Mary Lilja selected as an “Industry Leader” by The Business Journal

The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal recently honored 51 women for its 14th annual “Women in Business” awards. Honorees were selected “who contribute to the broader Twin Cities community, either by volunteering their time with nonprofit organizations, or by sharing their knowledge with peers as leaders of industry associations.”

Among the women selected was our very own Mary Lilja.

After 23 years in business, Mary is no stranger to being recognized for her leadership in the communications industry. But as you may know, like any true Minnesotan, Mary is not prone to self-aggrandizement.

I have had the honor of working with Mary for more than eight years. In that time, one thing is clear: Mary is a tireless advocate for all her clients, from Fortune 500 companies to the smallest non-profit.

For a complete list of the 2011 honorees, visit the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.

Congratulations, Mary!

-- Alex

Storytelling: Gramma’s Grand

At Lilja, we focus on telling stories. Here’s a story I recently wrote for a newsletter at my grandmother’s request.

“Gramma” has always meant music to me. This isn't all that surprising in my family; Gramma, Mom, my sister – we're all musicians and have sung and performed together since each one of us could barely speak. Gramma's husband was a piano tuner, as was his father before him. Gramma's mother played piano (usually patriotic marches, as loudly as possible), and Gramma's brother played trumpet during and after World War II. There was always a piano at home, and Mom was frequently teaching lessons. But Gramma and Gramma's house was something different.

Not only did Gramma have a piano, she had an organ. Sometimes she had two pianos. But best of all, she had the grand.

Many years ago, my grandfather purchased an old, beat up grand piano for my grandmother and rebuilt it. Completely. I remember not being able to go into the music room because the action, all the hammers and the innards that make the piano hit the string, was laid out on the floor. The cabinet was off at a furniture repair shop to be refinished, but Grandpa did all the rest himself. Re-felting the hammers. Adding weights to and rebalancing the action. Meticulously going through each of the 88 keys to make sure there was a consistent touch and beautiful sound every time.

Once his work was done, Gramma's began. I remember lying underneath the piano, listening to her practice. Chopin was always a favorite, and rightly so – she can trace her piano teachers back to Chopin himself. Once, I elbowed my way into playing “duets” with Gramma and my mother. And when I got my “59 Solos You Like to Play” book, a rite of passage in my family, I remember sitting down at that beautiful grand myself, Gramma by my side to guide me through our favorite pieces.

Wherever she's moved, we always must make sure there's room for the grand piano. This usually meant getting a slightly larger apartment so Gramma and her piano roommate would both have space. But this was a necessity. Gramma and her grand were not to be parted.

Until now.

I'm moving into a townhome in Apple Valley, and, as I've been told since the grand was reassembled all those years ago, the piano is going with me. Now I must make sure there's room for my piano roommate. I know Gramma will miss her pal, but as she noted when we talked about it, now she'll have room for another chair in her apartment. And next time I visit her, we'll just have to play our duets on the community piano at her apartment complex, instead.

- Kadee

Share the Vision - Donate Eyeglasses to Haiti

Watching the destruction in Japan makes me think of one thing: Haiti. While the two island nations couldn’t be more different in terms of culture, economic structure and stability, the human emotion involved is, I think, universal. Watching a scene unfold of a Japanese man who has just realized his son and his son’s family have perished, I’m reminded of a similar scene I watched in Haiti of a woman realizing she was the only member of her household to escape the earthquake with her life.

Material things suddenly seem so unimportant to me, as I’m reminded of these people who don’t have shelter or clean water to drink. Looking at pre-earthquake pictures of Haiti, it’s easy to see what little material goods they had to begin with and the chaos that already existed. It’s a notion that hasn’t left me. So many organizations were already providing aid to Haitians, serving food, building homes, taking in orphans, and more.

While I can’t claim to doing anything profound to help Haiti, it’s something that’s always in the back of my mind. That’s why when I discovered how many pairs of prescription eyeglasses I had going unused, I knew exactly what I was going to do with them. After doing some research and making a few phone calls, I will be sending a package of very-gently-used prescription glasses to the Haitian Health Foundation, which aims to improve the health and wellbeing of the poor, sick and infirm in Haiti.

If you’re in the Twin Cities and have very gently used eyeglasses to donate, I just might be persuaded to come pick them up from you to add to my outgoing package. If you’re not in the Twin Cities but would still like to donate frames, email me for details.

-- Alicia

The Power of the Purple Brain

In her recent blog post “The Power of Human Interaction,” Mary lauded the value of the face-to-face meeting.

After we learn more about our clients’ business goals, the next step is to develop a plan. And in my opinion, the most effective plans are developed under the guidance of an efficient pubic relations team that can collaborate to meet the clients’ objectives.

