The Friday Wrap is back after a Thanksgiving break. I hope your Thanksgiving was as rewarding as mine (with 18 family members gathering at my home). If you’re new to the Wrap, it’s 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 newsletter.
News
Snapchat covers San Bernadino mass shooting—Next time there’s breaking news, you might want to consider checking Snapchat’s coverage. The app ran a story on the mass shooting in San Bernadino, providing updates and images from people sharing content from the scene. “We published this story because we felt that the content, which comes from the LA local Story, was newsworthy and held national significance,” according to Snapchat’s Communications VP. The takeaway: News coverage is fragmenting more than you may have thought. What impact does that have on your media relations or crisis communication planning? Read more
Facebook live streaming coming to everyone—Reacting to the popularity of Periscope and Blab, Facebook introduced live streaming via a tool called Facebook Live four months ago to celebrities and high-profile users. Now, the feature is slowly being rolled out to all users of its mobile app. Facebook Broadcasts include the ability for people to subscribe to be notified when you’re starting a new session. The takeaway: The web has been all about on-demand content, but real-time streaming is growing in popularity. Facebook’s entry into the space will propel it further. Read more
Snapchat breaks the app barrier—Snapchat is letting its publisher partners (CNN and Vice, for example) to post links on social media sites (like Facebook and Twitter) that will connect readers directly to content inside the app. In addition to breaking down the barriers of the app, the move adds the ability for publishers to deliver content to targeted users and measure user engagement. The takeaway: Since publishers work to build traffic from Snapchat to their own properties, it’s unclear how popular the feature will be. Nevertheless, the ability for people to share links to app content is a move in the right direction—away from strictly walled gardens. Read more
Customers can chat with companies on their website via Messenger—An update to Facebook’s Page Plug-in lets businesses add a message box and even information to their own websites. An example of how this could be useful: “A customer could place a food order on your site, and then immediately make a correction via Messenger. Customers could directly ask questions about items for sale, send in a complaint or provide feedback.” Customers already turn to Facebook to reach companies, and more and more companies are beefing up their ability to respond via Facebook. By adding a Messenger channel to your website, you funnel those queries through the same channel. It’s efficient and enables customers to use their preferred channel even when they’re on your site and not Facebook. If you’re already engaging with customers on Facebook, there’s little reason not to take advantage of this capability. Read more
There’s a message in the success of the Pledge 1% movement—More than 500 companies joined the Pledge 1% movement, founded by collaboration software company Atlassian, Salesforce.org, and others. They’re not the P&Gs or IBMs of the world, though. The companies that signed on are high-growth new-economy companies like DocuSign, Glassdoor, Lookout, Twilio, Xactly, and Zuora, each of which pledged 1% of employee time, equity, product, or profit to philanthropic endeavors. The takeaway: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced he and his wife would donate 99% of their Facebook stock to charitable causes. While older executives like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have also given away huge sums, it’s notable that Millennial-run companies are the ones adopting the philosophy that their businesses are about more than profit. A younger generation of investors is increasingly interested in investing in companies that use their assets for more than just profit. There is a substantial and growing body of research that supports this trend. Consider it a more enlightened form of capitalism. Read more
Kanvas inks content deal with Guess—Oh, you haven’t heard of Kanvas? Neither had I until I read about a deal that will live-stream the #GuessAllAccess event in Miami over the AOL-owned Periscope rival. The takeaway: Whether this is enough to put Kanvas on the map is anybody’s guess, but the fact that AOL thought acquiring the app was important speaks volumes about the rise of the live mobile social video streaming category. Read more
Research
Teens use Facebook more than any other site—You hear it all the time: Teens are abandoning Facebook. Not so, according to Forrester data. Few teens think Facebook is cool (65%), yet teens are “hyper users” of Facebook—more than with Snapchat Instagram, or Twitter. 61% of teens identified Facebook at the social network they use most—and 47% say they use it more this year than last. 78% of teens use Facebook at least once a month, compared to 55% for Instagram, 50% for Twitter, and 45% for Snapchat. The takeaway: The question is, what are teen using Facebook for? Not messaging, I would think, but rather for Groups, photo albums, and other features unavailable in their preferred messaging apps. Still, they use it and after they leave school and enter the world of work, it’s likely they’ll use it more as their need to build new connections becomes more important than maintaining insulated connections with messaging apps. Read more
