Interesting





Today is American Thanksgiving and in honour of our U.S. family, friends and clients, I thought I would use football to make my points today. We have TV sets in our AHA office and usually they are tuned in to news channels; today they will be on football.



What we do as communicators can be compared to football. In the sport, there is an offence and defence; we have proactive and reactive. Each person on the football team plays a key role in their success. Some show their abilities on the field (the players), others in the background (the coaches, trainers, front office staff).



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I recently received an email from an organization in the communications field asking for my input. The email offered me the chance to win an iPod Shuffle. I found it surprising that an organization in this field would reach out to communicators and offer that as the prize. The communicators I know either have iPhones or smart phones that hold music or they already have a music player. And a Shuffle is pretty far down the food chain. An iPad would have been a better prize; only about half of the communicators I know have a tablet of some type.



It was clear to me that this organization either didn’t think about the audience for this request or didn’t care. Trying to better understand the “what’s in it for me,” I went through their request. (There always has to be something in it for the person you are asking to take action.) They wanted to know about social media and how it has impacted what I do, but nowhere did it say that it would share the results. An oversight perhaps… But then I realized I have received emails from this organization before – emails trying to sell me reports. I didn’t take the survey and I asked to be removed from their mailing list.



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I saw something on Facebook this morning that really made me sit back and think. I have quite a few “friendly acquaintances” on Facebook. For the purpose of this blog, I will call them “pals.” These are people I have met and like, but that I don’t connect with very much in the real world. Some I met through work, others from my personal life. Many of them I met while travelling.



I don’t hold the same political views as some of them. I have to admit, I have found some of the discussions and ideas put forward by a some of my “pals” a little worrisome. Especially when it comes to politics – specifically in the U.S. There are some very personal attacks on politicians happening these days – on both the Democratic and Republican sides. We’re seeing a little of it here in Canada but not to the degree that it happens in the U.S.



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I was fortunate enough to attend a Vancouver CPRS breakfast event where Gillian Shaw, Digital Life Reporter for the Vancouver Sun, spoke about what it is like to be a journalist in the age of social media. It was an excellent event – well run, interesting and I walked away feeling like I had learned something valuable. Gillian Shaw is an excellent speaker – full of knowledge, authentic and she gives the audience information, knowledge and her experience. She isn’t there to impress, she is there to share and provide insight. (Which means she ends up impressing.)



Gillian had a lot of insight into how the world is changing and how we as communications professionals can make the most of this. One of the areas that she talked about was the online newsroom. The online newsroom is a component, in my opinion, of brand journalism and it is a hugely effective tool for an organization.



We’ve all made use of (and in some cases still are using) media kits. Most of us have, at some point, created b-roll for media use and provided images on a disk. The online newsroom holds all of the information that would normally be in a media kit – and more. It allows your organization to become a “media outlet” on its own, because these days, you aren’t just informing and showcasing your news to journalists – you are making it available to all stakeholders online. An online newsroom can have interviews with key subjects about a topic (including industry and community leaders and other relevant individuals), it can provide a range of photos (for web and print usage), it provides facts and stats. It can provide editorial style articles, brief profiles, and industry overviews and “state of the industry” forecasts. And, as Ms. Shaw pointed out, some organization’s online newsrooms even provided suggested tweets about their organization. I have to admit that when she first said that, I was skeptical – but the more I thought about it, if the tweets are accurate, interesting and aren’t self-promotional, I don’t see why not.



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