Social Media & SEO

Did you experience a sudden and sharp sense of FOMO last week? Then you should’ve been in San Francisco with PR News. An all-star lineup of speakers presented on topics ranging from SEO and Google Analytics to influencer marketing and Snapchat at the Big 4 Social Media Conference and Google for Communicators Boot Camp held at the San Francisco Grand Hyatt Aug. 9-10. Here’s a wrap-up of the two-day event, which showcased compelling video, top-notch speakers and networking opportunities galore.

Many brands still struggle with how best to build up a presence on Snapchat. The nature of Snapchat’s short-lived content can trick some communicators into thinking the planning they put into each snap should be just as brief. But a detailed strategy can be the key to making your snaps burn bright before they fade away.

When a crisis breaks, users inevitably Google the brand in question (or, for smaller brands, look them up on Yelp). But the last thing communicators want is negative headlines or reviews topping the list of search results for their brand. Here are five ways to make SEO an integral and immediate strategy when developing a crisis management campaign or handling Yelp customer reviews.

A few years ago, each of Southwest Airline’s departments used social media in their own way, independent of each other. But the firm quickly moved to create “an enterprise-level function with multiple players and dotted lines back to operational units, while still maintaining a master strategy,” according to Linda Rutherford, Southwest’s CCO. To her, the question of who should own social media centers around how an organization approaches customer engagement.

Hershey is embracing employee advocacy programs as a way to pull back the curtain on life at the company, helping to improve recruitment, retention and reputation. The giant chocolatier has devoted an Instagram account (@HersheyCompany) to celebrate its employees, who in turn use the platform to celebrate the company. Here are some examples of successful posts, as well as four tips to keep in mind when crafting your own advocacy program.

This season, you’ll find your Trending tab awash in bizarre holidays like National Watermelon Day (Aug. 3), National Lazy Day (Aug. 10) and National I LOVE My Feet Day! (Aug. 17). We took a look at three brands in different verticals who saw high engagement around their #NationalWatermelonDay posts, and pinpointed how each contender entered the conversation in a relevant way.

Facebook engineers Jiayi Wen and Shengbo Guo explained in a newsroom post Aug. 2 that an update to News Feed will soon show users more stories that will load quicker on mobile. This will take into account not only the speed of the site itself, but also the users’ network connection at the time they are browsing. Here are 10 tips from Facebook to ensure your site is up to speed.

Instagram had cause to crow Aug. 2: It posted a celebratory blog for the one-year anniversary of Stories. Today it boasts 250 million daily users. A larger proof point for the success of Stories is how Snapchat is faring, and an auspicious date for Instagram coincided with a dismal one for Snap Inc.

Despite what you might think, there were other things going on in the world recently besides the resignation of Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications chief. An example of this was a deal in the social listening space. That got us to thinking about the various ways social listening can help brands, beyond crisis communication and customer service.

It seems that nearly everything Mark Zuckerberg supports grows like a mushroom. Facebook Live is just one example. So why hasn’t your brand begun using it? Fear? Fear not, as Jamie Izaks provides several tips that will help ease your worries as you make an initial foray into Facebook Live streaming.