Twitterstorm in a teacup
Helen Reynolds
Unboring comms training that taps into your creativity, grows your confidence and helps you make a powerful impact
It's the first Big Yellow Newsletter of 2024!
Hello and HNY loyal?readers and welcome to the newbies.
You should all know that I HATE boring comms. Dry info dumps, braggy announcements, TMI updates.
Creativity is why most of us got into comms, but so many of us find it sucked out of us in corporate environments that expect - and demand - we produce samey, safe and snooze-inducing content.
Because bold and interesting might be risky, and it's hard to know how it will perform. I’ve built a whole school and community around my mission to ‘unboring’ our comms, social media, media, internal comms, our careers, our videos, our writing, our leadership.
In Comms Creatives Academy , our training is about developing skills and building those creative muscles across all comms disciplines. What we call ‘unboring’ could also be called ‘successful’, ‘effective’, or ‘excellent’. We call it unboring.
I thought you might like to see this, from our comms creativity course : our model for the elements that make up creative, unboring communications ??
(BTW, if you're new here, you can familiarise yourself with the lore of the?Big Yellow Newsletter thing?is about by?browsing some?back issues ,)
Comms Creatives Content of the Week
CCCotW comes from the US Embassy London on X.
This post is a creative way to get lots of engagement from both British and American audiences.
And at the time of writing this hasn’t resulted in a declaration of war between the two countries! But they've taken advantage of the?old 'how to make a proper cuppa'?debate. We don't expect public institutions to make jokes.? So this is a great example of surprisingness, one of the key ingredients of the Comms Creatives Unboring Model I showed you above. People want a moment of amusement to distract them from their doomscrolling, and then the brand gets associated with the good feelings. As I write this, this is the second most engaged with tweet from this account EVER, and it will have reached loads of new people and it did so well that it's gained loads of positive media coverage.?
Comms tip: be less predictable
As you’re content planning for 2024, make sure all your content isn't totally predictable and informational, otherwise?people will get bored and switch off. Sometimes you need to be more playful as a way of capturing attention from your audience and reminding them you exist.
Comms poll of the week
Answer a 5 second question! Friday is National Spouses Day (January 26), so I'm asking you about your partners, exes, and loved-ones more generally:?
As is often the way with these things, I have a cartoon on the topic .
Last weeks poll results show that most of us want to look into our crystal balls and see a good work/life balance, unshakable confidence and creativity in our futures.?
Online comms courses?coming up
Online Course: Internal Comms Expert Programme
领英推荐
?? 10 x 90 Minutes weekly starting 7 February 2024
Join internal comms legend, Jessica Roberts , for the best learning, strategies, tips and tricks to boost engagement, reach all your internal audiences, and plan like a pro. It's the complete programme to make you a confident?IC expert!
Online Course:?Social Media Expert Programme
?? 9x 90 minutes weekly starting 7 February 2024
Learn and implement the techniques used by the world’s best social media managers. The Social Media Expert will transform how you think about social media and comms - and get you amazing results too.
Online?Masterclass: Email marketing?masterclass for comms?professionals
??? 10am - 3pm, 27 February 2024
Social media might get all the attention, but email is still a powerful and important part of the comms and marketing mix.
You’ll discover proven techniques to get your email strategy right, enhance the readability, relevance, and click-through rates of your emails and newsletters. and uncover the industry’s best-kept secrets, top tips, and tricks to maximise the effectiveness of email marketing for your brand.
Comms billboards
The bit where we imagine if comms professionals clubbed together for some pass-ag outdoor advertising to colleagues.
Comms Cartoons (bingo is back)
I started drawing comms facepalm bingo cards 8 years ago, and they remain to this day a good way to laugh about some of the things we experience that make us groan. The people we work with who just don't get comms often mean well and we can't all know the ins and outs of each others professions. But between us comms friends, it's like therapy to have a rant and a chuckle. ?
Cool comms and social media jobs
Each week, Caroline and I scout about for great jobs and share a selection of them on Linkedin.? Brands don't pay us for this, it's just a curated list of jobs we think you'll like. Huge thanks to Caroline, it takes much longer than you'd think to compile this every week! Here's?a list of potential fresh beginnings:
Got a lovely job you'd like us to consider for inclusion in the weekly roundup? D rop us a message on Linkedin , or post it into our Facebook group .
Have a lovely week comms friends,
Hel