Stories by Justin Joffe

Asked what type of social video they watched most, consumers’ top three responses were telling: how-to videos, lists, and clips about sales and promos. Two of these video types also translate to strategies for engagement through editorial content—the reason people read so many listicles and how-to pieces is because they want to know, upfront, how the information you are providing benefits them. It’s unsurprising, then, that providing a service to your audience through how-to content and lists provides many happy returns in video form, too.

Apple CEO Tim Cook took to the stage at Wednesday’s International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners open session and took a pot shot “platform and algorithms” that “weaponize personal data,” as senior executives from Facebook and Google watched in silence. His words support the increasingly popular belief among communicators that social media regulation will actually be good for the big platforms, as it leads to improved user trust.

Search engine optimization is a necessary skill for any communicator who wants to earn a spot on page one of Google search, but it’s often less of a cross-organizational best practice and instead siloed into a niche function. Because of this, certain content decisions might be cause for rethinking your organization’s SEO strategy. And influencer marketing is one of those cases.

Ticketmaster’s banking on the hope that it’s decision to become the largest B2C brand to openly embrace technology will curb some of the reputational damage its done to itself over the years. But will its educating the masses on the transparency of blockchain make a difference if people don’t understand it?

Your strategy for getting that copy to the top of the newsfeed only works until it doesn’t, right? Not entirely. As an extension of solid communication skills, good, clear and direct writing will always be a highly valued skill on social. We caught up with Devon Harris, brand strategist at Twitter, to learn about some new and evergreen strategies for making sure your brand copy reaches—and resonates—with as many people as possible.

On the surface, this effort to give Senator Warren’s claims factual support seemed like an artfully executed campaign. Later that day, though, it became clear that the DNA test had done more harm than good. Senator Warren’s gaffe amounts to lessons learned for communicators about timing, why mixing heritage into your outreach strategies can be a dangerous game, and how to take cultural stand without angering any constituency of people.

It’s still tough for some American communicators to tell just what all of this means for us, at least until we start to see some consequences from GDPR’s enforcement. Those consequences will arrive by end of year in the form of sanctions, though, according to European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli.

The idea that most Americans have lost the ability to speak civilly to each other in these uncertain times may not be Robert Reich’s alone, but he offered an imperative specific to the 2,500+ communicators at the international PRSA confab—in an age when people don’t know how to talk to each other, or how to listen, it’s communications pros who must act as stewards and promoters of civility. “You are people who set the tone very much for what we and how we communicate,” Reich says. “And there is now a vitriol, and anger in the system. We are not communicating.”

“The millennial and Gen Z audience are always looking behind the marketing narrative at the purpose and the intention of companies and brands that they engage with,” says TwentyFirstCenturyBrand’s Jonathan Mildenhall (formerly of Airbnb and Coca-Cola). Here are some key tips for brands looking to define that purpose from Mildenhall’s keynote address at the PRSA International Conference 2018.

There’s more demand than ever for companies that specialize in teaching brands how to write for voice. A leader among them, PullString, built a platform that enables brands to create highly engaging voice applications for devices like Alexa and Google Home without writing any code.