✅ Monday briefing: Word play, training new talent, agency globalisation stalls, data science analysis, levelling up, ad platform data failure, web accessibility, and more…

Media, industry, best and bad practices, 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.

Media

🟩 WORD PLAY: Wordle raised the ire of users twice this week. On Tuesday it announced that it had been acquired by the New York Times. On Thursday the answer to the puzzle was moist - arguably one of the most hated words in the English language. The NYT has committed to keeping the game free for now. Spotted Nicky Regazzoni and her mum.

📰 NORTHERN CORRESPONDENT: The Financial Times has hired Jen Williams as its Northern England correspondent. Williams has recently worked as a politics and investigations editor at Manchester Evening News and is a previous Specialist Writer of the Year winner at the Regional Press Awards. Spotted Julian Christopher.

Industry

🙋 TRAINING NEW TALENT: The 3THINKR'S Academy is a free and open source training initiative for anyone starting out in a career in communications. Upcoming sessions for the remainder of February include: time management, building journalist relations, social media strategy, and adapting and responding to change. Source Ruth Jones.

🌍 AGENCY GLOBALISATION STALLS: Agency networks are more likely to retrench than invest in overseas market in 2022 but working internationally is more important than ever according to Arun Sudhaman writing in PRovoke. He cites factors such as supply chain management and geo-politics as important drivers. Spotted Ayeni Adekunle.

📊 DATA SCIENCE JOB ANALYSIS: Wafts from Whitehall provides insight on public sector investment in policy and comms talent. Alex Waddington (no relation) scrapes Civil Service job sites and uses a data analysis tool to extract information. He’s running a free session on data science and public relations from 1-2pm on 9 March. Source Alex Waddington.

⬆️ LEVELLING UP: The much awaited Levelling Up White Paper was effectively a devolution announcement and message for combined authorities and local enterprise partnerships to get organised. The vision will hopefully drive political change but there was limited new investment to address deprived areas of the UK. Spotted Stephen Waddington.

Best and bad practice

😡 AD PLATFORM DATA FAILURE: IAB Europe’s so-called Transparency and Consent Framework breaches GDPR legislation on multiple counts. A case brought by the Belgian Data Protection Authority ruled that data collected via the platform must be deleted. Thousands of firms use the platform including Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.

♿ WEB ACCESSIBILITY: Social media strategist Alexa Heinrich shared an example of how web accessibility tools interpret Wordle posts. It's hell and a powerful demonstration of the impact of inaccessible web design. Meanwhile the Financial Times has switched from m to mn for million because screen-readers read m as metre. Spotted Mags Halliday.

Research and insight

📈 TRENDING COMMS: CEOs speaking up on human rights issues, disinformation, the financial value on trust, diversity and inclusion, and the smarter use of technology in communication are among communication trends discussed on the latest PRovoke podcast. Must listen. Source Maja Pawinska Sims and Diana Marszalek.

🏷️ TITLE TAGS: A study by SEO tool Zyppy found Google rewrites web page titles in two-thirds of cases. Titles have a large impact on click-through rates because they provide important context to search engines. Length, duplication, use of separators, and superfluous brand names are factors that are likely to result in a rewrite. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.

💼 STATE OF THE PROFESSION: The annual CIPR survey aims to gather practitioner data on the future of the profession on topics including salaries, pay gaps, day-to-day activities and challenges. Please contribute via this online survey. It takes 5-10 minutes to complete. Source Jon Gerlis.

Social media and platforms

📉 DAILY USERS DOWN: Facebook lost daily users for the first time in the final quarter of 2021. CEO Mark Zuckerberg attributed this to competition from platforms such as TikTok. Shares in parent company Meta have dropped by more than a quarter amid fears of a long term impact on the company’s ad revenues. Source Alan Morrison.

Tools

🔧 TWITTER TOOLBOX: Twitter has published a list of recommended content scheduling, safety, and measurement tools. Buffer gets the thumbs up for scheduling; Moderate for management; Thread Reader for unrolling threads; and Followerwonk for analytics and bio searches. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.

💻 DEEPMIND AI: DeepMind has taught some of its machines to write computer software – and it performs almost as well as a human coder. The new AlphaCode system is claimed by DeepMind to be able to solve software problems that require a combination of logic, critical thinking and the ability to understand natural language. Spotted Catherine Arrow.

Disclosure: 3THINKR’S is a Wadds Inc. client.