Letter from Kingston Park: rugby lessons for life

Facebook privacy, improving your media relations game, report on organic engagement, Comms School on content, and Metia recruitment drive.

I’ve had a break from my weekly letter for a couple of weeks due to holidays and my stag do. Both events passed off without incident but I’m sure that you understand.

Wedding preparations are in the final stages. We’ve less than four weeks to the ceremony in New York. It’s going to be the full City Hall designed-for-Instagram experience that you’d expect from Sarah Hall and I. We’ve then a humanist celebration planned with friends and family on our houseboat in London at the end of June. I’m on the lookout for an outdoor container to hold 125kg of ice to chill drinks if you’ve any ideas.

I’ve been at Kingston Park, home of the Newcastle Falcons, this morning with my son’s country development squad. The teaching is as much about mental health and life skills as it is about the game. That’s no bad thing given the season that the Falcons have had in the RFU Premiership. We return to the Championship for the 2019/2020 season.

🤚 Facebook privacy isn’t necessarily a good thing

Facebook’s big play at its F8 developer conference this year was privacy. CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a keynote speech that it’s an area in which the social media firm has a lousy reputation. Facebook’s plan is to shift to privacy by default, effectively building a private version of the internet. While that may be good for personal privacy, I’ve argued in a blog post that it’s a threat to public conversation. #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo are unlikely to have emerged from a private version of Facebook.

📰 Land a media relations pitch with SEO and social audience data

If you want to improve your media relations game I recommend reading the 2019 Cision Global State of Media Report. It contains useful insights for media relations practitioners seeking to cut through with their pitches. Tailored pitches have always been the key to success in media relations. Adding SEO and social data to pitches adds huge value for time pressed journalists. Views are the most common measure of success for publishers.

💬 Report: Organic engagement on major social networks

Seth Bridge, founder of social analytics firm Rival IQ, has written a cracking guest blog post for me spotlighting opportunities of organic engagement on social media. He pulls data from Rival IQ’s annual benchmarking report: Facebook engagement is declining; Instagram is stable and relatively high; and Twitter stable but low. Passion, purpose, community and stories drive engagement. It a long read but well worth your time.

👩‍🎓 Comms School on content

It’s the penultimate Comms School session on Tuesday when Marcel Klebba and I will be discussing how to find sources of inspiration for content. You’d be welcome to join us at 6.30pm, BST or catch the replay via the Facebook group. Around 500 people have joined us for the sessions to learn basic communication skills to help get started and ahead in their career. We’re thinking about what might come next. Let me know if you’ve any ideas.

💼 Metia in recruitment drive

Metia is on a recruitment drive following a series of wins. We’re looking for account executives and managers to join both our digital marketing and public relations teams. We’ve also roles open in Singapore and Seattle. Give me a shout if you want to talk about what we’re up to. Maybe you fancy a change and want to join a hot independent digital agency. No dicks, please.

If you like this letter, please forward it to a couple of friends by email and recommend that they sign-up. Social shares are also appreciated but they rarely result in new people subscribing to my letter. Thank you.

Have a great week.


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Cision report: land a media relations pitch with SEO and social audience data