Tag Archives: Social Media
Making sense of the mayhem at SxSW is far from an easy feat. After sifting through my circuitous content trail: 90 instagrams, 136 tweets, and countless notes captured on moleskins, napkins, my iPhone and laptop, I am now left pondering the inevitable question: what was the big takeaway?
Looking back at past SxSW’s, Twitter was the quintessential poster child for start-up success, bursting onto the scene in 2007 and pioneering an entirely new mode of communication for the masses: brief, to-the-point, 140 characters of bite-sized nuggets, ranging from the mundane to the profound, and now by some estimates closing in on 500 million registered users.
However despite the microblog’s massive social media success, I’ve still heard protests—most often from creative types—that they “just don’t get it.” It’s true that the signal-to-noise ratio can often be deafening. And let’s face it, it’s pretty hard to make 140 characters look all that pretty. The medium itself, though undeniably effective in altering the way millions of people share, socialize, and even mobilize movements, still feels fleeting, temporal. Tweet today, gone tomorrow. And the bare-bones, unadorned interface flies in the face of what most creatives value most: beauty and craftsmanship. Perhaps if Twitter offered a Helvetica Neue option, the creative usage might skyrocket, but I digress…
Power to the People: Closing the Gap on Creativity
Most of us have been brought up to believe that, when it comes to creativity, “you either have it or you don’t.” Whether it’s the iconic image of dapper Don Draper pontificating about carousels and selling dreams or the tattooed hipster pushing pixels to sell products, the sacred ground of creativity is a line that supposedly can’t be crossed by “the rest of us.”
However at this year’s SxSW, a common theme resonated across a divergent range of speakers. Is technology actually bridging the creative gap between “the haves” and “have nots”? Consider these sound bites from luminaries in digital, film, music and TV:
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Enjoy this blog post from Annalise Kaylor, currently the Director of Social Media at Intrapromote (representing their full portfolio of brands in the social space) and previously a community moderator for Aveda. She will be joining the “Confessions of a Community Moderator” panel with other guest authors you’ve heard from earlier this week.
Every business, when launching their Facebook account, thinks about the multitude of ways they can engage their audience and start driving business from the social sphere. Hundreds of ideas for content and contests and promotions are batted around, yet there is one major component of social media strategy that always seems left off to the side of the table – what happens in a crisis?
A crisis in your business doesn’t have to be worldwide disaster or major event. It could be a rogue tweet, like what happened when someone accidentally tweeted from the Red Cross account about getting drunk one night. Or perhaps it is similar to what happened to DKNY when a coordinated group of PETA protestors took over their Facebook page. Regardless of what has happened, if your organization doesn’t have a crisis plan in place, you are vulnerable.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with a variety of brands and organizations in creating their crisis backup plan and like any good plan one of the first steps is prevention. What has always been a little crazy to me, however, is how few of these businesses take the time to consider how their community manager can assist in times that require reputation management.
Today’s guest post comes from Nina Kester, a Social Media Associate Producer for the Peanuts brand and cast of characters (via the Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates group). She will also be joining our “Confessions of a Community Moderator” panel Tuesday 3/13 at SXSW.
When did Pinterest become a powerhouse? How long has everyone but you known that Facebook’s Timeline for Pages is out? What new social trend or upheaval lies just over the horizon?
Trying to stay ahead of or just with social media trends and changes can feel like a rat race. From a native user, millennial and social media professional here are five tips to dominate social media changes:
1. The Social Media Post Delivered to Your RSS
There are tons of noteworthy news sites dedicated to tracking the latest in online social developments for you. The biggest one that comes to mind is Mashable.com. Articles are short and sweet with great takeaways and everyone from a newbie to a seasoned pro can get value out of their reporting.
TechCrunch.com, SocialMediaExaminer.com, SocialMediaInfluence.com, and VentureBeat.com are a few more to start with.
To Do:
Set up an RSS feed of your favorite social news sites. Then set aside 15 min to an hour each day to read them. Choose two to peruse every day or focus on a different one for each day of the week.
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We’ve always looked for that integration point between social media and other digital media. In particular, how social media fits into the .com experience or mobile? We ask ourselves how do we integrate social extensions into existing digital landscapes, how do we make the likes of Facebook more entwined in digital and traditional campaigns? I would argue that Timeline now shifts the way we strategize Facebook and now social media as whole.
An Account Director at Critical Mass brought up a very valid point the other day. He mentioned Timeline makes Facebook more like a website than a social media extension. That statement blew my mind because he was right! Instead of thinking of how we can integrate Facebook into .com, let’s think of how we can turn our Facebook Pages into an experience like .com. Or better yet, push the envelope further and make .com an extension of Facebook. Users are no longer forced to leave the Facebook page to find more information.
How do brands achieve this new experience? Brands now need to be more aware of storytelling, creating compelling and valuable content, integrating site/social applications, leveraging customer service and utilizing a new form of engagement. Read More
Today we kick off a week of guest posts from the co-presenters and panelists we are thrilled to share the stage with at SXSW Interactive. Enjoy this POV from Rebecca Russell, a Community Manager from Anomaly, who represents “a popular American shoe brand” on Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms. She’ll be joining our “Confessions of a Community Moderator” panel.
Trolls. In the community management line of work, many of us have had to deal with them head on. In fact, simply saying any variation of the word “troll” is likely to make our collective cringe, laugh, cry, or another combination of these three actions. Wikipedia defines a troll as “…someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community…with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response…” When building an engaged community, they often act in total opposition of a brand’s ideals and initiatives, which can lead to disaster.
Like it or not, purposely-disruptive members have to be dealt with expeditiously, and your organization must have protocols in place if and when situations arise. Essentially, when dealing with the lowest circle of a community’s hierarchy (categorically speaking), you will be using one of the following techniques. They are by no means an exhaustive plan of action, and each option can lead to unexpected outcomes, which are discussed as well. Implementing any of these practices requires an intimate knowledge of your community climate and brand guidelines, so proceed at your own discretion.
Industry Reacts To Facebook Marketing Conference News
The big social news this week came from none other than the folks at Facebook. On Wednesday, they held their “Facebook Marketing Conference” and unveiled some new features and ideas. As always, the announcements shook up how brands and individuals will interact on Facebook, and again as always, there have been plenty of opinions on the changes in the aftermath.
One of the biggest changes is that brand pages will now be upgrading to Timelines, similar to the Timelines that were released to individuals earlier this year. While there have been plenty of mixed reactions to this new feature (many are featured in the above article), this has potential to be an awesome new feature for brands. Brand pages can now be more visually enticing, without sacrificing any content.
