The Friday Wrap is my weekly collection of news stories, posts, studies, and reports designed to help organizational communicators stay current on the trends and technology that affect their jobs. These may be items that flew under the radar while other stories grabbed big headlines. As always, I collect material from which I select Wrap stories (as well as stories to report on the For Immediate Release podcast, along with stuff I just want to remember to read) on my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow. If you want to make sure you never miss an edition of the Wrap, subscribe to my weekly email briefing.
Are you ready for the chatbot revolution?
It is upon us and as sure as I’m typing this right now, your company will most likely be using bots, possibly within the next few months. The uses of chatbots for organizational communicators is massive but nobody (and I mean nobody) in the industry is talking about it yet. It reminds me of the industry’s response to the Web in 1991 and 92. Don’t be caught unawares. Register for my webinar, Chatbots for Communicators, which I’m presenting on May 20. Your registration is good for you and your whole team (just gather around a monitor or in a conference room), and you’ll get access to the replay whenever you or anyone else on your team wants to watch it. Register here.
News
Your employee handbook may need a new update—The National Labor Relations Board has ruled against T-Mobile’s employee handbook’s requirement that “employees…maintain a positive work environment by communicating in a manner that is conducive to effective working relationships.” According to the ruling, employees would interpret the policy in a way that would restrict “potentially controversial or contentious communications and discussions,” a violation of Title 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. The ruling also struck down a policy against recordings in the workplace. The policy was designed to protect privacy, but the Board said it was overly broad, didn’t address a specific need, and could violate Section 7. The takeaway: You should review your handbook for any limitations on employees’ ability to express themselves and make sure they meet the bar raised by this NLRB ruling. Overall, it’s better to build the kind of culture where you just don’t have to worry about these kinds of things. Read more
Facebook tests temporary Reactions—Facebook has added a new Reaction to the five standard options. As Mother’s Day approaches this Sunday, people in some non-US markets are seeing a flower added to the mix. After Mother’s Day, the flower will vanish, though it will be visible on posts where it was used. Adding temporary Reactions for holidays and cultural events could inspire more people to use them. So far, not many people are. One study found Reactions are being clicked in less than 3% of posts. The takeaway: Even if temporary Reactions don’t give the feature a lift, it’s still too early to write them off. It’s a behavior change, and these things take time. Eventually, they could provide valuable sentiment feedback for marketing and PR. Read more
LinkedIn looking to emulate Facebook’s Instant Articles—The idea behind Facebook’s Instant Articles is to avoid the time it takes when clicking a link you find in your News Feed to open the related article from another website. On LinkedIn, users have no choice but to wait for that page to open, so the business-focused social network is thinking about creating a LinkedIn version of Instant Articles. Like Facebook, publishers would host their content on LinkedIn rather than sharing links that send people to their sites. The takeaway: The trend toward fast-opening pages is geared entirely to mobile users. In addition to Instant Articles and Apple News, Google is leading an open-source initiative, Accelerated Mobile Pages, to achieve the same result. The simple takeaway here is to make sure your pages load with lightning speed on smartphones. It would also be a good idea to explore the creation of AMP-compliant versions of your content pages. Read more
T-Mobile uses Star Wars Day to attack a competitor—It’s all in good fun, right? A lot of brands took advantage of May 4—Star Wars Day—to share some clever tweets and images. (Unlike tributes upon the passing of a celebrity, leveraging these kinds of cultural moments rarely backfire on companies.) T-Mobile carried the idea to an extreme by introducing a Google Chrome extension that replaced any reference to AT&T to “The DeATTh Star,” including a tiny Death Star graphic. #DeATThStar was also a hashtag introduced by the mobile carrier, part of a Star Wars Day campaign to label its competitor the “Evil Empire.” The takeaway: T-Mobile has a history of this kind of marketing; people expect it. Caution is advised in any effort to duplicate this approach! Read more
