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Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.

From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.

Navigating Metaverse and What to Make of the Space

By now, everyone has likely heard of the metaverse. Though, despite its prevalence, the definition of the term is unclear. Descriptions of the metaverse vary, which feed into overwhelming confusion surrounding the word. However, a consistent variable of the metaverse is a “digital world with immersive experiences.”

With this explanation as a lens, it can be easier to understand metaverse and see that it already exists in science fiction, virtual reality (VR) and gaming ecosystems, such as Minecraft and Fortnite, and even a Peloton Bike, where users participate in virtual experiences. 

So, while Xbox owner Microsoft’s recent announcement of its acquisition of gaming studio Activision Blizzard did not surprise the gaming world, what has drawn broader attention is how the company positioned the news. In Microsoft’s press release, the company said that the acquisition will “provide building blocks for the metaverse.” Viewing this messaging with knowledge of gaming and VR platforms makes the connection logical and seemingly harmless.

However, in a recent episode of The New York Times’ The Daily podcast, they discussed Microsoft’s announcement and evaluated potential concerns with the space. They emphasized that metaverse is no longer just science fiction and highlighted concerns about big tech companies harnessing control of the creation and evolution of the sector. Nike, Walmart, Disney, and of course Facebook, or Meta, are a few of the big names that have announced plans or existing investments in the metaverse.

The concern The Daily flagged primarily centers around the uncertainty of the future of the space and the prospect of a finite number of companies governing a new reality.

For example, as large tech companies invest billions of dollars in informing and making a profit off users in the metaverse, they will solidify their control over consumer behaviors and information. The dystopian worry then becomes that these companies will shape an immersive digital world while the real world tackles issues like climate change and inequity. And that these tech giants will control the metaverse, just like they control much of today’s internet.

With these concerns on the table, users should be cautious about the evolution of the space. For other tech companies, it’s wise to familiarize themselves with the space now and determine how the metaverse could support stakeholders and customers. Through this exploration, companies should also consider the potential value or role they can play in shaping the metaverse to ensure it is an equitable space.

A recent article in PR Daily outlined three tips companies can consider as they navigate the metaverse. The tips include increasing education around metaverse, setting company objectives around the space, and determining opportunities for participation.

These tips are informative in that they can help companies map out whether or not getting involved in the sector makes sense. Like other tech tools or platforms, it’s not always a one-size-fits-all approach. The fluidity of the metaverse in itself should motivate companies to take a strategic look at where and how they can add value to the digital ecosystem in the short and long term.

The metaverse is an exciting topic and one that will continue to present new opportunities and concerns. We’re eager to see this space unfold and help our clients position relevant news in the metaverse.

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Revealed: Most Popular Posts of 2021 vs. 2011

Over the years since we started the Communiqué PR blog, the readership has steadily grown. Our team writes PR-focused posts that provide thought leadership on trends, summarize client results, and offer guidance with tips and tricks relevant to marketing executives, PR practitioners and business leaders.

It is revealing to look back at what posts were most popular with our readers 10 years ago compared with those of the past year. The blog posts that secured the most unique visitors in 2021 focused on social media, storytelling, and effective messaging.

In 2011, the most popular posts were more varied – ranging from mastering the nine-second sound bite and tips for April Fools’ Day announcements to tactical guidance on choosing hashtags.

The style of our blog has evolved while still publishing posts that offer guidance and counsel but tying recommendations to current events or prominent figures. You can find the links to the top posts for 2021 and 2011 below.

We look forward to providing ongoing PR expertise, perspective and critique in the coming year.

Below is the list of the most popular blog posts published in 2021 based on the number of unique visits during the year.  

  1. Storytelling Lessons Writers Can Learn from Taylor Swift
  2. How to Disconnect from Social Media but Stay Connected to the World
  3. 5 TikTok Tips Every Content Creator Should Follow in 2021
  4. Tips on Protecting Your Brand from Social Media Impersonators
  5. ‘The Hill We Climb:’ Using Poetry and Art in Effective Messaging and Communications

 

According to our post “A Look Back at 2011,” the most popular Communiqué PR blog posts ten years ago included:

  1. How to Choose the Best Twitter Hashtag
  2. The Importance of Body Language
  3. Mastering the Nine Second Sound Bite
  4. Public Relations, April Fools’ Day, and Fake News
  5. Motivation for Higher Performance: The Purpose Motive v. the Profit Motive
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Six Tips on How to Organize your Digital Workspace

Since I began working as a public relations intern with Communiqué PR about three months ago, I have found my work requires a lot of organization, attention to detail and an ability to track and meet deadlines. As such, I’ve had the opportunity to hone my digital organizational skills and thought it would be helpful to share some of my best practices.

