News

Facebook loosens grip on its News Feed -- Facebook is testing a new feature that will enable users to ensure they see content from people (and brands) they never want to miss. Dubbed "See First," the feature lets you click a button on a profile so you'll see recent posts from that person at the top of your News Feed. Brands that figure out how to get consumers to click that button on their page could see huge gains in organic reach. Remember, though, so far it's only a test. Read more

Another Facebook News Feed change focuses on time spent -- The amount of time you spend looking at a post will play a bigger part in determining the kind of content that shows up in your News Feed. If you spend a lot of time with a post featuring pictures from the concert your friend went to, Facebook will put other photo-based posts from friends at concerts higher in your Feed. The idea is to make the Feed more compelling and interesting so you'll spend more time on it. Some have called the feature creepy, but publishers like the Financial Times are already using attention -- that is, the time spent on articles -- as a metric for assessing the effectiveness of advertising. Read more

New social network focuses on politics -- If you just can't get enough politics, you may want to join Brigade, the latest offering from Sean Parker, the Silicon Valley billionaire most people will remember from the movie The Social Network, portrayed by Justin Timberlake. Brigade solves the problem of adhering to the social norms demanded by Facebook. Currently invitation-only, Brigade welcomes the kind of political debate from which many shy away on Facebook. Brigade's beta group -- some 13,000 users -- took an average of 90 positions, which appear in the "position-taking ribbon," akin to the Facebook News Feed. Read more

FTC updates disclosure guidelines -- The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has updated its endorsement disclosure guidelines for the first time in five years, and its message is pretty clear: Material relationships between brand and endorser on social media must be "clearly and conspicuously" disclosed. That's nothing new, but the agency has added detailed guidance. Analysts point out the guidance puts brands and endorsers on notice. Addressed in the guidance are topics formerly considered gray areas, like contests and sweepstakes, Facebook likes, the use of influencers as spokespersons, disclosures in videos, and the need for disclosure in tweets. Read more

GIFs and Vines now autoplay on Twitter -- It's harder to ignore an animated GIF or a Vine video if it starts playing without you needing to click on it. That's what happens on Twitter now, and Mountain Dew was among the first to take advantage of the feature. The soft drink brand sent out five threaded tweets, each of which contained a GIF of the Baja Blast pouring out from the sky. Read more

Ello launches iOS app -- Remember Ello, the upstart social network that wants you to abandon Facebook for an ad-free experience? The one that became a public benefit corporation in order to demonstrate its commitment to never inflicting an ad on its users? Ello's new iOS app is getting some good notices. Founder and CEO Paul Budnitz has more plans for the future, including ecommerce as a way to make money without advertising -- users will be able to sell their creative services and artisanal wares through their posts. For me, there's nothing besides the lack of ads to differentiate Ello and very few people I know are there, leaving me little reason to add it to my list of must-visit sites. Read more

Snapchat capitalizes on location-based photo-sharing -- "Look at me, I'm on the Vegas Strip!" It's that kind of location-based sharing that has led Snapchat to find a new source of income. Geofilters are a location-based overlay that feature the name of the place you're at and a symbolic drawing. These digital stickers are now available on Snapchat to enhance your "here I am" photos -- for a fee. The user won't pay; rather, it'll be the location. McDonald's was the first brand to sponsor a geofilter. Read more

Research

Sponsored content leaves one-third of readers feeling deceived or disappointed -- It's hard to blame the category of native advertising for the results of a study that found 33% of UK consumers and 43% of US consumers feeling disappointed or deceived when they discovered content they had read on a publisher's site was sponsored by a brand or a company. That would be like blaming canvas for bad art. Clearer disclosure and more useful content can change things. (And it's not unimportant that a majority of users don't share that experience.) Read more

Useless content is an obstacle to embracing social media -- More than 1/3 of Americans and British professionals are staying off social media because the content is useless. The study of full-time professionals aged 20-45 found a quarter of Americans think social media is the source of too much spam, 26% don't have time to post anything, and 25% would worry about their employers' views of their social media profiles. Americans, however, are more conscious than Brits of how beneficial it can be in business to have a good social media profile. Read more

Another day, another survey reveals inability to measure social media -- Despite the fact that we've been reading this same story over and over again for years, marketers still have trouble measuring the value of social media. North American social media professionals were most likely to list measuring the ROI of social media as the most challenging dimension of their efforts. It's almost as though they never looked to see if there might be any useful content online or at a local workshop or conference that might offer them a clue. Read more

Trends

Does your product need an app? -- Reinforcing the increasing importance of the Internet of Things (IoT) is the growing expectation that an app can increase the value of any product. In fact, apps are becoming an integral part of many products, such as a home theater receiver that is controlled through an intuitive mobile app. As the use of apps to control or connect with other kinds of products becomes more routine, whether your products have one could spell success or failure. Read more

