It is always great to hear from your professional peers that you are doing a stand out job. It is also beneficial to give feedback to those on our staff who might not get as many obvious pats on the back – our production staff.
With sales, you can easily see progress just by looking at the numbers. Which month was up, who had the most sales in January, and so on. However, production’s outcomes are less easily quantified. While we all can see the fabulous finished product each month, sometimes it seems they only hear complaints. So I am always looking for ways to let them know what an amazing job they do.
FAMILY Magazine belongs to some national and regional trade organizations whose membership is made up of publications like ours. Sharing ideas and providing feedback on industry issues is a big part of being a member of these groups. Another part is competing against each other to see who can create the best publication. For the first time this year FAMILY Magazine entered the competition.
In the past, we simply did not have time to put together the entries. This year I decided to let our production staff put in the time to enter so they could see how they are doing compared to other publications. It ended up being sort of fun (in a weird – hard work – crisis - work as fast as you can way).
We entered one national and one regional competition. The Association of Free Community Publications (AFCP) is a North American organization of free publications which includes publications in Canada, and has a combined circulation of more than 17 million. The Mid-Atlantic Community Publications Association (MACPA) is an association of community publications delivered free to readers. This association represents the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Just a few days ago we received a letter notifying us that we had won at least one award in the 2011 AFCP Awards Contest. Then on Friday we received an email indicating we had also won an award in the MACPA competition. We are so excited.
The annual meeting for MACPA will be this week. So by Friday of this week we should know what entries are the award-winning ones for MACPA. The annual conference for AFCP, when the awards will be announced, will be held during the first week of May. It is very exciting. I will keep you posted!
Congratulations to our production department. No matter what the award, we already knew they were winners!
Brenda
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