To ensure you aren’t caught flat-footed if something like this were to occur to you, here are few quick tips to put in place right now to ensure you’re prepared to react more effectively and efficiently than the fallen King.

Update your log-in credentials often: Secure passwords that are updated frequently are the first step to prevent this type of situation. Hacks still happen but a little additional effort upfront will help stave off some attacks.

Actively monitor your name, product names and profiles: Good old fashioned real-time social listening would have helped Burger King jump on this crisis much more quickly. The account was actively tweeting under a hacker control for over an hour. Immediate detection and quick action is crucial, which brings us to…

Have a social media crisis plan in place: A well-thought out response will help to ensure that you can help your client minimize embarrassment and diminish subsequent ripples across social channels, on blogs and beyond. Crisis plan steps include:

• Identify and anticipate future risks as much as possible.
• Plan for responses with a social media SWAT team that knows the appropriate response for each potential issue and the chain of response.
• Listen and assess the crisis at hand before quickly jumping to action.
• Analyze the situation by referencing against what’s in your previously identified crisis issues to align with approved process.
• Launch the formal plan following set procedures, roles and responsibilities in a timely manner.
• Monitor and evaluate how the media and public are reacting to the company’s official response and modify as necessary.

 Have any other questions about social media crisis planning? Connect with us to get the conversation started.

The SOTU as seen from the other Washington

Last night, the White House’s enhanced State of the Union address bridged the gap between a traditional live feed viewing experience and a future built on richer, multimedia-heavy staging. While the enhanced format fell somewhere between feeling like a glorified PowerPoint presentation and a more behaved version of Colbert’s “The Word” segment in the beginning, the added visuals greatly amplified the points the President was making after the initial distraction value leveled off.

As PowerPoint and Keynote presentations are the norm for most product launches these days, the White House’s seamless digital execution will mean that multimedia-rich online presentations will become table stakes in no time.

As we prepare for the second screen experience of the future, here are five tips brands can take from last night’s selection of sidebar content.

1) Show the human side of the story with compelling photos of human connection

2) Bring stats to life with simple diagrams

3) Highlight what you want people to remember by highlighting specific key words

4) Explain relationships with visual analogies

5) Use charts and graphs to back up data-heavy claims

Have thoughts on visual-heavy presentations of your own? Paint a picture with your words in the comments. Want to learn more about visual storytelling? Connect with us to get the conversation started.

By combining timeliness, a playful sense of  humor and a simple, yet evocative image, Nabisco’s century-old bestseller won widespread acclaim*, including thousands of retweets and favorites, for their spot-on newsjacking effort.

Power out? No problem. twitter.com/Oreo/status/29…

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

Brands looking to do the same should take a few pages out of this playbook by employing and empowering a quick-thinking, rapid-responding team with a good designer for maximum effect. The importance of establishing a path to get quick executive buy-off cannot be overstated – in the same room is preferable.

While watching the game, we couldn’t help but come up with the following fake updates that, once combined with fitting images, would have helped even more brands capitalize on a very unusual situation.

@GEICO – Well, it looks we’ve all got 15 minutes after all… #SuperBowlBlackOut

@PsychToday – Have you been in a “lights half off” kind of mood lately? #SuperBowlBlackOut

@5hourenergy – It’s going to be a late night, stay up for it #SuperBowlBlackOut

@Conan – See, that 30 minutes later thing really is annoying #SuperBowlBlackOut

@Carbonite -  Turns out back up plans matter #SuperBowlBlackOut

@HotPockets – 15-20 minutes for the lights to warm up, a Hot Pocket takes 3 minutes to warm up. You do the math #SuperBowlBlackOut

@Evernote – Helping you not forget important stuff like “buy generators” since 2008 #SuperBowlBlackOut

@ColgateSmile – At least your smile will be bright #SuperBowlBlackOut

@PCHdocome (Publisher’s Clearing House) – We’re all for surprises but just on the good side of the unexpected #SuperBowlBlackOut

@Lumosity – Increase your brightness in no time at all #SuperBowlBlackOut

@StarTrek – We swear, we had nothing to do with this – You’ll like our “Into Darkness” way better #SuperBowlBlackOut

@AmishCountry – How’s that whole electricity thing working out? #SuperBowlBlackOut

@MonsterCareers – monster.com: because on Monday morning, at least one person will need us #SuperBowlBlackOut

@AmazonKindle – Kindle Paperwhite, because you never know when you’ll really need a bit more light #SuperBowlBlackOut

