✅ Monday Briefing: Lockdown creative, PR reporting, Kickstart scheme, recruitment recovery, flawed ad metric, Clubhouse primer, Lockdown Unconference, and more…

Practice, industry, data and reports, social media and platforms, tools, and events

This newsletter is crowdsourced each week from my blog and Lockdown Facebook community.

Lockdown is a community of practice, created nine months ago, for people studying and working in marketing, media and PR. It’s a hive mind, newsroom and source of information, help and support.

You’d be welcome to join if you haven’t already.

Practice

🎨 LOCKDOWN CREATIVE: Tamara Littleton has shared insights from Social Element’s creative process during lockdown. It includes redesigning brainstorming, the smart use of technology, silent meetings working on a shared document, and pairing people across regions, roles and experiences. Source Tamara Littleton.

💸 PAY TO PLAY: Rolling Stone magazine is offering so-called thought leaders the chance to write for its website if they are willing to pay $2,000. The publication has approached would-be members of its new Culture Council by email. It’s a murky business. Spotted David Gallagher. 

📏 PR REPORTING: Andrew Smith has written a must read guide to PR reporting for BuzzSumo. It’s a practical guide to reporting and building a measurement dashboard. I suggest reading it in conjunction with the guide that I wrote on PR measurement. Source Andrew Smith.

📖 BOOK REVIEW: Planning and Managing Public Relations Campaigns has followed the evolution of media and practice since 1996. In the fifth edition author Anne Gregory acknowledges the opportunities for public engagement created by the internet and new forms of media. Source Stephen Waddington.

Industry

👞 KICKSTART SCHEME: 25 agencies have been given the greenlight by the DWP to create 60 jobs via the PRCA. A further 30 agencies have applied to the scheme which encourages organisations to create six-month job placements for young people aged between 16-24. Spotted Stephen Waddington.

💰 RECRUITMENT RECOVERY: Digital marketing and PR recruitment has recovered to pre-pandemic levels but several sectors remain challenged according to the team at Reuben Sinclair (disclosure: I recently joined Reuben Sinclair as a NED). The lockdown is creating challenges for recruitment at both junior and senior levels. Source Stephen Waddington.

📺 FLAWED AD METRIC: The IPA is promoting share of search as a metric for advertising effectiveness based on the work of Les Binet and Peter Field on share of market. It’s a silver bullet approach and there’s limited evidence of its validity outside large FMCG markets. Proceed with caution. Spotted Andrew Smith.

Data and reports

🤳 STATE OF DIGITAL: We Are Social and Hootsuite have published their latest digital insights and social media stats. Some of the key themes to look out for include changes in how people search and the evolving demographics of online audiences. Spotted Stuart Bruce.

🔥 COVID-19 BURNOUT: Research from Global Women in PR reports that 40% of women are working longer hours in lockdown and struggling to juggle work, childcare and homeschooling. The report covers the working environment, pressures of working in PR, barriers to women taking leadership roles, parental impact and gender pay. Source Maja Pawinska Sims.

Social media and platforms

🎤 CLUBHOUSE PRIMER: Sharon O’Dea has shared lessons from hosting a session on Clubhouse. She recommends agreeing on a theme, moderator, key contributors and a date and time. The lack of analytics makes it hard to measure value. Source Sharon O’Dea.

📱 LINKEDIN ALGO INSIGHTS: LinkedIn tweaks timelines based on the device used to access the feed. On mobile you’ll see more polls and videos, and fewer external article links. On laptop/desktop you’ll see more documents and comments on posts. Source Andrew Smith.

📰 FACEBOOK NEWS: Facebook News launched in the UK following deals with publishers including the Daily Mail, The Economist, The Guardian and more. The UK launch is the first outside the US and will generate revenue for publishers. Spotted Sarah Waddington.

🐤 FLAGGING MISINFORMATION: Twitter is set to allow users to flag and annotate misleading or inaccurate tweets in an ongoing efforts to address misinformation on the platform. The company has faced growing calls to combat misinformation particularly after the 2020 presidential election. Spotted: Sarah Waddington.

Tools

📣 AUDIENCE INTELLIGENCE SEARCH: Media research tool SparkToro has launched a new feature that helps discover the media sources and hashtags use by an audience. Spotted Andrew Smith and Stuart Bruce.  

Events

🎓 LOCKDOWN UNCONFERENCE: You’re invited to join a new Unconference learning and development event at 1pm-2pm GMT, 26 February. Better still, come and share an idea. Confirm sessions include developing junior talent, social media regulation, search listening and PR reporting.