Overview: Communications Strategy

We still write stories for the web as if they were fixed and transitory, but they’re not... people have expected that something like 70 per cent of traffic would be to “new” content, and the rest to the “archive”. The reality usually proves to be exactly the other way around... we’re over-weight in publishing “news” and significantly under-weight …

if news content focuses on the ‘Who, What, When, and Where,’ explainer journalism looks to inform the reader of the ‘How and Why’... give the reader background information about a story to ensure that they are able to properly understand events as they unfold... Explainer journalism enables the media provider to at least show some intelligence an…

... using Viber and WhatsApp to publish documentaries... Whereas Viber can only be used to send messages to users, the upside of WhatsApp is that it allows for back-and-forth communication. The downside to the platform is that the process is more manual for the publisher. WhatsApp only lets publishers have 256 people per broadcast channel... the …

building community means intentionally creating a culture, every step of the way... It’s hard to overstate the importance of community guidelines... members ... didn’t want to be a part of a community where people were fighting all the time, but had been afraid to speak up in the discussion, lest they get dragged into the fray. with every post, e…

many marketers spend their resources on talking at people, not listening. The key is to find the space between what you want to talk about as a marketer and what they want to talk about as a consumer. That small slice is the opportunity for true engagement and will shift the conversation from monologue to dialogue. Attention is a gift, and what yo…

companies made huge bets on branded content... to leapfrog traditional media and forge relationships directly with customers... invested billions pursuing this vision. Yet few brands have generated meaningful consumer interest online. In fact, social media seems to have made brands less significant. Digital crowds now serve as very effective an…

My sadly underwhelmed response to @sidewireinc’s gr8 “Today’s Internet is Optimized for Noise”

What’s the difference between customization and personalization? - Customization: The visitor deliberately chooses between options designed to make the user experience more personal.- Personalization: The visitor is automatically shown personalized pages based on anticipated needs / wants.

Axel Springer, wary of being overly dependent on third-party platforms for traffic... fighting back by launching its own news aggregator platform... now has around 1,200 publishers on board ... Digiday spoke with Würtenberger, CEO of Upday, about using humans and algorithms for news sourcing, creating a platform for publishers and banning ad block…

Social activity on a website can increase users’ commitment to the site and willingness to pay for its services... social engagement could solve the conversion challenge ... users enjoy free content that the website provides but are unwilling to contribute to the site monetarily. The bad news is that it’s not enough to just add participatory optio…

Brands have always had a tougher time spreading messages on Facebook than individuals, because they’re playing in a space that’s fundamentally not designed for them... What if our kids find the idea of any brands communicating as if they’re people even more awkward than we do? there are opportunities to re-think the role publishing plays in soci…

Conversational UIs will also force designers to cosy up to writers, or to become more linguistically literate themselves. Information architects will be trendy again, since syntax and labels are totally their turf.

News organisations are increasingly embracing the use of analytics and metrics as part of editorial decision making, but what constitutes a sophisticated analytics strategy?... A new report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism looks at which organisations are building a competitive advantage over less advanced competitors through a…

"We put aside existing notions about news apps and imagined what our journalism would be if it lived natively on your iPhone. It wouldn’t be a facsimile of our website. It would be something entirely different, with original writing, new features, and a fresh interface."... The Quartz news app isn't for everybody ... the app is by design unlikely…

... manually curate 10 stories from other publishers, which will run as a daily edition. Three different articles, often with opposing viewpoints, will run on each story, representing the left, neutral and right-wing political perspectives on the same story... For example, in Wednesday’s edition, it ran a Guardian story entitled “Terrorism publ…

The afternoon session at Future Media Lab 2016 showed that while European media are warming to the idea of using advanced language technologies to share content across borders, their audiences are already well ahead of them.

Betts ... became the first data head to join the publisher’s board, recognizing data’s importance in growing its subscriptions and audience. Today, he heads up a 30-person team focused on customer analytics and research. Here are lessons from Betts on data maturity and driving audience engagement... While subscriptions are critical ... it’s not t…

the hallmark of a good branded podcast is that the marketing is subtle... this is something where you want to build a long-term relationship with people. It’s not about short-term conversions, or anything like that, but about having an amazing first experience with a brand.

Rather than paying to be sandwiched within ad breaks and between editorial pages, brands can communicate directly with consumers. Unfortunately, the result is often a longer form version of the same old ads. Marketers need to change their approach. Here are four questions that will help you create a viable strategy... ... done effectively, people…

The Wall Street Journal, claims it has been the Journal’s fastest-growing social channel, reaching over 2 million followers since it launched on the Japanese app 15 months ago... Publishers like The Economist, BBC and Mashable have all added Line to their social media arsenal

"It tears conversations apart, and it's really confusing when some people have been live-tweeting an event and those things get scattered all across my timeline."

Bots are to modern messaging apps what APIs were to Web 2.0; a way to build on top of other services, experiment, and create a new way of interacting with existing services... what inspiration can we draw from the past that might help us to think about designing Conversational UIs?

I’ve just spent a few days running the Discovery phase of a new project to further develop the communication strategy of an EU Institution, with a particular focus on retooling its online, social media and publications tactics. Apart from focusing on developing a new information architecture, I’m running the overall project. This means not only en…

I’m now at to the point where I can spend a few days interviewing key people in an organisation to develop a complete communication strategy.

We’re all rushing to create piles and piles of content to serve our customers, upkeep an online image, and create more brand awareness. Despite that... people targeted aren’t “taking action”. Visitors come and go and analytics aren’t great ... Content marketing cannot be all about your company and fulfilling company needs... Get rid of excessivel…

the number of marketers who consider their content marketing effective dropped by 20%... content generated by the brands increased by 78%... the number of interactions by followers FELL by 60%... “Marketers are getting better at distributing content, but are not getting better at creating content worth distributing.”... marketers are under p…

the new application is to deliver a round-up of curated news stories to readers, meant to be viewed first thing in the morning ... presented on eight different cards... the app’s content is able to be digested fairly quickly. Users can ... clicking a link to view the longer article, but they can also just use Refinery29 This AM to flip through car…

what started as a cynical in-joke has become a bad habit, and an excuse for enabling abuse across the web... The fact that we joke about it documents an acceptance of a culture of abuse online. It helps normalize online harassment campaigns and treat the empowerment of abusers as inevitable, rather than solvable... we denigrate a form that use…

The 12-person unit, called the social stories team, includes a variety of roles: writers, animators, graphics professionals, and producers, who create and package content for Instagram, Vine, Tumblr and Snapchat Discover.

Free group messagingIt's like a private chat room for your small group. Have as many as you want, and it's always free. Now, you can coordinate with coworkers, organize a game night, and keep in touch with family all in the same place.