Last month, the Associated Press created a bit of mayhem when it reported a recent surge in employers seeking access to employees’ Facebook profiles. The story was broadcast on countless news outlets and posted all over social media sites.
In one case, the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services asked job applicants to submit their social network username and password in order to conduct a background check. The American Civil Liberties Union complained about this incident, so now the Department only requests that applicants log in “voluntarily” during the interview.
This issue has stirred so much controversy that it prompted a few congressmen to craft an amendment that would ban companies from asking current or potential employees for social media passwords. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal insisted that this practice is an unreasonable invasion of privacy; however, the amendment was ultimately defeated on March 28.
Facebook officials immediately responded to the news by saying that this type of action is an invasion of privacy and threatened to take legal action against companies that ask for an applicant’s or employee’s password. “We’ve made it a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to share or solicit a Facebook password,” stated Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer.
How would you respond if your current or future employer asked for your Facebook password? Would you hand over your login information, or would you turn down the position to keep your privacy?
Personally, I feel that asking for my username and password would be a violation of privacy. I wouldn’t mind logging in and allowing a perspective employer to view my profile, however, I would be uncomfortable sharing my login information. Many social network users, as do I, believe that there is a private side to our public persona, and we are entitled to adjust the privacy settings however we desire. Users should have the choice as to whether or not their employers, among others, have access to their content.
Asking for, as opposed to demanding, social media passwords can still create a sticky situation. What happens if an employer asks but the applicant or employee refuses to give out the information? In the case of Kimberly Hester, she was fired. After rumors of having posted a humorous picture, a school administrator asked the teacher’s aid for her password and she refused. The school decided to suspend and eventually fire her for the refusal.
Since social media acts as an extension of our identity, it has always been important for us to use discretion when posting statuses, comment and photos. Now that some employers are requesting access to our virtual identity, we must closely monitor our profiles and potentially be ready to hand over login information at any given time.
Just recently moving out of Twitter’s former digs and into its own space in San Francisco’s South Park district, many thought photo-sharing and filter app Instagram would be taking their freshly minted million user addition, courtesy of their new Android app, and plunge neck-deep into another influx of venture capital.
Instead, Facebook, potential IPO cash burning a hole in its pocket, decided to double-up the previous valuation, acquiring Instagram for about $1 billion in cash and stock. The announcement took place (where else?) on the Facebook feed of CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier this afternoon.
The feed, which has more than 12 million Facebook subscribers, focused on assuring the masses the Instagram brand would remain independent of the social networking juggernaut, keeping the app’s cross-platform functionality intact.
Facebook has made several acquisitions since 2005, though the majority of its M&A history has been with smaller companies – below $100 million.
The Instagram community, along with half-sibling Hipstamatic and distant-cousins Pinterest and Tumblr, have seen their influence rise with content marketers as brands move at a snail’s pace towards visual-heavy mediums for consumer engagement purposes.
Even prior to the Facebook acquisition, the magical twin-terms of “monetization” and “ROI” surrounded Instagram, adding fuel to the fire between social marketers specializing in the content creation/user engagement and the data-focused offspring of paid display advertising.
Perhaps it begs the question, but can any community balance the central dogmas of these two camps? While the transaction is expected to close later this quarter, app developers, community managers and brand marketers will be monitoring for changes in Instagram’s performance closely. Between the Instagram team staying on to continue app development and a working, if rather plain, integration into Facebook’s open-graph and Timeline updates, will be subject to increased scrutiny – mostly based on consumer feedback.
Today, MSL Chicago welcomed 11 bright young PR professionals to our office for the 2012 Intern Challenge. Below are a few pictures from today’s events, which included a media pitching session, a brainstorm challenge and writing tests. Thank you to all the students who attended and for sharing your enthusiasm for public relations with the team!
