Social Media’s Sweet Spot: Writing Short and Snappy — Without Stripping out Style

Joyceann Garippa is the director of content & programming at Ragan Communications where she oversees the content direction of Ragan.com, PR Daily and Ragan’s Workplace Wellness Insider, as well as Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council (CLC) and PR Daily Leadership Network (PRLN). She also leads Ragan’s conference team, which creates strategic programming for conferences (live and virtual), workshops, bootcamps and webinars for Ragan’s vast audience of internal communications, external communications, wellness professionals and human resources.

Jim Ylisela is Co-founder and Senior Partner of Ragan Consulting Group. He is an award-winning veteran Chicago journalist and a former publisher of Ragan.com. He brings more than 30 years of experience in writing, editing, communications research and consulting. Ylisela has designed and organized newsrooms for many companies and organizations, including Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where he served as a faculty member and co-director of Medill News Service from 1988 to 2001. He works with communicators to create brand journalism news sites, organize and train writers and editors and restore reporting (and creative storytelling) to internal and external communications.

Nikki Sunstrum is the director of social media at the University of Michigan in the office of the vice president of communications. As an internationally recognized public speaker and advocate of strategic online communications, Nikki is responsible for developing innovative solutions to advance the University of Michigan’s over 200-year-old legacy of impact. Nikki leads U-M’s social communication team, the strategic oversight of the President’s Public Engagement and Impact Initiative, and U-M’s Social Integrity project. These efforts each aim to ensure that all online communications provide additional value to university stakeholders while mitigating institutional risk, elevating brand perception, and educating users of all ages, around the globe, of the lasting impact of these critical tools.

Casie {kay-cee;KC} Shimansky is the creative director at Stax Payments. Writing. Photography. Social Media. If you can use it to tell a story, Casie has likely done it as a creative director specializing in social media, content strategy and employee storytelling. She has been a part of Cisco’s award-winning employer brand and most recently led a storytelling transformation at Stax. She lives in Orlando, FL with her husband and three German Shorthaired Pointers who can regularly be found on Instagram @PawsitivePointers. Oh, and don’t fall too much for that purple head of hair. Casie goes bald every March and raises funds for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation benefitting children’s cancer research. She leads Team Live Out Loud (in memory of her younger sister Kellie) who has raised over $120k to date.