Social Media & SEO

Generating new and exciting content is essential to any social media strategy, but it’s no small feat. Brands spend a good chunk of their marketing budget on copywriters, agencies and influencers to build a library of rich, dynamic content that captures and captivates their audience’s attention. But there’s another way. Here, Vanessa Sain-Dieguez, senior director of HR digital strategy at Hilton Worldwide, shows how the hotel giant built a tribe of passionate content creators in-house.

The recent rise in popularity of live video has many brand marketing plans in a bit of a tailspin—if you’re not leading in the space and killing it, you’re falling behind and struggling to stay relevant

A pair of Brits, chef Jamie Oliver and filmmaker Louis Cole, were the top influencers in food and travel, respectively during the month of April, according to data provided exclusively to PR News Pro by Shareablee. The rankings were compiled looking at social media shares, retweets, comments and likes. Interestingly, Oliver’s top post lacked any mention of food.

After an industry show, the question we receive often is a variation on “What did you hear?” With some 90 speakers over two and a half days, one person’s experience during last week’s sold-out Social Shake-Up show in Atlanta likely was a bit different from anyone else’s. One theme was that many, though not all, brands and organizations understand social media is far from a fad, but instead can be a valuable communications tool, a listening aid and a useful platform for e-commerce and customer care.

A step-by-step approach for communicators to use when setting up a program to train sales personnel to use social media for selling. Since social selling sits at the intersection of marketing communications and sales, putting such a program in place is a great opportunity for communicators to drive social selling adoption and help close the gap between sales and marketing. Another benefit for communicators is that social selling lets them directly measure their influence on business results, sales and bottom-line revenue.

Our weekly roundup of news, trends and personnel moves in PR and communications. This week we features stories about British Airways weekend crisis, a fond farewell to Ketchum’s David Rockland, notes about expansion and a slew of personnel moves, including a White House ouster and Staples naming Michelle Bottomley as its CMO.

Similar to one of the themes running through the recent, sold-out Social Shake-Up Show, an idea at the heart of the Conference Board’s new study is that some members of the C-Suite continue to doubt the importance of social media as a valuable business tool. The culprits most often reside in the C-Suites of B2B brands, says the report, made available early and exclusively to PR News Pro. One solution is emphasize the positive attributes of social in business terms, the study says.

If I had to pick one thought to summarize this week’s sold-out Social Shake-Up Show, it would be this: The lines between content and marketing are blurring so rapidly, the phrase “content marketing” is starting to become redundant. Words such as authenticity, experiential, immersive and storytelling were heard often during panel sessions and networking breaks to describe this zeitgeist, this evolution of messaging. But to me, it really all comes down to a single, often misunderstood word—empathy.

Want to know some of what was on the minds of attendees at the sold-out Social Shake-Up Show? Ask the attendees to discuss 10 social media-related topics toward the end of the conference. That’s just what happened on Wednesday afternoon at the show. Find out what the attendees were thinking about as well as some of their key takeaways.

The Saturday Night Live actor who plays the girl you wish you hadn’t started a conversation with at a party turned out to be quite conversant about social media during Tuesday afternoon’s session of the sold-out Social Shake-Up in Atlanta. Actor/comedian/activist Cecily Strong provided trenchant points about social media as it relates to celebrities and brands. There were plenty of laughs, too. Photo: www.Jkleinphotography.com