Subscription Content

B2C brands don’t seem to be listening to tales of gloom about Twitter, at least not the brands that have the most consumer engagement, according to data provided exclusively to PR News by Shareablee.

After a 2-year-old boy was killed June 14 by an alligator at Walt Disney World, a brand representing magic seemed to be without pixie dust. In today’s news cycle, it is impossible for companies, especially those as large and iconic as Disney, to hide from online critics who thrive on call-outs of organizations undergoing a crisis.

Influencer Social Media Guidelines The document is intended to provide general information and guidelines only and is not a substitute for legal advice. Since all promotional campaigns must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis for… Continued

The tit-for-tat between social brands continues, with the battlefield moving to live streaming. For a time pundits enjoyed contrasting Facebook’s financials with those of Twitter. No more. Due to Facebook’s historic financial prowess, it’s no longer a fair fight. At least with live video, it’s still a contest. In July, CNBC International signed an agreement with Face- book to put its morning show Street Signs on Facebook Live for a trial following the Brexit vote. Meanwhile Twitter tapped Bloomberg Media, which will live stream several of its shows on the bird platform, including election monitor With All Due Respect. July 20 Twitter said it hooked the NBA to live stream a pair of new, weekly pre-game shows on the platform. This adds to Twitter’s sports stable: it signed the NFL ear- lier this year to live stream Thursday Night Football games. Twitter also live streamed Wimbledon in July. Facebook returned serve: it signed a bevy of people who made their reps on Vine and YouTube to create video for Facebook Live. That’s in addition to media companies like BuzzFeed and The NY Times, announced earlier (PRN, June 27). From July 25-July 28 Twitter carried live coverage from CBSN of the Democrats’ convention from Philadelphia.

The internet doesn’t forget. Or does it? Through the miracles of science (and some clever PR professionals), online reputations are no longer as cemented in history as perhaps once thought. Enter the advent of reverse SEO. Think of it as SEO but, well, in reverse. The concept has been around for about a decade, and elements have seeped into the lexicon of public relations professionals. Namely, reputation management has caught on. But while reverse SEO shares characteristics of reputation management, reverse SEO is more specific to search results that pop up for clients when specific keywords or phrases are used.

Just as communicators are starting to ‘get’ millennials, there’s a follow-on cohort, Generation Z. While there’s debate about the age range of Gen Z, we’ll define it here as those born from 1995 to now, meaning anyone 21 or younger. As a communicator you can think of Gen Z-ers as the poor man’s millennials and treat them as you did their predecessors. This is a mistake. It’s better to see them as young evolutionaries. Of the characteristics that will influence how brands interact with this group, the most important may be Gen Z’s sway over family spending (more on this below). These toddlers, tweens and teens represent 28% of the population. In four years this is expected to be 40%. While the implications for communicators are clear, a paradigm shift makes Gen Z’s influence even greater. Unlike their predecessors, they have more sway over not just their piggy bank but family spending. It started with putting Gen Z in the driver’s seat for low-stakes purchases and has evolved into many Gen Z-ers making family decisions for tech devices, vacation and cars. In terms of back-to-school buying, a 2015 National Retail Federation survey found 10% of parents admit their children influence 100% of what they buy, up from 8% in 2014.

In case you hadn’t realized, video is no longer a fad. It has become a fait accompli. As we’ve seen in this series, which has examined Shareablee data made available exclusively to PR News, consumer engagement with U.S. brands—B2C and B2B—on social media in Q1 2016 has grown year over year. Tremendous increases in consumer engagement with video posts have powered the bulk of the growth. Consumer engagement, or actions, is defined as the sum of retweets and likes. The same pattern seen with B2C and B2B ( PRN, July 11) holds true for nonprofits, the subject of this week’s Data Dive. In Q1 2016, U.S. nonprofits generated 5.3 million actions on Twitter, a 49% improvement compared with the same time last year. A 125% increase in engagement with video content on the platform was responsible for the growth. Actions rose 49%, from 3.56 million to 5.3 million.

There are myriad lessons for communicators related to transparency, monitoring the social conversation and when and whom to engage from two recent news items. The first item has the Republican Party being forced to shut down its live chat on YouTube July 18. The party had urged viewers to chat while it streamed its convention live on YouTube. The reason for the shut-down were anti-Semitic comments posted on the live chat as former Hawaii governor Linda Lingle was addressing the convention. The other involves the nasty messages sent via social to actor/comedian Leslie Jones, a co-star of Ghostbusters.

When a company does something good and no one notices, what is the impact? Companies create philanthropic or charitable initiatives as part of their CSR programs for many reasons. Because there is the notion that CSR campaigns are created to cover up bad behavior, some corporations shy away from publicizing these efforts to stakeholders. They worry that if they do, they are signaling that there is a reason behind the strategy and will come under attack.

Many internal communicators have an idea of how to define a remote worker, but a consistent definition often is hard to find. While some believe a remote employee is anyone who does not work at headquarters, this is not really the case. Those who work in a company building, owned or leased, remain highly connected to the brand. The ability of internal communicators to reach them is relatively easy. Remote employees typically are telecommuting from home, embedded at customer sites or working in remote parts of the country. Reaching these employees can be tricky. It certainly is not impossible. A few simple and inexpensive tips will help internal communicators reach them.