Video or print? What if they’re the same thing?—Forbes magazine is releasing a special issue next Tuesday, some copies of which will feature a video player insert. Sponsored by a division of BAE Systems, the insert will let readers view a 60-second ad directly on the page. I have seen this technology in demo packages and expect to see more of it as its use becomes more common and the price drops. Even young people like print, according to research, and the ability to integrate digital features onto a tactile paper page is an integration that makes loads of sense. Imagine, for example, a print publication for production employees who have no access to computers, and it includes the video others are watching on the intranet of the CEO’s remarks at the annual town hall meeting. Read more
Livefyre acquisition signals more consolidation—Livefyre has been acquired by Adobe, which it will merge into its Experience Manager content management system. Livefyre is known mainly as a social commenting system, but it also includes tools that lets brands enhance their audience engagement. Livefyre recently acquired Storify, the curation system, in an effort to move beyond comments. For the time being, Livefyre customers won’t experience any disruption in their service. The exit strategy for startups is acquisition. Adobe’s purchase of Livefyre indicates the trend won’t slow down anytime soon. That’s great in a lot of ways, but for small businesses that could afford services like Livefyre, the cost of entry for Experience Manager may be beyond their reach. That concerns me. Read more
Trends
The worse your engagement, the more bad news hurts—This may sound like a blinding flash of the obvious, but bad news and crises are more harmful to brands that already have low consumer engagement. “A brand that has some level of engagement…is six times more likely to survive,” according to Brand Keys President Robert Passikoff. Brand Keys evaluated 10 of the worst-scoring brands in its engagement index to reach the conclusion. Volkswagen is one example, already a low engagement scorer before its emissions scandal made headlines. Added to the low engagement score, the scandal hammered the company far worse than it would have if consumers had been engaging more with it. The takeaway: While there’s nothing very surprising in this report, it is a wake-up call regarding the importance of engagement. Read more
The declining value of the like—The “like” has been “the basic unit of currency on social media,” but it’s not what it used to be, either for people seeking validation or brands looking to measure engagement. The takeaway: Getting a like no longer necessarily means someone actually liked your content, especially on Instagram, and it’s impossible to separate the genuine likes from the rest. It may take a bit more work, but use other engagement metrics. Read more
Live-tweeting a historical event is now officially a thing—We’ve seen historical live-tweeting on the anniversaries of a number of events, most recently the sinking of the Titanic. Last week, the CIA used its Twitter account to do the same thing with the Bin Laden mission. Following these re-enactments via Twitter is weirdly compelling. The takeaway: Nobody wants to watch a live-tweet re-enactment of the launch of your new product, but if your company is connected to a touchstone historical event, this is a technique you could take advantage of. So far, I haven’t seen a brand do this, but consider as an example the idea that Johnson & Johnson could tweet in real time its response to the Tylenol tampering incident on its 30th anniversary, which happens to be next year. The crisis response is still considered an archetype of good behavior, and tweeting it as if it were happening over the several day period over which it occurred could remind people of the groundbreaking response. Read more
New York Times introduces six new video shows—The future of media is great content, according to The New York Times, and to back up that assertion the Grey Lady has announced plans for six digital video programs that will cover music, space exploration, and productivity, among other topics. The hope is that a single brand will sponsor each show, one of which will be a Virtual Reality flight to the surface of Pluto. The takeaway: You produce videos? Awesome. Want to get repeat visitors? Consider a program with regularly scheduled episodes. Given what we’re seeing from companies like Tastemade (with a bundle of programs on Facebook Live) and the move by the Times—not to mention the programs millions of people watch regularly on YouTube channels—brands should be looking at the potential for a content series in addition to standalone video productions. Read more
Why Facebook is becoming a forum for executive thought leadership—Facebook has become a key destination for people sharing opinions. Not just dotty old uncles and blowhard former high school classmates, but executives like Loic LeMeur, who said he’s using Facebook more often to share his thoughts and that the return he’s getting from it makes it worthwhile. Why Facebook instead of LinkedIn? LeMeur says, “It’s where people live.” He’s getting 100 times more viewers using Facebook Live than he does on Periscope. The takeaway: It’s not just streaming video that’s drawing executives to Facebook. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has used his Facebook presence for all kinds of information sharing, including financially material announcements (which has gotten the SEC seal of approval as long as investors know that’s where he’s doing it). Of course, there’s no rule that says you can’t post your thought-leadership pieces in multiple places. It’s called syndication! Read more
Automation is simplifying influencer marketing—The data has revealed for some time that influencers are among the most (if not the most) valuable tools in a marketing or PR campaign. Tools and platforms are beginning to flood the marketplace, designed to make the process of identifying and connecting with influencers easier. The takeaway: I’m a big fan of Little Bird, a nifty automated influencer tool from former tech journalist Marshall Kirkpatrick. Before I saw it, I was firmly in the camp that believes influencer marketing needs to be mostly a person-to-person activity. Certainly some human interaction is still critical to the process, but nobody has claimed that automation replaces that connection; it just simplifies it. Read more
Research
Users spend 50 minutes daily on Facebook properties—You read that right. Between Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, people spend an average of 50 minutes on platforms owned by Facebook. WhatsApp was not included in the number reported in Facebook’s earnings call. That’s more than 1/16th of the average person’s waking hours. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that’s more than people spend on any other leisure activity. The takeaway: Facebook continues to be a vital component of most communication plans. Advertisers, too, need to recognize that the time people spend on Facebook represents one of the best opportunities to be seen. Consider that YouTube grabs an average of 17 minutes per day—it’s Facebook’s next-closest rival for attention. Read more
Your long stories will get two minutes of attention on smartphones—With so much commentary pushing ultra-short content, it’s interesting to learn that people are willing to spend time with longer-form content (such as news stories over 1,000 words) on their smartphones. According to the Pew Research Center, smartphone users spend twice the time with longer stories—123 seconds vs. 57) and people are attracted to longer stories at the same rate as short ones. Another key finding: Most readers find content (regardless of length) the day it’s published, meaning it has a very short shelf life. The takeaway: Don’t use this research as an excuse to publish a lot of longer content. Make sure there’s a sound strategy for sharing material 9over 1,000 words and get the important bits into the beginning of the article, since 123 seconds means most readers won’t make it to the end. Read more
Your comments get dumber the more you post—The more time you spend online commenting on content, “your language becomes more elementary, less complex; your content becomes less interesting,” according to the co-author of a study that examined more than 40 million Reddit comments. The study found those who spent more than an hour commenting were inclined to post increasingly “shorter, less sophisticated comments that received fewer upvotes and responses.” The takeaway: For communicators looking to measure sentiment or identify opportunities to engage, this presents a dilemma. It’s not easy to determine from a single comment (identified, perhaps, by monitoring software) how long the user has been online sharing comments. But a user who shares a comment at the tail end of the hour may be sharing less important feedback than one who is spending less time online or is t the beginning of their online session. Read more
Chatbots
Mila is a Human Resources chatbot—Employees at Overstock.com will be able to engage with a chatbot called Mila for many of their HR needs. Too sick to come to work? Text that information to Mila, who will respond, “I’m sorry to hear that” and then start a short dialogue to get details, followed by a message to your manager who can adjust your schedule. Currently, staff needs to use a “cumbersome call-in hotline.” It also handles scheduling time off, checking schedules, and a number of other tasks that are simple enough that human interaction just isn’t necessary (and is often an obstacle to quick completion of the task). The takeaway: Sorry for hammering on this point, but chatbots are coming fast and furious. They are not a shiny object that will fade, and despite some early growing pains, they’re going to be a major big deal. That’s why I’m hosting a webinar on chatbots for communicators on May 20. Details are at the top of this update. Read more
Viv: It’s what comes after Siri—The team that created Apple’s Siri (an AI enabled chatbot that is voice rather than text-enabled) are working on the next evolution, a voice-powered chatbot that could disrupt digital commerce. “Powered by artificial intelligence and unprecedented volumes of data, (next-generation chatbots) could become the portal through which billions of people connect to every service and business on the Internet.” The takeaway: Some are calling them virtual assistants. Think about Star Trek and the way the Enterprise crew interacted with the ship computer. With Viv, advances in the Amazon Echo, and other tools, it’ll be commonplace within just a few years. Read more
Mobile and Wearables