@Motel6 – Leaving the light on for you since 1962 #SuperBowlBlackOut

*If you’re one to find yourself in the company of social marketing “gurus,” you shouldn’t be at all surprised to see this bold move complement if not supplement the omnipresent Old Spice case studies as a favorite recent brand-driven social media home run. Why not join them yourself with a bit of strategic planning and moxie?

via Flickr/ You As A Machine

Much to the dismay of the masses who had previously written it off as a flop, Google+ resurfaced in the news earlier this week as a result of a new study by the GlobalWebIndex that offered surprising results. According to the much-discussed study, G+ just surpassed Twitter to become the second largest social network based on active users. One wrinkle that’s crowded many a comment section is the fact the original report doesn’t clearly define “active user.” As such, there’s no way to say for sure what their definition is and both the pro-G+ camp, the anti-G+ camp and the general skeptics have been trying to make sense of it all.

There’s been a lot of debate on the question at hand and just as Facebook “active users” include anyone who has posted a comment on an external article using a FB login, anyone who has clicked ‘like’ on a website and anyone who has played games through the FB login, Google+ “active users” appear to include those who have taken any action while logged into Google services. In both cases, “active user” doesn’t mean people are actively posting or interacting with content in news streams.

Wearing our skeptic’s hats, we’d point to a few things…

A different Pingdom report we recently read tallied the number of active global Gmail users at 425 million. That’s a difference of only 80 million from GlobalWebIndex’s Google+ stat, and we’d have thought a LOT more people are on Gmail than Google+. Oddly close.

via Flickr / west.m

Due to the grain of salt that has to be taken with any of Google’s properties, a more telling stat might be length of time spent on platforms per visit. Some of the last data we’ve seen (from comScore) on this topic had Twitter at 21 minutes per visit and Google+ at 3 minutes.

The other thing that makes us a bit wary is the fact that, according to the original report, Twitter has allegedly been growing at a rate of 40% over the last three quarters (compared to 27% for Google+) and has been around much longer. It’s kind of baffling how Google+ could be growing at a slower rate overall, but at a faster rate as far as “active users” are concerned. One could chalk that up to greater proportions of “lurkers” on Twitter, but we’re not convinced.

via Flickr / Teosaurio

Stats are wonderful, but they must always be questioned, examined and put into context. We’ll be eager to see traffic numbers down the road that put some concreteness around any bump in truly active users stemming from heralded advances such as communities, background-instant photo upload, Hangouts and the like.

Only time will tell whether this current bit of pro-G+ news will mean “active users” may become a bit more active, turning the much decried “ghost town” into another solid platform for widespread social engagement. We’ll certainly be keeping our eyes on this and will report back with relevant updates.

This post was written by Aaron Motsinger in Austin and Matt Whiting in Seattle

There’s clearly an opening for clever, highly-visual communications to break through in this tl;dr world in which we all now live.

Brands will have a huge opportunity to show, not tell and by doing so, will have the opportunity to show off a bit of personality along the way.

While there’s been a lot of speculation around what this means for the future of short form communications, here are four quick thoughts on tweetable videos and brands.

• The rise of the social teaser. While companies like 12seconds played around with the “idea of tweetable video commercials,” the launch of Vine will mean brands will have the opportunity to give the world glimpses of what they’re selling to entice further action.
• Story arcs are critical. While these aren’t going to be works of a Scorsese caliber, successful short form videos will plan the bite-sized takeaway(s) they want the viewer to get. Thoughtful quick shots and edits will tell mini-stories to elicit desired outcomes.
• Series will become low-drag keys to reoccuring connections. Thinking in serial ways will help these short videos catch on with audiences who will come to appreciate truly valuable (whether humorous, informative, entertaining or other) content on a regular basis. Expect to see series pop up in the vein of “quick thought of the day,” “recipe of the week” and “Monday productivity lifehack.”
• Companies selling physical products will be the first to embrace. Similar to the early retail push and current prominence on visual heavy sites like Pinterest, brands with tangible products will be among the first to jump on this opportunity.

Had a chance to play around with Vine or have thoughts to one the future of social videos? Sound off in the comments.

As Facebook unveiled its latest offering, Graph Search, earlier this week, there’s been much written about what the functionality would mean to the future of search engines, reviews, jobs and dating sites, user behavior and everything in between.

The search update, currently in limited beta, greatly amplifies the power of the network’s previously simple search functionality by diving deeper into the likes, interests, places and photos of your friends.

While we’ve had fun pontificating about the sweeping changes that may or may not come as a result, as a communications agency, we’re most interested in what these search changes mean to our communications and marketing clients.