Below are a few of my top tips:

  • Plan your digital organization. I found Melanie Pinola’s article, “How to Organize your Digital Files” in Wirecutter, to be especially helpful. She writes, “Make a plan. Before you start attacking your files, take stock of what you must organize, and visualize what an organized file system looks like to you.” Her piece helped me realize that planning is often the first step to success in digital organization.
  • Create a folder structure. According to a productivity blog by Microsoft, it’s best to organize your files by name, date, project or department. I categorize my projects by client. This method helps me easily keep track of my files, and OneNote automatically arranges files by date.
  • Decide on a file naming convention. When saving your digital files, it’s best to have a consistent naming convention so that you can easily find your files. Again, according to Microsoft’s productivity experts, it’s helpful to use more specific file names. For instance, when I name a file “Blog-Digital-Organization-January2022,” it is specific to the project and date and contains keywords, which will make it easier to find in the future.
  • Delete and archive email first. When your inbox fills up with messages, be proactive about managing them. If you’ve already responded to an email, and it isn’t something you’ll need in the future, consider deleting or moving it to an “Archive” folder. Check out more tips for email management here. 
  • Tag your files. Pinola’s article also featured a tip on using tags. A tag is a label attached to documents and other files that you can use to locate content. By tagging documents, you can identify content that is related to each other or pertaining to the same project. For instance, if I add “blog” and “2021” to select files, then when I do a search, it will be easier for me to locate them. To add a tag, right-click on the file, select properties, choose details, and add keywords.
  • Pin your folders for quick access. In a Lifewire article, “How to Use Windows 10 Quick Access,” Jerri Ledford discusses the advantages of pinning items to your Quick Access folder. In File Explorer, a pin allows you to save frequently used documents and folders more easily and quickly. It is a good idea to pin frequently used files.

Taking the time to get organized is essential, but it will also help you be more efficient in the long run. I would love to hear any of your best tips for digital organization.

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Top Tips to Future-Proof Your Business

Transformations to the digital world and workplace are happening all the time and impact how we interact with our organizations daily. This shift has emphasized the need for collaborative tools, new communication techniques, increased security and maintenance of competency as team members span across various locations and business practices shift.

Keeping up with the times is difficult enough on a personal level, but what can we do to ensure success for our businesses now and in the future? Here are four top tips to future-proof your business:

 

  1. Keep Up with the News

This will come naturally to most but keeping up with current trends is key to maintaining an understanding of where our world is going, and it’s important to update yourself daily. Investing in subscriptions to news outlets may prove beneficial, and the Apple News app is an easy way to keep up. Readers can receive live updates and notifications for breaking news, and can also subscribe to preferred outlets through the app.

It is not the sole responsibility of leadership to keep up with current trends and shifts within the industry, but executives can set a great example by maintaining competency for themselves, sharing their knowledge with the broader team, and encouraging coworkers to do the same.

 

  1. Utilize Effective Team Collaboration Tools

Cloud usage is becoming more ubiquitous, and the importance of an effective virtual workplace directly impacts the quality of service businesses can provide. With enterprises on both a national and international levels moving toward remote work, cloud capabilities, the need to keep data safe, organization and convenience remain key.

Luckily, businesses no longer need to use multiple applications to satisfy all of the communication and organizational needs that cooperation demands. It will be most beneficial for businesses to adopt these suite-style services, as it is more cohesive, accessible and cost-effective to have a sole provider rather than multiple. The ability to utilize multiple capabilities under one umbrella, such as office suite applications, collaboration, meeting infrastructure, IaaS and more is a major draw to simplify a business’s needs.

 

  1. Understand Data Security Evolution

Maintaining and understanding data sovereignty is an ongoing process that requires thought and care. Given the numerous, and sometimes inconsistent, array of data regulations, the responsibility for staying up-to-speed on data sovereignty often falls on the shoulders of IT teams. The stakes for compliance are high. Running afoul with any of the many regulations or laws can cost companies and individuals money and resources.

With the introduction of cloud applications, IT teams will need to evolve their thinking on security, their policies of managing it, and consider data sovereignty, as well. Questions that IT teams must address to mitigate cloud-security risks include:

  • Have data sovereignty regulations been considered, and has your team ensured that these rules can be met?
  • Is one cloud tenant or are multiple tenants needed for your data protection?
  • Is a regional cloud ecosystem reliable for you?
  • When your core business systems rely on cloud service providers, what is your business continuity plan (BCP)?

