Social Media & SEO

The choice to use a picture without any dark-skinned people to pat oneself on the back for “diversity” is an odd and ill-informed one. The lesson that communications pros should remember is that visual storytelling is a language—a language that, though as rich and nuanced as any language can be, relies heavily on the first impression, the momentary glance.

Live streaming has seen a huge surge in popularity this year, and Facebook Live has provided communicators with a powerful new platform to share their brand stories. Despite its popularity, it’s difficult to show ROI with Facebook Live campaigns, and it can be tricky to ensure your audience is ready and waiting when you go live. Karen Vega, director of social and earned media activations at Viacom, has brought a potent combination of influencer marketing, measurement and media outreach to her Facebook Live strategy. She offers some tips here.

In previous editions, we’ve noted engagement with brands’ social posts on Facebook in Q3 has been modest or even down (see PRNP, Nov. 7 & 21, for example). The thinking then was brands were investing more effort in other social channels, such as Instagram. Data for U.S. B2B brands in Q3 (July 1 – Sept. 30) on Instagram, provided exclusively to PR News Pro by Shareablee, proves the point. Total consumer actions, or engagement, with B2B brands posts on Instagram increased a whopping 80% compared to Q2 2015. Engagement with photos grew a modest 4%, yet video engagement grew a healthy 74%. Actions are defined here as the sum of reactions and comments.

Among the keys to a successful Snapchat effort is an editorial calendar, says Larissa von Lockner, PR & social media manager at PwC. A sample of the brand’s editorial calendar for Snapchat is shared exclusively with PR News Pro readers below. PwC’s belief that using Snapchat must track with a brand’s larger PR and business goals is seen in columns 2, 3 and 5, as the campaign, stakeholders/requestors and strategy are listed.

“Finding the right influencer is like dating,” says John Walls, director, brand PR, luxury & lifestyle brands, Hilton Worldwide, who’s newly married. Agrees APCO Worldwide managing director Lisa Osborne Ross, “[Beginning a relationship with an influencer] is like starting any relationship…etiquette is etiquette…[and the relationship] really clicks when each side has something to offer…I’ve been married for 28 years…I’m very clear what my husband offers and what I offer,” Osborne Ross says in deadpan gest.

Taco Bell is often held up as a brand that knows what it’s doing on social media. Before you follow Taco Bell on Snapchat and steal its ideas, take a look inward. Are burritos and… Continued

Given Snapchat’s reputation as the new kid on the social media block, it’s no surprise that Snap Inc. continues to add new features to the platform, even as its competitors develop and release copycat interfaces. At PR News’ Snapchat Boot Camp Dec. 7 at the National Press Club, Larissa von Lockner, PR and social media manager at PwC, and Megan Frantz, senior producer at The Shorty Awards, shared the most recent updates PR professionals should know about—and how best to use them.

If you’re thinking about abandoning Twitter to refocus your efforts on Snapchat or Instagram, you may want to reconsider: A whopping 40% of journalists source their stories on Twitter, according to a Cision report. What’s more, Medium reports that almost a quarter of the platform’s verified user base are journalists. And if the 2016 election cycle taught us anything, it’s that Twitter is the center of the online national conversation at any given moment.

As a PR pro, you’ve heard the advice often: Stick to the basics that you learned in Communications 101. It applies in so many situations, including thinking about paid social, according to PR pros we spoke with about the subject. And, yes, all of them have modest budgets for social media.

It’s official: Snapchat has reached phenomenon status. Dunkin’ Donuts, in particular, was one of the earliest brands to start snapping. Melanie Cohn, social media marketing manager at Dunkin’ Brands, will be speaking on Snapchat content strategy at The Social Shake-Up, May 22-24, 2017 in Atlanta. She shares a few of Dunkin’s go-to Snapchat tactics.