Disney demonstrates how to tap into a fan base -- The Walt Disney Company invited 1,300 moms who write about Disney in their social media channels to be part of a community dubbed Disney Social Media moms. Members of the group aren't paid but they do get perks for participation, including deeply discounted four-day family trips to Walt Disney World, where they attend the Disney Social moms Celebration. The company does not require any posting and makes no suggestions about what to post, yet so far this year, the event alone has produced 28,500 tweets, 4,900 Instagram photos, and 88 blog posts. You don't have to be Disney to convert your biggest fans into ambassadors by making them part of something exclusive. Read more

New York Times blocks employee access to desktop home page -- In an effort to get staff to start using its mobile offerings -- and get accustomed to the platform that will be the primary means of reader access -- The New York Times blocked employee access to its desktop home page this week. They could still get to articles, but to see the site from the top, they had to use a phone or tablet. The Times hopes it sparks more thinking about how to better take advantage of the mobile shift. It's an experiment companies should emulate. Read more

Cards are taking over web design -- If you've encountered websites composed of rectangles filled with images and text, brace yourself: You're going to see more. Cards make it easy to organize large amounts of content and adapt well on mobile devices. Using cards is an exploding trend, one worth paying close attention to. Read more

Who needs a cameraman when you have a selfie stick? -- TV news reports at Australia's Sky News are handling their own camera work, attaching phones and microphones to selfie sticks from LiveU in order to deliver their reports. The LiveU product, SmartGRIP, handles transmissions through its own servers to ensure high-quality footage, but for companies -- particularly when a live broadcast isn't vital -- these kinds of reports can probably be handled just fine by recording the reports on smartphones for production later. That means any old selfie stick will do. Read more

Mobile and Wearables

The "Instagram of News" arrives -- Kite is a new app (iOS only at this point) that focuses on sharing articles with your followers the same way Instagram lets you share photos. Early reviews also note that Kite is also gorgeous, a full-featured browser that substitutes a social graph for the URL bar. Consider it a social network for finding what to read next. Read more

Facebook's Moments app syncs your camera roll with others -- Facebook's Moments app is designed to alleviate some of the hassles associated with uploading photos from people's camera rolls. The app groups the photos you've taken based on the date and the people who are in the pictures. Once they're grouped, the app asks if you want to synch that group with the friends who were in the photos. You can manually include anybody the app left out. Read more

Cautionary Tales

Useful Shit

Don't ignore LinkedIn for PR -- AirPR Chief Strategy Officer Rebekah Iliff offers 10 ways to leverage Linkedin for PR, including humanizing employees, senior execs, and thought leaders through content they can create or comment on; making better use of your company page; reinforcing the value of authenticity instead of promotion; and focusing on the quality (not the quantity) of your connections. Read more

Having trouble convincing your execs of content marketing's ROI? -- Numbers focused executives might have trouble wrapping their minds around content marketing, which might keep them from funding it. You can help clear things up by pointing to lead generation, sales generated from content, how well referral traffic worked, and more. Read more

Rebuild your Facebook organic reach -- This infographic from SocialTimes offers some useful insights for organizations suffering diminished social reach on Facebook, including recommendations for the kind of content that wins engagement 9such as original, behind-the-scenes photos of you and your team). Read more

This week on the FIR Podcast Network

• FIR B2B co-host Paul Gillin joined me as guest co-host of this week's Hobson & Holtz Report. We focused on some B2B conversation, such as the need for marketers to adopt predictive analytics. We also covered the consequences of social networks controlling the news (and deciding what's newsworthy), the slowdown in live-streaming as on-demand listening increases, the Onion's Clickhole's success in mocking clickbait sites, and why subscriptions need to be a content marketing goal. We also covered Twitter's future in the wake of CEO Dick Costolo's departure, The New York Times' decision to block the desktop version of its homepage from employees (to force them to use mobile devices), what Paul learned when training former NFL players, and a poll that highlights the importance of good internal communications. Listen
• On episode 36 of Higher Education, host Kevin Anselmo talks with Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, on the role of content marketing for academic institutions. Listen
• Ron Shewchuk returns to FIR with episode 6 of TV@Work, a great episode that features an interview with the producers of Home Instead Senior Care's employee video program. Listen
• The second episode of Digital India features discussions on faster and ligher mobile web pages in India, the speed with which India's first lesbian video went viral, and a brand champion's decision to invest in girl-child education, among other topics. Listen
• In an FIR interview, I spent time with 2015-16 IABC Chair Michael Ambjorn talking about the state of the association and the direction in which he'll take it during his term. Listen

• I'm presenting a half-day workshop on strategic social and digital media for Owens Corning in Chicago next month.
• In June, I make my annual trek to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for three days of instruction for senior communicators, part of the ABERJE/Syracuse Univesity certificate course in executive communications.
• Also in June, I'll deliver another precon at another Ragan Visual Communications Summit, this time in Denver.
• In July, Ann Wylie and I co-present our writing workshop for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.
• On August 6 (my birthday), I'm presenting a pre-conference session in Chicago at Ragan Communications' Visual Communications Summit.
• In September, I travel to the U.K. to teach a two-day social/digital media workshop for the International School of Communication.
• I'm delivering the opening keynote at a joint session of CorpComm Expo and EduComm Expo in Atlanta in early October.
• In October, I'll speak to the Association of Public Relations Professionals of Puerto Rico at their conference in San Juan.

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