HC+T Update: September 6, 2013

From: "HC+T Update" <shel@holtz.com>

Subject: HC+T Update: September 6, 2013

Date: September 6th 2013

September 6, 2013
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Pardon the commercial here at the top of the Update, but I'm excited about an online session I'm conducting later this year on social visual communication. I've been focusing on this emerging category, curating content on the subject in a Flipboard magazine and talking about it during sessions I conduct with clients. The 90-minute webinar, presented through Lorman Education Services, is set for December 4. I'll talk about the importance of the trend and how to incorporate visuals as the primary communication channel into your digital communication planning. By making your reservation here, you can get half off the cost of the session. Now, back to regularly scheduled programming.

Promoted complaint isn't a sign of a social media problem. It's a customer service problem.

Hasan Sayed was so angry at the poor customer service he received after British Airways lost his father's luggage that he not only tweeted it, he spent $1,000 to promote the tweet. Much of the attention this story has gotten (and it's a lot) has focused on the idea that customers will actually pay to be the squeakiest wheel in the social media space. There's a deeper issue at play, however. Customer service should never leave someone like Sayed so frustrated that he feels he has no option but to exploit social media channels in order to get someone to pay attention and solve his problem. Read more here.

This week on FIR

The feedback has been particularly positive for an interview I conducted with Craig Jolley -- who is both an old friend and business development manager at ngage marketing Services. It seems a lot of people are very interested in marketing automation, the subject of our conversation. You can hear it here. In episode 719 of The Hobson and Holtz Report, we looked at what happens when bad comments are posted to good websites, how brands might be able to moderate the bad behavior of some customers, the fine line between social surveillance and simple monitoring, and how some brands are spending ad dollars to further amplify earned media. We also talked about news from WordPress, twitter and Facebook; how some brands are using social channels to talk to each other; the dramatic increase in companies maintaining multiple Twitter accounts, and Google's plan to release an enterprise version of Hangouts.

The tale of a British Airways passenger buying a promoted tweet to complain about lost luggage was everywhere this week (including this very blog), along with a couple other high-profile stories. There were also some studies, reports and posts that could easily have escaped your attention, but no worries. I collect the ones I think communicators will find interesting every week in this space. The items from which I make the final selection are housed on my link blog at LinksFromShel.tumblr.com.

Pew releases social media demographic study: Facebook is king

A comprehensive social media survey conducted over several years shines a spotlight on the social media platforms used by different demographics. The report, from the Pew Research Center, found 67 percent of adults use Facebook. The next most popular network -- LinkedIn -- represents a dramatic drop in usage, down to 20 percent. Twitter is used by 16 percent, Pinterest by 15 percent, Instagram by 13 percent and Tumblr by 6 percent. Seventy-one percent of Women use social media, 9 percent more than men do. Seventy percent of city dwellers use social media, as do 72 percent of Hispanics and 72 percent of households with annual incomes below $30,000. A great divide persists in the age demographics, with 83 percent of young adults (18-29 years old) using social media, twice the numbers in the over-65 group (32 percent). The report also explores demographics within various channels. Pinterest, for example, is popular with rural dwellers, women, whites, people with some college and people with mid-to-high incomes, while Twitter skews toward the 18-29 demographic, blacks and urban residents. The report -- with an information-rich infographic -- is on Docster.

Topsy's the place for a comprehensive Twitter search

Real-time search engine Topsy has indexed Twitter. All of it. Every single tweet since the service was launched in 2006, accounting for 425 billion content objects (photos, pages linked and other material in addition to tweets themselves). The archive previously reached back only as far as 2010, according to The New York Times' Vindu Goel. The piece quotes Topsy co-founder and CTO Vipul Ved Prakash: "How do you make sense of 400 billion pieces of content? One, by ranking it. We do that ranking by looking at how much a particular piece of content is being cited by other people." It's information you won't find on Google.

