Monday briefing #4: agencies hiring, PR in a state, freelance recovery, faking LinkedIn influence, and more...

Must read, reports, practice, commercial break, tools, platforms, traditional media, and diary dates

Good morning. My name is Stephen Waddington. This is a mix of articles from my own blog and content discussed in the marketing, media and PR community that I manage on Facebook. My thanks to all the contributors.

Must read

👨‍🎨️ SIDE HUSTLES: Like Brandwatch CMO Will McInnes I highly recommend side hustles to anyone stuck in a rut as a means of exploring creativity, learning something new and building new networks. Spotted by: Stephen Waddington.

🔥 DIGITAL CRISIS: Upmarket furniture sold by the US-based company Wayfair is at the centre of a bizarre conspiracy theory involving allegations of child trafficking, which has been spreading online. It’s a fascinating, if alarming, digital crisis case study. Spotted by: Kate Hartley.

💻 AGENCIES HIRING: Independent agencies Don’t Cry Wolf, Hard Numbers, and Lynn PR are all hiring. They each have a rock solid proposition and strong, entrepreneurial management. Good luck. Spotted by: Stephen Waddington.

📰 AD FRAUD: Tim Hughes talks to investigator Dr Augustine Fou about the 2017 multi-million dollar Uber ad fraud. Cheats simulated app installs and made up numbers. Self-interest means no one in the supply chain has any interest in tackling the issue. Spotted by: Andrew Smith.

Reports

😠 ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA: Are you finding conversation on Twitter hard going? More than 20% on Twitter during the COVID-19 crisis has been toxic according to analysis by the Reuters Institute. Spotted by: Kerry Sheehan.

👍 PLATFORM PRIMERS: Socialbakers’ latest best practice guide explores what works and what doesn’t on Facebook and Instagram. It’s packed with useful planning data and insights for execution. Source: Stephen Waddington.

Practice

☎️ POOR PITCHING: A survey of journalists in PRWeek called on PRs to stop pitching by phone. It could have been written anytime in the past decade. Alternative means of automation and email marketing are not favoured either. Spotted by: Stephen Waddington.

🖨️ PR IN A STATE: The CIPR of State of the Profession survey was concluded before lockdown. I’ve explored some of main themes and framed them in the context of COVID-19. Source: Stephen Waddington.

📈 FREELANCE RECOVERY: The freelance PR market is recovering according a survey by PR Cavalry. Flexibility and holiday cover are attributed for more than half of respondents saying work had returned to pre-crisis levels. Source: Nigel Sarbutts.

Commercial break

☕ I engage with agencies and communication teams as an advisor, non-executive director, mentor and speaker, providing pragmatic and straightforward advice and execution. If there is any way I can help you or you’d like to have a conversation, let’s jump on a Zoom call.

Tools

🔧 TOOL DEALS: AppSumo provides early access to apps and tools and lifetime deals at heavily discounted prices. The benefit to software vendors is access to an early market and scale. Spotted by: Stuart Bruce and Jerry Silfwer.

▶️ ALTERNATIVE YOUTUBE: TheirTube is a simple but powerful tool to experience YouTube with different biases. Take your pick from fruitarian, prepper, liberal, conservative, conspiracist and climate denier. Spotted by: Stephen Waddington.

Platforms

🎬 STREAMING BOOM: Netflix subscriptions are up 26 million in 2020, compared with 28 million for the whole of 2019, bringing its global paid memberships to 193 million. But the market expected even more, shares are down 10%. Spotted by: Stephen Waddington.

💼 FAKING LINKEDIN INFLUENCE: So-called pods of LinkedIn users like and comment on each other’s content increasing its apparent popularity. Often these are pay to play. It is a dubious technique that has jumped across from Instagram. Spotted by: Andrew Smith.

🤓 TWITTER HACK: It took Twitter two hours to spot last week’s hack. Secure your social media accounts with two-factor authentication and use a secure password generator and password manager such as Lastpass. Spotted: Stephen Waddington.

Traditional media

📰 GUARDIAN CUTS: The Guardian plans to cut 180 jobs, 70 in editorial. Revenues are expected to be down by more than £25m as the effects of pandemic hit media industry. Donations aren’t a viable business model. Source: Karan Chadda.

🗞️ SIGN OF THE TIMES: New York opinion editor Bari Weiss has resigned from the paper citing the influence of Twitter conversation on its on editorial. Her resignation letter is worth reading in full. Spotted by: Stephen Waddington.

Diary dates

📅 23 July – 1pm to 2pm –  Prof Anne Gregory and I will explore the impact of COVID-19 on the public relations profession in a webinar hosted by CIPR Scotland. Attendance is a £5 donation to iProvision, the CIPR’s benevolence charity.