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Thursday Buzz: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Screen ‘Em

CTIA: The Wireless Association didn't counter-program against the Apple iPhone 6 announcement—it literally screened the livestream at Super Mobility Week. Also: Are you looking at content strategy the right way?

Give CTIA: The Wireless Association some credit: It knows its audience.

Faced with the challenge of having its Super Mobility Week take place at the same time as Apple’s highly anticipated keynote earlier this week, the association set up the Las Vegas event around the week’s big tech story.

“When you think about it, the 40,000 people in the industry who will be affected most by this announcement will not be in Silicon Valley, they’re going to be in Las Vegas at the Sands Expo,” CTIA Vice President Rob Mesirow said to WirelessWeek prior to the event.

The association, which didn’t have any insider information about what Apple was going to offer, screened the two-hour keynote, then had analysts on hand to offer their takes on Tim Cook’s big reveals—the iPhone 6, Apple Pay, and Apple Watch.

“The payment system Apple announced will be exciting and transformational,” Joe Basili, the Telecom Expense Management Industry Association’s managing director, said at the event, according to ComputerWorld. “Apple’s taking the existing ecosystem they’ve built and pushing it out [to payments].”

That said, people in the audience weren’t automatically fanboys. Basili, for example, admitted that while he liked what he saw, he’s “not wildly Apple.”

And, oh yeah, Samsung was there.

Set Your Goals First

It’s a term we all use, but do we actually understand what we’re trying to do with it, anyway?

On her personal blog, online communications pro Helen Mosher tries her hand at the difficult task of explaining what content strategy is. She highlights the difference between content architecture, analytics, and production. Mosher says all are important parts of the whole that is content strategy.

“Start with your goals,” she suggests. “What do you want to achieve with your stakeholders? Once you know that, it’s about understanding the needed messaging on all channels to accomplish it, what to leverage where, how to do so effectively, and how to measure the effort and adjust as need be.”

Good advice, huh? (ht @maggielmcg)

Other Links of Note

Trying to drive donations to your nonprofit? Make things really simple, Qgiv’s Abby Jarvis argues on Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog.

You may think you learn from experience, but you don’t. Instead, you learn from reflecting on that experience, Velvet Chainsaw Consulting’s Jeff Hurt writes.

Struggling to get a room at the hotel you want? LifeHacker highlights a tip on how to get a room at the last second.

Panelists at Super Mobility Week react to Apple's announcement. (CTIA handout photo)

Ernie Smith

By Ernie Smith

Ernie Smith is a former senior editor for Associations Now. MORE

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