Posts Tagged ‘social media’

Attempting to hijack a current news story is as old as the PR profession itself, and even though we’re in an age of social media, the skills required are still similar.

But while a well-placed story or stunt that ties into another item dominating the news agenda can earn a lot of online and offline coverage for a brand, an ill thought through newsjack – or Twitterjack, if you will - can harm your reputation faster than you can issue a retraction.

To help ensure you’re more likely be remembered for a creative campaign than a viral fail, here’s Ruder Finn’s top five rules for ensuring your Twitterjack stands a good chance of catching the internet’s attention.

1. Plan when you can

It’s far easier to plan great content when you know what’s coming up in advance, and any good PR desk will have a calendar with all major upcoming events and opportunities around these.

Twitter is no different. If you know an event’s coming up, you can at least have some ideas and images planned. It also means you’re in a better position to react quickly to any news surrounding the event.

Dulux are a good example of how a brand can leverage extra coverage from an event. Their Tweet on the evening of the BRIT Awards comparing Damien Hirst’s statue design with their colour palette was simple and clever.

2. Make it funny

140 characters are particularly effective for pithy punning and a well-crafted piece of humour that can tie your brand into a current event is always likely to gain traction on social media. What’s more, it shows your Twitter feed and company is run by people with a sense of humour.

Nando’s were particularly good at exploiting news of Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, with a Tweet announcing at Manchester branches would stay open for an extra five minute - a reference to the amount of added time the club generally receive at the end of a game.

A word of warning though – unfunny or tasteless jokes won’t do you any favours. Virtual tumbleweed moves much faster than the real thing.

3. Be ready to react quickly

As with so many areas of communications, if you’re first, (and not forgetting if you’re good), you’ll probably be the brand that manages to get a fair bit of traction.

It’s why it’s important that the people responsible for your creative or social are plugged into wider events surrounding Twitter, not just your industry. It means they can react quickly to anything breaking.

Again, to take an example from Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, Golden Wonder quickly photoshopped a special bag of Fergie-flavoured crisps. It probably wasn’t the best effort on the day, but it was the first and gained those all important retweets and reach.

4. Make it visual

Two of the three examples already cited worked well because they were very visual in nature and highly shareable.

Whether it’s as simple as whipping up a quick lolcat or spending time photoshopping something a little more sophisticated, keeping it visual makes your Tweet stand out and increases the chances of virality.

It’s why US processed meat company Oscar Mayer’s Oscar-night Twitterjack worked so well. Posted after Adele scooped best song for Skyfall, their cheeky Tweet wouldn’t have made as much impact in text only – and it’s a clever comms team who can connect James Bond and bacon.

5. Avoid tragedies

Twitter really comes into its own during breaking news or times of disaster and, with so many eyeballs, it’s tempting for brands to try and muscle in on whatever happens to be dominating the news agenda that day.

However, unless it’s offering a message of condolence or is incredibly well thought through and sensitive, it’s probably best to stay away from promoting your wares on Twitter during this period.

Whether it’s Gap encouraging those affected by Hurricane Sandy to shop from the comfort of their homes, or Celeb Boutique’s attempt to tap into the Aurora shootings by promoting their Kim Kardashian Aurora dress, an insensitive Tweet can do more harm than good. What’s more, many of the tech and social blogs are likely to pick up on this, and we all know how good they are at SEO….

Recently McDonalds faced criticism for a Tweet around the Ohio kidnappings, saluting rescuer Charles Ramsey after he mentioned he was eating a McDonalds before he went to the aid of the kidnapped women.

The Tweet has divided opinion, with some viewing it as smart and others criticising the company for being insensitive, even if that wasn’t the company’s intention. Given the potential for a backlash, it’s probably best to give the bad news stories a miss.

6. And one bonus piece of advice… check your scheduled Tweets

Just as your social media team should be looking for opportunities to make the most of breaking news, they also need to be able to be aware of any risks pre-written Tweets may contain.

With many brands often choosing to schedule their Tweets throughout the day, an innocent remark can take on a very different meaning following a tragic event.

