△ MENU/TOP △

Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
SearchClose Icon

Friday Wrap #141: Three crises, the perfect tweet, podcast growth, WhatsApp for political campaigns

Friday Wrap #141: Three crises, the perfect tweet, podcast growth, WhatsApp for political campaigns

Friday Wrap #141
Flickr photo courtesy of Larry Jacobsen
Before we jump into the week’s news, I want to bring two upcoming events to your attention. First, for the fourth consecutive year, Thornley Fallis CEO Joe Thornley and I will present our eight-week interactive course, “Getting Strategic with Social Media.” Offered through IABC, the course includes a weekly, asynchronous, multimedia learning module and a live conference call; there’s also an exclusive, closed Facebook group where you can participate with Joe and me, fellow workshop participants, and some 300 participants from prior years’ sessions. Details and registration are here.

Second, I’m presenting a session on how to support adoption of a social intranet at a workshop that will also feature Mike Rocco, internal communications manager for Hulu. This half-day session in Los Angeles is free. Details and registration are here.

Now, let’s got on with the news! As always, I collect the articles, posts, updates, and reports from which I select the items for the Wrap on my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.

News

What’s wrong with this picture?—The photo of fashion company ASOS proudly tweeted of its 2015 class of 14 interns grabbed a lot of attention—just not the kind the company wanted. Commentary erupted over the all-white group. The company deleted the tweet and the social team has been frantically trying to convince attackers that the picture didn’t accurately represent the Asos workforce. Before posting any kind of image, you should ask yourself if there’s anything in the image that might provoke an unwanted outcry. Read more

Philip Morris botches response to John Oliver attack—In the main segment of his weekly news-comedy show, John Oliver focuses on an industry. Tobacco should have seen it coming. Last Sunday, Oliver focused on tobacco’s tactics for driving sales outside of North America, and zeroed in on Philip Morris in particular. In its response the company tries to convince the public its investment in improving the health of its products justifies its behaviors. Somebody in the company’s PR department could stand an introductory lesson in crisis communications. And any company making controversial products or engages in controversial practices should be prepared for just such a public shaming. Read more

KKK Wednesday backfires on Krispy Kreme—The third social media crisis in this week’s Wrap comes courtesy of donut icon Krispy Kreme, which planned to host the Krispy Kreme Klub in the UK and promoted KKK Wednesday on its Facebook page. In no time, the company was reminded by more than a few people that KKK has another, less savory connotation (that should have occurred to them before the public pointed it out). The company removed the post and apologized. Read more

16-year-old builds app that brings transparency to politicians—Washington legislators most likely won’t be happy with it, But a 16-year-old from Seattle has developed Greenhouse, a browser plugin that lets you hover over the name of any U.S. representative or senator—appearing on any web page—to activate a box that shows all the industries and groups that contributed to the politician’s campaign, and how much they got from each sector. The app also displays the politician’s support for or opposition to campaign finance reform. CEOs and board members could easily be the target of a similar plugin one of these days. Read more

Twitter tool aims to reduce hacks—Popular Twitter accounts are targets for hackers, and with multiple people updating accounts, password leaks are one key means by which hackers gain access. In a lot of cases, those passwords are weak so the multiple people with access can remember them. With a new tool, TweetDeck Teams, the administrator of an account can set up a list of contributors who can access the shared account after signing in to their own account, potentially reducing the risk of a hack. Read more

Third-party tool can help you craft the perfect tweet—Cornell researchers backed by Google and the National Science Foundation have created a tool that looks at two wordings for one tweet, then displays the percentage chance that one will be most popular. Among other findings: Adding the words “please retweet” to aa mesasge made the message 95% more likely to be shared. The tool is available free. Read more

Google sunsets Helpouts—They were a good idea. Google Helpouts used Hangout technology to allow experts to offer their expertise for a small fee (or for free). But they never took off, so Google has decided to do away with them. Google’s refusal to call the shutdown permanent has given some hope the Helpouts will return at some point. Read more

Facebook introduces dynamic product ads—The idea is simple. A retailer uploads its product catalog. Facebook uses the catalog to produce ads that are targeted to users based on their interests. Target is one of the first retailers to test the service. Read more

Slack introduces native Windows app—Slack has been taking the enterprise world by storm. The app allows groups of employees to network and collaborate. There are hundreds of other apps and tools that do the same, but for some reason, Slack has gained rapid and huge adoption. Acknowledging its growing place in many organizations, the company has introduced a beta version of a Windows desktop client. Clearly, there’s a demand to be able to use it when you’re seated at your desktop, not just when you’re on the move. Read more

Trends

46 million Americans listen to podcasts at least monthly—Early next month, Edison Research will release its 2015 Infinite Dial study with an expanded podcasting section. In a preview of the data Edison will release, the research firm has noted that the percentage of Americans age 12 and over who have listened to at least one podcast in the past month has risen from 15% to 17%, for an estimated 46 million podcast-consuming Americans. Read more

Oscars go big on social media—The Motion Picture Academy is making a concerted effort to encourage those watching the Oscars this weekend to engage via social media. Last year’s ceremony was the most-tweeted non-sporting live event of the year. This year, producers have been studying the 2014 show to find new ways to build on the Oscars’ social media momentum. Read more

Ikea unveils product Emojis—Emojis allow people who don’t speak the same language to communicate with icons instead of words. The entire text of Moby Dick (among other classics) has been translated into Emoji. Now, Ikea has introduced a set of Emojis representing its product line you can download and install into your smartphone keyboard, just like regular Emoji. It joins other branded Emoji sets, like one from NBC that features Saturday Night Live images. Read more

