Social Media & SEO

When Northrop Grumman began posting to Instagram, it wasn’t quite sure what would resonate. The global aerospace and defense technology company made the initial mistake—as many brands do—of pushing out self-serving content, viewing the platform as another method to showcase pictures of its aircraft, spacecraft and radar systems. But as it dove deeper into Instagram, the company realized the platform could be much more than just a repository of slick product pictures.

None of the brands behind the most-talked-about Super Bowl ads (Budweiser, Mr. Clean, Skittles, Kia, Audi), took to Twitter and Facebook the morning after the Big Game when the water-cooler chatter was in full swing. Why?

As it’s Super Bowl weekend we pull a bit of razzle-dazzle from our playbook and offer you two brand communicators who are heavily involved in activities around the big game. Each offers trends and their brand’s reactions to them in the form of Super Bowl communications and campaigns.

By now you know the score, but the real Super Bowl stakes were social. Shareablee data below shows brands with the most consumer engagement for the 2016 Super Bowl. Pepsi might reign this time. Talkwalker’s image-recognition software eyed 40K Super Bowl-related posts last week and told us consumers saw Pepsi’s logo more than that of any other brand by far.

Our weekly roundup of news items, trends and personnel moves from the past week. This edition highlights Snapchat’s IPO announcement, Volkswagen’s pyrrhic victory and a new book from Marian Salzman.

Smart brands keep their separate channel audiences in mind and develop content with a specific purpose for each channel. One such brand, Boingo Wireless, uses Facebook to repost content that reflects its audience’s interests, Instagram to share behind-the-scenes moments, Twitter to showcase thought leadership and Spotify as a space for users to have fun and blow off steam.

Beyoncé announced on Instagram that she is once again pregnant, a revelation that sent the social media world into a frenzy. The post, a photo of the star posing nearly nude holding her belly, won 6.4 million likes and broke the record for most-liked post on Instagram (the previous record holder was Selena Gomez, with 6.3 million likes). While most PR pros probably can’t claim the nearly 100 million Instagram followers the pop icon boasts, here are a few major takeaways to consider the next time your brand has a big announcement.

For Arby’s, Twitter isn’t just a platform on which to advertise, it’s a chance to delight. The fast-food chain’s evolving Twitter strategy isn’t concerned with promoting its sandwich of the month or the latest addition to its menu. Instead, Arby’s is focused on engaging in conversation, identifying niche areas and most of all, having fun with its followers.

Facebook Live has a lot of advantages for communicators: It is novel enough that people are drawn to the medium per se out of curiosity, Facebook’s algorithm privileges it above other forms of content and the medium prompts engagement probably more than any other. But can you take those advantages and turn them into a winning strategy for capturing audience attention?

In this era of the 24/7 news cycle, Moments, Twitter’s curated collection of tweets and videos, has become a favorite stop for a fast check of the news and celebrity tidbits. But last week it seemed to disappear from mobile screens. It hasn’t. Moments has been moved somewhere less conspicuous. True, that seems like we should be preparing its obituary, but Twitter swears Moments is alive and well. And at least one social media insider says there’s a silver lining in all this for brand communicators.