When people ask about Lilja Inc., they are often surprised by how small our company actually is (we have five staff members, for those of you taking notes).

But being a part of a small agency means that we are an agile team that can pool together our unique talents at a moment’s notice to form what we lovingly refer to as “The Big Purple Brain” (of course, purple is the official Lilja color).

This intellectual cooperative is the single greatest resource we can offer our clients, as the ideas that come from these Purple Brain sessions inspire, challenge and guide our work. And like Superman taking Lois Lane to the Fortress of Solitude, clients are involved in these sessions and can lead to an even more powerful outcome.

In one meeting, our collaborative work swiftly navigated the complex task of developing positioning and key messages. In another, we reviewed a broad media relations approach suggested by a client and developed a more honed, strategic campaign.

To lift from a well known ad campaign: “What can Purple do for you?”

Almost anything you throw our way.

- Alex

The Power of Human Interaction

We recently hosted a new client at our offices, a wonderful woman who is launching a new product that meets a real need in the marketplace. (Note: More to come on this!)

We could have arranged introductions via the electronic world we all inhabit: We could have conferenced her in, emailed our ideas and followed up via text, and friended her on Facebook to social network our way to a working relationship.

Instead, she suggested the old fashioned approach: meeting face to face. She flew in to meet with us on our home turf. We listened and learned about her expertise, saw her quick laugh, experienced firsthand her wonderful wit. We brainstormed ideas together, having fun all the way. We broke bread together. We pondered approaches and made great progress. As we drove her to and from the airport, we chatted about kids and family, interests and hobbies. It was time well spent, indeed.

How many times do we take the shortcut in human interactions? How many times do we send a text or an email when it would be better to pick up the phone? How many times do we send our expressions of concern when our presence would make the difference?

Years ago, I developed media tours for a new product launch, one to the California tech market, the other to consumer media in New York. On the way, my client and I stopped at a nondescript Midwestern suburban hotel restaurant to meet with an editor of a small journal. We ate a rather bland meal while the local Rotary Club sang “God Bless America” loudly in the next room.

The editor reflected, “No one ever comes to see me.” But we did. He tried out the product, liked it and wrote a positive review, which was later syndicated in U.S. and Japanese newspapers. My client landed a positive business deal as a result of the overseas coverage.

Face to face is powerful; sometimes you just have to leave home. Never resist the impulse; it can make the difference because, when all is said and done, we are human beings first, business people second.

- Mary Lilja

A Sight for Sore Eyes

For the last few days, the world has watched the tragic events in Japan unfold. In these moments of chaos and destruction, we hold our breath, watch and wait for a sign of hope.

My next door neighbor is from Japan and has family who lives just north of Tokyo. As she explained to me, her family may be relatively safe, inland from the tsunami-ravaged coasts and 200 miles away from the Fukushima nuclear plant, but food and water are still scarce.

Just the other day, I saw a video posted on several blogs of helicopter crews from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ronald Reagan – one of the first Naval vessels to arrive off the coast of Japan – delivering aid to the people of Sendai as part of Operation Tomodachi, which translated means “Operation Friendship.” I was overjoyed to see our nation reach out to people suffering from the unimaginable horror of this disaster.



Help is beginning to arrive for these people, but writing this post in a warm office with a fresh cup of coffee, lunch waiting for me in the refrigerator, I am motivated to help. So, I have made my donation to the Red Cross.

As you read this, I challenge you to do what you can to help these people in their time of need as well by making a donation.

-- Alex

Marco Polo SEO

Rather than throwing out some academic definition of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), I’ll sum it up as this: Think of the Internet as a big swimming pool of people playing Marco Polo. The person yelling “Marco” is looking for some sort of information using a search engine and the ones yelling “Polo” are all the possible search results. Only in this game, the one yelling “Polo” the loudest gets tagged first and wins.

It’s not hard to up the volume on your website or blog’s SEO. Playing by some simple rules when writing a news release, website, or anything else purposed for the web, can help all those people yelling “Marco” find you.

While search engines’ goal is help users find exactly what they’re looking for, they are merely robots and need help knowing which online sources are experts. They rely on the text of any given web page, placing importance on the words at the top of the page, URLs, anchor text, page summary text and more. Making sure these key areas are clear and hold important phrases is paramount to making sure the Marcos of the internet find your Polos.

Of course, some key phrases have multiple meanings. For example, someone searching for images of the Venetian merchant and explorer Marco Polo mostly will find drawings of the historic figure … and this slightly off-topic image that does have “Marco Polo” in its URL.

-- Alicia DeMatteo