KEYWORD ANALYSIS BY CARRIE MORGAN

A Modern, Sophisticated Approach
to Improving Conversion

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Social Media

How to Control Snippet Titles & Summaries When You Post a Hyperlink on Social Media

From a corporate perspective, social media is the gift of a brand platform; a place to step up to the podium and let your voice ring out.

There’s no better place to share content and be heard.

When we share a post on social media–particularly Facebook and LinkedIn–a title and summary of content from that hyperlink are pulled in right along with the link. These are called snippets.

Snippets are also showed in search engine results when a piece of content is listed (although Google occasionally rebels by replacing them with its own inexplicably bizarre findings).

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Handling Social Media Complainers

Customer Service Nightmares

Trolls.
Complainers.
Haters.

They’re unavoidable on social media and most of us quake in fear at the thought of handling them wrong.

The topic is top-of-mind this week due to our recent #PRprochat (get the transcript here). I came across this absolutely wonderful infographic yesterday that explains different types of complainers and how best to handle them. It’s worth a quick bookmark.

Social Media Complainers infographic
(used with permission)

 

Which type are you? I think I’m a cross between the “meek complainer” and the “aggressive complainer” categories. I have a big mouth and am not afraid to use it, but try to only complain when truly frustrated. Being heard makes me shut up quickly.

Understanding these different types of complainers, where you fall personally in the spectrum and how it impacts your own perception, and how others respond to different solutions can be very helpful! It also supports why a one-size-fits-all approach to customer service is rarely a good idea. 

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Troll Control: Fabulous Tips From Five Experts

Every community manager worries about trolls. Potential risk, how to respond in a way that minimizes damage or–in a best case scenario–boost reputation when a troll jumps into a conversation…

When you aren’t sure what to do, decision trees can make the decision simple. This one from Kuno Creative is pretty ingenious. 

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Zero to 1.25 Million: Celebrating Three Years of #PRprochat

Twitter chat for public relations professionalsSocial media has completely changed our lives.

Sitting down to personally chat with the most influential, amazing people in an industry was virtually impossible before social media.

One-on-one conversations with heroes, influencers and leaders rarely happened. They just weren’t accessible. How we learned was completely different, too. Experts are now available with the click of a mouse and five seconds of social media searching, and Google happily delivers free education on any topic we can possibly conceive of. Twitter chats, Periscope, Google Hangouts, YouTube videos, LinkedIn articles – expertise is available everywhere we look, with authors and influencers completely open to direct conversation.

If I were a meme or automated gif kinda girl, I’d put one here but, alas, I’m not.

September marked the third anniversary of #PRprochat. Thirty-six Twitter chats!! We’ve gone from a fledgling chat with nobody listening and a moderator grateful if the same three people showed up each month, to a chat with incredible guests like Jay Baer, Gini Dietrich, Danny Sullivan, Jeff Rohrs and more.

This month, we hit our highest numbers ever, REACHING OVER 1.25 MILLION TWITTER USERS and 23+ million timelines, largely thanks to the reach of my amazing guest, Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land). Source: Hashtracking

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Instagram is Sexy, But Does Your Audience Actively Use It?

Are we focused on social media platforms with hardly any users?

… making decisions on where to build audience for brands based on buzz, instead of fact??

SSocial Media Strategy: Instagram is sexy, but does your audience use it? Don't make blind decisions.ocial media is fantastic – but choosing the right platforms to focus your effort is critical. Otherwise, you are speaking to an invisible audience.

The truth

The marketing industry overflows with massive hype about social media – but is it worth the time investment? Which platform(s) do you choose for your business? How do you decide where to prioritize your time when you have a presence on multiple platforms? How do you know which ones to drop, if you are trying to maintain too many and your staff (or budget) are overwhelmed?

These are questions your social media strategy should address. These decisions must be based on fact, not guesswork or industry buzz, which is what is happening all too frequently.

It’s time to start talking about active users, not accounts. There’s a MASSIVE DIFFERENCE.

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What Our Search Behaviors Signify About The Future of PR

Google Trends and Digital PR

(Nerd post alert. Endorsed and paid for by Carrie’s Inner Geek.)

Well, this is rather interesting!! I thought I’d take a quick look at Google Trends to come up with new keywords (blog inspiration!).

First, I searched trends on content marketing.

