Every brand has a story to tell, but not every brand has mastered the art of telling its story in a way that is meaningful, attention-grabbing and long-lasting.

Just as people, some brands have a "way with words" – they are natural storytellers – while others find it a little bit more challenging and need to acquire the relevant skills first. Learning from the best in class is one step ahead at becoming a masterful storyteller.

But who are those brands that we can learn from? Who are the masters of storytelling? What do they stand for and what is their purpose?

That's what a recent study by Aesop tried to find out. It surveyed 2,000 consumers in the UK, asking them to rate companies against nine key storytelling elements:

• unique character/personality
• clear opinion
• vision/purpose
• intrigue (that urges us to learn more about them)
• credibility
• unique world
• shareable, worthy to talk about content
• entertainment
• memorability

The combined ranking result is enlightening:

Global warming, extreme weather events, resource scarcity, food and water crisis, instability of financial institutions – these are all interconnected global risks that we are facing today and that require us to act as fast as possible as they have major systematic impacts. But do you ever wonder who is going to solve these issues? Is it governments? Or companies? Or non-profits? Or regular people? I'm afraid I don't have the answer, but here's an interesting suggestion – it might be a whole generation.

Meet Generation Z – the bold rebels with the cause to save the world.

Gen Zers are the ones born after the mid 1990s. They now account for more than a quarter of the world's population, with that number rising steadily.

In many ways, Gen Zers are the opposites or extreme versions of Millennials, aka Generation Y – the previous generation.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+ and about a hundred more social networking sites... The choice is overwhelming and expanding by the day. Smart marketers and communications professionals know that establishing a social presence on the right platforms is crucial to successful social media that adds real value for business. But how do you make that choice? How do you determine the right social networks for your business or client?

The first step towards deciding which network to be active on is defining your target group – that's Marketing 101. So, who is it that buys from you? Who is it that are you doing business with?

Once you've defined your audience, you need to get to know it – what is it that your customers like, do, talk about, where do they congregate online, how often, for what purposes? How do they make purchase decisions? To what extent are those decisions influenced by what people are saying, liking, sharing on social networks and on which platform exactly?

Every day I come across an interesting study and I want to dive into it to learn more about the research findings and then write a blog post with the key takeaways and my views. Unfortunately, I do need to sleep too. Indeed, from a professional's perspective it's hard to keep up with the tons of valuable research studies and analyses that are being released all the time. Information overload is our reality...

This is why when I saw the following infographic from the Institute for Public Relations I thought "Wow, this is spot on!" The infographic summarises the latest key issues and trends from the industry's top social media studies – one infographic, many studies.

This is something I would've found very useful when I was doing my research for my dissertation.

I would've had an overview of the top social media for PR studies in one place as a great reference for me to dig deeper in each study if I wanted to. Just knowing that those studies existed would've saved me a lot of time trying various keywords on Google search and bouncing from website to website for days to find the relevant and trustworthy sources.

A few months ago I participated in the largest transnational survey on strategic communication worldwide - the European Communication Monitor (ECM). The results were published a few days ago and, as always, I was eager to find out to what extent my input corresponded to the answers given by the other participants and if I had correctly identified the same emerging trends in the field as they have. As it turns out, I seem to be on the same page as most other practitioners.

Here's some research background first:

The ECM 2014 surveyed 2,777 communications professionals from 42 countries to study key issues of communication management and public relations, the digital age, networking, leadership, gender and mobile media.

The research findings confirm that without any doubt the digital age has transformed how communicators work, interact and share experiences. However, the rise of online channels and social media not only have major strategic implications, but also bring about considerable challenges for professionals: