Flickr photo courtesy of Matt ReinboldThe Friday Wrap (which is what you’re reading) is a curated rundown of news, reports and posts from the past week that, while they didn’t go viral or attract much attention, are still interesting and useful for communications professionals. I select Wrap items from my link blog, which you’re welcome to follow.
News
FTC may scrutinize Facebook experiment—The Facebook’s A/B test to determine if suppressing positive or negative posts leads users to post more positive or negative updates of their own may be reviewed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, based on a request by Senator Mark Warner (D-VA). Warner wonders if the experiment violated Facebook’s privacy agreement with the federal government. Last week, the FTC received a complaint from the Electronic Privacy Information Center also alleging the experiment violated the company’s 2012 consent order. Read more
Yo alerts Israelis to rocket attacks—The social app Yo was the subject of considerable derision despite its huge uptake. After all, the only thing it lets you do is send and receive the word, “Yo.” Still, Silicon valley companies were taking meetings with Yo’s developers, intrigued by its notification interface. And now, people can sign up for the service through Red Alert: Israel—another app—and get a Yo as a way to alert people worldwide whenever a rocket is fired at Israel. Read more
Trends
Why you can do well by doing good—Evidence that consumers increasingly take a company’s behavior into account continues to mount. This time, it’s no less an authority than Nielsen showing that consumers in 60 countries are willing to spend more on a company that is committed to positive and social environmental impact. The sentiment is strongest in Asia-Pacific, where 64% of consumers will spend more on products and services from companies that behave well. In Latin America and the Middle East, it’s 63%. For North America, 42% will reward companies with strong corporate social responsibility records, while 40% in Europe will pay higher prices to these companies. Amy Fenton, global leader of public development and sustainability at Nielsen, says, “Consumers around the world are saying loud and clear that a brand’s social purpose is among the factors that influence purchase decisions.” Read more
Conflicting results for native advertising—Does native advertising work or doesn’t it? The answer depends on the study you read. For example, a Contently study released Wednesday finds that 59% of consumers think a news site loses credibility if it runs native ads, and two-thirds said they are less likely to click on a branded article than on a story produced through the site’s normal editorial processes. However, Upworthy reports content from advertisers regularly outperforms its regular editorial posts. Read about the Contently study and the Upworthy experience.
Employees ignore internal social media—Internal social media (also known as enterprise social networking) is meant to improve interaction and collaboration. However, 70 to 80% of the companies are struggling to get employees to embrace it. According to Gartner analyst Carol Rozwell, “Too often we see companies whose leaders are thrilled with the technology, and they see how quickly consumer social networks like Facebook have grown. They think they’ll accomplish the same growth rate and participation if they purchase the right tool. That approach doesn’t work.” Garter believes 80% of social business efforts won’t achieve their intended goals due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on the technology. Read more
Microsoft advertising effort focuses on multiple screens—Microsoft is testing some innovative campaigns with advertisers like Lexus in an effort to reach the same user across multiple digital devices while being able to track the individual from the Web to TV to a mobile device. Making it even more interesting is the idea of telling one continuous story across the devices. Here’s an example: Lexus first shows an ad to a consumer on the MSN portal featuring a parachutist jumping from a plane. When that customer next gets on his XBox, he would see the next part of the ad sequence, with the same skydiver preparing to jump off a cliff. On the next Microsoft property he visits on his smartphone, he sees the third phase, with the skydiver going off road in a Lexus. The sequence could run in any order and be delivered only to targeted customers. Read more
The best argument for unblocking employee access to social media—Do you have any idea how influential each of your employees is in social media? Not knowing could be bad for business. This Simply Measured piece is by an employee advocate with a strong personal brand, whose efforts resulted in over 21 million impressions. The piece offers advice on how to take advantage of employee advocates with personal brands. Read more
Mobile
Mobile drives surge in digital spending—The amount of money marketers will spend on spreading their messages through smartphones and tablets will rise 84.7% this year to $32.71 billion. With a lot of that money going to twitter and Facebook ads designed for mobile devices, smartphones and tablets will account for 25% of all digital spending in 2014. Read more
Sharing on Twitter and Pinterest is mostly mobile—ShareThis found in its latest quarterly report that Twitter and Pinterest are the most mobile-centric networks. Seventy-five percent of all content sharing on these platforms takes place on mobile devices, compared to 50% on Facebook. Still, thanks to its size, Facebook leads the pack for sharing on smartphones, accounting for 72% of all sharing; Twitter weighs in at 14% and Pinterest at 12%. Read more