It’s obviously not the brand or PR agency’s fault – they have no way of predicting how 140 characters can go from irreverent to offensive in the space of a few minutes – but Twitter users may not be so understanding.

If bad news does break, it’s worth checking your scheduled Tweet queue and checking if there’s anything lined up that could cause problems. Ten minutes work can save you from dealing with a mini-crisis a few hours later.

The Daily Mirror apologised for a pre-scheduled Tweet that read, “Keep on running: David Luiz urges Chelsea marathon men to drag themselves over the finish line,” that was published on the day of the Boston bombings. Entirely innocent, but unfortunate timing.

Any more we’ve left off? Share your tips in the comments below.

Are you an iPhone or Android person? Do you prefer Facebook or Twitter? Coffee or tea? Cats or dogs? We’ve got something for lovers of all of the above in Ruder Finn’s digital roundup this week. Well, apart from cute animals, maybe. We’re resisting the staple of pulling in views by resorting to posting animal memes.

Instead, this week’s All You Need Is… a plethora of digital choice, developments and technology that could change your life.

Mail Online launches live stats page – The Drum

The Mail Online, Britain’s most-read news site has launched a live stats page showing the most read, shared and commented on stories across their site.

Visitors to www.dailymail.co.uk/stats will see the top rated comments, most active commentators, most viewed articles and which stories have the most likes on Facebook and largest number of Tweets, along with a roundup of the most-read articles across the site and a live ticker detailing the stats for the past hour.

The Mail may not be everybody’s favourite paper online – Twitterstorms around specific articles are a pretty common occurrence – but it is phenomenally successful in attracted readers and an active community. With nearly 127m monthly unique users and an average of just under 8m unique a day, the site is an online publishing powerhouse that knows how to appeal to its audience and continue to grow.

For the community, their new stats page is a simple but effective way to drive both content discovery and engagement, while for anybody in PR it’s a fascinating snapshot at any given time of the day on what’s popular with one of the web’s largest audiences. Once again, with the launch of By The Numbers, the Mail have shown a very savvy understanding of their core community.

Starbucks presses social media onward – Seattle Times

On the subject of successful brands online, Starbucks’ social media presence continues to go from strength to strength. The Seattle company are the fifth largest brand on Facebook – with an estimate reach of 1 billion – and 3.6 million Twitter followers.

At a time when many brands are demanding more ROI from their activity on social media, Starbucks 5-strong social team are a key part of the brand’s operation, with an editorial schedule that “looks like the departing flights board at the airport” and the ability to creatively monitor and respond to conversations across the web.

The Seattle Times’s profile of Starbucks’ social operation show the level of detail and planning that brands need to invest if they’re serious about social – and how to see results off the back of it. Any company that can dominate online conversation just by changing the colour of its cups for a seasonal holiday is clearly doing something right.

Do you follow or interact with the coffee giant? What aspects of their social strategy work or don’t work for you? We’d love to know your thoughts in the comments. Ours is a flat white, one sugar, by the way.

Facebook deserted by millions of users in biggest markets – Guardian

Are Britain and America getting bored with Facebook? Certainly the latest figures paint an interesting pattern of user drop-off for the social media behemoth, with 1.4m fewer users checking into the network last night and 2m fewer monthly visitors to Facebook over the last six months. In the States, that number stands at 9m, according to research from Social Bakers.

However, it’s worth noting that while the number of minutes spent on Facebook is declining, this doesn’t take into account the rise of smartphone and tablet useage – something Facebook moved to address when it announced a redesigned timeline. And, crucially, the financial markets expect Facebook to post increased revenue this Wednesday.

Nevertheless, despite growth in other markets such as South America, some analysts are querying whether we’ve reached peak Facebook point in this country. But with the social network still a key part of our lives, there doesn’t appear to be any replacement ready to challenge for the number one spot, even if the likes of Instagram and Path are growing at an impressive rate.

Let us know if you’re one of the 2m who’ve stopped using Facebook in the past sixth months, or if you’re planning on leaving it behind in the future. What’s driven you away from the site and what would tempt you back?

