Social Media & SEO

James Chong, senior manager of social customer engagement at TOMS, is tasked with managing TOMS’ social budget while spreading its cause-related messaging to new audiences. Chong, who will be speaking at PR News’ Digital Summit Feb. 24 in Huntington Beach, CA, shares the arguments for paid social that he’s made to senior leaders.

Social platforms are in a constant state of evolution, with new features being rolled out at a breakneck pace. And every brand can benefit from keeping an eye out for upcoming social platform updates and trends. Yelp, for instance, with its diverse audience of businesses and consumers, prioritizes staying current to ensure it serves content in the most engaging way possible. John Carroll, manager of local outreach at Yelp, will be speaking on what’s next in social at PR News’ Digital Summit, Feb. 24 in Huntington Beach, CA. He shares seven trends in social media to be on the look for in 2017.

The Trend: In the first half of 2016, Facebook introduced live streaming, aka Facebook Live, allowing brands and individuals to reach out to their followers in an instant and very visual way. While this wasn’t the first time live streaming was available on social media, the huge audience and demographic reach of Facebook made its foray into this space instantly relevant. Facebook took steps to ensure the adoption of this new feature by letting every follower of every page/individual know when one of the people/brands they follow was live streaming. This makes your potential reach enormous.

Take a glance at various data firms and news outlets that track communications and marketing trends. If there’s one that failed to mention Facebook Live (FBL) as among the top communications trends of 2016 we’d be surprised. We include ourselves in this, with IBM Global Technology Services’ digital experience manager Brandi Boatner saying in these pages last week that FBL had just gotten started last year and predicting it will be far bigger in 2017.

Since President-elect Donald Trump is a controversial figure to say the least, it’s difficult to tell exactly what the impact of an endorsement on a brand’s bottom line would be. Is increased enthusiasm from Trump supporters canceled out by antipathy from his critics, or does one side weigh more heavily than the other—and is the equation different for a New England brand like L. L. Bean and one anchored in Trump country?

Facebook has announced several new features communicators can use to more effectively measure and broadcast quality content to engage audiences. The update includes six distinct features that will help stabilize footage, increase flexibility and collaboration for multiple admins and improve metrics and views post-broadcast. Here’s a breakdown of all six updates and a few ideas on how communicators can start putting them to good use.

Snap Inc. is testing two new ad features on Snapchat this month. The first feature addresses one of advertisers’ perennial complaints about Snapchat, allowing users to swipe up to be directed to another app; the second aims to make user sign-up processes for ad products more seamless via autofill.

Every six months the Television Critics Association (TCA)—some 400 media folks who get paid to watch television and write, talk, tweet and blog about it—commandeers a Hollywood-area hotel for two to three weeks. During that time… Continued

While overconfidence has ruined the best of brands, teams and people, sometimes you just have to admit: When you’ve got it, you’ve got it. That’s the case with PETA’s prowess on social media, according to data Shareablee provided exclusively to PRNews Pro.

At the end and start of the year we ask communications pros to prognosticate about the coming 12 months. In our last edition of 2016 we heard predictions from communicators about data security, authenticity and brand ambassadors. For this first edition of 2017 we offer part II of our predictions series. Happy New Year.