Each Spring MSL Chicago hosts our Intern Challenge Day, where we invite top talent to participate in an all day rigorous interview process. We’re excited to meet our 12 candidates for this year’s event on Friday, April 6 and look forward to seeing what each individual will bring to the table throughout the day’s scheduled events.
I think anyone would agree that in the agency side of the business, interns are an integral part of teams and client programs. Especially within the MSL Chicago office, our interns serve as strong contributors across several blue-chip accounts – assisting with events, participating in client meetings and contributing on a regular basis to new business brainstorms. Our agency recognizes that each individual brings a new perspective to the table and is a contributing factor to the success of all of our programs.
As our office revs up for the big day on Friday we’ve started asking ourselves – what type of background and characteristics stand out for us in an intern team member? The competition is tough and each year the caliber of the candidates continues to grow.
For MSL Chicago, it’s the entire package that someone is able to bring to the table: experience, writing skills, a strong ability to actively contribute during discussions and the capacity to think quickly on their feet. Our office is fast paced, and often times, our team members need to make quick decisions to drive positive programs forward on behalf of our clients. We look for candidates who are interested in the “always on conversation” – the candidate who knows how to engage, knows their audience, asks the right questions and shares their own experiences and insights. Our Challenge Day will incorporate a series of events that will ultimately test team interaction and collaboration, along with reviewing contributions made at an individual level in presentations and during interviews.
We look forward to the Chicago Challenge Day on Friday and are excited to see how each candidate will set themselves apart through their engaging conversations and experiences.
In the past 30 years, consumers have become largely numb to traditional forms of brand storytelling and messaging. In fact, a study by The Relational Capital Group, estimates that with the onset of digital marketing, the average consumer is now exposed to 30,000 messages per day compared to 500 messages, 40 years ago.
Consumers today are no longer phased by the big splash concepts or stunts, and are rather seeking ongoing, two-way conversations about their interests and lives in and outside of their favorite brands. However, amidst all of the noise, how do brands today tap into these not so easily impressed consumers?
The answer is in owning the conversation and the content. PR then has the advantage of already owning the conversation, as the strategic thinkers behind traditional brand messaging. Thus, content generation is a natural progression of the traditional PR process to elevate brand storytelling across varied media-rich platforms. Here are a few content staples to shuffle into your content mix:
Video. As discussed at the March PRSA Chicago luncheon, video has become a highly interactive platform for breathing life into a brand story. Thanks to the invention of iMovie, Animoto, and HD video via the iPhone and Flipcam, brands can bypass the hefty production costs of a full-fledged video crew, and film and produce their own videos instead without having to compromise on quality. Given that YouTube is now the second most popular search engine, video has become a vital tool for driving online dialogue.
Photos. As they say, a picture’s worth 1,000 words. With applications like Instagram, brands and consumers can edit and share photos of events and happenings on the go, and upload them simultaneously to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other social media vehicles where the brand conversations are ignited.
Infographics. Consumers love surveys, research and trends; however, they are crunched for time, and reading a 20-page research report is simply not on their priority list. Infographics, however, offer an opportunity for brands to boil technical information down into a digestible graphic that can easily be shared.
Polls. Consumers don’t have 15 minutes to bust out a Survey Monkey questionnaire regardless of the survey’s incentives or prizes. However, a quick Facebook or LinkedIn poll is a great mechanism for engaging consumers and then propelling them into conversation surrounding your poll topic.
Audio. In most offices it has become quite kosher for employees to listen to their favorite iTunes playlists. An audio webinar or podcast can serve as a very accessible and engaging medium for the busy worker bee.
Experiential. Sometimes the most effective means of breaking through the clutter is to plant consumers into a physical, branded event where they cannot simply “X” out of a desktop window. Not to mention, a strong brand experience often propels consumers into brand engagement online and offline beyond the experience itself.
It is important that these content mechanisms are not a replacement for content as copy, but alternative means for diversifying content, sparking conversations and breathing life into your brand stories. The content mix is constantly evolving and not every one of these ideas above may be appropriate for your brand, however as PR professionals, you have the benefit of having a firm grasp on the conversation already. PR simply needs to take the reigns of the content generation piece, and make engagement (i.e. conversation and content) king.
