Overview: Communications Strategy

There’s nothing more devastating than a rigorous debunk sprinkled liberally with acid. A model to keep in mind whenever setting the record straight: be entertaining.

Medium on how magazine editing is morphing as technology transforms online longform: "Online, each story is at best its own magazine, sent out to find its own temporary audience. One article may absorb people who subscribe, or would once have subscribed, to Foreign Affairs; another might absorb devotees of Wired or Men’s Health or Glamour. The au…

NYTimes.com on how legacy organisations failed to go digital, leaving field open to tech-first startups: "Vox is a digitally native business, a technology company that produces media, as opposed to a media company that uses technology. Everything at Vox, from the way it covers subjects, the journalists it hires and the content management systems …

Last Thursday I finally caught up with Eric Maurice of PressEurop, which recently had its plug pulled by the EC following their decision to cancel its renewal tender some weeks after publishing it.

"The winners and other leading entries in the annual Intranet Innovation Awards show that WordPress and other open-source technologies can provide an intranet platform to meet both organisational and user needs. One of the aims of the Awards is to showcase examples of successful approaches and practices which can be applied by intranet team wit…

"As we enter a new year we have crowdsourced a checklist of 10 vital skills for journalists to produce digital content in the most effective ways ... We hope that the mix of skills, techniques and qualities listed below would help journalists to stay ahead of the game in terms of digital innovation, be able to harness the latest tools and techniq…

These questions are worth asking whether you're thinking of Influencer Outreach or not. "There are all sorts of tools you can use to reach your marketing goals, but before even getting into the discussion of goals and influence marketing, you need to ask yourself these questions: - Who are you targeting? - What are your objectives? What does…

Excellent advice here: "The right mix of content will always be “it depends.” If you’re selling jeans or computers to shoppers at the mall, it probably doesn’t matter that much what Red Bull or Intel or SAP are doing, content-wise. Their activities may provide ideas and inspiration — but at the end of the day, you’re in a different vertical, selli…

Not their star reporters. Not their politics coverage. An intern. Who never considered journalism as a career. But knew data visualisation. "On December 21 the quiz was posted and by the end of the year had become the site’s most popular piece of content for 2013." - Behind the dialect map interactive: How an intern created The New York Times’ m…

"Barack Obama, Jerry Seinfeld, a line cook at Applebee's, and a guy with two penises walk into a bar. Actually, no, they would never do that. No venue could bring these people together. And yet, each of these people has stood before the IamA subcommunity on the social network Reddit, and typed those immortal letters, "AMA." Ask. Me. Anything. "…

"I still catch myself thinking I know better than the wealth of data at my fingertips. That’s not to say your intuition and savvy as a marketer aren’t valuable. You need both. ... take a holistic look back at what worked well, what didn’t, and what you can double down on in the year to come." - Year End Analysis: How to Plan Your Content Based o…

"whole new publishing and technology system ... continually iterate on the site and take advantage of new technology trends ... instead of seeing major redesigns in the future, users will see more incremental changes" Key question: are the native ads clearly ads? - New York Times redesign points to future of online publishing - Jan. 8, 2014

Great advice for web data analysis everywhere: "We don’t live in a perfect world. Vague requests are going to get floated. ... that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recognize and strive to minimize how often that happens. Here’s how: - Condition yourself to go to full alert whenever the word “interesting” is used ... - probe for clarification as much …

“Comments from readers are probably one of the thorniest problems for online publishers of all kinds… and the methods for dealing with them are all over the map... We spoke to online editors and community managers at 104 news organisations from 63 countries across the globe, plus a selection of experts from the corporate and academic worlds to id…

Interesting survey of HuffPo, Techcrunch & other experiences with changing commenting systems and policies. - HuffPost policy banishes trolls — and drives away some frequent commenters | Poynter.

"we essentially write new content that we then throw away at the end of the day. Content shouldn’t die by design... topical contexualization... means guiding readers through large, convoluted news topics. ProPublica’s topic pages get us closer to contextualizing huge topics. For every major series that they cover over time, there’s a landing page…

"Too many companies make the mistake of assuming their global audience speaks English. I hear it all the time. “We don’t need to translate. All of our customers can read English.” And “English is the language of the world. Everyone speaks English.”" - Rule #2. Everyone Speaks English, Right? | Content Rules, Inc.

"As your company’s content strategy becomes more sophisticated, it’s important to consider different types of media for your outreach efforts. The internet has changed the paradigm from “please tell my story” to finding platforms that allow you to tell your own tale. A content strategy helps you identify needs, prioritize projects, and invest limi…

"Building kickass content strategies focused on appealing to users isn’t difficult, though, and will always yield better results and not succumb to one of Google’s future algorithm updates. "

"Do You Need a Separate Mobile Content Marketing Strategy?"

3 cheers for less warm fuzziness! "In 2014, we need to move away from measuring our content marketing with soft engagement metrics such as ‘retweets’, ‘shares’, ‘linkbacks’ and ‘Likes’, and start having adult conversations about ROI. ... whilst engagement may make your marketing team feel warm and fuzzy inside, it counts for nought if your conte…

" Content marketing is really about providing valuable information or content to current and potential customers for the purpose of building trust, branding, awareness, and positive sentiment. A successful content marketing campaign establishes you as an expert in your field, and that sets the groundwork for a long-term business relationship."

"My favorite part ... is that I’m usually wrong" Refreshing!

Basically sums up why I want a Hub, not just a stream, for my virtual presence: "If I had my way, Facebook would have a hard and fast expiration date for posts. I generally don’t want most of what I say hanging around longer than I’d keep eggs in the fridge. Sure, some links and videos are worth revisiting—but does anyone really care that I was t…

Some key points from "The Benefits of Quality Content and Genuine Social Engagement ... to create great, sharable, engaging content and become an active participant on social platforms: - Quality content is what your clients want to read, not what you want to tell them.... - Content that gets highly shared is content with heart. Real stories, re…

A good holiday break longread: "As people talk back to organizations, organizations find they have trouble telling their story and listening to their customers at the same time. The forces of change affecting content can test the conventional responsibilities of marketing and IT and customer service. "

The rapid evolution in newsmedia provides a lot of ideas for better content strategies in a less organisational, more networked society. One such concept is ideas-based, or fluid, beats for journalism: "... a way for reporters to be human-centric rather than newsroom- or bureaucracy-centric", according to the latest piece in Niemanlab's Journalis…

How nice to see the Brussels Bubble meme continue to spread ... ;) "In a damning indictment of efforts in Brussels to promote stronger public attachment to the EU through the European Year of Citizens 2013, Emily O’Reilly said the campaign was “not succeeding”. ... the new office holders needed to be courageous enough to address the union’s demo…

"I think companies such as Asana (which I love) will be the future of business consultancy. They will substitute the big consultancies leveraging big data, just like Coursera will displace traditional course providers by leveraging information on how people use training and using this information to design more effective training. Business consult…

"The idea of the stream has become so dominant that it is easy to think it is the natural state of things in a networked media environment. "Of course we have the stream: this is the Internet after all." That's why it's so important to look back at 2009 (just 2009!) and remember that the stream is a creation of particular companies and thinkers. Y…