Last week I had dinner with my neighbors who are in market research. They told me they are paying a blogging outfit to write multiple very short posts for them each week. The posts are inexpensive and mostly shameless plugs for their services. The writing, the friends said, was, shall we say, not of the highest quality and they often have to spend additional time re-writing what is submitted. But the posts still have value for their business — they create content for their web presence and attract new customers.
I feel like everywhere I look these days I see more evidence of the pressure to create more content faster. Between articles, blog posts, tweets, books – even of the sheer quantity of output we’re expecting. [More]
Behind the loud and often garrulous rhetoric of politicians and pundits lies a quiet pipeline of information that flows from the research world to the people making policy decisions in state and federal offices. The staffs of senators’ offices, the long-time bureaucrats at the Department of Justice or the Department of Health and Human Services, or the communications staff of major committees on the Hill all need information they can trust in order to formulate the policies that shape and support our society.
So how do policymakers find that information, and what is the most effective way to reach them? For insights, we talk with John Hutchins, communications director at , a research organization that for the past 37 years has developed and evaluated education and social programs, from workforce development to education reform to family and child well-being. [More]
If you thought wonky regional planners were more concerned with watershed management than social media management, think again. Local planning and policy folks are a growing and powerful voice on Twitter, where they discuss everything from the latest federal transportation bill to what their own communities are doing about the foreclosure crisis. [More]
A senior communications advisor at one of the oldest think tanks in the country talks about how they are using social media to get their research findings out to policymakers, journalists, and the public.
We sat down with the David Jackson. He says all the things your English teacher taught you about strong topic sentences are even more important today. [More]