How to succeed on Reddit

When a story takes flight on Reddit, there's a good chance it'll spread far and wide across the Internet. After all, Buzzfeed acknowledges that Reddit content inspires a lot of the content it produces. Knowing what makes a Reddit submission popular would be useful, to say the least, to marketers and communicators. Some answers emerged from a Stanford University study during which statisticians spent several months "analyzing 16,700 pictures on Reddit in order to analyze the impact of content, title, community to which it was submitted, and time of submission," writes Adrianne Jeffries in The Verge. The answer, she explains is "'it depends.' The interplay between factors turned out to be hugely important, and different strategies worked for different subreddits, the topic-centric communities on Reddit." The researches concluded that good content speaks for itself, b ut the title is an important factor, as is the choice of community. Submissions are more likely to succeeded when posted around 8 a.m. or noon UTC, and are least successful when submitted around 4 a.m. UTC. There is also a "resubmission penalty," with content become less popular each time it's submitted. Researchers suggest the data from the study could be used "to develop models to name products for different markets."

Facebook hashtags diminish a post's virality

Facebook introduced hashtags with some fanfare in June, but a study from EdgeRank Checker finds that posts with hashtags produce less reach than those without them. According to the study, "hashtags on Facebook posts resulted in less viral reach, specifically that there was a decrease in the amount of engagement per fan and wasn't affected by the size of the fan base -- there's no correlation that the more fans you have, the greater the positive impact on a brand's engagement," Ken Yeung writes for The Next Web. Facebook responded that hashtags get gamed and the social network has been "fine tuning the ranking algorithms before we surface them more prominently to people." In the meantime, Facebook advises focusing "on posting relevant, high quality -content -- hashtags or not. Quality, not hashtags, is what our News Feed algorithms look for so t hat Pages can increase their reach."

Hashtags are here to stay

Facebook's hashtags may be struggling, but that hardly count as a hiccup in the rise of the hashtag as a marketing device. You might think that after six years, and with 75 percent of social media users deploying them, hashtags may have had their day. But, writes Saya Weissman for Digiday, "brands are still gung-ho about using hashtags for organizing conversations and pushing campaigns." Weissman cites several case studies, like the #Nissan360 tag, which generated more than 1,000 impressions during a press-focused driving event. "A hashtag has to have a purpose: Is it making the idea bigger or better?" BBH's communication planning head Julian Cole asked. "At the moment, I think there are just a lot of people adding them to the end of their TV spots; it is the new URL, which is a bit lame."

During a crisis, using Facebook will help your company's public image

Before the digital revolution, companies kept the public updated during a crisis through press conferences and statements issued by the PR department. Today, organizations would be wise to consider Facebook as at least one channel for crisis updates. According to a University of Missouri study, the practice "can improve the overall image of the organization that is experiencing the crisis." A UM press release explains that the study was based on news stories given to study participants about two fictional universities' crises. "After the participants read the news stories, (doctoral candidate Seoyeon Hong) measured their attitudes about each university and how severe they thought the crisis was. She then showed participants Facebook posts from the universities' main Facebook accounts which gave additional information and messages dire ctly from the universities. Hong then measured the participants' attitudes a second time and found that following the Facebook posts, attitudes toward the universities were significantly more positive than before participants read the posts." Study participants also found the crises less severe after reading the Facebook posts. According to Hong, the narrative style of Facebook posts "indicates that the effect of narrative tone in organizational statements during crises increases perceived conversational human voice, which represents a high level of engagement and best communicates trust, satisfaction, and commitment to the audience."

Shipping line limits crisis damage through social media

The MU study results are validated by a story out of the maritime industry. In June, the Maersk Norwich struck and killed a while. When the ship arrived in Rotterdam harbor, the whale lay dead across its bow. The company -- already the subject of praise for its social media savvy -- posted photos to its Facebook page and created a memorial album on Pinterest. Comments on the widely shared content was mostly positive, according to to a Reuters story by Ole Mikkelsen. The company also is using social media to track down lost containers, with fans shooting pictures of containers washed up on beaches and uploading "the picture and serial number to Facebook or Instagram so that Maersk can retrieve it." Maersk's social media manager was interviewed a few months back on Jay Baer's SocialPros podcast.

Finally, you can publish something sort of like animated GIFs to Facebook

The Gap posted a branded GIF to Facebook within hours of Giphy's announcement that it had launched a Facebook GIF product, according to Christopher Heine in an Adweek piece. "A handful of other brands are readying theirs for release shortly," Heine said. Giphy created the product using Facebook's API. Facebook banned GIFs a few years back, but Giphy insists that "Facebook is OK 'with our embed strategy, which works within their guidelines, but they don't support GIFs in general.'" Over on Mashable, however, Lance Ulanoff points out that what Giphy enables isn't really a GIF, but rather a Flash file. "Somewhere in the transition from the Giphy platform to Facebook, a conversion took place." Whether the native file is in the GIF format or one that emulates the original file seems inconsequenti al to me. If you want GIF-like animation in your Facebook post, Giphy's platform is currently your only bet.