Blackberry exec leaves $1/2 million job to build a suggestion box—Ray Gillenwater was making half a million dollars a year at Blackberry, but he left to launch a startup, SpeakUp, which allows employees to share insights and ideas with managers while other employees add their own $.02. Employees can also vote ideas up or down. The tool, which works on the web and as an app, is being used by 400 companies in 380 cities worldwide. Who should avoid it? According to Gillenwater, “companies that don’t really care what employees are thinking, who want you to keep your head down and just work.” Read more

May we have better metrics, please?—Twitter co-founder Ev Williams said in an interview that Internet companies should be judged based on better metrics than just monthly active users, which can be misleading. Williams’ publishing platform Medium measures success by the amount of time spent reading a story, not just how many people viewed the page. As investors punish Twitter for its slow growth, Williams argues Wall Street “does not have a sophisticted understanding of what creates value in this world.” Read more

Mobile and Apps

Spanish politicians turn to WhatsApp to win over voters—Brands are mostly still scratching their heads when it comes to mobile messaging apps, but in Spain, voters are sending messages to political candidates Borja Gutierrez Iglesia’s phone all hours of the day and night. Iglesia invited them to with a campaign he launched, “Call or write me on my phone.” He’s not the only Spanish politician to adopt WhatsApp, handing out their numbers and inviting voters to engage. WhatsApp is on 99% of phones in Spain. Read more

Will we soon be talking about Yik Yak like we talk about Snapchat today?—A Johnny-Come-Lately to the mobile app game, Yik Yak is a hyper-local gossip app with a cool $10 million in investment funds that is spreading like a virus across American college campuses. Users post anonymous “yaks” (text posts) which are voted up or down Reddit-style by other “yakkers.” Users only see yaks from users within a 10-mile radius; they’re called “herds.” The post with the most votes can be commented on. The whole thing is anonymous. With a foothold on 1,500 campuses, Yik Yak is now spreading into other English-speaking countries. Don’t forget, Facebook started as a campus-only network. Read more

Shoppers don’t want location targeting, but mobile alerts are awesome—A study from PricewaterhouseCoopers found more than half of shoppers globally buy online because they find better prices, while 47% said it was the 24-hour-a-day access to online shopping that appealed to them. Only about one-third like retailers using their phones for location targeting. Read more

IFTTT adds a DO button—If This Then That (IFTTT) has added a feature called DO, which lets you create your own personalized button, camera, or notepad with which you can run IFTTT recipes whenever you want. You can program each of the three buttons to do up to three things to make connected things work and drop the buttons on your phone’s home screen. For example, one DO button could automatically turn on your Philips Hue lights while another adjusts your Nest thermostat. At the same time, the company renamed its app IF. Read more

New app brings Snapchat sensibilities to the workplace—Confide is a new app that lets employees engage in conversations that vanish after they’ve been seen, just like Snapchat messages do. Unlike Snapchat, the entire message (which can include photos) is never revealed all at one time, so even if someone grabs a screen shot or takes a picture of the app screen, only part of the message is revealed. Confide isn’t the first app to offer the self-destruct feature. Mark Cuban-backed Cyber Dust offers similar capabilities. Read more

Research

Scientists rock when it comes to engaging with the public—A Pew Research Center study has found that scientists are excellent at building connections with non-expert citizens, with nearly all scientists—98%—interacting with the public at least some of the time through blogs and social media, and 51% maintaining contact with journalists about the results of their research. Nearly half use social media to talk about science or read about new developments at least some of the time, and nearly a quarter blog about science and research. Read more

You know how photos boosted organic reach for Facebook updates? Fuggetaboutit—As many brands found organic reach drying up on Facebook, word that adding a photo boosted engagement led everyone to start including images in their posts. New data from Socialbakers, however, suggests Facebook has changed its algorithm to punish photos, “perhaps ini response to page owners trying to game the system by constantly posting photos.” An equally likely reason is that Facebook is pushing its own video-focused strategy. Whatever the reason, video is now the most effective way to get a brand page update into users’ News Feeds, with photos producing the lowest organic reach (3.7%) compared to video (8.7%). Even links and text-only updates did better than posts with photos. Read more

Twitter growth may be slow, but it delivers for brands—A study from Interbrand 100 found that engagement with tweets from brands grew 85% in the last quarter of 2014. Brands were also more active on Twitter in 2014 than the year before, with the percentage of brands tweeting at least daily growing 3 points to 95%; the volume of tweets published grew 11%. Follower counts for the top 100 brands grew 38%. Read more

Brands suck at delivering what customers want—A new study from Brand Keys that measures a brand’s ability to meet its customers’ expectations better than the competition found that brands have improved their ability to satisfy customers by 7%, while digital and social networking brands have kept up with expectations by 10%. The Customer Loyalty Engagement Index found the gap between customer expectations and what brands deliver is huge and driven mostly by emotional values, including a sense of personal connection, giving customers the feeling they belong, letting customers express themselves, and responding in real time. Read more

What selfies tell us about our customers—Coyne PR’s “State of the Selfie” report is designed to help marketers learn as much as they can from the phenomenon in order to leverage it to their companies’ advantage. More than 93 million selfies are taken and uploaded daily, many of which (notably by women) are taken after careful adjustments to get just the right photo. Women also take considerably more selfies than men. The report includes a guide to help you get your selfies just right. Read more

But wait! There’s more!

  • The first major change to the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) in 16 years is ready for prime time. Read more
  • Sandwich maker Quiznos is going all digital with its advertising; no more TV ads. Read more
  • Facebook has patented a way to target ads to people whose content gets shared the most and the experts whose content they’re sharing. Read more
  • Business Insider has produced a fantastic step-by-step guide to using Snapchat. Read more
  • A new class of apps lets you broadcast your entire life. Read more
  • Pinterest competitor Keep makes a play for Pinterest users angry over affiliate ban. Read more
Comment Form

« Back