Strategic Public Relations

Tips for Brands on Instagram

Instagram changed its terms of service earlier this week, unleashing a vocal and fast-emerging online protest. For brands, the “Instadrama” raises a more important question. As brands and their loyal consumers become invested in free online platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, what should brands do as these platforms evolve into a business? How brands react to things like a "controversial" terms of service change can have broader implications, including how consumers perceive the brand.

Rules of Disengagement?
Much like the “rules of engagement” many social media teams craft when it comes to responding to negative comments online, perhaps brands should consider “rules of platform disengagement.” At a minimum, the following tips should help prevent any rash decisions and, more importantly, it can help ensure a brand’s investment in a platform is not lost.

For more of this article, visit Media Is Power.

3 Tips to Pwn Storify

Storify’s new site design makes it easier to find relevant content on the site. As part of the more cosmetic changes to the site, Storify also became the latest social platform to add landscape header photos to its users’ profiles.

The changes might also be designed to make Storify less of a distribution tool and more of a destination platform. A quick review of active users shows that few have updated their profiles to capitalize on the new header design. It’s a telling sign that more Storify users tap the social curation tool through content management platforms instead of through the site

I've been playing with Storify to curate content for posts. It's a great tool -- one I'll bet you're either not using, or not using to its full potential. Regardless of your Storify-savvy, here are three tips to help you pwn Storify.

1) Curate Cross-Platform Content
Storify is used by most to capture Twitter conversations. The ability to pull in tweets on a certain topic, before they vanish from Twitter’s short-term memory, to select and then organize the best ones into a story is certainly an example of where Storify shines.

But Storify allows you to pull in content from several platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Tumblr. You can also pull in direct URLs to easily add content. In an age of distributed storytelling, the need to pull in content from across multiple platforms is important.

One example of using Storify to contain a fast-emerging, distributed story is the #SignalPG Storify I built. It’s based on the Signal event held at Procter & Gamble earlier this year. Storify made it simple to curate content from Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to give a brief event overview of the event.

2) Get Creative With Curation (like Moleskine, Lego & MIT)
And while Storify is typically used to capture temporary moments, like Twitter chats or events, it can be used for projects with longer timelines as well. For a recent product launch, Moleskine tapped Storify to create an online clip book. In addition to news, the brand captured consumer conversation for an even more potent compilation of buzz emanating from the co-branded product launch.

The ability to organize all of the conversation, add context and then embed it anywhere reminds us of Storify’s utility. Creativity is the only limitation as to where and how it can be used. This behind the scenes tour of MIT’s Media Lab. Is a great example of using Storify to give your audience access to something they can’t get elsewhere. And you’re not limited to one platform in doing so.

3) Become a Power User
This post assumes most users start and stop their use of Storify with Twitter chats. But there are a variety of ways to get more out of the site.

• Plug-In: Using Storify as a browser plug-in is not just more convenient and efficient, it makes for a much smoother embed, including eliminating duplicate titles between your blog post and the curated story.
• Research: If you’re using Storify just to curate and distribute your own content, keep in mind a variety of brands and media outlets use it. The end result is an untapped platform for informal research on a variety of topics.
• Miscellany: From tapping into each story’s analytics to clicking “View All” on a user’s profile to see all of their stories, there are a few basic steps worth remembering. More basic steps are included in "Getting Started.” This story is automatically generated for every profile and worth walking through. And while you’re at it, if you have a profile on the site, update your header photo!

Other Brands Crushing It On Storify
We’ve seen a broad variety of brands demonstrating how Storify can help content marketing efforts. Here are a few that stand out in addition to the ones highlighted above.

• Vanderbilt: The Vanderbilt news room curates tweets and Instagram pics into a weekly buzz roundup to engage students and other university fans while creating promotional content.
• General Electric: In addition to covering its own news stories, it uses Storify to get more long-term use out of its more evergreen event content.
• Smashing Pumpkins: In addition to increasing fan engagement with Twitter Chats, the socially active band memorializes the content with Storify and even used Storify to leverage a fan photo challenge for their latest album release.

If you’re curating content and not using Storify, it’s a free tool worth checking out. As the above shows, it’s becoming a go to for brands, journalists and content marketers.

Content Marketing Lessons from Facebook, Twitter & Google

Three pieces of content driving some serious sharing online last week are "year in review" stories from Facebook, Twitter and Google. Perhaps stories doesn't do their projects justice. More than just breezy content, each story also holds lessons for brands and their approach to content marketing.

It's Not About You: Facebook
By tapping into each user's last 12 months of activity, Facebook gets high marks for its year in review on two levels.

First and foremost, they do not make the project about Facebook. It's about the life moments each visitor shared on Facebook

Making the user the center of the story makes them more inclined to participate. And the project's output, a personal visualization of each user's activity, is slowly helping consumers get more comfortable playing with, visualizing and sharing their personal data.

Brand Lesson: To encourage consumer engagement through content marketing, consider what your brand enables the consumer to do instead of simply focusing on your brand.

Click here to read the rest of this story on Media Is Power. Media is Power is a new content marketing project from my employer.

Facebook, Online Privacy & the Bottom Line

Facebook just changed its privacy controls, making it impossible to hide from Facebook Search.

Unfortunately, the bulk of users that are even aware of these changes will probably spend more time complaining about it instead of either learning about the changes or doing something about it.

Learn
According to Mashable,

"The new privacy tools will make it easier for you to pick which of your friends or subscribers can view your personal info, status updates and photos, according to Reuters. It also makes it simpler for you to request that a photograph of yourself be taken down by the uploader." 

There's good news and bad news here. The bad news is that these changes are driven by Facebook's desire to offer better advertising options to brands. Like it or not, brands have always come before users on Facebook. And it's because brands pay for Facebook. But the good news is, while you can't hide from search, you CAN control who sees what content. Facebook is putting the onus of individual user privacy into the hands of the individual - albeit at a granular and incomplete level.

CNET reminds us that I may be a bit Pollyanna in my outlook.

"Facebook has mostly just fostered apathy in the vast majority of its subscribers -- and confusion among those who are paying attention to what Facebook is doing with their activity and the resulting data." 

Facebook is horrible at communicating privacy changes. The apathy and confusion mentioned above plays to Facebook's advantage. And they are user issues of Facebook's own design. I've always learned about changes from users -- never Facebook itself.

Do
Had I written this earlier in the week, I'd have suggested voting via Facebook's community voting process. But there was not enough voter turnout -- the option has been eliminated. Users can still do something about it though. They can either get Medieval on their privacy settings or they can leave Facebook.

I know about 1 billion reasons why most users are more likely to complain than to leave Facebook.

Bottom Line?
No matter how self-entitled the user base may become, Facebook is a free site. We play by their rules. And whether it's Facebook or any other corner of the internet, it's up to individual users to manage their privacy. Facebook makes this clear time and time again. Whenever I get online privacy questions, it's usually from someone that wants to create a private/stealth spot on Facebook. And whenever this happens, I point to my favorite venn diagram (above).

If you don't want someone to see it? Don't put it online.