✅ Monday briefing: Future of news, B2B earned media effectiveness, Glassdoor review, writing about violence, Vogue overreach, B Corp change, GCS plan, climate survey, mental health support, and more..
Media, industry, best and bad practice, research and insight, social media and platforms, and tools
This newsletter is crowdsourced each week from my blog and community of practice for people studying and working in marketing, media and public relations. It’s a hive mind, newsroom and source of information, help and support. You’d be welcome to join us.
It’s a big week for events in communications. The AMEC Summit takes place in Vienna from Monday to Wednesday. The PRovoke Media Summit takes place in London on Friday. And WaddsCon returns on Wednesday from 1-2pm.
Four Waddscon speakers will share best practice approaches to building relationships with journalists, pitching, and landing a story in earned media. If you got a ticket for April, it’s transferable and we’ll share access information shortly. If not, please follow this link.
Media
👫 MEDIA RELATIONS: Journalists respond to less than 4% of pitches. The ideal media pitch should have a short subject line, be 50 to 79 words, contain no more than three links, and be sent on a Friday. Propel analysed 400,000 pitches sent via its platform in Q1 2022. Source Sophie Frankpitt.
🔮 FUTURE OF NEWS: In a speech to the Society of Editors, the BBC's Ros Atkins called for a reappraisal of the role of news in society and engagement with consumers. Its contribution to public discourse is no longer guaranteed. Innovation in the operation and production of news is typically secondary to the day job of finding news stories. Spotted Nigel Sarbutts.
🔬 EARNED MEDIA EFFECTIVENESS: B2B content produced by journalists gets eight times more engagement than all other content according to BuzzSumo. B2B media coverage is far more likely to: reach your target audience; get more engagement; and sit on a higher domain authority site than your own and attract more backlinks. Source Andrew Bruce Smith.
Industry
🥇 AGENCY RANKINGS: The worldwide public relations industry recovered in 2021 with growth of 11% according to PRovoke. The top 250 public relations firms reported a fee income of $15.3bn. It reports demand for corporate communications, crisis counsel and employee engagement, along with sectoral growth in healthcare, B2B and technology. Spotted Maja Pawinska Sims.
🚪 GLASSDOOR REVIEWS: Research set to be published in the journal Management Science suggests that Glassdoor posts are a good early warning sign of a sick culture and corporate bad behaviour. Applications include employee listening, a signal for compliance departments, and a monitoring and alerting system for regulators. Source Stephen Waddington.
Best and bad practice
📝 WRITING ABOUT VIOLENCE: Zero Tolerance has published media guidelines for reporting violence against women responsibily and accurately. Its guidance includes: respect women, include diverse voices, name the cause, name the crime, and consider how you present the perpetrator and the victim. Source Alan Morrison.
🍺 VOGUE OVERREACH: Iconic fashion magazine Vogue threatened to sue a 200-year-old village pub from Cornwall after claiming its name could confuse its readers. The Star Inn at Vogue which is named after the local hamlet has since received an apology from publisher Conde Nast which is now framed in the bar. Spotted Alison Hollinshead Tobin.
🌍 B CORP CHANGE: We should celebrate large organisations that use the B Corp framework as a means of driving change. The community exists to change the economy by working with both small and large companies. Nespresso has been working for the last three years changing its policies and practices to reach certification. Source John Brown.
Research and insight
🤔 GCS PLAN: GCS has published a new three year strategy including a new operating model. The document sets out a plan based on three pillars: collaboration, innovation and improvement, and talent. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
📝 PRCA CLIMATE SURVEY: The PRCA Climate Misinformation Strategy Group is seeking contributions to its second research study. It aims to explore the contribution of public relations to the climate crisis. Source Koray Camgöz.
🤕 MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT: Despite progress in the public relations industry to understand mental health issues there's still a long way to go to provide adequate workplace support. An ongoing project seeks to understand ways to help practitioners. Source Steph Brown.
Social media and platforms
🗑️ FAKE ACCOUNTS: Elon Musk has put the Twitter deal on hold while he investigates bots on the platform. Analysis by Followerwonk and SparkTork found that almost a fifth of Twitter accounts fit a conservative definition of fake or spam accounts. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
🌳 ORGANIC POSTS: LinkedIn has rolled out more granular analytics data on organic posts. You can apply various filters such as job title, location, industry, etc to isolate the numbers based on those factors. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
Tools
🛠️ DIY DASHBOARD: A dashboard provides a single source of information for a marketing or communications campaign. Options include do it yourself using automation software and RSS; custom using API data; pre-made dashboards; and manual exports into a visualisation software application such as Google Data Studio. Spotted Louise Linehan.
💻 WORKFLOW CAPTURE: ScribeHow is a tool to easily record and capture workflows that can then be shared. It’s a useful tool for demonstrations or training. Here's an example showing how to do Boolean "AND" searches in LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Source Andrew Bruce Smith.