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True Stories: Blog

In True Stories: Blog

6 Tips to Create an Annual Report You’ll be Proud to Publish

When the time comes to start drafting your organization’s annual report, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. What information should you include? How long should the final document be? What should it look like? Whether you’re drafting your first annual report or have been writing one for years, it can be difficult to get started. With nearly twenty years of experience helping organizations tell their story through annual reports and other communications, we’re sharing six tips we’ve learned to help you create an impactful report that you’ll be proud to share with your stakeholders. 1. Define Your Audience Before starting any major communications project,...

In True Stories: Blog

What is IGTV and How Will It Impact Your Social Media Campaigns?

Yesterday Instagram launched IGTV, a new app that will allow creators to share long-form videos. Staying true to Instagram’s mobile-first strategy, videos will be displayed in a vertical, full-screen format. But, unlike the traditional Instagram feed and Instagram Stories, IGTV videos can be up to one hour in length, giving creators and brands the opportunity to spend more time with their audience. Leveraging One Billion Users IGTV will allow content creators to start their own channels to which users can subscribe. While IGTV is a standalone app, Instagram’s full user base of one billion accounts can access IGTV from within the native...

In True Stories: Blog

Facebook Privacy Updates Impact Ad Targeting and Results

As Facebook and other platforms address questions about online privacy and what types of information they allow brands to use when targeting advertising, users continue to see privacy update after update roll out. Over the past few months, we’ve seen major updates for Facebook, Google and virtually every social platform out there. While these updates give users the sense of safety from their online data being used for targeted ads, these updates also remove targeting options and the opportunity for brands to connect with audiences.  Facebook announced over the next six months, it will disable ad targeting based on data provided by third party partners...

In True Stories: Blog

5 Ways to Enhance Your Web Design

If you’re reading this right now, we only have about 10 seconds to convince you to stay on our site. So how do we do that? We make sure our website design is visually appealing and the information on it is straightforward and easy to find. Here are our top five tips to help you enhance your web design: Give the people what they want. Design your site with the user’s experience in mind.Your user’s experience is the top priority, so you need to design your site with the user’s experience in mind. To do so, determine why they are there, what information...

In True Stories: Blog

Why the Lady Doritos Debacle is a Great Lesson in Media Training and Crisis Management

Earlier this week, an important lesson in media training and crisis management unfolded on Twitter. On the Friday episode of the Freakonomics Radio podcast, PepsiCo’s CEO Indra Nooyi made unfortunate comments that sent the internet into frenzy. Answering a question about whether men and women eat chips differently, Nooyi said there’s indeed a difference. She said, “Male consumers, they love their Doritos, and they lick their fingers with great glee, and women don’t like to crunch too loudly in public. And, they don’t lick their fingers generously and they don’t like to pour the little broken pieces and the flavor into their mouth.” This promoted...

In True Stories: Blog

What’s an Unpaid Contributor Worth?

Not much, according to the latest editorial philosophy at Huffington Post. The site just closed the doors on its open platform for contributors. Over 100,000 individuals were posting content even though they were unpaid. Some even offered up interesting stuff that we’ve shared on our own social channels. Yet, we’ve also encountered a fair share of contributors who milked the platform for all it was worth – inquiries to test (and keep) client products being one of the chief ploys, ostensibly for inclusion in the numerous listicles and gift guides so prevalent on the site. At the same time, HuffPost certainly benefitted from...

In True Stories: Blog

Essential Research Questions for PR and Marketing Pros

Ask (the right) questions first, shoot out communications later. Everyone loves to talk about data-driven PR. Research, insights, measurement, analytics, market intelligence – the PR services offer has certainly embraced tactics once relegated to brand and product marketing tool boxes. And while we continue to chip away at the dated perception that PR professionals skipped the STEM track, we still run across plenty of instances where costly campaigns are based on guesswork, bad assumptions, personal bias or, at best, instant surveys, skewed focus groups or generic third-party data.  Sad, expensive, ultimately ineffective and 100% unnecessary. When we say, “let’s research that,” we...

In True Stories: Blog

PR Trend: Paid Content Sparks Earned Media

Sponsored. Underwritten. Paid. Native. Branded. All these words have one thing in common within the context of media - they suggest that a story, video or other piece of content was purchased. Paid content used to be the less credible cousin to earned content. On the public relations side, we've long viewed "earned" as PR's hallowed ground: media coverage, or any content produced independently, without money changing hands. How things have changed. Sure, we still earn great coverage through traditional research, proof point development, pitching and good old-fashioned persistence in finding the right medium and journalist for the message. More and more often, though, paid elements are very much a part of successful PR...

In True Stories: Blog

Are You Wasting Your Digital Dollars on the Wrong Creative?

What makes consumers pull the trigger on purchasing a product? If I had a nickel for every article written that tries to answer this question, my garage would eclipse Jay Leno’s. Yet, despite the avalanche of intelligence on influence and behavior, there is no clear-cut solution. That’s because we’ve never been exposed to more messages. Whether you’re getting streams of ads or branded content served up on your social feeds, consume digital billboard messages while stuck in traffic or feel overwhelmed by the hundreds of online offers on your industry trade media websites, your information filter is logging some serious overtime.  Add...

In True Stories: Blog

To Go Live or Not Go Live – That is the Question Brands Are Asking

Ever since Facebook launched their live video offering last April, clients and colleagues alike have been asking if and when they should go live. As always, with any kind of content, context is key. So, let’s look at the Reasons To Go Live: It’s what Facebook wants you to do. Facebook programs their algorithm to support the technologies they want you to use. And, right now, they want you to go live. This means terrific reach results as the algorithm places a premium on live video in user news feeds. So, if you want your content to be seen, going live is a great way to...