@digitaltonto on "Cargo Cult Marketers", who - despite the complexity of modern marketing - "offer a false solution ... a simple formula that explains everything." Greg goes into the psychology of this particular breed of marketers with great insight, charting how they come up with and fall in love with their own idea and then, subconsciously, on…

Excellent article, via @joncaswell, pointing out that not only is Mindulness a treatment, not a cure, it's being peddled by those responsible for the disease... "We must subject social media to the kind of scrutiny that has been applied to the design of gambling machines... ... [it's a mistake to assume] that anxiety and insecurity are the nat…

@baekdal explores "a complete and total blind spot in the newspaper industry ... based on a business model that used to work in the old days of media, but was as a result of scarcity." Newspapers, he argues, are "the supermarket of news ... [but] upermarkets only work when visiting the individual brands is too hard to do... But on the internet, e…

Good piece from @digitaltonto pointing out that "data journalism ... falls short when confronted with complexity and nuance... Traditional journalists could benefit from more data literacy and objective analysis, while data journalism would be much improved by real world context. Unfortunately, little integration has occurred. Traditional journa…

5 principles for any organisation seeking to innovate digitally. Most cover the role of management and organisational structure (flat vs hierarchical structures, cross-silo interdisciplinarity, etc.), but the one that resonated most for me was cultural: "...one of the main cultural challenges [to innovation]... focus on optimising current proce…

"it appears that the FT is adopting a model similar to that of a wire service in its mobile approach, with mobile news being complemented by context, comment, and analysis in the print product, as well as to a certain degree on the web." - “From a news business to a networked business”: The FT pushes its workflows to digital » Nieman Journalism L…

"publishers like the Economist Group are still trying to get their salespeople on board with a way of selling that they're either confused by or outright hostile to - so hostile, in fact, that some buyers have encountered salespeople who have actively tried to talk them out of programmatic sales." - How the Economist Group is retooling for prog…

The NYT's "Snowfall" of native advertising. Great quality. Still don't like native advertising.

Great read on intrapreneurs and innovation. Thinking the @bloggingportal reboot probably qualifies ... "When you treat something like it's stupid, you have fun with it, you don't put too much structure around it. You can enjoy different types of success... no one is watching you and there are no expectations... The best thing a startup can d…

A Review of the State-of-the-Art and an Emerging Research Agenda. "This special issue focuses on the relationship between innovation and open data, while the second special issue emphasizes research on open data related to transparency and open data policies. To realize the practical benefits of this transformative practice and to develop theor…

... We are statistically closer to the next recession than to the last one, and another year or two of double-digit ad declines will push many papers into 3-day printing schedules, or bankruptcy, or both. " Clay Shirky giving it straight. What will the world be like in 5 years time? - Nostalgia and Newspapers, Clay Shirky

"an interesting glimpse at the technology responsible for publishing 700 articles, 600 images, 14 slideshows, and 50 videos on a daily basis." I find the article fascinating because of what the CMS is not - it: "does not render our website or provide community tools to our readers. Rather, it is a system for managing content and publishing d…

If you're involved in developing strategy, you need to read 'Why Smart People Struggle with Strategy'. Personally I recognise a lot of this, including in myself, although I don't consider myself particularly smart. The key recommendation? "strategy should not be a monoculture ... of high-IQ analytical wizards. Great strategy is aided by diver…

"These numbers are even more striking when you consider engagement is significantly down even though brands are almost certainly spending more money to promote their posts to combat plummeting organic reach. Facebook’s ad revenue reached $2.27 billion in Q1 2014, up 82 percent from Q1 2013" - New Report Reveals Just How Drastically Brand Engageme…

The implications for CMS and responsive design of these "three key points to consider for adaptive storytelling" are potentially huge. - Advice for 'adaptive storytelling' from the Washington Post | Media news

"what type of organisation gets a presence on GOV.UK - and what sort of presence they get. " Interestingly similar model to the E2G 'variable geometry' portal architecture developed around 12 years ago, albeit with additional features - notably Groups, recently made more flexible. - GOV.UK organisation types: a user guide (updated June 2014)…

Good advice for me here. "once you've established that heroism is required to hit deadlines ... work will expand to fill the available space ... more and more weekends and late nights are required to meet the expectations you've set yourself on what you and your team can achieve... by doing lots of out-of-hours work you're over-estimating …

"Things that may distract us without actually capturing our conscious attention (for instance, a mobile phone left on the desk close to the keyboard, secretly "reminding" us that a new text or a new call may just be about to arrive), can have a detrimental effect on performance" - Work Smarter: Close Those Damn Tabs! -- Science of Us

No fremium model - minimum price $19/m - but it looks worth it: "Meshfire turns Twitter into a dashboard of tasks... The tasks can be to reply to different tweets, or to block someone or follow someone. Every twitter account is a mission inside Meshfire, and every mission has a goal. You define the mission ... a virtual assistant inside Meshfire…

Excellent intro to @buffer team's toolkit. Many I'll definitely check out, particularly Sqwiggle "... a video chat tool that helps you stay in touch with your team when you're working remotely. Every few seconds, Sqwiggle takes a screenshot of you so your colleagues can see that you're around, and just by clicking on another person you can join a …

Thoughtful post from @steveology. Reminding me of Rule #2 of "10 things the EU should probably know about social media", but adds to it. "in house staff, or primarily outsource to an agency? ... neither model works very well, but a hybrid works extremely well... The advantage of a comms agency is that their staff work for "a dozen or two comp…

"You can now run a promotion without using a third party app. There are still rules though, and not everything can be done... a good option in some instances, or a very poor one in others." - Why Promoting on the Facebook Timeline is Good and Bad - Jeffbullas's Blog

"the Insights module will show you several metrics relating to your competition’s Facebook activity, including the number of posts by page admins, number of fan interactions and a leaderboard of the five top-performing posts across all watched pages." - How 'Pages to Watch' from Facebook Can be a Source of Competitive Insight | Social Media Exami…

Steps 2 & 3 is worth reiterating: "So what it quality content? It is: - Informative - Sharable - Actionable - Relevant to the target audience" and 3: "Think Visually" - 5 Essential Steps to Success in Social Media Marketing - Jeffbullas's Blog

At first glance, Overtask uses Chrome’s new tab page into a project or task management tool, depending on how granular you want to go. But in reality its approach makes it an excellent productivity enhancement:each task is managed via a tab, which stores all sites and pages associated  with that taskopening a task opens all the related sites for t…

Jeff Bullas reminds me why I do EU communications - so I don’t waste my life producing this sort of sh*t, for these sorts of companies.

"Here are some quick tips to help you conduct a basic SEO audit in 30 minutes which you can use to improve your site’s performance."

"Influencers come in many forms — celebrities, connectors, thought leaders, aggregators, CEOs and journalists — and need to be identified and targeted based on your vertical market. The following tools are avenues to help you define who you should target as an influencer through 2014 and beyond." - Influencer Marketing Tools That Will Power Yo…

How's (y)our LinkedIn strategy? "Bob runs a local business and was fired by a new customer... The customer had decided to review the LinkedIn profiles of Bob and his staff. As it turns out, there were mixed messages being presented and the nature and quality of Bob’s business came into question." - A Story About How LinkedIn Can Hurt Your B…

One for @richardmedic ... "Smydra ... he wants to find a way to allow the public to benefit from all the knowledge of future news events locked up inside newsrooms.... He'd love your thoughts" - Can you turn future news events into structured data? » Nieman Journalism Lab