CASACOM’S TOP THREE COMMUNICATIONS STORIES OF THE WEEK

Before wrapping up your last tasks of the day, why not catch up on a few communications and PR stories and tips from this week. Here are our top three:

Audience Engagement:

Good PR involves sending a message, but it’s also about telling a story. PR that tells a story is usually successful. However, you need to understand the basics of storytelling in order to make an impact with your audience and to generate stories. Below are 10 tips that communicators can use to tell a persuasive story provided by Alisa Agozzino, Ph.D., assistant professor of public relations at Ohio Northern University.

• Communication is part of human makeup.
• Be clear in your story.
• Demonstrate how you are different.
• It is not about you.
• You don’t have to create every story organically.
• Don’t tell all in the first few sentences.
• Listen and adjust to key constituents.
• Answer the “so what?” question.
• Visuals are fun and can help tell your story.
• Keep it simple.

“10 Tips for Telling a Story That Engages Audiences” (PR News)

Strategy:

Strategy has two elements: Preparation and execution. Alex Lowy, a Toronto-based consultant, who also lectures at the Schulich and DeGroote business schools says, “About 70 to 90 per cent of strategies don’t work out and the cause of failure is that things tend to fall apart in execution.” He has put together five questions that companies need to ask if they want their strategies to be effective.

1. Why does our business deserve to succeed?

2. What would a new CEO do?

3. Imagine it is three to six years in the future and the proposed strategy has been unsuccessful. Why did it fail?

4. What would have to be true for our strategy to succeed?

5. Would I put my own money into this?

For more details and explanations on each of Lowy’s five questions, please see the article link below.

“Five questions to hone your strategy” (Globe and Mail)

Social Media:

According to a new report from Olive Media‘s ShareThis, Canadian moms spend more time on social media and share more content than both dads and people without children. ShareThis looked at the social behavior of more than 4.1 million consumers and discovered that moms in Canada spend an average of 617 minutes on social media per month. Moms can also be powerful brand advocates as they almost double the general population in clickbacks per content share.

You can read more about Canadian moms being the most social audience, as well as some other social media facts and news in the article link below:

“Social Scanner: Moms are the most social audience” (Marketing Magazine)

Thought of the week:

“Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” – Oprah Winfrey