How the Internet of Things will revolutionize search – Read Write

The Internet Of Things may not be the catchiest of phrases, but it’s definitely becoming one of the key focuses for many digital practitioners. With connected physical objects already generating a vast amount of data, it will, as Read Write predict, change the way we use search.

Whereas previously we’d type in a query surrounding this data into search engines, the Internet of Things gives us information from devices before we even ask for it.

Writer Brian Proffitt gives examples of technicians who get reports from broken devices that automatically prioritise the order in which they need to be fixed, or store managers who can use data from their store, such as heat maps, to best position items for sale. And that’s just the start.

The Internet Of Things might not catch the eye as much as a new launch from Facebook or Google. But the principle behind it could well be feeding into our lifestyle choices and activities sooner than we realise - see the video below for one example.

Android picks up the pace in smartphone sales - Techcrunch

Google’s mobile operating system, Android, is still leading the way in terms of sales across the globe this year. In the opening months of 2013, Android phones accounted for 64.2% of all handset sales. In the UK, the platform accounts for 58.4% of the market sales share, way ahead of Apple’s iOS phones with 28.7%.

With two new handsets poised to enter the market – the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One – analysts are predicting further growth in this market.

However, although Android is the most popular platform in the UK, the iPhone is still the most popular phone overall. And while Android users are plentiful, their browsing habits are very different to iPhone and iPad owners – many web managers note that the majority of mobile and tablet views still come from Apple operating systems.

But Android continues to grow and app makers are ensuring that they’re on board early enough to ensure market penetration. Vine is the latest popular app planning on launching an Android version of the six-second video sharing app.

Are you an Android or an iPhone fan? And would you start tailoring your product to an Android audience, if you don’t already? Let us know in the comments below.

And that concludes our tour of the digital world this week. Remember to share anything cool you’ve seen with us online or on our Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Until next week… Gary (@garyandrews)

How would you judge yourself if you read back every thought and written outpouring you made as a teenager? There’d probably be a fair bit of cringing, embarrassment and, on occasions, a degree of wonderment of who that person in front of you was. To be honest, even in your late teens, there’s a good chance you’d feel the same to your early teen self.

Thankfully, for most of us over a certain age, our angst-riding wailings remain confined to teenage diaries or our memories. For a younger generation, it’s a lot more public, as 17-year-old Paris Brown found out earlier this week.

The Kent teenager had barely stepped into the job of Britain’s first youth police crime commissioner when her past history on Twitter moved from teenage rantings to front page news. And thus a teenager posting Tweets – ranging from the silly to the idiotic with a dash of the downright offensive, but all of them very teenage – became a story.

There’s plenty to be discussed on this from a PR perspective – not least that her future employers may have wanted to do a little background checking on Paris Brown’s online presence before appointing her. But one of her comments, just after the story first broke, caught my attention.

“Older generations haven’t grown up around Twitter and social media,” she told the BBC. “They know how to talk to other about about it [their feelings]. But for young people, it’s different. ‘Oh, I’m annoyed,’ and then you Tweet.”

Whereas once these would have formed a teenage diary and kept under lock and key, they’re now Tweeted within a few minutes. Private thought become public and are swiftly forgotten about, unless, like Paris Brown, you happen to enter the public eye.

It used to be that a disclaimer that views on Twitter and elsewhere weren’t connected with employers. That’s increasingly not the case – take the story today about six Metropolitan Police staff, including three officers, sacked for social media use.

From a reputation perspective for brands, of course there’s a degree of nervousness about employees on social media. Maybe an employee might make derogatory comments in what they believe to be a personal capacity, but if the subsequent headline reads “Brand X employee is foul-mouthed rant,” context will count for little.

It’s easy to say that better social media training, internally, will help prevent this, but what about tomorrow’s generation of future public figures, who have practically been born with an iPhone and Twitter log-in in their hands? Better education in school will help, sure, but it’s somewhat naïve to think that a little extra training will stop teenagers being teenagers online.

Anybody entering the public eye would do well to check their digital footprint. It may seem unrealistic for you to remember every Tweet from the past five years, but one poorly judged Tweet or Facebook status can still wreck an entire career several years later.