 

Looks promising, right? The growth is a bit obvious, since everyone is buzzing about content marketing like it’s Columbus arriving at the New World. Add in the projected explosion in content creation over the next five-plus years, it’s no surprise to see an upward trend.

But then I added in public relations, social media and search engine optimization (SEO) – the other three key components of digital PR – just for comparison purposes.

Which areas are generating the most online search activity? The results surprised me.

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Vanity Metrics Turn Breaking News Into A Giant Popularity Contest

Impact of vanity metrics on breaking newsI came across this interesting infographic (below) from BusinessWire this morning.

I’d seen it before, but here’s what struck me about it this time: publications are using vanity metrics to determine if a story is successful or not. It’s a simple metric – easy to track.

What does that actually mean? They like successful stories – who doesn’t – so when something generates a nice amount of comments, likes and shares, they produce more content that is similar to what was successful.

These are vanity metrics, and a great explanation for why breaking news is gradually becoming more about repurposing entertainment currently popular on social media, instead of local news. It’s a place to get instant feedback on vanity metrics – real-time reactions. Stations can see what is already popular and trending on social media, then pop it on the news that same day. It’s proven successful by another publisher, making it an easy win for vanity metrics.

It’s the news equivalent of clickbait. News is being determined by what is already popular (sometimes on a national scale), instead of what is important locally, instead of what drives important, MEANINGFUL change.

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Can Twitter’s Decline be Saved With PR?

The Death of TwitterMy Dad has brain cancer. It’s a traitorous, inexorable assassin that isn’t just ravaging his body. It’s murdering everything about my dad that MAKES him who he was before cancer snuck in, while he’s still here. I hate it.

I have a fresh understanding of what dementia caretakers go through, since damage to his poor brain is causing similar behavioral and memory changes.

With this week’s announcement of Twitter’s declining growth and press speculation around its potential demise, I feel like I’m now also losing my best social media friend, too. Twitter is my favorite platform and the thought of it losing steam as a valuable social media tool makes me very unhappy.

The below infographic outlines the major issues pretty well.

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Brand Ambassadors, Brand Advocates: These Programs Aren’t Easy!

Don’t Let The Plethora of Blog Posts Fool You

Brand Ambassador & Brand Advocate ProgramsIt’s easy to tout the benefits of brand advocate programs – of which there are many – but there isn’t enough discussion around just how difficult it is to create and sustain one.

What is the difference between a brand ambassadors, brand advocates and just an online community?

Communities are a collection of people passionate about something, who are gathered into a social media community around that passion. It can be an industry, a career field, a product or service or just an idea. Sometimes a marketing tool to build awareness, communities are typically created and supported by a manufacturer, company or association who wants to reach that audience.

Brand ambassadors and brand advocates are often used interchangeably and incorrectly, but they are a difference of paid versus unpaid. Even Wikipedia incorrectly redirects a search for “brand advocate” to the “brand ambassador” page. Whoops.

A brand ambassador is someone who supports an organization or business and builds awareness, loyalty and conversation around its brand. It’s their online spokesperson(s). Often the moderator of a community, that person (or persons) embodies brand attributes and represents the brand online. They are hired by the company and have a paid role to grow the brand.

A brand advocate is similar to a brand ambassador, but typically NOT paid. Brand advocates are most often customers passionate about the brand who support and promote it online because of their loyalty and enthusiasm for the brand.

Many consumer bloggers who do product reviews, for example,  are brand ambassadors because they are paid in money or product, not unpaid brand advocates.

Brand advocate programs and brand ambassador programs have much in common, but for the purposes of this article we’ll focus on unpaid brand advocates. I consider brand ambassadors a marketing tactic (advertising) and brand advocates a public relations tactic (awareness).

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F8 Update: Two Upcoming Facebook Changes PR Pros Should Care About

 

Media coverage abounds related to last week’s 2015 F8 Developer Conference – an event for app developers put on by Facebook. A few exciting changes seem to be looming, amidst a ton of snooze-worthy hype.

Out of all the gossip, what are the 2-3 things that PR pros should care about the most? Brand opportunities for its messenger app that could take public Facebook conversations to a private level – labeled Messenger Business – and an update to the comments feature could  allow website-based comments to show up on a Facebook story.

But I have a few big “if’s” built in to my reluctant excitement.

Only time will tell what is hype and what is worth that happy dance, but I do have some predictions to share. Read on for the dets!

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