Social Media & SEO

As the year ends with this edition of PR News , we begin the first of three data installments provided exclusively to us by data partner Shareablee. In this first edition Shareablee provides the most-engaged B2B brands during 11 months of the year with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Starting today, Facebook will demote what it calls “engagement bait,” posts that lure users into interaction by explicitly asking for likes and shares without offering editorial value. The posts are one way that brands can take advantage of Facebook’s (ever more discriminating) News Feed algorithm by boosting engagement to gain more organic reach. But the platform is taking action in response to widespread complaints, likely forcing some brands to rethink their approach.

When it comes to holiday tweets, should brands play naughty or nice? Netflix’s snarky tweet, calling out fans of its program “A Christmas Prince,” begged the question. In a statement to PR News, Netflix wrote: “The privacy of our members’ viewing is important to us. This information represents overall viewing trends, not the personal viewing information of specific, identified individuals.”

Communicators assume social media and influencers are influential to some degree on peoples’ decisions. The more important questions: How influential are they? Which demographic groups are influenced most? And do people value the advice of influencers and what they see on social media equally across the board? In other words are there particular sectors where social media content and influencers’ advice carries the most weight? A new report attempts to answer some of those questions.

Launching Dec. 4 on iOS in the U.S., Messenger Kids is focused on kids 13 and under who want a fun way to communicate with friends or family. The number one concern, of course, is privacy and safety, and Facebook has done its research to ensure that this app will address everything parents are worried about.

With U.S. consumers spending up to 5 hours daily on mobile devices, social media usage patterns are a goldmine for marketers. Yet social media alone is not enough. Shoppers are more than their mobile Facebook or Twitter profiles. Other sources should be added to social media data, our author argues and provides 3 easy steps to augment consumer insights to create more data-driven, research-backed campaigns.

Communications executives have begun in earnest to make their way into boardrooms, C-suite meetings and the critical business conversations at their organizations. But the pace is not fast enough and the courage of their convictions… Continued

Snapchat has announced a new feature that recognizes users’ images and suggests graphic overlays and filters. These smart filters can parse an image and suggest relevant graphics in several categories. Pets, concerts, food, sports and beaches are among the top suggestions. For communicators, the new feature is more than just a fun way to decorate posts. The rollout sends a larger message to brands about the app’s ability to drill down beyond users’ interests and into their daily behavior.

Nonprofits sometimes are thought of as second-class citizens: small organizations with inadequate budgets for PR. That may be so, but they can do pretty well when it comes to consumer engagement with their social post on at least a few channels, according to exclusive data provided to PR News from Shareablee.

In what surely is a sign of the times, the number of American adults getting at least some of their news from social media has grown to 67%, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in August. More than that, some of the platforms where people are gathering news will surprise you.