Social Media & SEO

Securing that coveted top ranking in search results requires equal parts art and science. Search companies are constantly changing and updating their algorithms, and recently they’ve been favoring quality content over quantity of content and keyword stuffing. To rank well your content has to first be good, and then be optimized.

Beleaguered, embattled PR pros have been trying hard to keep up with all the updates from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube and more, but it may be time to monitor another blip on the radar: Tumblr. On July 26, the microblogging/social networking platform announced it would introduce ads “so that later this year people can start making money from their blogs.”

In case you hadn’t realized, video is no longer a fad. It has become a fait accompli. As we’ve seen in this series, which has examined Shareablee data made available exclusively to PR News, consumer engagement with U.S. brands—B2C and B2B—on social media in Q1 2016 has grown year over year. Tremendous increases in consumer engagement with video posts have powered the bulk of the growth. Consumer engagement, or actions, is defined as the sum of retweets and likes. The same pattern seen with B2C and B2B ( PRN, July 11) holds true for nonprofits, the subject of this week’s Data Dive. In Q1 2016, U.S. nonprofits generated 5.3 million actions on Twitter, a 49% improvement compared with the same time last year. A 125% increase in engagement with video content on the platform was responsible for the growth. Actions rose 49%, from 3.56 million to 5.3 million.

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.