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Deirdre Breakenridge and Elizabeth Sosnow joined host Shel Holtz for conversations about these topics:
- Twitter is doubling the character count for a tweet from 140 to 280. Not surprisingly, opinions vary on whether this is a good idea.
- Rather than touting the benefits Artificial Intelligence can bring to their products and services, companies are simply saying, “We’ve got AI!” The AI-washing needs to stop.
- Citibank has a music strategy for its latest ad campaign. Does the focus on music mean words are on the wane?
- Most communicators still haven’t heard of blockchain, but there are those who are already having to navigate its complicated world.
- A study finds that publishers who pivoted to video have suffered massive declines in page views. Wasn’t everything supposed to be pivoting to video?
- Dan York reports on developments in the world of live streaming video along with an update on the WordPress editor, Gutenberg.
Connect with our guests via Twitter at @debreakenridge and @ElizabethSosnow.
Beginning with this episode, we will post links to content addressed during the show directly in the show notes. They appear at the end of the post.
Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.
FIR is recorded with Zencastr.
About today’s guest co-hosts:
Deirdre Breakenridge is the CEO of Pure Performance Communications. A 25+ year veteran in PR and marketing, she is the author of six business books with her newest book, Answers for Modern Communicators to be published by Routledge in the fall 2017. Her other recent titles include, Social Media and Public Relations: Eight New Practices for the PR Professional,” “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations,” and “PR 2.0, New Media, New Tools, New Audiences.” Breakenridge speaks nationally and internationally on the topics of PR, marketing, branding and social media. She is an adjunct professor at UMASS at Amherst, and an online instructor for Rutgers University. She is also a LinkedIn video instructor with three PR courses published in 2015 and 2016 and two more marketing courses to be published in 2017. Breakenridge hosts the podcast show, Women Worldwide and is a blogger at PR Expanded. She was named by Traackr as one of the top Social Media Engagers in 2014, awarded the Best 50 Women in Business by NJBIZ in 2015, and recognized on the Richtopia 250 Most Influential Women Leaders in the World List in 2016 and 2017.
Since 1996, Elizabeth Sosnow has been part of the management team responsible for the Bliss Integrated Communication‘s overall operations and strategic direction. As Managing Partner and co-owner, she creates and oversees integrated marketing strategy and execution for large professional and financial services accounts. Elizabeth directs the firm’s digital activities, helping major clients and colleagues assess and maximize audience engagement via evolving communications tools. She oversees the firm’s award-winning company blog, The Blend, and has her own vlog, Marketing Espresso Shots. Elizabeth is the past Chair of the Digital Practice for Worldcom’s Global Board of Directors and previously held that position for the Americas region Board of Directors. Her own guest blog posts have appeared in Convince and Convert, PR Daily, Content Marketing Institute, and Communications Conversations, among many others. She was recently named one of “50 Game Changers of PR” by PR News.
Links for this episode:
- Twitter trials an expansion beyond 140 characters
- Twitter testing 280-character tweets
- 140-characters, the defining quirk of Twitter, becomes a relic of the past
- Twitter gives brands space to run, brands run badly
- Twitter users respond to 280-character limit – mostly in 140 characters
- Of course brands are already joking about Twitter’s new 280-character limit
- Twitter’s 280-character tweets are fine
- Companies need to stop AI-washing their products
- AI will turn PR people into superheroes within one year
- PR firms start using AI for mundane tasks
- Why you’ll recognize the tunes in Citi’s new campaign
- Comms pros navigate the complex world of blockchain
- The secret cost of pivoting to video
Links from Dan York’s report:
Since I don’t do Facebook, I’ll have to leave my comments here.
First, I think we need to distinguish between behavior specific to a generation and behavior specific to an age group. I don’t know what it was like when you were a teenager, but back in the ’80s when I was in high school, life had a soundtrack. There were songs for all occasions and we pretty much only stopped listening to music when we had to. People copied their vinyl albums onto cassettes in order to share them with friends and watched music videos on MTV for hours. Adolescence is an emotional time and music is an emotional medium. It’s no surprise that teenagers are obsessed with it in any era.
Regarding VR/AR, while I can’t see putting on a headset for 10 minutes, one area I can see this taking off in is the tourism and museum industry. I met my husband in the course of an attempt to create 3D computer renderings of a particular archaeological site, and while that project didn’t get off the ground, I’m sure there would be plenty of people eager to engage in immersive tours like this as part of visits to places like Stonehenge or Macchu Pichu. (Or even instead of them.)
As for WordPress, so far as I can see development of Gutenberg didn’t miss a beat. The editor team has released several new iterations, even though the JavaScript team is still figuring out what framework to adopt. I think the idea is that they want to move ahead with implementing and testing features, even if they may need to rewrite their code later. If you’re interested in seeing what it’s like, you can go over to https://gutenberg.eastbaywp.com and create an account.