HC+T Update: May 9, 2014

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

Subject: HC+T Update: May 9, 2014

Date: May 9th 2014

May 9, 2014
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Here's your weekly curated rundown of news, reports and posts from the past week that, while they didn't go viral or attract much attention, are still interesting and useful for communications professionals. I select Wrap items from my link blog, which you're welcome to follow at http://tumblr.com/blog/LinksFromShel

News

Facebook introduces Insights for better audience targeting -- Audience Insights, a new tool rolling out the Facebook Ads managers in the U.S. this week, gives brands access to aggregate and anonymous information on Facebook users, including demographics, page likes, language and location, frequency of Facebook logins by target audience members, and purchase activity. Marketers can view the information three ways: the general Facebook audience, people connected to brands' pages or events, and people in audiences comprised of current customers. Facebook offered a use case for the new tool: "Say you want to raise awareness for your women's luxury fashion brand, and you sell your products in-store. You'd want to know how many people on Facebook live near your stores, as well as their interests, their past purchase behavior, and how they tend to shop (online vs. in-store)." Read more

Business Manager is another new Facebook tool -- This one lets marketers and agencies manage multiple campaigns via a single interface. You can assign roles to people working on different campaigns, and share materials between agencies and clients, add and delete add accounts, and revoke permissions to people using those accounts, and simplify the separation of personal and business experiences on Facebook. Read more

Salesforce unveils Social Studio -- Salesforce is combining two of the social technologies it has acquired in the last few years to create Social Studio, a unified suite for social media. According to Marcel LeBrun, founder and CEO of Radian6 (which Salesforce bought), "It's one simple tool with easy automated rules, team collaboration, and the ability to assign cases in Salesforce." Read more

Coca-Cola caves in to blogger conspiracy theorists -- An ad campaign for Diet Coke featured the two-word tagline, "You're On," but when those words were positioned over the brand name, some saw it reading, "You're On Diet Coke" and connected that with being on cocaine (because cocaine was long ago an ingredient in Coca-Cola). That discussion led the brand to drop the campaign while assuring everyone that the company "in no way endorses or supports the use of any illegal substance." Seems like an overreaction to me. Read more

Foursquare splits its app in two -- Foursquare, the "check-in" app, has divided its offering into two distinct apps. Swarm is a new app, designed for the social networking that results from check-ins, while Foursquare will concentrate on search and recommendations. Swarm will appear first in the Apple App Store. The unbundling is consistent with an industry trend, such as the largely successful separation of Messenger from the Facebook app. Read more

Tumblr goes all-in with mobile, introducing in-app themes -- It may not sound like a big deal, but Tumblr's announcement that you can customize your blog's design from within the iPhone or Android app signals the recognition that most people are using and consuming Tumblr from mobile devices. Until now, viewing a blog on a mobile device stripped it of its design, but now viewing Tumblr blogs on a mobile device offers up much of the blogging utility's diverse look-and-feel capabilities. Read more

Vine opens its own app-less website -- Vine.co lets you watch Vines in TV mode, pushing Vine into YouTube-like viewing experiences. Using the newly opened site, you can also search and browse Vines while comfortably seated at your desktop or laptop. "There may not be any demand for Vine ads right now but a well thought out and executed 6 second Vine is more valuable than any 30 second pre-roll on YouTube," according to Tech Guru Daily. "Vine may be helping to rewrite video messaging, for the better because it is now more readily accessible." Read more

Fleishman Hillard launches Native Newsroom for LinkedIn -- PR agency Fleishman Hillard has introduced a new product, Native Newsroom, with LinkedIn as its first target. Tapping LinkedIn's organic and paid/sponsored ad channels, along with analytics, the Native Newsroom will develop content "based on what people are talking about," then assess how that content is performing. Clients using the tool will work with Fleishman's brand journalists and audience management teams to craft content, such as SlideShare decks, which are become more and more integrated into LinkedIn (which owns SlideShare). Read more