Ever thought about how many times a day you say the words love, food or work?

Now think about how many times you say the word Facebook.

Facebook seems to have become an intrinsic part of our lives and now that is reaching market saturation in many countries it needs to start reinventing itself to make sure its users won’t start hanging out elsewhere.

This week, all you need is… a whole bunch of juicy news about the king of social.

Here are the headlines:

• Facebook Videos Have a 10x Higher Viral Reach than YouTube Links

As you might know there are two ways to upload videos on Facebook. You can either share a link from You Tube or upload it on your timeline from your computer.

Have you ever wondered how these two methods affect engagement rate and reach of your videos?

A study by Social Bakers shows that Facebook videos tend to have a higher Engagement Rate than YouTube links (0.22% on average compared to 0.10%). But what’s really interesting is that the reach of Facebook videos is ten times higher than the reach than YouTube links.

However, Social Bakers does not give an explanation for these figures.

Do you think it’s because users believe videos uploaded from the computer are more personal and therefore more interesting?

Share your thoughts below.

• A Few Reasons to Actually Like Facebook’s News Feed Redesign

Facebook has recently unveiled its re-designed news feed. This is not just more pleasant to the eye but is actually bringing some advantages for its users too.

With the redesign, Facebook has condensed its two feeds into one and the chat frame has been incorporated into the left sidebar, which is now just a strip of icons. Facebook has reduced the clutter and made it easier to find the type of information you’re looking for.

The re-designed news feed also features filters.

The “News Feed” filter is the regular assortment of updates, sorted by algorithm in order of importance, while the “Most Recent” filter shows everything in reverse chronological order. There are also filters for Photos, Music, Games, Groups and more.

As Mark Zuckerberg said, the new filters will make Facebook “the best personalised newspaper.”

Lastly, Photos will be a lot larger and this will make it easier to just scroll through, without having to click on every individual image in order to see what’s going on.

But individuals are not the only ones benefitting from the new changes. The news feed redesign brings a whole lot of changes for brands too.

If you want to find out more, then don’t miss RF’s Gary Andrews blog post on what the redesigned Facebook news feed means for brands.

• The Facebook mortgage. Could social data be used for credit scores?

Econsultancy posted a really interesting article on how social data could be used for a more accurate credit rating.

Many would argue that the process by which the main UK credit reference agencies apply their judgement should be more tailored to each individual.

What do you think about connecting with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and allow the bank to analyse your lifestyle as well as your credit rate when applying for a mortgage?

That data could be cross-referenced with established credit history, third party data and freely available ethnographic segmentation and could then be re-interrogated as a whole picture in order to make application process simpler, fairer and representative of someone’s wider existence.

Credit files are not the only way of understanding consumers. So why are they the only product used to assess financial worthiness? We have access to more data now than we ever have. Let’s use it to transform some of the areas that frustrate so many people and make better some of the things that simply don’t work well enough.

This would represent a significant step up not only for a fairer credit rating but also in in terms of enhancement of social media content.

Wouldn’t it be a better online world if we all thought twice before posting?

• Facebook Reports Bugs in Page Insights Reporting

Facebook certainly has some truly unique features (such as its recently unveiled Graph Search), but is it faultless?

While conducting an engineering audit, Facebook has discovered bugs in Facebook Insights affecting data of impression and reach. According to Facebook, Ad Insights weren’t affected by the bugs and the issues were encountered only in reporting and not in delivery.

Fixes to sort the problem have already been rolled out and Facebook Pages saw a median Total Reach gain of 31 percent per fan, Organic Reach median gain of 41 percent and a median gain in Viral Reach of 275 percent.

Would you like to find out the impact these bugs had on you page?

Here’s a video that shows you how to do it.

• Facebook’s Uncool (Comic)

First parents were against Facebook due to their privacy concerns. But when they realised that the lack of privacy could play on their favour and allow them to keep an eye on their children, many decided to embrace it.

So what’s going to happen when teenagers will start labeling Facebook as uncool and dropping it?

Ah, wait, is that already happening?

