Social Media Thought Leadership for Executive Teams

Still can’t get your C-suite to understand their role in social media thought leadership strategy?  
Get them to read this….

Social media is already a multi-trillion dollar industry and Boston Global Consulting predicts it will be at $4.2 trillion by 2016. With over two billion people using it globally, executives are making it a priority to understand the impact of social media on their business and just as importantly, on their own careers. (more…)

Like a big rock thrown into a pool, the many ripples from mass media redundancies and some sackings of journalists and others across Australia’s main newspaper groups can be expected to last long and have a profound effect.
For some it is straightforward enough. Ask a top reporter at one metropolitan daily about the impact and he simply says: “Virtually everything I now write gets in and I work one Sunday in four instead of one in six.” (more…)

What Does it Mean For Media Managers?

The muffled scream was followed by yet another body being thrown down the lift well. Metaphorically speaking this has been the fate of some top newspaper editors lately, as media organisations grope towards online news as a means of survival.
Top Editors at The Age and Herald Sun in Melbourne joined their ousted colleagues at the Sydney Morning Herald as, to mix a metaphor, the tumbrels of the new regime rolled on.
Some Fairfax journos struck over outsourcing sub-editors’ jobs to New Zealand, a largely symbolic step with no discernible effect. (more…)

It’s called the golden hour. That is how much time there is to respond to a crisis or incident breaking in the media.
Time is telescoped by digital and social media. Eyewitness accounts of events rocket out on Twitter at a speed once unimaginable.
So, says an expert, crisis management and communication plans are irresponsible or worse unless they include digital and social media.
This advice comes from Jane Jordan-Meier, author of The Four Stages of Highly Effective Crisis Management: how to manage the media in the digital age. (more…)

With a mix of fascination and horror, we watch the media circus that accompanies sensational courtroom stories on the television news.
Thank god it’s not me, we all think. However, increased regulation and litigation mean more and more organisations are likely to find themselves embroiled in a court case.
In this article, we look at the best ways to manage the opportunities and risks of courtroom communications.
(more…)

Many people, experienced and inexperienced, speak of times when they believe they have been ‘misquoted’ by print journalists – usually when the words attributed to them cause, rather than solve,…

This article was first published on Dec 27, 2010, and revised on Nov 24, 2017. One of the hardest parts of the job for media spokespeople and their communications gatekeepers is being…

It has got to be the most frequent question asked in media training: “Should I ever go off the record?” There appears to be a huge amount of confusion about…

When recession starts to bite, does your organisation see communication as an essential or a luxury? In hard times, should you shun the spotlight or stay visible and on message?…

“Hi this is Janey from AcmePR. I was just wondering if you received the press release on our new product.”
This type of phone call is the bane of every journalist, editor, reporter and producer working in the media.
“I really hate the follow up call,” said a leading Australian magazine editor.
“Ninety-nine times out of one hundred it is from a poor PR lackey that has been told to ring you and ask you this banal question and whether you are going to do a story on it.”
The follow up call that has no value, does nothing except interrupt someone and ask him or her if they have received something they are likely to have received.
Not all media releases go out to the media never to be heard of again. They can be a valid source of news ideas. “If I see something in a media release that I think has value, then I will ring,” said one Fairfax reporter. “In fact, I have rung several people today on the back of media releases.” (more…)

It seems these days that news is no longer solely the domain of hard facts, events and people doing extraordinary things — there is another element driving the media agenda – opinion.
Whether it be comments from twitter, blogs, surveys, polls or talk back radio – public opinion is dominating much of the news.
Even journalists are no longer objective reporters of the truth; many have become commentators in their own right. A reporter interviewing another reporter has become commonplace.
(more…)