Facebook Live is front-and-center in Android app update—The latest update to Facebook’s Android app puts the Facebook Live button “dead center” in the app interface. Clicking it reveals “a never-ending, scrollable list of videos, sporting a very visual look that’s unlike anything else on the Facebook Android app.” You can also click the “Guide” for a list of streaming video topics (e.g., World News, TV & Movies, Politics, and Food); you can add any of these to your preferences so you’ll see more of them. The takeaway: The writer of this piece says the placement of the Live button in so prominent a position will alter the way people use the app, and I suspect he’s right, though it’s too early for any research to confirm it. It is, however, one more reason to recognize the growing importance of live-streaming, especially to those using their smartphones. There’s no word on when the feature will come to iPhones. Read more
Now, Periscope videos can live forever—One reason Facebook Live has attracted so much attention despite the earlier introduction of Twitter’s Periscope is that Facebook Live videos are forever. They may be hard to find once they’ve scrolled off, but you can always save the link and direct people to it. Periscope’s video vanish completely after 24 hours. Until now, that is. Periscope is letting you permanently save your broadcast by adding #Save to the title. Periscope wants your feedback and plans to develop better controls for saving your broadcast (making it easy to make the decision to save it after it ends). The takeaway: See the item above. Live streaming isn’t just an afterthought. Read more
Periscope has hired an editor-in-chief—The new position—to be filled by Medium editor Evan Hansen—will focus on helping users identify the most interesting and relevant live streams. The curation job is likely to evolve to include new responsibilities over time. The takeaway: The ecosystem for live streaming is getting more sophisticated in a hurry, given that it has only been a thing for about 14 months (since Meerkat launched at the 2015 SxSW event). The ease of finding relevant live streams when you have the spare moment to watch one could be a boost for companies that have held back on entering the space. Read more
Branded content does better on mobile than PCs—We keep hearing the notion of “mobile first,” but does that apply to your content marketing efforts? It should, if you lend any credence to a report from Polar that shows branded content generates 63% higher than it does on PCs. The takeaway: Mobile first. Right? Of course, it depends on the industry you’re in and what you know about your audience. Read more
Facebook couldn’t buy Snapchat so they’ll copy it instead—Snapchat turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook. That seemed crazy at the time. Today it looks like a genius move. What’s Facebook to do? Simple: Introduce disappearing messages to its own messaging platform, Messenger. That’s the plan for the iOS app, which will let you set messages to disappear 15 minutes after being sent. Snapchat isn’t the only messaging app with disappearing messages. It’s also a big part of Telegram’s success. The takeaway: Of course, there’s more to both apps than just disappearing messages. Watch for more options in Messenger that mirror some of the most popular functionality drawing users to competitors—and, of course, watch for the disappearing messages feature to come to the Android version shortly after it’s introduced to the iPhone. Read more
Giphy unveils a keyboard—The ability to add a looping animated GIF to a message is a godsend for some, an easy way to express a feeling or reaction that would otherwise require a lot of words. To make it even easier, Giphy introduced Giphy Keys, a keyboard that lets you add a GIF right in your texts, messages, or posts whenever you’re using your smartphone. Let your phone recognize the keyboard, then use it to find and share the GIFs you want to add to your message. The takeaway: Thanks to the increasing dominance of mobile devices, language is evolving to incorporate emojis and GIFs. Deal with it. Read more
Twitter makes it easier to find people to follow—Desperate to grow its user base, which has been stuck at around 300 million for some time, Twitter has added a new option to its mobile menu called “Connect,” which displays accounts of people connected with others you follow and related to your interests. The takeaway: I was skeptical, but it works. When I went to check it out, I wound up following six new accounts. Give it a try! Read more
Hate SharePoint on your computer? Get ready for it on your phone—Microsoft will roll out SharePoint mobile apps for the iPhone/iPad, Android, and Windows before the end of June. Nearly 200 million people use SharePoint in more than 200,000 companies. The SharePoint Online tools will get new features first and the desktop version won’t ever get some of the new features Microsoft will introduce. The takeaway: Microsoft is pivoting to mobile and cloud. With any luck, using SharePoint on your phone will be less painful than it is on a computer. The shift is necessary, though, as most work is moving to mobile devices. Read more
This week’s wrap image—branches that grew wrapped around a power line—is used courtesy of Ryan Dickey‘s Flickr account.