Keeping Your Social Media Refreshed

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When Facebook was created in 2004 to enable university students to keep in touch with friends and family, the main features included writing a status, writing on a friend’s wall and uploading pictures.  However, over the past 10 years, we’ve seen Facebook develop and morph from a digital contacts book to one of the most powerful social media networks available.  Over the social media decade, we have seen the birth of other social media platforms who contribute to the marketing process of around 92% of businesses. The competition between the platforms mirror the nature of social media itself, by having to constantly update its tools and reacting instantly to a competitor’s new feature. Here is a roundup of new features from some of the biggest platforms and how it could benefit your business.

Facebook’s Quality Control

Facebook has spent the last few years limiting users straying onto external websites through links posted on newsfeeds.  This has been achieved through the use of Facebook’s algorithm, which is a way of deciding what shows up on everyone’s newsfeed. Businesses should avoid including too many links in their posts, as the algorithm will identify that you are leading the users away from Facebook. This will ultimately impact on how many users will be able to view your post within their newsfeed. 

Recently, Facebook has started to combat ‘spammy links’ via subtle changes in their algorithm, to avoid any ‘like-baiting’ posts.  Like-baiting means when the company asks people to like/share or comment, in order for the post to be pushed to the top of newsfeeds. Facebook carried out a survey and found ‘like-baiting stories are, on average, 15% less relevant than other stories with a comparable number of likes, comments and shares’.  Businesses should take note of this, as this means posts will have to ensure the content is relevant and engaging without relying on task demands. 

Brands wishing to highlight their own website through links should look to Facebook Advertising where specific advertisements have been designed to highlight a brands website.

Twitter’s Ecommerce Debut  

There are over 241 million monthly active Twitter users and 184 million of these followers are using Twitter on their mobiles. Therefore, businesses have to grab the follower’s eye instantly as they are scrolling through their newsfeed on the go. 

Twitter have just started to experiment with their new ‘buy it now’ button, where users can buy a product at just a click of a button.  The button is only available to a small percentage of people in the US, but Twitter’s Tarun Jain blogged, ‘This is an early step in our building functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient and easy, and hopefully even fun’.

This new feature has potential to grow sales for businesses however companies should analyse if this function is beneficial for them.  There’s around 50 million users in the UK, so companies should ask themselves if they could cope with a sudden demand for a product due to stock or delivery issues, as any problems that occur like this could potentially back fire and create more negative posts made against the company.

Social media platforms are ever-changing, so as a business it’s important to keep an eye on the key feature upgrades, and update your social media strategy to ensure your digital presence remains at the top of newsfeeds.  

By Elizabeth Doherty, Senior Account Executive, Clarion Communications

The Implications of Social Media Growth On Brand PR

We all know how far & fast social media has grown in the past few years – but what does this mean for the way in which brands PR themselves? I think there are four key implications:

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1. Storytelling. PR people have always been storytellers - whether creating stunts, staging photos, concocting spoofs, or simply spinning yarns about their clients’ brands. Social media requires our storytelling skills too, today more than ever. Consumers are getting fed up with being sold to or talked at or interrupted online by brands & their representatives pumping out commercial messaging. They want to be engaged and entertained. They want to be told stories. The PR storytelling skills that have always worked for traditional media work brilliantly for social media. 
2. Cut-through. The ‘Youniverse’ macro-trend (where consumers feel an emotional desire to be seen as unique) has led to a massive outpouring of self-expression on social media platforms. With a huge and growing volume of social media conversations it is vital to identify what really counts among all the noise and how to cut through as a brand – who are the key digital influencers, which are the key brand mentions, and what are the best ways to engage.           
3. Imagery. Psychologist Albert Mehrabian demonstrated that 93% of communication is nonverbal. The success of Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, twitpics,  infographics and viral videos shows how much this primal appetite for pictures and images applies to social media. I think PRs do sometimes use a thousand words when a picture would do, but we are getting better and are now increasingly using imagery to tell brand stories.
4. Transparency. There’s nowhere to hide in the social media world. Brands must be truthful and honest in their proactive and reactive communication with consumers or they are likely to be exposed and ridiculed.

By Gary Freemantle, CEO, Clarion Communications

Who’s Winning Gold in the ‘Summer Sporting Event’ Sponsorship Awareness Stakes?

Niall Hughes, senior account manager, Clarion Communications

With the world’s biggest sporting event taking place on our doorstep shortly, most PRs will have worked on at least one activity tying their clients to ‘the games’ - but is there room for everyone, and as PRs should we be advising clients to stay away from the branding bloodbath?

Are Brands Linking with Charities for Extra PR Leverage or Does Corporate Altruism Truly Exist?

Maddalena Pinto, account manager, Clarion Communications

More and more brands are developing strategies involving charity link-ups as well as celebrity endorsements - and one wonders if this is because corporate altruism has hit an all time high, OR if finally we’ve reached a point where supporting a charity guarantees better media coverage. From tailors linking to support male cancer to a giant egg hunt around London to save elephants in Africa, it seems no brand is exempt. 

Is Creating New Content the Biggest Challenge Facing PR?

Katy Jameson, senior account executive, Clarion Communications

News is on a constant cycle - and in our fast-paced world, where we have access to both real-time updates online, as well as daily newspapers and both weekly and monthly magazines, I think it's almost irrefutable that every PR story has been done before.

PR Stunts – Are They Risky Business?

Kathryn Webster, account manager, Clarion Communications

When I began researching a career in PR there was one part that really excited me: the big PR stunt.  It’s the crazy idea that comes up in the brainstorm to which people don’t know whether to applaud or hang their head in shame. We all remember the classics - the polar bear on the Thames, Gail Porter on the side of Big Ben and most recently the Pimms giant deck chair on Bournemouth beach. Yes, ultimately some PR stunts do work in securing high profile national coverage but what about the rest of them that are long forgotten by the media and which brands have invested huge sums of money into producing?

Evaluating Social Media

Alison Crowley, senior account executive, Clarion Communications

How PR campaigns are evaluated is changing as quickly as new social media groups are being dubbed ‘the Next Facebook’. With the arrival of the likes of Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest, traditional models for evaluating the success of an entire PR campaign are proving insufficient in dealing with the wide variety of digital coverage with which modern PR campaigns are generating i.e. ‘Likes’, ‘Retweets’, ‘Followers’ and ‘Repins’.

PR: It Can Be a Bit Fabulous

Alexandra Gerolami, senior account manager, Clarion Communications

I started my first internship in PR at 14 - and preparing a catwalk show was at the time the most exciting thing I had ever done, even though the experience was far from glamorous.  I spent most of my time in an archive room organising dusty press books and franking mail (and there are a lot of envelopes to mail out when preparing a catwalk show) but the excitement and the non-stop buzz - and the fact that I was backstage at the show - got me hooked straight away.

Google + Brands + Customers / 2012

Google+ will become the natural home for brands and their customers in 2012

Habib Amir, head of digital, Clarion Communications, part of the WPP group

Google+ is set to become the fastest growing online medium in 2012. In this think piece, I will make two predictions based on the trends observed in the past few years.


Products before brands

Prediction 1: ‘Search’ will become more specific, more contextual, more social and therefore highly relevant to purchase journeys

An Irish PR in London

By Alison Crowley, Senior Account Executive, Clarion Communications

Dia dhaoibh.  Or ‘hello’.

Understanding the language, interests and what makes people tick in the market you’re selling to has to be the fundamental cornerstone to every good PR campaign.  And that’s been my challenge for the past six months since moving to London from Ireland to work at Clarion as the new and only ‘paddy’ on the team.