I’m still recovering from SXSW Interactive. The sheer volume of the conference can overwhelm, and I find it a bit daunting to distill the number of ideas, perspectives, panels, and conversations into something cohesive and, more importantly, actionable.
Why SXSW?
Let’s start with the numbers. This alone should serve as a great reason for anyone who has only considered attending to actually do so next year. (And yes, I do think that you should attend next year.)
Austin360.com reports: “Tuesday evening, the festival said its official paid attendance count for 2012 was 24,569, up from 19,364 in 2011, a change of nearly 27 percent. From 2010 to 2011, the fest grew from 14,251 to 19,364.”
The panels were spread across fifteen locations throughout downtown Austin, ranging from technical sessions about web and interface design, wireless innovation, and business operations to more philosophical discussions about online marketing, social networks, and our relationship to new technologies.
When I say “panels,” I mean not only actual panel conversations but also keynote addresses, solo presentations, interviews, and core conversations. Most sessions are one hour in length, though the numerous “Future 15″ talks run only fifteen minutes. Toss in book readings, signings, workshops, the Start-Up Village, and the many evening events, and suddenly you’re in the middle of a very busy hive of activity.
The content followed fourteen tracks — Design + Development, Better Tomorrow, Convergence, Health + Education, Government + Global, Culture, Science + Play, Start Up, Emerging, New Business, Branding + Marketing, Social Networks, Journalism + Content, Featured Sessions, and Keynotes — and was further categorized as Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced. Each track offered at least two options during every time slot, and there were five time slots each day. That added up to more than 1,050 different panels over the five days of the festival.
I’ve spent time over the last few days distilling my thoughts and notes into what I hope are valuable takeaways. I was looking for ideas, tools, technologies, and tactics that I can use for my clients, not macro trends, but it’s impossible not to begin to see patterns emerge or gaps appear.
New Technologies
Although technologies launched at SX in the past have gained acclaim and wide adoption (Twitter, Foursquare), I didn’t encounter any of those this year. There were several new apps with lots of buzz (Highlight, EchoEcho, Sonar) that seemed to concentrate on finding people in the crowds, narrowing one’s focus as opposed to widening it. I eagerly used both Highlight and EchoEcho and was pleased with the ability to find someone from my social network attending a specific panel, although actually locating them in the capacity crowds remained a challenge.
These apps enable you to narrow your social circles instead of widening them, whether by filtering people within your broader network by location alone (EchoEcho, Sonar) or by location and interest (Highlight). They offer a fascinating perspective on the social graph as they categorize your connections by interest and location while simultaneously exposing those connections to friends of friends in a relevant and intimate manner. I’m experimenting with using these tools in a non-conference setting and am eager to see if they maintain the same value.
Trans Media and Shared Screens
Trans media (content amplifed through shared screens, like tweeting the American Idol results while watching TV for example) and the multi-screen experience was everywhere. I’m fascinated by this convergence and attended as many panels on the topics as I could. Interestingly, while I expected to be impressed by content or technology, what I actually took away from these panels was more the idea of the interest graph, although the impact and challenges of contextual content gave me much food for thought.
Shared-screen experiences are a natural application for the evolution of dynamic communities, as they seamlessly integrate people into a wide network rooted in a common interest. The interest graph creates new opportunities for brands to present products, services or content based on a user’s interests, and also offers brands new ways to engage, learn from, and access new audiences.
Interest-Based Networks
The significance of the rise of the interest graph was underscored in a panel on consumer intent. Pinterest, Fancy, Tumblr, and Spring Pad are all examples of tools or networks that allow people to connect not (only) with other people that they know or are otherwise linked to, but with people who like or are interested in similar products, services, artists, or activities.