Here comes the API economy

APIs -- Application Programming Interfaces -- are the "'digital glue' that empowers developers to create new software applications, partnerships and even new businesses," argues Byron Deeter, a Bessemer Venture Partners partner, in a guest post on Venture Beat. "This business-to-developer (B2D) market is quickly becoming one of the fastest growing opportunities within cloud computing," he says. There's no data I could find to suggest whether APIs are becoming a consideration in the development of digital marketing programs, but we communicators need to become as well acquainted with the concept as we did with HTML in the early days of the web. Deeter writes, "Empowering developers to build against your platform doesn't just create value for partners; the API provider wins as well by expanding the ecosystem, increasing retention, and driving up the value of the platform. Even more importantly, end customers win when all their products work seamlessly together."

A social network by and for police

There are thousands of social networks, but to read most of the media, you'd think there were only a handful. Most are niche networks, a lot of which are powered by services like Lithium and Jive. USA Today's Dan Gomez reports that a new niche network is poised to launch, one for cops. It's not only for cops; it was created by a notable one, Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Bratton. "BlueLine is being touted as a site where officers can shae their expertise, insight and information securely through video, instant messaging, videoconferencing and screen share capabilities." Bratton hopes the network will improve inter-agency cooperation. The site was built from scratch by Bratton's startup, Bratton Technologies, which has venture capital backing. The company's president, David RIker, said, "Our focus is to have a walled community where you're verified and authenticated, so you have a s afe form of communication with law enforcement, analysts and administrators."

Google Glass powers live stream of surgery

Google Glass -- Google's forthcoming wearable technology -- is the subject of both geekstatic gushing and derisive dismissal. But the practical uses are coming into focus with stories like the Ohil surgeon who streamed a knee surgery to remote colleagues, "demonstrating how the medical world can use wearable technology like Glass," according to Vignesh Ramachandran, writing for Mashable. The stream was watched by the surgeon's colleagues, as well as medical students. Other medical applications are in development, including MedRef for Glass, which hospital staff will use to pull patient information based on facial recognition of patients.

Even pre-rolls are an opportunity for creative communication

Nobody would tell you that they love sitting through commercial pre-rolls before watching a video, but even the reviled pre-roll offers an opportunity to tell a story. The Australian Federal Police used geo-targeted pre-rolls on YouTube videos to "show you people who went missing in your areas and ask if you've seen them," writes Quinton O'Reilly on SimplyZesty. The usual "skip ad" button was replaced by a "Yes" and "No" button, either of which got you out of the ad. And the video length: five seconds. Check out the Missing Person Pre-Roll video, embedded in the article.

Just added to my calendar, I'm speaking at PRSA Sacramento's monthly meeting on September 26.
On September 25, I'm speaking at an Intuit conference for its company communicators and writers on the writer's role in the social visual communication world.
I'm speaking about content marketing and gamification to IABC/Orange County on October 8.
I'll have a speaking slot at Ragan's Intranet Summit in Chicago on October 16.
I have three speaking gigs the week of October 20: one at the Canada regional IABC conference, one at The Mayo Clinic, and one at IABC's intranet conference in New York, held in conjunction with Prescient Digital Media.
I'm conducting a workshop November 6 at Chesapeake Energy Corporation in Oklahoma City, part of a three-day ragan conference on the role of communications in creating best places to work/
I'll present a webinar on December 4 for Lorman Education on social visual communication. It'll be available to the public.
Next February 6, I'll speak at an industry conference for manufacturers of Omega 3 products on crisis communications. The session is in Salt Lake City.

Strategy guidance

Most agencies and consultants gather information from you, vanish into a black hole, then re-emerge with a strategy. At Holtz Communication + Technology, we work with you as a unified team to ensure a strategic plan takes shape that is a perfect fit with your resources, capabilities and business goals. Want more information? Call me at +1.415.881.7435 or email me at shel@holtz.com for details.

Since 1996, HC+T has helped organizations communicate effectively in the emerging online space using intranets to reach employees and various dimensions of the Internet to communicate with other stakeholder audiences.

HC+T provides a full range of services for large organizations, from speaking and training to communication audits and strategic plan development.

Visit us at Holtz.com.

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