Overview: Social Media Strategy

"Facebook is ... aiming to be the Internet equivalent of a broadband provider — providing the means by which all media is published and accessed. Here’s what brands and publishers need to know ... - Facebook urging publishers to post their articles and videos directly to Facebook... - For publishers that use Facebook for their comments sections,…

"Interested in checking EU content on Twitter, Facebook and the rest? Use this search tool to find social media accounts with EU input." - EUROPA – Social networks and the EU

"There are some choice accessories that will take your Meerkat and Periscope performance to a new level of professionalism. From devices that turn your iPhone into a mini video rig to grip-anywhere tripods, check out these accessories that will make your live streams look and sound better. " - 5 accessories to improve your crappy Meerkat videos

"Skeptics are howling that this is a Faustian bargain—that the media are mortgaging their long-term futures for short-term gain... Facebook has presented the news media with a collective-action problem. News sites aren’t blind.... if they could all get together and decide, as a group, what to do about Facebook, no doubt they’d think long and hard…

"The problem is that Facebook controls what you see and when. If it becomes the primary way to consume news and watch videos, what happens when a news story is controversial about the company itself? Or isn’t within its content guidelines (like pornography)? You’ll be receiving a filtered version of the internet that’s controlled by one company."

"The New York Times is preparing to plant a taproot right inside the highly walled garden that is Facebook." - Memo To Publishers: Watch Where You Put That Taproot… — Medium

"the idea of distributed content argues that publishers should be more comfortable putting their content on platforms they don’t control. But Facebook isn’t just another platform. It’s dominant in a way no other platform is... the sort of decision that one might look back on in a few years as the moment you got swindled" - Facebook wants to be t…

"But Meerkat, which designed to work exclusively with Twitter, has taken off because its simple interface makes it almost effortless for anyone to start broadcasting. Users say it also owes its popularity to the evanescence of its recordings. Once a user records a stream, it’s impossible for other Meerkat users to watch it afterwards. Meerkat is …

"A Content Marketing Roadmap (CMR) is a strategy and game plan for content production and publication, usually for a three-month period. Its purpose is to take the guesswork out of blogging and lead generation and to, with every piece of content written and published, be working toward a goal." - What is a Content Marketing Roadmap? | Amanda Shaw…

"Images with text over them ... do make a post more enticing to your followers or friends... Buffer's Pablo, which creates these images, out of beta." - Buffer Officially Launches its Image Creation Tool Pablo

"Startups are notorious for this: You’ll have two or three people who are true hustlers, wearing multiple hats, pushing themselves and others to get shit done, while the rest of the group sort of ‘tags along’ and waits for shit to happen. " - The Truth About Collaboration — Medium

"the Internet has dismantled newspaper’s geographic monopoly & business model ... & also upended the core assumptions underlying the actual journalism ... BuzzFeed as an organization has been figuring out what works online for over eight years now, and while “The Dress” may have been unusual in its scale, its existence was no accident... BuzzFee…

An article aimed at companies, so just substitute "government communicators" for "corporate marketers", and "citizens" for "consumers", as you read: "Technology changes fast ... but consumer behavior changes more slowly. As a result, people tend to overhype new technologies and misallocate resources, especially marketers. "posts from top brands …

Comment moderation and online community management strategies for news organisations, but relevant to government sites too: "Comments are a way for readers to connect with one another, and with the journalists and editors reporting the news. But ... can quickly turn uncivil, and news organizations often don’t have the resources or manpower to con…

Good case study, concluding with observations on the role of journalists which also apply to government communicators: "An engaged journalist's role in the 21st century is not only to inform but to bring readers directly into the conversation through... real-time coverage, alternative story forms, crowdsourcing, beat blogging, user-generated co…

A whole load of recommnendations for the UK's House of Commons, including some intriguing ones - eg: "We believe the public want the opportunity to have their say in House of Commons debates; we also believe that this will provide a useful resource for MPs and help to enhance those debates. We therefore recommend a unique experiment: the use of…