Brands that chose to engage with new and future audiences within the interest graph must think about the goals, tactics and management of those relationships in different ways than they currently do with their current Facebook and Twitter followers. The connection, the interactions, and the opportunities are all different. We’ve already seen some brands use Pinterest in exciting ways, creating real-time ad-hoc communities of people who all are interested in what the brand is offering, regardless of location, demographic, or social connectivity. Understanding and using this new lens on community and interaction to leverage its power and value remains a challenge, but is certainly an exciting one!
Extracting Relevant Data
Much to my delight, I was able to attend several panels focused on data. I learned more about creating infographics, using data to inform content development, data as narrative, and the continued growth of interest in personal data, and I saw demos of several analytics tools and platforms. I’m excited to see this attention continue to grow, but there was also a critical and very important shift in this year’s data panels that I’ve been eagerly awaiting. The conversation isn’t solely about data capture, monitoring, tracking and reporting anymore. It has shifted now to data as the input — data as critical information that helps to shape strategy, drive tactics, show relevance, and prove value. I had many conversations about the skill sets necessary to extract relevant data from data sets, how to identify the right metrics, and how to approach analysis and recommendations so that data can inform ongoing execution. This is an area where I’m certain we’ll continue to see growth and change over the next few years, and I couldn’t be happier about it. As technology gets smarter and smarter moving into the second half of the year (HTML5 and CSS3 anyone?), identifying what data to track and how to use it will become more important and powerful.
2012 is already moving fast, and if SXSW was any indication I’m buckling my seat belt tightly, hydrating, and getting ready for what promises to be an exhilarating ride!
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are one of the 100 million viewers who have watched the Kony 2012 video on YouTube, or at least have heard about it through your tweets or Facebook news feed. For only being live about one week now, the video went viral at a rapid rate. Mashable reports it as the “most viral video in history.”
Posted by Invisible Children Inc., the video, “aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.”
Since the video was hard to ignore when we signed on our computers that morning, many were impacted by the narrator’s story, and quickly chose to repost on their social media channels. Being so convenient to click the “Facebook” or “Retweet” button, #Kony2012 became a topic that was trending on various social media feeds.
I think that overall, the video going viral was impactful for those Americans who weren’t aware of these types of global issues. Only a completely heartless person would not be impacted by the horror of genocide. However, in some cases even those who posted became bitter or upset to hear of the controversies with the issue and the campaign. If your social media presence matters to you (which it should), consider these three things before posting on your feeds:
1. Check your Source. Invisible Children, Inc. has undergone criticisms in the past. Research the original source’s website, as well as conduct a quick google search to see how they are viewed in mainstream media.
2. Check the Facts. Though there are two sides to every matter, many critics, including ForeignPolicy.com cite miscalculations in their tallies of the real children in the soldier ranks, in addition to the Lord Resistance Army’s group memberships to be in only the hundreds, and quite close to making peace. A Ugandan social entrepreneur commented on The New York Times online that, “when activists want to help people, we shouldn’t assume we know what’s best for them.” Many sites are also referring to the campaign as “slacktivism.”
3. Think on Your Own. Question what a campaign is asking for. Many were upset to hear that the $30 kit they purchased in order to promote the campaign was under criticism. Understand your own political view — do you feel it’s the U.S.’s role to intervene in another country? Find out if your daily purchases are a result of foreign child labor — for example, in the instance of diamonds and cocoa. Check the website of your favorite chocolate maker and see if they are a partner with the Fair Labour Association. You may change your choice in brands.
Brian Solis spoke at a SXSW panel yesterday afternoon about how audience segmentation is no longer only about age or demographics. One of the key audience groups is “GENERATION C:” C for connected. The connected generation not only integrates technology seamlessly into their lives, but this group also uses and embraces that technology to form, sustain and nurture relationships with others in Gen C.
Brian’s perspective is that we’re the problem and we are also the solution. This not about generations or age. It has to do with how we AS PEOPLE make decisions, interact and connect. We look at things in different ways. We have become a disruption. The decision-making cycle of connected consumers is very different today.