If businesses don’t remain current, they risk falling behind in the blink of an eye, or even facing legal repercussions. Abiding by updated regional data sovereignty laws can future-proof your business today and tomorrow.

 

  1. Understand ESG

Among businesses and corporations, a new emergence of consideration surrounding environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) plays a vital role in whether investors and consumers are inclined to buy into a company or utilize their services. This is especially pertinent as millennials settle into the workplace and Gen Z enters it.

This newness may shift the idea of which companies are valued more than others. While a company’s reputation is not limited to its ESG score, prospective clients, customers and investors may be influenced by how a company treats its employees, handles social issues, and the company’s geopolitical view.

Investments and business activity will follow those companies that score well and demonstrate their dedication to sustainability, carbon-neutral initiatives, broader social issues and team member satisfaction. Companies must think long-term in order to remain successful. There are sustainable funds that exist so that investors can contribute to companies that meet ESG criteria and adhere to sustainability goals. Enterprises that fail to factor ESG into their long-term planning risk falling behind.

The tech world changes every day. If you don’t remain current, you and your business can fall behind in the blink of an eye. The largest key to future-proofing your business is to simply keep up and adapt as necessary. Get comfortable with change and know that it will continue to come consistently. Companies that future-proof well will possess team members that are passionate about maintain industry competency, are competitive in their progressions, have safety and security at their core and remain proactive.

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AP Style Evolves with the Pandemic

As we begin the third calendar year of the coronavirus pandemic, the fast-spreading omicron variant has thrown us yet another curveball, causing staffing shortages and closures and disrupting essential services for travelers, medical patients and students alike. Over the past 24 months, terms like COVID-19, social distancing and quarantine have become part of our daily vernacular.

As the virus evolves, so does the terminology we use to tell the story, and the AP Stylebook recently updated their topical guide on the coronavirus to reflect these developments.  

While the terms quarantine and isolation have been used interchangeably during the pandemic, the team at AP points out that they have distinct meanings. This guidance is especially timely with last week’s updates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cutting the recommended isolation period for people who tested positive for COVID-19 from 10 days to five. Isolation refers to preventing disease by separating sick people from healthy people. On the other hand, quarantine refers to separating and restricting the movement of those exposed to COVID-19 or another contagious disease to see if they become sick.

The updated guide includes new COVID-19 terms, including booster, breakthrough infection and hybrid immunity. Other updates to the AP guide include:

  • Vaccine or vaccination? According to AP Style, a vaccination refers to the act of giving a vaccine and can be used interchangeably with the term immunization. Writers should refer to the COVID-19 vaccine (or vaccination) or coronavirus vaccine (or vaccination) rather than an anti-COVID-19 vaccine or anti-coronavirus vaccine. It is not necessary to indicate the type of vaccine unless it is relevant to the story or using the manufacturer’s name is essential to distinguish between vaccines. Finally, the team at AP advises avoiding the shorthand vax or vaxxed.
  • What’s in a name? According to AP Style, virus variants, which writers can also refer to as versions, should be identified by the letter of the Greek alphabet assigned by the World Health Organization, such as omicron, and not include numbers, such as B.1.7. Avoid identifying variants with country labels like the South Africa variant.
  • Mask up! The coronavirus guide defines the terms mask, respirator and ventilator and notes that it is acceptable for writers to use the word mask as a verb and combine it with the word up. For example, the CDC recommends that those with subsiding COVID-19 symptoms mask up around others after five days in isolation.
  • Passports, please? Defined as documents, digital or paper, showing a person’s COVID-19 vaccination status, the term “vaccine passport” is acceptable in quotation marks, according to AP Style. Proof of vaccination, however, is better.
  • Epidemic, pandemic or endemic? An epidemic, which refers to a disease spreading rapidly within a specific region or population, becomes a pandemic once it affects many people and scientists find the virus in multiple countries or continents. The editors at AP advise that endemic is an adjective that describes a disease’s constant presence, such as malaria in some tropical areas.

While still considered a pandemic, medical experts expect COVID-19 will eventually become endemic. It is critical that we continually reference expert sources and the most current information available to ensure accuracy when writing about the virus; the AP Stylebook will continue to be a reliable source for writing about this fast-evolving subject.

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