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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Friday Wrap #131: Agency settles with FTC, Instagram overtakes Twitter, employees expand reach

Friday Wrap #131: Agency settles with FTC, Instagram overtakes Twitter, employees expand reach

Friday Wrap #131
Flickr photo courtesy of Retis
The Friday Wrap is my weekly collection of articles, posts, and reports that may not have risen to the top of your news feed but still can add value to your work as a communicator. I collect all the items I find interesting on my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow. The link blog is my source for items to appear in the Wrap as well as those I’ll report on in my weekly podcast.

News

FTC settles with agency whose staff tweeted about clients—It’s a standard practice in PR and marketing agencies to ask agency staff to support client activities with tweets, Facebook posts, and other missives in their own social networks. Doing so without disclosing the staffer’s connection with the client and the agency, however, is a violation of FTC rules. That’s what Deutsch LA has learned. This was the first case against an agency for employees failing to disclose their relationship, but it won’t be the last. Read more

Instagram overtakes Twitter—As Twitter struggles to build its user base, the microblogging service finds itself slipping in the rankings of social networks. Instagram has added 100 million users since March, propelling the Facebook-owned visual-focused network past 300 million monthly active users, surpassing Twitter’s official tally of 284 million. Concurrent with the announcement of its user totals, Instagram also announced the introduction of verified accounts. Read more

Now you can search for old Facebook updates—Google probably isn’t quaking in its boots, but there is a new search service in town. Facebook has made it easier for users to look for old posts without ceaseless scrolling through News Feeds or Timelines. With users able to take a more active role in content discovery, brands will likely need to optimize their Facebook content for search as well as shareability. That may mean more work, but it also means longer life for content brands publish on Facebook. Read more

Senate staffer attempts to remove “torture” from article on CIA torture report—Wikipedia doesn’t take kindly to conflict-of-interest editing of its articles. The collaborative encyclopedia has found instances of political staffers trying to change articles to benefit their bosses in the past (such as an attempt to remove references to a candidate’s previous marriage to make him more appealing to voters). This time around, someone logging in to Wikipedia from a U.S. Senate IP address has tried to delete a phrase that includes the word “torture” from an article about the recently-released CIA torture report. The attempt was made twice, with the anonymous editor asserting the motive was “removing bias.” Both attempts vailed. The revelation was made by a Twitter-bot, @congress-edits, that automatically reports Wikipedia edits coming from Congressional IP addresses. Read more

New Microsoft service takes on PollEverywhere—PollEverywhere is a nifty service that lets you inject real-time polling into presentations. Its one drawback: It’s pricey. Microsoft may have an alternative for you with the rollout of Bing Pulse, which also lets you solicit reactions from groups at events and meetings in real time. The service is free while it’s in beta; after January 31, it may move to a freemium model. Read more

Trends

PR is embracing the PESO model—In public relations, the pace of change driven by technology and other factors is forcing agencies and practitioners to consider a new model in order to remain relevant. Championed by Gini Dietrich, the PESO model defines the overlap of paid, earned, shared, and owned content. Those who don’t adopt the model, Dietrich says, won’t have a job in 10 years. Read more

News outlets embrace aggregation apps—Unable to convince readers to use standalone apps for their individual outlets, news publications have started to embrace aggregation apps like Flipboard as a means of distributing content. Media companies are signing deals with Flipboard and its competitors to host their content in exchange for a slice of the ad revenues the apps generate. It’s a recognition that “the user does not want to go to one single source for all their information needs,” according to the content VP of SmartNews. Not many brands, though, have started using these apps for their own content; early adopters still have an opportunity to stand out from the crowd.Read more

GM makes real-time adjustments at the factory based on social feedback—While most brands are monitoring what customers say about them in the social space, how they take action on that input tends to be a long-term, planning-focused activity. Not at GM, where social feedback can be used to make changes on the factory floor in real time. For example, a problem with the backseat ventilation system in one model, identified by customers and gleaned from GM’s social media dashboard, led to repairs that were made to cars that appeared in showrooms within a few short weeks. Other companies weaving social feedback into real-time adjustments at the front line include Dick’s Sporting Goods and the Five Guys burger chain. Read more

