Social Media & SEO

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

There were things old and new during the sold-out 2017 Social Shake-Up Show’s opening general session today (May 23) in Atlanta. The new started right away, as six members of the Alpha Rho step dancers of Morehouse College literally kicked off the show with a rousing performance. And then Shonduras took over the stage.

The early bird gets the worm. That certainly applied to the pre-Social Shake-Up workshops, which featured plenty of personalized instruction on topics ranging from customer journey mapping, SEO and building online communities. The Social Shake-Up, which begins in earnest May 23, is sold out, yet the pre-show workshops were intimate and filled with important takeaways or shakeaways, perhaps.

As PR pros working in an age when even the term ‘new media’ feels old and social apps appear and disappear like stairwells at Hogwarts, we can’t simply sit back and watch earned opportunities slip away. We must evolve and expand by mining new communications platforms for the earned potential that lies within them. Since media companies have adopted social channels as a viable distribution method for their content, shouldn’t PR pros be working harder to earn coverage for clients from media…on social media?

Twitter rolled out new tools and controls May 17 that allow users to view and modify the data that helps advertisers target them. Users are now able to turn off interest-based ads entirely (although they would still see other paid posts) or curate their interests to see ads that are more relevant to them. To see which interests Twitter thinks you have, go to Settings -> “Your Twitter data.”

It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. If this is true, then you could argue that video and other multimedia content are worth millions. This is especially the case in the very crowded brand journalism waters, where The Coca-Cola Company is using content to simultaneously build brand love and corporate trust. Coca-Cola Journey makes (and sometimes breaks) Coca-Cola news, bringing to life the stories bubbling just beneath the surface of our business. We made this big bet because we believed that authentic stories matter.

Trying to replicate what made a post get 300 likes when your account routinely sees 100 likes per post can make you want to bang your head against the wall…Or, it can ignite a new test-and-learn campaign. Your team can make educated guesses about what worked and incorporate those elements into future posts.

You’ve probably either sent or received a version of this work email: “Who posted this tweet on the brand account? I think it’s too [personal/political/off-brand/sloppily written/insensitive/blatantly promotional/factually incorrect/ill-timed].” If you’ve never written or seen an email like that, you should congratulate yourself and your team. You’re managing to speak with a consistent brand voice on Twitter.

Banafsheh Ghassemi’s passion for using technology to promote empathy can be traced to a turbulent childhood. Ghassemi, the winner of the first annual Robin Carey Connector Award, was born in Iran, where her parents were both politically active members of the resistance during the run-up to the Iranian Revolution. As the revolution intensified, her family was forced to seek refuge in England when she was just 11 years old. And that experience has been central in shaping Ghassemi’s focus on human-centered design.

As PR pros know, media exposure can be a double-edged sword. Most of the time the system works: Stories that deserve to be told are told, and people who make outlandish claims only to gain… Continued