After some discussion, we identified the following four categories as most immediately relevant for brands.

• Engagement Matters Even More: There’s even more of an incentive to encourage customers to check-in, like, review products and discuss you positively on Facebook to ensure these actions are showing up in searches. Pushing out engaging content (think compelling photos, humorous updates or useful information) is more likely to push your company up in the search results.

• Facebook Page Basics = Now Even More Essential: Establishing a Facebook page is more important than ever if only to ensure your official brand presence shows up in searches. When developing your page strategy, think about the key terms for your page – consider using those key terms in posts every now and then. Graph Search is a category-based search, so update your page information and make sure it’s categorized accurately so it shows up high on the list in relevant searches. It’s also important that “About,” “Basic info” and “contact info”  be up-to-date.

• Comprehensive Search Strategy is Key: Now’s the time to start spending more time and resources ensuring your search strategy includes Bing. The typical Google only approach will no longer suffice. Since Bing has a longstanding partnership with Facebook, which has been significantly enhanced with these new changes, the new Graph Search means there will be many more instances of people searching, so Bing results will be served up much more often.

• More Effective Ad Avenues = Coming Soon: There will be more opportunities to reach customers through search ads (once rolled out on Graph Search) as even more people begin using what was once largely an unusable search function. This is potentially a huge moneymaker for Facebook and a compelling additional ad channel for companies.

As these search changes are slowly rolling out, we’ll keep our eyes on how these theoretical effects play out in reality.

Had any experience with Graph Search yourself or have any thoughts on what these means to brands? Sound off in the comments.

With proclamations like “Facebook Is Making Us Miserable” on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network and questions like “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” on The Atlantic, the widespread head scratching really began in earnest.

Daniel Gulati’s much discussed HBR post weighed the dangers of comparisons, time fragmentation and friendship closeness decline brought on by Facebook while Stephen Marche’s longer piece for The Atlantic focused more on the downsides of superficial connections.

Interestingly, a new report out of the University of Edinburgh seems to point out that the popular may have the worst of the potential maladies and then some – as the report asserts; more Facebook friends means more stress.

According to the report’s authors, the more people someone has friended on Facebook, the more likely these online friends are to spread across groups of friends, colleagues and family. As such, this creates stressful psychological considerations around self-presentation, since after all we are different people, if only slightly,sometimes more so, to each person we know.

In addition to time fragmentation that Gulati brought up in 2009, turns out that self-fragmentation is yet another potential headache we’ll all have to sort through as we all try to figure out this dual IRL/URL existence we all live. If all this just becomes too much, you could always take articles like Psychology Today’s “Quitting Facebook Could Make You Happier” to heart; spend some time on wikiHow’s increasingly popular “How to Quit Facebook” page and join the likes of these people.

As Ben Marder, author of the report and early career fellow in marketing at the Business School proclaims,

“Facebook used to be like a great party for all your friends where you can dance, drink and flirt. But now with your Mum, Dad and boss there the party becomes an anxious event full of potential social landmines.”

Megan Garber has wrapped this up quite nicely over on The Atlantic. Some thoughts I’ve condensed here:

“Which is another way of saying that Facebook is George Costanza’s worst nightmare: It enforces, second by second, the collision of worlds…

Facebook’s power, and its curse, is this holistic treatment of personhood. All the careful tailoring we do to ourselves (and to our selves) — to be, say, professional in one context and whimsical in the other — dissolves in the simmering singularity of the Facebook timeline…

Because, as liberating as it is to erase the divides that separate formerly fractured identities — as nice in theory and in practice as it is to live an all-purpose, one-size-fits-all existence — the mingling comes with costs…”

In addition to time fragmentation that Gulati brought up in 2009, turns out that self-fragmentation is yet another potential headache we’ll all have to sort through as we all try to figure out this dual IRL/URL existence we all live. If all this just becomes too much, you could always take articles like Psychology Today’s “Quitting Facebook Could Make You Happier” to heart; spend some time on wikiHow’s increasingly popular “How to Quit Facebook” page and join the likes of these people.

This blog was originally posted on the Urban Times.

Sure, friends and strangers will debate the issues in public and private places throughout the next two months but the real deluge will be felt online.

Like no other time before (yet in line with the trend that we saw with the Summer Olympics), this October and November will dump a barrage of politics into the social networking sites we use every day.

According to research released by Harris Interactive and Pew Internet and compiled into an infographic by MGD Advertising, a majority of social media users expect to have access to candidates and learn more about candidates via social media.