Research

Most customer interactions on social media are positive -- 55% of direct user interactions with 20 leading global brands on Twitter were positive and 25% were neutral, according to an analysis by Converseon. 49% of the interactions on Facebook were positive and 20% were neutral, while 53% of Google+ interactions were positive and 18% neutral. Overall, interactions were more likely to be neutral than negative. "At most, one-fifth of all such interactions went badly," according to an eMarketer report on the study. "Brands may have caught on to the fact that social media tends to be more positive than not." Read more

Instagram photos beat stock images in online ads -- Social media agency Laundry Service measured its campaign performance using Instagram-style images versus studio shots and stock photos, and found that the "organic" content produced click-through rates as high as 8% compared to 2.35% for "regular" photos. Based on these results, the agency has opened an Instagram division with plans to expand its network of Instagram photographers. Read more

Native advertising doesn't undermine credibility -- One of the biggest criticisms of native advertising is the fear that advertorial-like content sneaked into the editorial stream will harm the journalistic integrity of a media outlet. Not so, according to a research paper, "Native Advertising and Digital Natives: The Effects of Age and Advertisement Format on news Website Credibility Judgments." Regardless of the age group studied, people felt about the same about the credibility of a site, regardless of what kind of advertising it contained, according to the study. Read more

Sharing and recommendations more influential than brand or price -- Consumers make buying decisions based more on content sharing and recommendations than brand or price. A study from Beresford Research found that a positive share increases both intent to purchase and product value by 9.5%. Consumer reviews produce about 7% additional value; ratings add another 6%. Negative online shares decreate purchase intent by 11%. One online share produces value of between $.33 for a brand or store recommended by a stranger and $1.33 for brands recommended by someone you know. Read more

Women value peer opinions over paid placement -- Female shoppers put more stock in the opinions of their peers than over any kind of paid placement, according to a Ladies' Home Journal study, and most said the experience of those peers has led them to make a purchase. 79% of those surveyed bought something based on the experience of someone they know, while 74% said their purchases are routinely influenced by what their peers share with them. 82% said they regularly share their own experiences and opinions about products and services. Read more

Legal and privacy

LinkedIn user trends may surprise you -- LinkedIn consultant and expert Wayne Breitbarth has released a 2014 update to his earlier research on LinkedIn user trends, finding that 41% of users report 550 or more connections, an increase of 11 points from 2013. Paid membership has dropped from 18% to 16%. Fifty-eight percent of respondents spend more than two hours on the site each week. And groups aren't as popular as they once were, perhaps the result of Site-Wide Automated Moderation or too much spam. A year ago, 60% said groups were a favorite feature; that's down to 42% who like Group discussion and 26% who like searching for people in groups. Only 16% are in 50 groups, the maximum allowed. Thirty-nine percent of users see posting individual status updates as a top feature, but at the very top of the heap is seeing who has viewed your profile; 76% of respondents chose it as their favorite feature. Company page use rocketed from 24% last year to 57%. Read more

20 years of monitoring for Snapchat in FTC settlement -- In a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over accusations of misleading customers about their privacy contradicted by the amount of information it collected about users, Snapchat agreed to revise its policy and to be monitored by an independent privacy professional for two decades. FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said, "If a company markets privacy and security as a key selling point in pitching its service to consumers, it is critical that it keep those promises. Any company that makes misrepresentations to consumers about its privacy and security practices risks FTC action." Read more

How much do Google and Facebook value you? -- PrivacyFix, a new app from security company AVG, lets you estimate what you're worth to Facebook and Google. You give the app permission to peer into your accounts; it checks your privacy settings to determine how much information you're giving away and what that adds up to in dollars and cents. AVG has determined that women are worth 25% more than men on Facebook. PrivacyFix analyzes your Google activity based on the number of searches you've conducted in the last 60 days, based on the idea that more searches result in more clicking on ads. Read more

