Archive for the 'Book: International Communications Strategy' Category

Leadership coach and good pal Nicola Stevens interviewed me this afternoon about my book International Communications Strategy and using social media for business. She used the Ipadio app on her iPhone to record our conversation and then posted it up to the web within minutes of our chat - so it was a little nerve-wracking knowing there was no opportunity for any editing before we went out “on air”!

She also snapped me in full flow with her iPhone and posted it up to her Posterous site.

Off record after the interview, we talked about how easy it is these days to publish images, video, audio and text. A click of a button on a mobile phone is all it takes! Even just a few years ago, it was still very fiddly to get the content from whatever source - a digital camera, a video tape, an audio recorder - convert it to the relevant format and find the software to FTP transfer it up to some specialist server and then to get it to your website… Now, even a self-confessed non-tecchie like Nicola can be a one-woman multimedia hub - all she needs is her iPhone!

Marc Wright, Chief Executive of simply communicate and Chair of the simplygroup, did a video interview with us during our book launch. He has edited the interview down to this great 3 minute video that brings out the key points of the book.

When I walked into the premises of Chicago Booth University in the heart of the City, I was stunned by the wonderful architecture and sense of space created by sleek, subtle lines. I had been a little nervous as our big day approached but the moment I arrived at these stunning premises, I felt a sense of calm and also, an eagerness to enjoy the party we were going to have that night.

After two years of hard work with my co-author Silvia Cambie, this lovely evening amongst friends and colleagues was the best way to celebrate. We are really indebted to Chicago Booth University (especially Arnold Longboy and his team) and also The International Alliance for Women (especially, its president Diane Morris) for sponsoring the event - support for our book from such well-respected institutions means a great deal to Silvia and me. We were also honoured that Helen Kogan of Kogan Page came to the event and say a few words about their response to our book proposal and why they are excited about the book - so excited that they nominated our book, one of two nominations from their list of business books published this year, for the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

Silvia and I were also delighted to be able to have a party to thank all our friends and colleagues for their encouragement while we were writing the book. In particular, we were very happy to see some of our respondents who gave up their time to answer our interview questions for the case studies in the book, sharing with us their experiences of international communications and social media. We were also delighted that Cafe Spice Namaste supplied the finger food at our party.

The slideshow below captures the formal presentations and hopefully, some of the atmosphere of the party.

I was also pleased that Mark Smith of Ipadio could make it. We’d been in touch by email and phone over the last few months about Ipadio’s live phoneblogging service and it was great to meet him for the first time. He’s a lot like his photo on Ipadio but very, very tall - he used to play rugby and has the build of a rugby player! It was his love of sports that inspired him to create the live phoneblogging service as a way for ordinary people to broadcast live sports commentary online. Now it is being used by those who have difficulty accessing typing-based online communications as well as - well, writers at their book launches: Mark kindly streamed live audio of the presentations onto the internet via Ipadio. You can check out the archived audio here.

And finally, the most important person on this roll of honour I want to thank is Silvia. She has been the driving force behind this book and I really admire her energy and intelligence in everything she does, not least her work on our book!

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If you’d like to view the slides from the formal presentation that Silvia and I gave at the event, you can view them below:

My co-author Silvia Cambie and I are very excited that our big day has arrived. The launch of our book International Communications Strategy is taking place tonight, hosted by Chicago Booth University and The International Alliance for Women.

Due to restrictions on numbers, this is an invitation only event but Mark Smith, CEO at Ipadio.com, is kindly running a live phoneblog from the event where he will hopefully be able to live stream some of the speeches and also interview some of our guests during the party so that those who have not been able to come along will be able to get a flavour of the event through the audio feed.

I’ll also be calling in at various times during today to let you know how the preparations are going.

You can listen to the audio blog via the player below. When the tab “Live: On Air” shows up, you will be able to listen to the live audio feed (subject to a 5 second delay). Otherwise, you can listen to already-recorded audio sessions by clicking on the Previous tab (and move about the various sessions by clicking Next and Latest as required).

The event starts at 6.30pm UK time (GMT +1hour). The live audio feed will be running intermittently whenever Mark calls in on his mobile phone.

I hope you enjoy the audio version of the event.

I’ll be phoning in after the event, too, to share my impressions and de-brief of the event so do come back in the next few days as well!

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My thoughts on a Twitter interview I took part in just a few minutes ago, conducted by Angelo Fernando with Silvia Cambie.

You can catch up with Angelo’s interview at #hoipolloi - you may need to scroll back to 12 Aug 2009 if you are visiting this page some time after that date.

You can subscribe to my Live Phoneblog by clicking on the “Subscribe with iTunes” button - it’s free and new episodes will be downloaded automatically to your iTunes application.

Business communications expert and podcasting guru, Neville Hobson, interviewed my co-author Silvia Cambie and me on Friday for his influential For Immediate Release podcast. We talked about how we came to write our book, International Communications Strategy, the main themes and ideas we explore in it and our favourite chapters/ case studies.

Neville has now uploaded the podcast interview on iTunes and his blog - so if you’d like to listen to our discussion, please do go and check it out.

Thanks, Neville!

Photo: thanks to Neville, with permisision

My 6 author copies of International Communications Strategy that I’ve been working on since November 2007 with my co-author Silvia Cambie arrived in the post today. After 18 months of hard work - involving research, writing, re-writing, editing and more - it’s very satisfying to finally hold the end product(s) in my hand. Even more so now that the book has also been nominated for the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2009!