Clients want creativity from PR agencies—Nearly three-quarters of in-house survey respondents are more likely to approach a PR agency for big creative ideas than they were a year ago—by a long shot. Last year, only 43% said they would seek creativity from their agencies. That’s one finding from the 2015 Creativity in PR study, co-authored by the Holmes Report and Now Go Create, along with H+K Strategies. The survey of 500 agency and client representatives from around the world found the industry “is finally starting to realize its creative ambitions, becoming a critical priority amid continued concerns over talent and investment.” 88% of respondents reported creativity is either fundamental to their work or a high priority. The takeaway: The pressures on agencies come from all sides. There’s a need for creativity (right brain) but also for analytics (left brain). The challenges for agency leaders are many, but at least there’s no shortage of data to support the directions they choose to take in order to best position themselves as the preferred client solution. Read more
Refine your headlines—The approaches we have used for writing headlines for decades aren’t very effective any more, according to a new study from analytics firm Chartbeat. Using terse, punchy headlines; asking questions; dropping names—“none of these properties show much predictive power,” according to Chartbeat data scientists Chris Breaux, who tested a dozen headlines styles to assess their click-through power. The one exception: headlines using demonstrative adjectives like “this,” “that,” and “these” produced higher click-through rates; longer headlines also performed somewhat better. The takeaway: It was bad enough that SEO killed a lot of great headlines. (Search engines don’t understand the connection between a great pun and the subject of the article.) Now click-through properties are making it even harder. Oh, well. Time to get even more creative and write great headlines that achieve your goals of ranking high in search and inspiring that all-important click. Read more
You may not want to pay for content, but your kids might—Well, not just kids. While the category may skew younger, age really isn’t the defining characteristic of what AdAge calls Generation #hashtag, media consumers who prefer native digital content. This group now makes up “nearly half the audience for entertainment in developed markets and more than a third of the audience for publishing and online services,”
according to a study from Bain & Company. The study also revealed Generation #hashtag is “increasingly willing to pay for content, especially for video, music, and games.” The takeaway: In addition to adding support for brands and agencies to employ native content, the study makes it clear that age categories are declining as a fundamental way to approach audiences. Read more
Email is dead? Only as an aspiration—The volume of emails sent in the third and fourth quarters of 2014 rose 46% over the previous year. 83% of retailers sent general holiday or seasonal emails in the fourth quarter, with email driving 27% of ecommerce sales on Black Friday; holiday-themed emails were opened more than any others. This year, brands will send 114 billion emails, and growth is anticipated with brands expected to spend $6.5 billion on email campaigns by 2018. On the recipient side, 70% of US adults prefer to hear from brands by email more than other channels and 91% want promotional emails from the companies they like; nearly 70% say an email has led them to make a purchase. To succeed with email marketing, personalization is vital, as is optimizing for mobile. The data comes from the Association of National Advertisers. The takeaway: Nobody said email is dying—just that it’s adapting to a marketplace where other tools are better for collaboration and messaging. For me, email is best for notifications, newsletters, and promotions—not for business communication or one-to-one messaging. In fact, knowing how to use email effectively is more important than ever (in addition to knowing what not to use it for). Read more
Messaging is just getting started—2.5 billion people globally are using messaging apps, which makes it 25% bigger than social media. But it’s just the beginning. Activate, a strategy and technology consulting firm, estimates 1.1 billion new users will become registered users by 2018, which will make it the most ubiquitous communication channel by a long shot. Look for Facebook’s apps—Messenger and WhatsApp—to dominate in Southeast Asia while the most significant growth will come from the Middle East and Africa. The takeaway: I still encounter a lot of people who shrug off messaging as though it’s some second-tier channel barely worthy of their awareness. That’s a mistake. Clearly, messaging is assuming its place as the dominant means of connection. If your audience is there and you’re pumping messages exclusively to other categories, you’ll lose a lot of potential eyeballs. Read more
Marketers see more success with sponsored content—A survey has found that marketers are getting better results using Facebook and Twitter for marketing than traditional platforms. Social media advertising is more effective than online display, TV ads, and radio ads, according to the Halverson group study. Social media wasn’t at the top of the list, though. Experiential marketing and content marketing ranked higher. The takeaway: The data from this survey reflects trends that are also easy to see anecdotally. Yet how many communicators consider experiential marketing when planning a campaign? One wonders if PR is positioned to adjust fast enough to these shifting trends. Read more
Communication education is falling short—A study from Baylor University finds that curricula aren’t adequate to prepare students for careers in PR and advertising. Social media, among other things, has blurred the lines between PR and advertising, but the university approaches to each continues to focus on one or the other, according to Gaps in Advertising and Public Relations Education: Perspectives of Agency Leaders. In addition to the traditional skills taught in school, the researchers found gaps including math and business skills, social listening, online community management, native advertising, social media analytics, content amplification, and programmatic buying. PR students need training in media planning and buying, including programmatic buying, as well as SEO and search engine marketing, while advertising students need to learn online community management, issues management, and crisis communication. The takeaway: Changing a university curriculum is harder than passing legislation in Congress, but it needs to change if students will emerge from college ready to work in agencies and companies that are already dealing with the new marketplace realities. Read more
