Social Media & SEO

There are myriad lessons for communicators related to transparency, monitoring the social conversation and when and whom to engage from two recent news items. The first item has the Republican Party being forced to shut down its live chat on YouTube July 18. The party had urged viewers to chat while it streamed its convention live on YouTube. The reason for the shut-down were anti-Semitic comments posted on the live chat as former Hawaii governor Linda Lingle was addressing the convention. The other involves the nasty messages sent via social to actor/comedian Leslie Jones, a co-star of Ghostbusters.

In today’s rapid-fire social media climate, it’s important for PR pros to watch for signals that forecast the next social media platform to take off and grow exponentially with users. With that in mind, we asked you, as top communicators and public relations strategists, to predict the next social media platform that’s going to explode in popularity and user growth.

By 2018, 3.6 billion people—90% of the world’s internet-enabled population—will be registered to use at least one messaging app, according to Activate, a strategy and technology consultancy. Facebook would like to have its Messenger app on each of those 3.6 billion devices, and it may get there. The company has just announced that 1 billion people globally use Messenger every month.

Many of us dreamed of instant stardom in our childhood. Musical.ly brings that dream to life, having spawned a number of social media stars. Plus, it’s fun: Who doesn’t like lip-synching or dancing like a lunatic to their favorite songs (or at the very least, watching others do so)? Here are a few ways PR professionals and communicators can use the app creatively to boost brand awareness to the teenage set and beyond.

Sand between your tanned toes and the relaxing sound of waves hitting the shore. Happy hour that begins at 4pm (it’s 5’oclock somewhere). Visiting new places. Dealing with crowds (literally, being able to deal with… Continued

You hear it constantly when brand communicators discuss social media, particularly Facebook: “It’s all pay-to-play. Don’t kid yourself.” With that in mind, our Big 4 Social Media Summit next month in San Francisco will include a how-to clinic called “Pay-to-Play—Putting Paid Social to Work to Amplify Your Brand’s Messages.”

It’s happened again. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has upended a major brand for failing to comply with regulations concerning influencers. This time it’s Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Inc. Its online influencers failed “to disclose adequately” that the brand paid them to provide favorable coverage during a late-2014 marketing campaign for video game Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. The brand settled with the FTC, the agency said July 11.

People watch 100 million hours of video on Facebook each day. If you do a good job of making and promoting video content for Facebook, you could end up with a lot of eyes on your message. But for a lot of communicators, it’s a struggle to make the viewer care, and even to get the video in front of the potential viewer in the first place.

Japanese messaging app Line went public July 14, with the potential to raise $1.14 billion in the largest tech IPO of the year. According to MarketWatch, the company is valued at $7 billion. While the app has the largest following in Asia, its well-publicized IPO in New York today will likely stoke curiosity in U.S. mobile users, and Line’s global potential for brand-to-consumer reach should not be ignored by communicators keeping an eye out for the next Snapchat.

Even though Snapchat lacks many of the brand-friendly features of Facebook and Twitter—native analytics, business profiles, etc.—it’s never been a better time to join the growing community. For cautious communicators, there are plenty of ways to participate in the conversation on Snapchat. At PR News’ Snapchat Boot Camp on July 12 in New York City, speakers offered a variety of case study examples to show how PR can use the burgeoning platform effectively.