Have I missed anything? If you think some other Facebook related news should be part of this week’s RF| digital round up, then feel free to add them in the comments below.

Remember that ‘sharing is caring’ so don’t forget to let your friends know what’s hot and what’s not. Until next week… Gabs (@gabrielegenola)

Licensed for use under creative commons by Numberstumper

1. Include the words “In 100 words or less….describe your creative idea”…

2. Request responses to be contained within an excel spreadsheet…

3. Send ideas to procurement at first stage…

4. Ask for ideas to be good, fast and cheap….

5. Ensure the agency focuses on ideas, messages, themes and activity that is already in use and not working…

Image courtesy of Betsy Weber - licensed under creative commons

“If we put a number on it, people will try to make the number go up….we’re told to make that number go up.

Increase the number of fans, friends and followers, so your shouts will be heard.

The problem of course is that more noise is not better noise.”

Seth Godin, 2011

Monocle magazine recently enjoyed their fifth anniversary of publication and as part of the celebration they put together a video which takes you through the history of the business from foundation to the present day.

When talking about their subscriber events they said:

Good conversation and a glass of white wine - that’s our type of social networking

We say: Facebook is all very well, but don’t forget the value of building real-world relationships and interactions.

Over the past few months I have hit a bit of a bloggers wall.

Lots of half drafted posts….ill-conceived ideas….half baked reviews and I have generally found the whole thing a bit of a struggle.  Yesterday was my birthday (37, I don’t look it? thanks.) and for once I had a day off work.  Well, that’s not true, I have two days off work each week but I always have my kids with me so yesterday was different.  I had half a day to myself, no friends around, no distractions, no kids home and husband went for a “birthday surf” (yes, I know).

Whilst lying in the spa, being pampered within an inch of my life, I had time to actually think and reflect on things.  Although I tried to keep my mind clear and relax (not a natural talent) I was processing all the pitches we’ve done recently, the conversations Ged and I have had, the new clients, the events within the agency, the new people I have met. It was refreshing.  Really refreshing to have some time where I wasn’t working, being needed or being social. No phone. No conversations.

It was a bit of a revelation (although I’ve been advising people to do this for years).

I am really bad at allowing myself time to process things.  Time without the pulls and pushes of life getting in the way. So I have made a resolution that every month I will find a day.  Or maybe two half day to process thoughts, catch myself up and get things down on paper. I haven’t told my boss or my husband this yet so shh.

Anyway, I came up with about 6 blog post ideas yesterday that I actually managed to think through.

So now all I have to do is write them.

Our colleagues over at RFI Studios in New York have put together a useful little tutorial on the latest social network to be stirring up (p)interest.

So I nicked shared it.

I hope it is useful.

Amid all the discussion over the past few days about search and social referral traffic, I also spotted an interesting piece from Econsultancy showing the site’s growing role as a referral source (client Experian hat tip here) for retailers.

Monetate has also put together an infographic pulling together the latest stats on Pinterest’s journey to become a “social commerce game changer” (see below).

I am playing around with it myself at the moment and from a PR/brand perspective it seems to be more about creating interest through the mindset of a brand persona and then curating content that supports that persona, rather than engaging around product or comms content. But like all social networks, it needs to be brought back into context - what are you trying to achieve, who’s your audience and what do they want?

Get an account and start exploring.

As someone relatively (under three years) new to PR, it is always good to go to as many as the informative talks on offer as possible. However I have noticed myself of late becoming increasingly frustrated by the treatment of digital in these talks. For some reason those giving the talks still seem to think that a back to basics approach is needed for us PR folk. For the record, I know that digital is important for PR, I know that it needs to be integrated into wider campaigns, I know what Facebook and Twitter are and how they work and I have seen examples of great digital PR in action. What I would like to see external organisations doing more of is offering talks on the practical side of digital - how you go about planning a digital campaign, how you SEO content, what the next big thing to watch is etc. Stop giving me a rundown of the history of social media and actually tell me how to use it. That is all I am asking for!

I know that there are still many sectors where the understanding of social media is pretty limited however I just don’t feel like PR is necessarily one of them – or am I wrong – what do you think?