Issue 0: Welcome to The Boilerplate

A newsletter for the curious communications and business pro in your life

Hello, and welcome to issue zero of The Boilerplate, a biweekly short read aimed to enrich those in communications, public relations and marketing with essential reads/watches, industry conversations and fun stuff too.

For issue zero, here’s a preview of the format and content: short, sweet and written on a Sunday.

1. Something to try with friends: the slow burn book club. A friend of mine started an unusual book club: a group of people read two chapters of a nonfiction book at a time and meet every other week to discuss. We’re currently reading Lies my Teacher Told Me, which I highly recommend. And if you start now, you might get to the bit about Thanksgiving just in time for America’s favorite five-day weekend. It’s an interesting discussion format, and the book leaves plenty to talk about each video chat — challenging assumptions, retelling the heroic tales we’ve learned as Americans three to four times in our schooling careers. And if you’re an adult suffering from ADD like me that usually scarfs down books like pillow mints, the format forces you to slow down, highlight and reflect and really retain what’s in a book.

2. Industry watch: social media is ephemeral by design: New formats at Twitter and Instagram this week inspired complaints, confusion and made me feel very old. Didn’t we all know that nothing free can be counted on? One of the smartest takes I saw on Twitter this week though was from OneZero’s Will Oremus: How Twitter Is Redefining Itself for a Post-Trump Future. He gets at what Twitter’s doing post-Trump: creating room for fun, frivolity and earnestness in a place that got quite nasty in the past 8 years. I’m personally looking forward to it: after all, I met my now-husband tweeting about PR trends and basketball.

   Oremus writes, “When the whole world feels like it’s on a dark timeline, it’s hard to imagine Twitter’s being any other way. A safer bet might be that Twitter remains fundamentally the Twitter that we know and love-hate today — a constant skirmish of ideas and tribes, at once addictive and vaguely monotonous.”

   I sincerely pine for the uninterrupted hope, blurry dog pictures and silly complaints of Old Twitter; but I also wish to see Twitter continue the kind of action from both young people and previously disaffected to make change in the world. But, we’ll be at the behest of what catches on - and the multitude of changes across the social media landscape. For those keeping a tab on platforms for work, the best we can do is plan to communicate more authentically and plainly, to listen to the audience that matter most to us, and to tell the truth. Call me old-fashioned, but I think no matter what the platform, the truth will always go viral.

3. You may be asking: Why Boilerplate? In public relations, any standard description of a company used at the end of a press release. Before that, boiler plates “originally referred to the small metal plate that identified the builder of a steam boiler. The term was borrowed by the printing industry where plates of text for widespread reproduction… ready for the printing press and distributed to newspapers around the United States,” according to this article.

   The idea is that this newsletter is short, useful and helpful context for those in business and communications. I also personally love trains, as public transportation (yes, I miss public transportation) and for leisure (I love a scenic train ride!); but I also love trains in art. One of my favorite scenes in film is the train scene in Spirited Away. Enjoy the music as your something fun for the day.

See you on the other side of Thanksgiving — I’m grateful for you. And don’t forget to send feedback!