Trends
The debate over Facebook’s value as a traffic source—Whether traffic driven to publisher websites from Facebook is rising or falling depends on whom you ask. One study says referral traffic has dipped 32%, another says it has dropped 17.3%, and still another says it’s steady. Some companies claim it’s growing. It matters because media executives anticipate Facebook could charge for traffic at some point. The takeaway: Trends are important to track, but many of the factors that could drive traffic from Facebook to your site are in your hands. It’s also worth considering whether traffic to your site is even a worthwhile goal, or if your content is fine being consumed natively. Read more
Brands are producing their own podcasts—When podcasting was brand-spanking new, back in 2005 and 2006, brands from Whirlpool to Speedo experimented with podcasting, but it was hard to build an audience and they eventually podfaded. Now, with podcasts surging in popularity thanks to the ease of access via smartphones and streaming TV devices like the Roku, a whole new set of companies is testing the podcasting waters, including Prudential, GE, and Netflix. (In fact, GE’s podcast, The Message, became the number-one show on iTunes.) Slate’s podcast network, Panoply, has introduced a custom unit specializing in helping brands produce podcasts. Wisely, these brands are producing solid content that isn’t thinly veiled advertising. Faith Salie hosts Prudential’s 40/40 Vision, exploring the experience of being 40 and over. The takeaway: Podcast quality is improving as the form becomes more popular, so entering the field requires a commitment to quality content and production. If you’re willing to make that commitment, though, a podcast could help you target to a specific audience and build a strong relationship with people who come back for more every episode. Read more
PR is figuring out the benefits of live-streaming—Periscope’s popularity continues to grow, and some in PR are beginning to see its advantages, such as scaling back on costly press junkets (“No need to book a plane, just send one person to that far away destination and film it while others watch from home turf”), augment an existing PR campaign, offer behind-the-scenes coverage, run Q&A sessions, and more. The takeaway: Audiences for live streaming content is growing and Periscope stars (like YouTube stars) are emerging. (There was even a Periscope Summit in New York in September that attracted many from the global ecosystem of Periscope stars.) If you haven’t already, download it, play with it, and start to include it in the set of available tools for your next assignment. Read more
The branded hashtag emoji is taking over Twitter—It started as a “hashflag” for World Cup fans—a the first branded hashtag emoji that automatically delivers an emoji when a select hashtag is included in a tweet. Now the strategy has been adopted by the likes of Coca-Cola (the first company to use a branded hashtag emoji with its #ShareACoke campaign), Dove, Star Wars, Toyota, and Starbucks. Meanwhile, twitter is adding emojis to even hashtags. The takeaway: I keep saying it: You need to get up to speed on emojis if you’re trying to reach the crowd that uses them, particularly on Twitter and via mobile messaging apps. Read more
The risks and rewards of Reddit marketing—Taking your message to Reddit can be a scary proposition, given the collaborative news site’s reputation for trolls and flame wars. Some companies, though, have cracked the code, running “stealthy” Reddit campaigns. The trick, according to one social marketing firm, is to un-brand marketing on Reddit. “You have to present value to the community in the voice of the community. If you don’t do that, you will fail,” according to Ghost Influence’s Brian Swichkow. The takeaway: Before attempting to navigate Reddit’s stormy waters, make sure you know the payoff you want to get from it, and pay attention to the guidance from those who have succeeded—view it as an opportunity for genuine collaboration with Reddit users. Read more
Is PR a dirty word?—UK agency Lewis PR is dropping the “PR” from its name to better reflect the range of services it has added through the acquisition of integrated PR, marketing, and business strategy firm Davis Murphy Group. The agency will still offer PR as a core practice, but the company will be known as just Lewis. The takeaway: PR is broadly misunderstood by people who don’t work in the field. (Many believe it’s only about media relations.) While I question whether Lewis’ new capabilities aren’t public relations, I’m inclined to think people will understand “Communications” better than “PR.” That’s sad; it means as an industry we have done a terrible job of branding ourselves. Read more
Virtual and Augmented Reality
Google app turns panorama photos into immersive 3D images—A new Cardboard app from Google, Cardboard Camera, lets you take a 360-degree panorama photo, then converts it into the split-screen format so you can view them in an Oculus-compatible headset. The takeaway: Virtual Reality has been the next big thing since the 1980s, but the technology has caught up with the hype. Cardboard Camera means the average person can create an immersive image with a smartphone and a free app. VR is here and (as I keep repeating) it’s going to be huge. Read more
This week’s wrap image—a 2001 shot of the former Berlin post office wrapped in oversized love letters collected from the public—comes courtesy osf Katexis Publications’ Flickr account.