HC+T Update: June 21, 2013
From:
"HC+T Update" <shel@holtz.com>
Subject:
HC+T Update: June 21, 2013
Date:
June 21st 2013
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The volume of news of interest to PR and marketing professionals this past week was impressive, and a lot of the stories you may have missed focused on the growing importance of video. Thus, video dominates much of the reporting in this week's Update. As you read this (assuming you're reading it on Friday), I'm on my way to New York for the IABC World Conference. Given recent turmoil and disclosures, it should be a fascinating conference, especially the town hall that'll take place as part of the Annual General Meeting on Tuesday, which I'll cover on my blog. Meanwhile, if you're planning to be at the conference, look me up and say hi! |
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As always, I welcome you to scroll through my link blog at LinksFromShel.tumblr.com. It's where I save the items I consider for inclusion in this bulletin. Fiction's place in the content marketing mixFiction is nothing new in communications. Training videos, TV commercials and employee benefits scenarios are almost always based on fictitious circumstances crafted to explain a real-world process or issue. Researchers increasingly are finding fiction is a valuable way to explain research that is otherwise dry and technical. Is it unreasonable to consider fiction as part of a content marketing program? Phillip Sheldrake wrote a free ebook that explains social business through the eyes of a fictional CEO implementing it in a fictional company. The cynics out there would suggest that marketing and PR is already fiction, but the snark aside, couldn't a ripping good yarn serve to explain a complex topic effectively? That's what I propose in this post, inspired by an article from a research expert I found in the Huffington Post.Retail employee behavior can go viral in a heartbeatIt's the nature of the business. Retailers -- especially in the fast food industry -- hire kids who are still prone to doing stupid things. With the proliferation of smartphone video and photo capabilities, that stupid behavior is likely to get captured and shared. So is especially good behavior. Either one can happen to a retailer any time, as two recent case studies demonstrate. The key to dealing with it is knowing it's coming and having a plan in place to deal with it.FIR #708The most recent episode of For Immediate Release covers Upworthy -- the fastest growing website in history -- and Line -- the biggest social network you've never heard of. We also talk about IABC's current situation, the introduction of analytics and #FollowMe at Twitter, the language of social images, and the Washington Post's dive into the native advertising pool. |
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A summary of the items appearing in this week's Friday Wrap at http://blog.holtz.com. I collect the stories from which I choose these items on my link blog, which you're always free to peruse. It's at LinksFromShel.tumblr.com. Bringing fans into your videosA lot of the material I tagged this week has to do with video, and there's a consistent theme running through it: the role of your customers -- including fans and influencers -- in boosting your videos' reach. From Marketing Week UK's Sebastian Joseph comes a story from GM, whose Chervrolet division turning to four YouTube stars to produce short films about a new vehicle model, the Captiva. "The YouTube stars were given full control to devise their own tests and host them on their channels in an effort to ensure they did not look anything like an advert," Joseph explains. "Chevrolet is hoping the approach helps it reach what it claims are 'difficult' to target 'web-savvy, connected individuals' between 30 and 50 years old." The idea of letting outsiders produce your content with virtually no company control may seem risky, but it works. Zach James writes in Adweek that "We're increasingly finding that fans drive more value by creating videos about the brands and products that they love." James uses makeup company Cover Girl as an example, noting "Of CoverGirl's 251 million total views on YouTube, 249 million (or 99 percent) are from fan-created videos, according to data compiled by Zefr." Similar stats apply to brands including Oreo, Revlon and Swiffer. (A commercial featuring a woman who breaks into a dance while mopping her floor with a Swiffer inspired more than 150 fan videos featuring their own versions of the "Swiffer dance"). "Swiffer fan views don't just outnumber the actual brand views (10,451,334 vs. 225,220);" James writes; "they indicate a larger shift in the way consumers are interacting with brands and using YouTube." The trends James highlights including fans uploading commercials that resonate with them, the creation of "unboxing" videos, videos demonstrating how to use a product, and brand fans capitalizing on a pop culture moment.Video viewing surges on mobile and among executivesConsumption of video on mobile devices continues to grow, and some counterintuitive data is emerging. "Q1 saw new records in the percentage of total viewing time that took place on tablets and mobile devices," according to an article in Advanced Television; smartphone and tablets accounted for more than 10% of all online video plays, representing 19% growth. Even more interesting than the easily-predicted continued growth of mobile video is the amount of time mobile viewers are willing to devote to video, which could explode the conventional wisdom that videos must be short. "Mobile and tablet video viewers spent more than half of their total online viewing time watching long-form videos last quarter," according to the post. Twenty-five percent of the time people spent viewing videos on mobile devices was given over to videos longer than 60 minutes. If reaching executives is your brand's goal, video could be the road to take. "The C-suite indexes very high on using video," says Mike Miller, director of Business and Industrial Markets at Google (quoted in an eMarketer report. "If you're a B2B marketer and you're trying to reach the C-suite, video is a great way to go. While the C-level executive might not be the one making the final purchase, they're consuming that video and influencing the purchase." That tracks with a Forbes study from 2010 that found executives consuming a lot of online video.Vine continues its increasing appeal to marketersVine, the app that lets people record six-second videos (which are being shared on Twitter more than Instagram photos), continues to find its way into the content marketing mix, according to an Adweek piece by Christopher Heine. Vine videos are being used to promote new movies (like Monsters University and World War Z), which seems a natural, but licorice sticks Red Vines? Yep; they've run some 20 Vine ads since the app debuted early this year; they've earned click-through rates as high as 3% (enough to make a direct marketer celebrate).Instagram isn't taking it lying downAs Vine videos begin to attract more attention, shares and click-throughs than Instagram images, Facebook (which owns Instagram) is taking action. Reports surfaced