Big ideas, great reads

RIP: The marketing funnel -- The buying process was once linear, giving rise to the marketing funnel, with awareness at the top. As consumers moved through the funnel, they considered a product, decided to buy it, then became advocates of the brand. The problem is, the process is no longer linear. "Prospects don't just enter at the top of the funnel; instead, they come in at any stage," according to Mark Bonchek and Cara France, writing in the Harvard Business Review blog. "Furthermore, they often jump stages, stay in in a stage indefinitely, or move back and forth between them." New models are emerging to accommodate the change, such as the Customer Decision Journey from McKinsey and Co. Read more

Police departments protect and serve on Pinterest -- Images of recovered stolen jewelry posted by Redwood City, California police to Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter accounts led to information about the owner of the merchandise. This represented the fourth person in the area to recover stolen goods via Pinterest, which features some 85 pinboards from U.S.-based police departments, who are using the service for police work like solving burglary and robbery cases, locating missing people, and educating parents about drugs popular with kids. Read more

Do you really need that video to go viral? -- If your video targets a very specific customer, and that group winds up spending more money on your products or services because they saw the video, it really doesn't matter if the view count doesn't rise to the level of a viral video. "Small companies can actually benefit tremendously by taking advantage of 'unscalable' tactics -- things that can work but will not yield proportional results on a bigger scale,' writes RJMetrics CEO Robert J. Moore. Read more

The four core elements of your employee social media policy that may be illegal -- Requiring employees to disclose their relationship to the company. Asking employees to behave online as they're expected to in the workplace. Restricting the use of trademarks and logos. These are pretty routine elements of social media policies, which an administrative law judge struck down. Is it time to revisit your policy? Read more

5 ways to lose a communication award competition -- After judging more than 100 entries in a competition, I've found five offenses that will ensure your entry won't make it into the finalist pile. Read more

This week on FIR

On The Hobson & Holtz Report, episode 754, Neville and I talk about the transformation social media is undergoing from all-in-one sites to discrete apps, the fashion industry's adoption of Instagram, the rising value of print, and business uptake of wearable technology. We also look at a meltdown on Twitter, a PR agency's launch of a content marketing unit, WPP's acquisition of Twist Image, and an NLRB ruling on social media policies. We also have our usual reports from Dan York on technology and Michael Netzley on Asia. Listen
On episode 8 of FIR B2B, Paul Gillin and Allan Schoenberg talk about the future of Google+, how to use LinkedIn as a publishing platform, ridiculous marketing buzzwords, and the growth of B2B media industry revenues. Listen
Michael Procopio and Mitchell levy chat with Steve Farnsworth, chief digital strategist at Jolt media Marketing, about how smart companies can integrate social media, PR 2.0, and content marketing into their marketing mix. Listen
AMP UP Your Social Media, with Glenn Gaudet, features an interview with Stephanie Frasco, owner and social media consultant for ConvertWithContent.com. Stephanie talks about helping clients by identifying the key benefits of each social media platform. Listen
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are up for discussion by Andrea Vascellari in episode 18 of FIR on Strategy. Listen

I'm conducting a webinar in June for PeopleFluent. Details to come.
I'll be speaking multiple times at IABC's World Conference in Toronto, June 8-11.
On June 25, I'll be in Columbus, Ohio presenting a workshop for communicators from Owens Corning.
I return to Sao Paulo, Brazil, in August for three days of teaching at the national communications association, ABERJE.
In October, I'll head to Warsaw, Poland to speak at an internal communication conference.
In November, I'll speak at the Global Intranet Forum in New York.

Need a strategic plan?

The idea behind a strategic plan is simple. After establishing goals, you identify strategies, set measurable objectives, then develop and implement tactics. Well, the idea is simple. Execution is another thing altogether. I've developed social media and internal communications strategic plans for a number of large organizations. Let's talk.