"we wanted an easy way to create and share social cards with our readers... Vox Media’s ‘meme’, an open source social card making tool. A few hours of tinkering later, and we had our own version set up with some simple functionality, along with a new name: CardKit.... a simple and easy to use tool for everyone to quickly and dynamically create im…

"Crowdsourcing is not about work. Crowdsourcing is about community. Without a solid community, you get not-solid results from your crowdsourcing endeavor.... The goal of many of these tactics is not to stop assholes from being assholes, just to slow them down and demotivate them from destroying your community." - Crowdsourcing isn’t broken — Bac…

"While we've always loved a good chart and map at Vox, appreciating a chart or map does not data journalism make. Data journalism is not just data visualization... ... the explosion in data sources readily available on the web... can both aid in telling important and necessary stories, but can also be easily misunderstood and potentially manipula…

" online comments can be worth having, if the publisher puts the work in." Excellent case study. Found this stat particularly interesting: "Users who log in, which is required if you want to comment, view seven pages per session on average, while non-registered users make it to only 1.7" I'd suggest that users who both view 4 times as much conte…

"What astonished him was the level of intimacy inherent in the form. After spending a decade in radio he had assumed that it was the most intimate medium, but he found podcasting to be one step deeper, in that listeners actively subscribe to a show and in doing so feel like they’re joining a club. " - Why Slate went all-in on podcasts while other…

~"Sleek and graphics-focused, the re-skinned Fusion will feature coverage of pop culture and tech, while also highlighting social-justice causes through verticals like “Justice” and “Voices.”... Part of our overall mission is to be a lab for experimentation and innovation for our parent company. Univision and ABC ... to reach this incredibly dyna…

"build[ing] our brand in the places [the audience] is spending time”—as opposed to publishing everything on a single website and hoping it spreads from there—is not strange in the context of television companies. They’re used to filling channels that they don’t totally control. ... Vox is now publishing directly to social networks and apps; BuzzF…

"Guardian digital editor Aron Pilhofer say killing off comments is a “monumental mistake.”... ... many traditional newsrooms are failing to take full advantage of the web’s ability to create a two-way relationship with readers, and that this is a crucial element of what journalism has become in a digital age... ... "You see site after site movin…

Sound familiar? "All it takes is the retirement of one blogger ... and the social web explodes with a mixture of praise, recriminations, eulogies for the death of blogging..." Good piece on how blogging has evolved, in the process pushing forward the evolution of the online world. "bloggers stopped thinking as much about being part of a larger …

"Twitter video allows users to post up to 30-seconds of video clips directly to Twitter... expect to see videos from live events and breaking news coverage ... also presents an opportunity for marketers to create unique content in a variety of ways..." Most intriguing suggestion: "Crowd-Sourcing Video Content" - Twitter Launching Video and Grou…

Interesting study of "whether having a video go viral leads to long-term success [defined as] increased activity with the brand on the whole.... After 15 days from the creation of a viral video, these brand YouTube channels receive virtually the same amount of attention ... before the viral video was posted... Our data does not support that vira…

"This video would have cost peanuts. Although it’s not something that can be directly applied to most of what we do, it’s here because of what it reminds us: there’s no better comms than filming people loving what you do. Unfortunately, you first need to give them something insanely great. The greatest communications can’t transform fish’n’chips…

"people keep asking about how to start a personal brand... without having a clear understanding of what comes before that, which is actually knowing something about something... To position yourself as an expert is difficult, but most people aren’t asking the first important question, which is: expert in what? ... You have to earn the privilege…

"Starbucks’ first-ever brand campaign, Meet Me at Starbucks ... showcases stories of how people use Starbucks as a meeting point, with an emphasis on the idea that technology brings us together, but there’s nothing quite as authentic as an in-person cup of joe. ... an incredible job of striking an emotional connection with people by associating t…