Categories make it easier to find apps—Apple has added “Browse by Category” to its app store to make it easier for people to find the kind of app they’re looking for within its catalog of 900,000 apps. Users click on category icons to browse through the collection. Meanwhile, a company called Xyo will launch a rival to the Google Play store designed to make it easier to find Android apps. The Xyo app offers 1,000 subcategories of apps, identified by image; testing shows it’s a faster way to search for apps. Read more
SAP’s mobile consumer trends site is a one-stop shop for data—If you need data on mobile trends, don’t miss SAP’s site, “The Mobile Consumer.” It’s a multi-screen interactive visualization that “explores the global use of mobile commerce services to uncover.” The key categories: appetite (how cultural, economic, and technological norms shape the use of mobile around the world) , opportunity (how addressing specific consumer concerns can expand the demand for mobile commerce services) and motivators (insights on how consumers can be motivated to make greater use of mobile commerce services). Read more
Research
Gap between company and customer perceptions about customer experience is huge—There’s a massive gap between how companies think they’re doing at delivering great customer experiences and what the customers themselves think. According to research from social media management system company Sprinklr, 80% of companies believe they’re doing a superior job while only 8% of their paying customers agree. The gap is particularly wide when it comes to customers complaining via social media, with 20% of companies rarely or never responding to social complaints, while customers believe they should be addressed within an hour. Read more
Another big gap exists between bloggers and the communication industry—A survey of 1,360 bloggers found bloggers see approaches from the communication industry irrelevant. The IPREX Blogbarometer found that bloggers get a lot of their material—40%—from press releases and products samples sent by communicators, and 72% are approached by PR or marketers, and while 65% view the approaches communicators take with them positively, there were a lot of complaints about the irrelevance and quality of a lot of the outreach. Read more
Trade associations adopt social media—On both sides of the Atlantic, trade associations have embraced social media, but not in the same ways. European associations use twitter and LinkedIn, with adoption rates at 77% for each of the networks, while Facebook was tops in the U.S. at 91%, followed by LinkedIn at 88%. In the U.S., trade associations use paid digital advertising for member recruitment far more than their European counterparts do—62% vs. 31%. Associations in both regions believe their investments in social media are paying off—69% in the U.S. and 63% in Europe. Read more
Great Ideas
You may hate the TSA, but you won’t hate their Instagram feed—The TSA provokes a lot of anger and angst among people who find the agency’s tactics abusive. But there’s nothing but awesomeness in the agency’s Instagram feed, which is one photo after another of the kinds of dangerous items people try to sneak through the security checkpoints. Even haters love looking at the odd collection of weapons and other assorted items, including a nine-bladed super knife, a hand grenade, bomb makings, a knife concealed in a smartphone case, and lots and lots of guns. Look at the feed for inspiration if your company has raised the ire of consumers as one approach to starting to alter that perception. Read more
CIA’s Twitter approach gains fans—Based on its first month with a Twitter account, America’s elite intelligence agency is showing itself to be pretty hip, even if—so far—it’s not addressing issues that have led to an erosion of trust. Still, there’s something to be said for wry humor and entertainment. On its one-month anniversary, the account provided tongue-in-cheek answers to the top five questions it had received. Among the answers, “YES, we are hiring” and “No, we don’t know your password, so we can’t send it to you.” The account also features interesting historical information and other odds and ends, such as a photo of William “Wild Bill” Donovan’s Medal of Honor. Read more
Business models emerge to tap into user-generated Instagram photos—Just what that model is depends on whether the photographer is a professional or merely a social participant. But the appeal of using social photography in commercial applications is growing. Consider the number of photos available that convey far greater authenticity that the stock photography to which many marketers have traditionally resorted. One example of a business model is Snapwire, which curates social photos into an image library available for marketers, with photographers getting 70% of the licensing fee. Read more
LocalMaven pays experts to promote products and services—This items appears under Great Ideas, but it’s more like, well, just an idea. I’m not sure if it’s great. Startup LocalMaven is a marketplace that lets businesses find experts to whom they can offer a commission in exchange for promoting discounts and other deals. Whenever a maven recommends a deal to someone in his or her network using a unique promotional code, LocalMaven will track whether the recommendation becomes a sale and pay out a commission. I’m not convinced that getting paid to make recommendations will build trust. Read more