everywhere this week that, at its June 20 event, Facebook would reveal one big thing: Instagram will let you record and share videos in addition to photos. Ingrid Lunden writes for TechCrunch that Facebook is playing details close to the vest, but calls the move by Instagram "the Vine effect."Video in email? It's the futureEmail marketers have been jumping on the video bandwagon, with one out of four including video in their email newsletters, according to an eMarketer report. Those who don't cite a lack of good videos as the main obstacle to incorporating video. But among those who have used it, "55% reported higher clickthrough rates, 44% saw an increase in the amount of time subscribers spent with an email, and 41% reported an increase in the sharing or forwarding of emails."Enough about video. Let's talk Twitter vs. FacebookIf the data from social advertising and analytics startup Optimal is to be believed, Twitter may represent greater opportunities for growing a following for your brand than Facebook. During a one-week period, Optimal found brands added 18.5 million new likes and 4.5 million new followers, "so on a percentage basis, their following grew 55 percent more quickly on Twitter than it did on Facebook," writes Anthony Ha for TechCrunch. "You might quibble about whether pitting Facebook Likes against Twitter followers is a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison, but those are, ultimately, the main ways that businesses can count their following on each service," Ha asserts. According to Optimal CEO Rob Leathern, "I think it does show that Twitter is growing and becoming more relevant for brands, too â in a sense 'catching up,' but also it is different as well. A smaller but often more active audience."So, how's your company website doing?The era of the destination website is over, Edelman digital exec Steve Rubel proclaimed several years ago. Brand behavior seemed to confirm that the destination website was now an afterthought, with most attention and resources redirected to Facebook and other third-party networks. A good idea? Lvefyre founder and CEO Jordan Kretchmer thinks balance is needed, according to his FastCompany article. "Brands and publishers have found value in creating a social presence through platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest to drive traffic back to their sites through links," he explains. "However, what they've learned is that while you can direct traffic back to your site, without building on that social experience, consumers don't stay on the brands' sites very long and ultimately end up heading back to the social platforms to express their opinions and interact around content." His advice: Adjust your website to allow users to continue their interactions on the brand website. Some brands have already figured out that their long-neglected websites have value, according to a Wired piece by Ryan Tate. "Businesses are realizing something has been lost in the transition (to social networks), that there's nothing like being able to control exactly how they speak to customers, and the humble website seems to be surging back," he writes. "The comeback is bolstered by new interlinks that make it increasingly easy for websites to suck in and selectively repurpose some of the very social content that diminished the open web in the first place."As long as you're looking at your website again, is it time to update the design?The introduction of new technologies has led to considerable innovation in web design in recent years. Lisa Wehr, writing for iMedia Connection, spotlights seven trends to watch. These include parallax scrolling ("3D-visual effects increase user engagement for image intensive sites"), infinite scrolling ("When there is no end in sight, users remain on the page, increasing engagement time"), alternative navigation ("A website doesn't always have to scroll up or down"), and fresh aesthetics ("Fresh, custom design elements help humanize the content and the brand"). Wehr provides a solid example for each trend.Is it time to rethink your media relations strategy?If your media relations strategy is all about pitching reporters who will write traditional articles, you may want to reconsider your approach. Journalists don't trust PR people -- in-house or agency -- to give them good information during their research. Only the head of marketing and online community managers are trusted less. Meanwhile, according to a study from Oriella PR Network, reported by Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog, newsrooms are now conducting research using a full set of digital tools. "A 'digital first' policy, breaking news online as it happens, is in place at over a third of the media titles surveyed with use of mobile apps, in-house produced video and social media as a news source all on the rise," according to the report. According to Oriella director Robin Grainger, "If these trends accelerate, there are some pote ntially game-changing ramifications for media and communicators alike. First, touch-screen interfaces will open up new possibilities for storytelling. One example could be interactive graphics (or digi-graphics) which blend high design and big data to enable readers to navigate their own path through stories." Second, she says, "We may see a polarization of journalistic output." Short, tweet-like news updates offer coverage in close to real time, optimized for mobile devices, while long-form content will be the approach to feature and investigative pieces. Journalists are also making use of social media for newsgathering, "but continue to place an emphasis on trusted sources and pre-existing relationships." For instance, just over half of reporters surveyed said they "source new stories from micorblogs...but only when they already know the source behind them." If journalists don't trust PR people, whom do they trust? It's almost like a mirror of whom the public trusts according to Edelman's annual trust barometer: academics or experts, technical experts inside the company (a good reason to have your subject matter experts establish a social media footprint), a person like themselves, an industry analyst, the company CEO,an NGO or charity, a regulator or government official, and a reader. After that the numbers all dip into the negatives. |
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Does your communication staff have the competencies to execute your digital/social strategy?My colleagues Richard Binhammer, Mark Dollins and I are announcing the launch of SME Squared, a new virtual consultancy designed to help identify the abilities of your staff across more than 30 digital and social media competencies in four distinct categories. Based on our approach, we'll map the competencies against your social media strategies and show you where gaps exist. We'll also propose training and hiring priorities in order to fill those gaps. If you're interested in more details, give me a call at +1.415.881.7435. We'll talk. More information is on our freshly launched website at SME-squared.com. |
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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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