Later in the panel, Billy Corgan joined Brian for a sit-down chat about how the music industry is no longer “business as usual”, then went on a (seemingly angry) screed about how music is so different today and how music consumers ‘mostly just want stuff for free.’ He spoke about how the business of today’s music industry has ‘taken the claws out of the music,’ forcing musicians who seek fame (and fortune) to acquiesce to the demands of the business and not be driven by their creativity or their own desire.
And after seeing the Jay-Z show tonight, I can say that they are both right. Music is very different today, but not necessarily in the way Billy articulated, at least from my perspective, the perspective of the consumer, the FAN. There was NO lack of creativity, originality, in this evening’s show, nor was there any lack of pointed observations in Jay’s lyrics and even his stage banter. And Brian is also right, at least from as far as shared experiences go…the audience was connected, with each other as well as with Jay.
Jay-Z connected the audience. He interacted with us, and encouraged us to interact with each other in ways that I’ve never seen at the hundreds of live shows I’ve been to. He EXPECTED that the audience would know entire verses and held the microphone out so that we could join him. He had us waving our arms, bouncing, doing the 2-step, making some noise, singing the chorus behind his raps. We eagerly and passionately connected with him, with each other, laughing, taking pictures, dancing with total strangers.
He didn’t just perform. He connected with us. He didn’t just sing, he structured his set so that we could join him. He didn’t just perform the set list that the Twitter-sphere helped construct, he wove all of those songs together into a story and we all went on a fantastic, LOUD, energetic and completely transporting adventure.
I will continue to buy Jay’s music. And I won’t miss an opportunity to see him live again, at any cost. And I was delighted to see such a concrete example of Brian’s panel and book: “The End of Business as Usual.” It was a memorable way to close out another great weekend at SXSWi.
Another full day in Austin — panels and people, as well as codification of some perspectives and new viewpoints on others.
The day began with confirmation of how critical it is for the communicator to have a seat at the table in making business decisions. I attended the “More Smart, Less Stupid” PR panel which underscored that through examples of public relations missteps and successes, including Susan G. Komen, American Airlines, Zappos, and Netflix. A key takeaway was that if you’re going to be bipartisan, decide in advance and plan out the scenarios — don’t react in-market.
I also attended two panels that approached data and the roles it can play in business in different ways. The first focused on integrating data into the narrative, exploring ways to turn statistics into thought leadership TOOLS that people can use and apply rather than just read and file. Visualizing data exposes opportunity that might otherwise be missed and brings it into the discussion in a compelling and shareable manner. The idea extends beyond simple quantitative data. Visual transformation of information can imbue it with new power and expose it to new audiences.
Another session I attended explored NEW ways that data is informing the editorial process beyond the impression and the click. The exponential increase in data availability along with new channels requires us to be smarter about what data we pay attention to and offers us the opportunity to begin to more deeply segment and categorize our audiences.
Later I attended a panel on creating “Great Events.” The speakers suggested that great events challenge and intrigue their attendees, have unexpected elements, and offer something aspirational. They also pointed out that allowing people to help shape their own experience can make an event memorable and continue the conversation long after the actual event ends.
The day came to a close with a deep dive into local marketing. The focus was both tactical and technical, offering insights into working with Google Places pages, mobile optimization, and geo-location search-term management. A key takeaway underscored the value of targeted social content, and how critical it is to ensure that your Google Places pages are correct, since many mobile apps pull business information from those pages. Keeping local sites in your reputation-management strategy is also critical given the power of online reviews.
I’ll close today’s post with some great data about the value of local marketing. I’m working on visualizing this data and will post that later this weekend!
–Google Places account for 33% of visits to local business websites.
–88% of people who search for local information on a smartphone take action within one day.
–67% of consumers would NOT purchase a product/service after reading one to three negative reviews.
