Opinion

Every morning many of us wake up to a cascade of notifications generated by the most varied platforms. Just as many scroll through endless news feeds while eating breakfast. On the way to work, we are impacted by targeted adverts and most of those around us keep their eyes glued to their mobile screens. Tuning in to the digital age (characterised by information overload, fleeting trends and constant noise) has degenerated into a permanent competition for our attention, a commodity that has become scarce and precious.

Those who think that crisis communication comes out of the blue are mistaken. It is often said that the ‘best crisis’ is the one that ends up as an inside story about what could have been.

Imagine a queue of traffic and an altercation between two drivers. A usual scene in an impatient daily life, if it weren't for the driver in the back being in uniform and getting out of the car decorated with the same brand he is wearing to assault the person in front - an elderly man. The rapid circulation of videos, comments and reactions to the episode plunged the company into a spiral of crisis communication, which only stopped days later.

Have you ever wondered how often you need to post to optimise a brand's growth on social media? Neil Patel, known in digital marketing circles as the ‘SEO guru’, recently analysed the numbers of thousands of accounts on the main social apps and came up with the answer: on Instagram, for example, the recommendation is to publish four to seven stories a day, around three to seven reels a week, images two to four times a week, lives once or twice a week, a carousel a week and between nine and 38 comments a day. Are you surprised by the amount of work that awaits you?

According to Informa D&B's latest barometer, the first half of 2024 saw 27.263 new companies set up in Portugal and 1.074 insolvency proceedings. At first glance, this is clearly a positive ratio in terms of the vigour of the domestic business fabric, but to what extent can analysing the figures give us any insight into the management of a business?