(c) Can Stock PhotoAmidst the bigger stories of the week, some great items tend to get lost. The Friday Wrap is a collection of items from the last seven days worthy of note by communicators and marketers that you may have missed. I collect stories to consider for the Wrap—as well as my podcast—at LinksFromShel.tumblr.com.

Fleishman study predicts a coming corporate reputation crisis

Every brand Fleishman Hillard reviewed in its Authenticity Gap study “found a gap between people’s expectations of the industry category and their actual experiences of the company or brand,” according to an item in Bulldog Reporter’s Daily Dog. Three high-level characteristics contribute to a company’s perceived authenticity, consumers in the study said: management behavior, customer benefits and society outcomes. For consumers, corporate behavior mattered as much as customer care. The categories that seem to be doing best at meeting consumer expectations include online shopping, major appliances, tablets and e-readers, and pharmaceuticals. The biggest gaps appear in the vacation and travel industry and among Internet service providers and wireless carriers. “When brand and reputation are not aligned, it creates a gap that damages an organization’s credibility and authenticity,” says Fleishman president and CEO Dave Senay.

We’re spending more time online thanks to videos and social media

All those commentators who lament that all the time we’re spending online is going to make us more distant and less social in the real world have new ammunition. We’re spending more time online—3 hours and 7 minutes per day in 2012, up from 3 hours in 2011. “As more compelling content moves onto digital platforms—including social networks that appeal to every iteration of hobby and personality, and an expanding selection of online video content—old media continue to lose share to the internet. Radio and newspapers each lost minutes of daily time spent with media. And even daily TV time declined by a minute,” according to eMarketer.

Remember when IR departments hesitated to use the Web for annual reports?

There was a day when investor relations departments were reluctant to publish annual reports to the Web. These days, just about anything goes, as the Calgary Zoo demonstrated with its decision to publish its report via Instagram. Using an account dedicated to the report, the company used 55 photos and captions that include statistics, financial numbers and the traditional welcome from the zoo’s president and chief operating officer. Titled, “The Year of the Penguin,” the report is a first for Instagram, according to Jessica Gioglio, writing for Convice & Convert.

Word of Eye: visual communication is a key to branding success

Sharing content is a critical element of any content marketing or social media plan, and images are easier to share than just about anything else. Consequently, brands should be turning their attention to images as a primary content unit in order to tap into what marketing consultant Julie Cottineau calls “word of eye.” In a Forbes piece, Allen Adamson notes, “We live in a culture whose technological advances have made images so simple to capture and disseminate – and in which images are fast becoming the currency of news and information – that this visual currency has become the currency of choice.” The article includes compelling examples from Disney, Apple and Virgin America.

Don’t forget the lowly webinar in your content marketing mix

A Marketing Sherpa case study reminds us that webinars can be an effective form of content marketing. It made particular sense for Adobe, since the product they wanted to introduce with a demo was the company’s Adobe Connect webinar platform. By presenting a webinar on the software, the company earned “a 500% increase in conversion to sale within the webinar funnel and placed webinars as the second largest generator of sales behind only product trials.” The full case study provides details on the process that led to this stellar outcome.

As brands adopt Klout, you may have no choice but to boost your score

It’s easy and fashionable to dismiss Klout, the service that purports to rank your social media influence. But as more and more brands use Klout scores to determine which customers get preferential treatment, having a high score may become an imperative whether you believe in Klout’s methodology or not. Influential marketing consultant Danny Brown is so anti-Klout that he has worked to wipe his own identity from any hint of a Klout score, which means he won’t find himself in an Admirals Club—the upscale lounges American Airlines offers in airports—unless he buys a regular old membership. The perk gets those with high scores into American Airlines lounges in 40 airports, even if they’re booked on a competitor’s airline. It’s far from the first such perk; the Klout Kolub at the Palms Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas was introduced in 2010, providing special amenities to guests with high rankings, according to Cotton Delo, writing for AdAge.

BuzzFeed to train agencies in the Buzzfeed Way

BuzzFeed is a native-advertising leader, hosting sponsored content from a number of organizations like Virgin Mobile. This content will work better if it fits the BuzzFeed style and, to that end, the company has introduced the Social Storytelling Creator Program, “meant to seed the market with agencies and people that will do great work in the social storytelling space,” writes Michael Sebastian in AdAge. Buzzfeed’s president and COO, Jon Steinberg, says, “We want more people doing it in a high quality way.” Participating agencies earn “accreditation,” which includes a badge to add to their sites. Earning that badge requires extensive three-to-six-week training from BuzzFeed’s branded content creative team. “Instead of relying on capturing attention in Instagram’s busy photo stream, having each photo contain important information made their Instagram profile page a destination.”

Must…post…something…clever…to…Pinterest…

Nearly half of U.S. moms occasionally suffer from Pinterest stress, “the worry that they’re not crafty or creative enough,” according to a USA Today study, reported by Rebecca Dube. The 42% of mothers admitting to Pinterest stress say they stay up late to sort through photos or “sob quietly into a burnt mess of expensive ingredients that were supposed to be adorable bunny cookies for the school bake sale,” Dube writes. The article features Jenna Andersen, the blogger behind Pinterest Fail, “which chronicles Pinterest-inspired crafts and recipes gone oh-so-wrong.” Andersen notes that it has become common to hear moms say things like, “It was just a little party, nothing I’d put up on Pinterest.”

Saudi prince speaks out for open access to the Net

The Saudi Telecommunciation Authority plans to block social media platforms in order to give the government tighter control over what its citizens see. That doesn’t set well with Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who has called on the Authority to drop those plans, calling such censorship a “losing war,” according to CNN writers Laura Smith-Spark and Samya Ayish. In his tweet, the prince wrote, “Social media is a tool for the people to make the government hear their voices. Just thinking of blocking them is a losing war, and a way to put more pressure on the citizens.” Bin Talal and his investment firm hold a $300 million stake in Twitter, which might have something to do with his desire to keep the tweets flowing in his native country. but the article notes that the prominent businessman has more progressive views than the rest of the ruling elite.