Social Media & SEO

The annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference—a week-long spectacle filled with experiential marketing stunts and immersive brand experiences that’s equal parts technology, education and entertainment—always offers plenty of style and substance for professional communicators. For those unable to attend, here are five fascinating live-streamed interviews and sessions that communicators will want to catch.

Letting a social media influencer temporarily take over your brand’s accounts can be a great tactic to bring in new followers and engage with your audience in an authentic way. But there are some important tricks of the trade to keep in mind.

We continue to look at the most-engaged brands in 2017, per exclusive data provided exclusively by Shareablee to PR News . In the Airline sector, we again see a pattern similar to what’s been observed in other industries: some of the best social brands are posting fewer pieces of content year over year although social engagement with their posts is growing. Video also plays a large role.

Last week we told you despite a number of worries, the sky was not falling as far as Facebook is concerned. More evidence comes this week, from the Pew Research Center, whose survey confirms many of the trends contained in reports other groups have issued. Yes, Facebook dominates with Americans older than 18, although youths tend to prefer Snapchat and Instagram.

The “Facebook Apocalypse” dominated conversations at Social Media Marketing World 2018, as brands prepare for a post-organic new world order. But for communicators, the future doesn’t have to be a dystopia of direct deposits into Facebook’s bank account. By mastering short-form and live video, focusing on storytelling and remembering to keep the humanity intact, your social media strategy can shift focus away from the brand and toward the consumer.

Do social media giants Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat have a viable, upstart competitor? Vero, launched and funded by billionaire Ayman Hariri in 2015, has found overnight popularity by offering free accounts to the first 1 million users, making it the No. 1 social media app on iTunes as of the morning of Feb. 27.

Similar to other segments we’ve been reviewing during the past few weeks, the Health & Fitness category owes much of its 2017 growth in consumer engagement with its social posts to video. In addition, it’s following the pattern of other industries, which have posted fewer pieces of content and increased engagement. CrossFit was the leader in this category in 2017, Shareablee says.

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” There’s good news and bad news for Facebook in terms of U.S. adult usage. The bad news is usage levels likely will fall in 2018, something that’s not happened in nearly one decade. The good news is it can absorb small reductions in usage for many years without its dominant position being threatened.

As a communicator, you can have a powerful impact on just about every corner of your organization by using the platforms, relationships and knowledge that you and your PR team are uniquely positioned to leverage.… Continued

While Snapchat’s redesign has caused a fierce resistance among its user base—prompting an online petition with 1.2 million signatures asking Snap, Inc. to revert to the original design—creators and brands are poised to benefit from the facelift. Over the last month, the platform has rolled out a suite of analytics, started growing an e-commerce platform and opened up its advertising API while offering new advertisers free credits to give Snapchat a test drive.