Social Media & SEO

Mark Zuckerberg’s op-ed in the Washington Post made a strong call for social media regulation in four areas—harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability. But while vape maker JUUL got ahead of regulation in a smart way, the same PR tactic fell flat for Facebook. Here’s why.

In each edition of PRNEWS we highlight takeaways from select articles as well as important notes for subscribers and additions to the PR News Subscriber Resources Center. This month we have takeaways from several articles and a reminder to PRNEWS subscribers to take advantage of the 33 percent discount on all PRNEWS events and webinars.

B2B brands are no longer cold, faceless entities. In fact, some of them have enough personality to do well on social media’s most personal channel, Instagram. Here’s a look at the top 10 most-active B2B brands on social in 2018.

Conventional wisdom urges brands to own their mistakes and be as transparent as possible with your explanation of them. Another maxim is that when you don’t tell your story, someone else will gladly do it for you, though that version may differ greatly from your narrative. Facebook said it exposed millions of users’ passwords to thousands of its staff. It discovered the issue in January. Why did it wait until the end of March to mention it?

March Madness begins today on hardwood courts around the country for a select group of college basketball teams. To mark this event, our monthly publication PR News asked several members of the 2018 PR News Rising Stars class to dish on the following questions: What about PR and marketing gets you mad and what can be done about it?

What content is TikTok’s burgeoning young audience most interested in? In a word: fun. Hashtag challenges and lip synch contests have become the platform’s vernacular. The app has placed a heavy focus on artificial intelligence, meaning the algorithm learns quickly and is custom-tailored to each user’s tastes. There also isn’t much pressure for users to build a large following—at least not in the same way that Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have quantified influence.

Before social media, an exchange between a PR pro and a journalist was akin to what goes on in Vegas. It stayed in Vegas. Now, though, some reporters seem to revel in exposing the miscues of communicators, writes Frank Ahrens, the former VP of corporate communications at Hyundai Motor and now a VP at BGR PR. Pro tip: Write email pitches with the understanding they could turn up on social media.

Facebook made headlines this week with two major announcements: First, the tech giant is pursuing legal action against companies that sell fake followers and likes; secondly, it plans to blur the lines between WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram in order to allay privacy and usability concerns. It was also recently revealed that Facebook is entering the cryptocurrency game. So, how will these changes impact professional communicators?

The use of influencers is such a new tactic, there’s a lack of agreement on what exactly an influencer is. There’s plenty of agreement, though, about the popularity and importance of influencer marketing and communication, a new survey from PR News and Meltwater shows. The survey also finds brands’ and organizations’ budgets for influencer spending are holding steady or rising.

Developing a social listening campaign is an important part of any communications strategy, as it can point to new trends as well as be invaluable as a crisis and issues management tool. But thanks to technology, it need not be difficult. Here are some tools communications professionals are using to ensure they know what is bubbling about their brands on social media.