Posted via email from Yang-May’s posterous

I think the writers and book readers amongst you could find this behind-the-scenes process interesting in terms of seeing how the publishing world works and also, understanding the importance of a book title, whether in the fiction or non-fiction sector.

When I was writing my first novel, The Flame Tree, that was the working title I used and when I submitted it to Hodder & Stoughton, that was the title they went with. The flame tree is the central symbol of that novel and it also evokes the Asian setting of the book.

With my second novel, my working title was Mindgame but Hodder were not initially keen on it. I remember sitting down for days coming up with a list of over 30 different alternative titles in response to their feedback. In the end, they looked at my list of 30 something titles and came back to say that Mindgame was the best of the lot!

For the last year, my co-author Silvia Cambie and I have been using the working title New Trends in International Communications/ PR for the business book on cross-cultural communications that we’ve been writing. The title seemed to us to sum up what the book was about and whenever we talked about it to friends and people we met, they would nod in recognition and understanding so we wouldn’t have to go into a long-winded explanation.

Originally, our publisher Kogan Page were keen to ensure that the title included the words “Public Relations” but Silvia, an experienced business communicator, always preferred the word “Communications”. She explains that in the world of business communications, marketing and PR, “communications” is the wider expertise, of which marketing and PR are subsets and that a title that encompasses that wider context would have a wider audience. From my point of view, coming from the world of social media, I also prefer “communications” as, unfortunately, “PR” has a bad name in the online landscape, being associated with spin and hype without authenticity in the minds of bloggers.

So when we submitted the manuscript to our publisher Kogan Page, it was time to discuss the final title of the book in some detail. After some discussion about the issues around “communications” and “PR” with her marketing and editorial team, our editor came back agreeing with the choice of “communications.”

There was another issue, however, she told us. The problem was with “new trends.” The book is going to be published in July this year and the aim is to keep it in print with good sales over the foreseeable future. What is “new” now is not going to be new in a few years time. Similarly, what are “trends” now are likely to have become mainstream in time. But what we are writing about - the case studies, the concepts etc - which are the meat of the book will remain relevant for businesses and communicators because they have practical and useful applications beyond newness and trendiness. So the publishing team felt that the phrase “new trends” did not fully or accurately capture the thrust of the book.

So what to do? We batted some ideas back and forth in a series of emails and finally, we all agreed on the final title: International Communications Strategy: Developments in cross-cultural communications, PR and social media. We introduced the word “strategy” to capture the aspects of the book where we discuss how businesses can take advantage of developments in technology and cultural sensitivities. From the publishers point of view, the word also emphasise that the book is aimed at high-level executives within businesses and communications professionals who will need to be thinking strategically in today’s globalised world.

We have a publication date for the book!

I met with my co-author Silvia Cambie and our editor, Annie Knight, from Kogan Page earlier this week to discuss the next phase for the book now that we were nearing the end of the writing process. I’ve got one more substantive chapter and then I need to go through my manuscript and prepare a smooth second draft. Silvia has a couple more case studies and a chunk of final writing to do and we then both need to get together to write a concluding final chapter. We are due to submit the finished manuscript at the end of November. Based on that timescale, the publication date for the book is set for 3rd July 2009.

It was exciting to sit down together for the first time in several months with Annie and Silvia and really talk through the detail of the book. The last time we did so was back in the autumn of last year when the project first came together and our book proposal was accepted. At that stage, we had an outline of our ideas and argument for the book. Now, 9 months later, we’ve done a lot of research and interviewed many business people and communicators internationally as well as putting it all together into a coherent narrative and I think we have something that’s going to be really fresh and thought-provoking.

So what’s the book about? Well, the working title has so far been New Trends in International Public Relations. Silvia puts the case for the rise of the till now non-dominant cultures in global business and the need for cross-cultural engagement to be at the forefront of any enterprise that wants to make waves internationally. Her experience as a business communicator means that she has drawn together a range of case studies on leadership communication, corporate social responsibility and cross-cultural communications from all over the world. My sections on the rise of social media as a recognised communications tool complement her part of the book, taking the reader on an in-depth guided tour of the virtual cultural landscape of the interactive web. The web is another country - to misquote H. E. Bates - with a culture and etiquette of its own and to engage succesfully in that landscape, communicators need to do so understanding those “rules” of engagement.

We may be tweaking the title of the book to New Trends in International Communications, which reflects more accurately the breadth of the content. If we do, it’ll play havoc with all my links and the URL for my research wiki - rats! But it’s important to get the title right so it’s a small price to pay to have to go back and reset my links etc… Stay tuned and I’ll let you know.

In the couple of months leading up to publication, we’ll be getting review and advance copies to send out to reviewers and also to take with us on speaking engagements at conferences etc. We’ll also be talking to the Marketing Executive in more detail about opportunities for promoting the book in the traditional real world way. We also hope to be able to offer additional online resources to our readers, perhaps via this blog and/ or the Kogan Page website eg links to the source material for my social media chapters, verbatim text from interviews, background research materials etc.

So, starting next week, my “honeymoon” is over and it’s back to hard work on the book to write the last chapter….

Do you have any ideas or suggestions for us about promoting the book? If you’re a writer or publisher, has there been a particular strategy that has worked well - or not so well? If you’re a reader, what kinds of activities would invite you take notice of our book - and even buy a copy…