Jump-start your conference experience by attending these interactive and practical workshops. These information-packed sessions are a great opportunity to network with fellow attendees while taking a hands-on, common-sense approach to mastering strategic internal communications that will enhance your understanding of the informative, case study presentations throughout the entire conference.

Choose ALL FOUR for Maximum Value and Learning

How To Link Your Communication To Your Business Strategy And Measure Its Impact: A Step-By-Step Process

It’s hard to connect our work with business results unless we plan our communication strategies from the beginning to help deliver those results. This workshop will give you an easy-to-follow, step-by-step process to connect communication to business goals—and then prove the value of the communication.

Specifically in this session, you will learn the difference between communicating a business strategy and communicating in a way that fulfills the strategy—sometimes without even mentioning the strategy itself. You will also be provided with a step-by-step process for engaging your executive management in communication planning in a way that feels like other, logical business processes they are comfortable with, including:

• Determining which stakeholder groups are most important in helping to achieve a particular goal
• Identifying the ideal behaviors for each stakeholder group to reach the goal
• Discovering through informal research which knowledge and attitude messages are contributing to the current (incorrect) behaviors and which messages would better motivate the ideal behaviors
• Choosing the best channels for the ideal knowledge and attitude messages
• Setting measurable objectives for the messages and channels
• Developing measures that will connect your communications with achievement of the ideal behaviors and organizational goals in terms of a return on investment

WORKSHOP LEADER: Angela Sinickas is President of Sinickas Communications, Inc. (www.sinicom.com), a consulting firm dedicated to helping organizations achieve business results through focused diagnostics and practical solutions. An award-winning organizational communicator since 1974, she has been measuring the effectiveness of communication since 1981. She wrote the manual "How to Measure Your Communication Programs" and has developed a range of Communication Starter Kits on CD-ROM and online modules available by subscription that provide tools for communicators to conduct their own focus groups, surveys and strategic planning.

Testimonials From Past Sinickas Communications Sessions:

"She was the best presenter of the whole conference. Very, very good
information and covered depth of subject."

"Very good. There was a great deal of information provided that can be
used immediately in my workplace."

"Measurement of employee publication content is a great idea!"

"Very enthusiastic presenter. She made the issue clear and easy to grasp.
Measuring results seems possible!"

11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Afternoon break/lunch on your own.

How To Master Engagement Within Your Organization:
An Audience-Centric Approach To Building Strategic Communication Campaigns

Communicators can produce more effective employee communications by developing a deeper understanding of their audiences. In this engaging workshop, you will walk away with a unique methodology for building strategic communication campaigns.

The Bonfire audience-centric approach employs a collaborative mapping technique that harnesses the collective insight of your communication and design teams. It has resulted in successful enterprise-wide programs for companies such as Gap Inc., General Electric, Wells Fargo, Starbucks, Oracle, and Genentech.

In this comprehensive and hands-on workshop, you will leave with tools for:

• Selecting and integrating new technology into your organization’s culture, based on specific learning styles and audience concerns
• Utilizing the basics of the six-lens, audience-centric communication planning methodology
• Integrating thinking models from change management, learning and communications design
• Discovering new ways of identifying and meeting the needs and preferences of your audiences and stakeholders
• Building multi-dimensional campaigns that sustain mindshare and momentum, and change attitudes and behavior to meet business objectives

WORKSHOP LEADERS: Preston Lewis is Co-founder & Director at Bonfire Communications. An expert in branding, employee engagement and strategic internal communications, Preston is an energetic and creative leader intimately involved with all aspects of the Bonfire business. As an active participant in current projects and responsible for nurturing new relationships, Preston consistently demonstrates the core values that steer each Bonfire project to success. His current and past clients are some of the most reputable companies in the world including Starbucks, Roche/Genentech, General Electric, Harrah’s Entertainment, salesforce.com and HP.

Matt Herlihy is Director of Strategy at Bonfire Communications. For nearly two decades, Matt has devoted his professional life to the intersection of brand and storytelling, helping companies change conversations and drive people to action. He has worked intimately with some of the world’s most revered brands, helping define such world-class organizations as General Electric and Procter & Gamble as well as iconic brands like Harley-Davidson and Jack Daniel’s.

How To Develop A Narrative That Increases Brand Awareness And Brand Loyalty

Your story is unique. There’s no other organization like yours. You have your own identity, your own mission, your own habits and practices and beliefs. Your own story. And stories are what people are truly interested in. How you talk about yourself helps you communicate the value of what you do to people who are interested.

In this workshop, you will learn how to achieve big success by distilling your corporate identity into specific messaging and editorial points, i.e., “stories,” and then use social media tools to spread them. Employing techniques based upon both classical drama and the journalism practice of asking “Who, what, where, when, why and how?”, you will be able to develop a narrative that increases brand awareness and brand loyalty.

In this interactive workshop, using famous historical cases (such as? Spell them out here) as groundwork for work examples, you will learn how to:

• Form your corporate message into a compelling narrative
• Develop an editorial calendar suitable for social media
• Expand your message internally and externally
• Communicate value and increase brand loyalty
• Demonstrate results

WORKSHOP LEADER: Lee Wochner is the CEO & Creative Strategist of Counterintuity, LLC, a creative marketing agency in Burbank, CA established in 2004 and with clients across the U.S. and in Canada and South America. In just the past year, Counterintuity has won 15 awards for its work in the field, including recognition as California Small Business of the Year, and four Communicator awards including the Award for Excellence in Travel and Tourism websites.

11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Afternoon break/lunch on your own

How To Integrate The Latest Social Media Tools And Technologies Into Your Internal Communications To Foster Better Employee Collaboration And Brand Engagement

Social media has received a significant amount of support over the last few years and as a result, almost every organization wants to rollout out social media accounts. Few organizations, however, understand how to do so to significantly enhance the internal communications within their organization.

Using best practices as a benchmark for your own future efforts, you will learn how leading organizations are moving forward today with enterprise-wide collaboration and how you can implement their solutions in a fun and thought-provoking way.

You will learn what you can do to turn your organization into a social one using collaboration. You will leave with real take-aways that you can implement within your own organization. Specifically, you will leave this high-energy workshop with answers to the following key questions:

• What are the common goals, approaches, and tools when rolling out an enterprise-wide communications effort?
• Why is now the time to move your organization forward with Enterprise 2.0?
• How can you get started?
• How can you overcome the most common reasons given to delay efforts?
• How do you drive a successful collaboration and measure its value?

WORKSHOP LEADER: Jeff Willinger is the Director of Collaboration, Social Computing and Intranets at Righpoint; as well as the President of the Chicago Chapter of the Social Media Club. Jeff advises his clients on the social aspects of web solutions. This includes social computing strategies, social intranets and portals, and increasing employee engagement. Jeff's 20+ years of experience include social computing work within organizations as well as social media expertise as an outside consultant. With his intimate understanding of social media, Jeff helps turn IT solutions into transformative opportunities for our clients.