings (ex: one of my strengths is “Positivity”, something I never viewed as a “strength”.

2. Teaches You How to Maximize Your Strengths– Even for the person who feels like they have a strong understanding of who they are, Strengthsfinder gives people the validation that they are exceptionally great at something and also gives suggestions on how people can hone in on their strengths and work to their fullest potential. Once you take the test, I highly suggest you take it a step further and read StrenghtsFinder 2.0. In the book you’ll find:

Your top five theme report, built around the Strengths Insight descriptions
50 Ideas for Action (10 for each of your top five themes) based on thousands of best-practice suggestions we reviewed
A Strengths Discovery Activity that helps you think about how your talents, investment, experience, skills, and knowledge work together to build strengths
A Strength-Based Action Plan for setting specific goals for building and applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year

3. Gives You Focus to Reach Your Full Potential– Traditionally, we’ve been taught that if we work really hard, we can do better at anything. While I truly believe in the power of hard work, it is obvious that some people have certain aptitudes that others don’t. For example, I could try my hardest to improve my basketball skills. I could practice every day, I could join a team, I could get one-on-one practice sessions in with a coach, and I could practice my free throws every single day. I would improve but I will never have a WNBA player level of talent. Instead, it’s much better for me to focus on my unique skillset and bring my strengths to the table, in both my personal life and in the workplace.

4. Stronger Team Building and Camaraderie– Strengthsfinder is an excellent tool for team building. It is great not only for staff to take on the individual level to learn their own individual strengths, but it also an extremely beneficial tool for management and allows you to see the strengths and potential in your team. I suggest everyone take the test prior to reading the Strengthsfinder book and then read up on their specific strengths, learn them inside and out. Then, I suggest management read about all the other strengths in the book. Yes, you only get 5 top strengths but there are 34 uniques strengths in the book that your co-workers or employees may possess. Learning about the other strengths allows you to better identify other people’s potential and work better with and assign projects that people will thrive doing and be happy doing.

5. Happier Employees Leads to a Stronger, More Productive Workplace

According to a study by University of Warwick Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy, happier employees are more productive. The experiment showed that productivity increased by an average of 12% when they were happy. The study stated opportunities, professional growth, and recognition at the workplace as some of the main factors in overall employee happiness. Strengthsfinder is an excellent stepping stone to give employees the recognition they deserve and opportunities to grow in their careers.

Allie’s Strengths

Achiever
Learner
Input
Individualization
Positivity

Rob’s Strengths

Empathy
Responsibility
Restorative
Arranger
Woo

Archive for month: July, 2016