2019 will be a crucial year for social media. Platforms will have to collectively pick up the pieces from the wreckage that was 2018. And companies will need to rethink their digital strategies to effectively connect with users.
TELLING THE EU’S STORY BETTER
John has been busy putting his storytelling skills to good use in Turkey and the Balkans over the past few months. Together with our social media coach Steffen Thejll-Moller, he has led a series of trainings for the European Commission on how to tell the EU’s story better by focusing on values and emotions as well as data.
So far, John and Steffen have trained project managers in Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia and Turkey. Montenegro, a return journey to Ankara and a wrap-up session in Brussels are planned for later in the Autumn.
The pair have earned rave reviews from the 40+ participants at each workshop. “The trainers were very energetic, positive, open and supportive,” said one. “They worked perfectly as a duo,” said another. “The trainers are real experts in their field.” Not that we’re proud or anything!
Social media as a source of news is falling, messaging apps for news are growing, subscriptions for online news are steadily rising, general trust in the news remains relatively stable and fake news on the internet is a top priority. These are some of the key findings from this year’s Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, which was published today.
The report, which is based on a survey of more than 75,000 news consumers in 37 markets from 25 countries, found that:
Jelle Annaars has worn many hats in the communication industry. Originally a copywriter and content marketer, Jelle fell into media training by chance. Asked to fill the shoes of a colleague who ran media trainings for Voice, Jelle never looked back and has hosted that same training session more than ten times since. In March 2016, Jelle was awarded an honourable mention in the Gouden Veer competition, which recognises best-practice in Belgian communication. He has also created copy for BNP Paribas and the European Parliament and was the first Copyblogger Certified Content Marketer in the Benelux. Jelle is excited about the future of a smarter media training industry and wants to help clients understand how they can use social media and blogs to advance their business. When he’s not conducting trainings himself, Jelle often finds himself attending trainings on media training.
Social media and tech giants like Facebook, Google, Apple and Snapchat are moving forcefully into the journalism business by publishing news on their mobile apps. This could be good news for users, who stand to benefit from faster, richer news. Some publishers could also gain extra revenue from more viewers and readers of their products – especially younger ones – on mobile devices.
But there are obvious risks too. With the tech and social media firms hosting the news, publishers will see less traffic and therefore less advertising on their sites. Smaller news producers lacking the resources to produce content for the new platforms could be shut out of the game. There is also the threat that these Silicon Valley mega-firms will move from distributing news to producing it, a move that could crush even the biggest media players.
Since the advent of the Internet just over 20 years ago the journalism industry has been revolutionised by new technologies such as smartphones and tablets. It has been disrupted by the emergence of major new players such as Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. It has been hit by the slump in advertising revenues and the collapse of newspaper readership. And publics used to being broadcasted to on media companies’ terms have now become “the people formerly known as the audience” in Jay Rosen’s memorable phrase.