Customer loyalty programs get mobile makeovers—The shift to mobile is shaking up traditional loyalty programs, with customers abandoning traditional one-size-fits-all programs in favor of mobile-focused offerings that accommodate their specific needs. An example, AdAge says, is the partnership between American Express and Uber, under which paying for an Uber ride with your AmEx card earns you two times the normal Membership Rewards points, which can then be used to pay for future rides. WalMart and Walgreens have apps that make personalized offers to customers while they’re in the store, and Starbucks’ mobile payment app saves money and delivers offers. Read more

New service lets brands transform reviews into native ads—While native advertising continues to explode, nobody is denying that independent third-party endorsements are still gold. A new player called InPowered wants brands to get the best of both by finding positive reviews of company products or services, converting them in to ads, and running them on ad sites across the web. “InPowered is looking to marry the ‘authentic’ nature of native advertising with the scale available in the display ad marketplace,” according to a Wall Street Journal report. It’s also the latest example of the increasingly blurry lines between earned and paid content. Read more

Research

Employee sharing builds reach—A mere 60 employees sharing your company’s content in their social networks can increase content reach by 1,000%, according to a report from GaggleAmp. The research also found that employee sharing extends the engagement lifespan of a post by 4,200%. Read more

Most of your social media audience are lurkers—Among your company’s customers who use social media, only 8% of users are responsible for more than half of all posts. The biggest share of your audience is made up of lurkers, those who consume content but rarely contribute. According to a study from Vision Critical, this group contributes posts once a week or less and accounts for just 5% of all social media updates. “The result is a major disconnect between what a company hears on social media and what its customers actually think,” according to a Globe and Mail report. Read more

Americans feel better informed thanks to the Internet—Remember all those worries about the Internet leading to information overload? It hasn’t happened. In fact, most Americans believe the Net (along with cell phones) has helped them “learn new things, stay better informed on topics that matter to them, and increase their capacity to share ideas and creations with others.” A Pew Research Center study found only 26% of respondents feel overloaded while 72% like having so much information. Read more

Content viewing habits vary by demographic—Consumer content viewing habits are changing as delivery mechanisms, from gaming consoles to tablets and smartphones, offer a fragmented content environment. According to a Nielsen report, content consumption habits vary based on a number of demographic factors, such as when an ethnic group adopts a platform or device. For example, the amount of time Asian Americans spend watching video online has grown 17% in the last year, along with the use of tablets. The report breaks out content consumption among blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans, and notes that overall, average daily time spent watching live TV dropped 12 minutes from a year ago. Read more

Comments
  • 1.The FTC Twitter disclosure violation is a game changer for anyone who uses social media for business.

    But it’s not unlawful to send emails company wide asking people to tweet about a product or service, contrary to what the Adweek article you linked to says. And it doesn’t mean you have to disclose by means of the hashtag #client, which Porter Novelli told staffers last week in an internal email.

    If you haven’t been including a disclosure when you tweet about your employer or clients, now would be the time to start. I wrote a detailed post to teach people how to avoid provoking a deceptive advertising claim if they tweet about their client or employer on a personal profile.

    http://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/why-last-weeks-ftc-twitter-violation-is-a-total-gamechanger/

    In FIR #785, you said you thought social media training is the best way to address this. But I'd go a step further and say social media certification is what's required. What's the difference?

    Social media training is the delivery of intelligence and practical know-how. Certification is the assessment of knowledge transfer.

    In the unfortunate of a investigation or dispute, it's going to easier to convince a regulator you've trained your staff appropriately if they've been assessed (or tested) and you have a record of those test results.

    Social media disclosure and transparency (http://bit.ly/1uxl5hd) certification educates staff and delivers management auditable proof that knowledge has been transferred.

    Eric Schwartzman | December 2014 | Santa Monica

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