The massive amount of dollars spent on social advertising by both parties is estimated to reach unprecedented amounts; at the very least doubling what it was in 2008 in conservative estimates.

While users are used to dealing with, which in most cases means ignoring, promotions, social ads and other paid means of persuasion on these networks, updates from friends and colleagues can have a profound impact – not so much on influencing views about candidates or issues but on informing views others have of those actually posting the updates.

Rather than prompting others to learn something new about a candidate or an issue, political posts will most likely inform the reader of something new about the person who posted the update, not the subject of the update itself. A research study by Pew Internet released this past spring found:

• 38% of SNS (Social Networking Sites) users have discovered through their friends’ postings that their political beliefs were different to what they thought they were.

Not surprisingly, seeing dissenting opinions can sever online friendship while seeing reaffirming opinions can forge new online relationships.

• 18% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the (social networking) site because the person either posted too much about politics, disagreed with political posts, or bothered friends with political posts.

• And 16% of SNS users have friended someone whose political posts have appealed to them.

 

Rob accepting the Bing Audience Award at NYTVF 2011

Whether you dismiss it as “sausage making” or embrace it as “behind the scenes access,” it’s only natural to be curious about how things really come together. While many content creators used to take a “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” stance, many are now eager to discuss what it really takes to make their projects a reality. Regardless of what sparked this relatively recent change (advent of DVD commentary, the insatiable content appetite of blogs and social channels, the prevalence of podcasts, among other factors), there’s now a huge wealth of information that can essentially serve as a roadmap to success based on the blueprints, trials and tribulations of others.

With the hope of learning from recent successes, I decided to interview Brooklyn-based actor, writer, director and longtime friend, Rob Michael Hugel to hear some tips on DIY marketing, creating quality content and the importance of an integrated communications approach first-hand.

I was lucky enough to catch up with Rob in advance of the finale of his hilarious web series, I Hate Being Single, which went live on ihatebeingsingleseries.com yesterday. (UPDATE: I’ve embedded Part I at the of the post as well for easy watching.) You can also catch episodes 1-5 on the series’ YouTube channel. While the entire interview (with an intro that links to a video of chimps fishing for ants – worth the click alone in my book) lives over on New Comm Biz, here are a few key excerpts to get you started.

Before we get into your take on marketing and promoting the series, how would you describe the premise of the I Hate Being Single for an audience who is used to elevator pitches and discussions of ROI?

The premise I would describe is probably that it’s a sitcom web series. Picture a Curb Your Enthusiasm for the Portlandia generation but in bite-sized 5 minute episodes. It’s a little bit Wes Anderson, a little bit Cosby Show. Each episode is a standalone story so you don’t necessarily need to know the backstory to get it. The tone of the show is dry like the British Office or Larry Sanders Show, with observations of Brooklyn and the “indie” lifestyle from the perspective of a lonely outsider. Anything can happen to him in the show but the eventual outcome is true to the phrase “I Hate Being Single.”

What’s been your overall strategy when it comes to promotion?

My strategy with promotion (and production) has been to do as much as I can without money. I made the series with the help of favors and eventually a Kickstarter. I work freelance and sacrificed a lot of the paid work time to do the show, so it’s a complete DIY strategy.

The promotion has been entirely online with the exception of a couple hundred flyers for the release day. Social media is the first and daily, and press outreach is done strategically to what the episode is about. I had a release schedule of about 14 weeks with a new episode each week so that was important to use as tool to keep people coming back each week knowing there would be a new episode.

As a rule, I try to make everything dealing with the show look true to the series style as far as graphic design, posters, flyers, images. I basically operate like a one man TV studio in the same way they have a graphics department making trailers, promos, magazine ads; I’m doing the same thing on a small scale. I watch HBO, FX and IFC and think about how they promote their shows. I’ll follow that guide. Anything to make the audience believe that the show is legit, substantial, and worth looking at. Consistency is very important.

You’ve been promoting the series through social media quite a bit. What does your presence look like online and have you found any one platform or tactic to stand out in particular?

I’ve been using Facebook (personal and fan page), Twitter, Tumblr, Buzzfeed, YouTube, and Blip.  I wish I could say there was one successful platform alone. It hasn’t been my experience.

I really love Tumblr as a tool for this show. Our official website is a Tumblr and I’ve been using a personal blog for a while. Over the past year I think there’s been a great boom of Tumblr users. It’s the best place for people to spread work and not feel like its “clogging a feed” or something like that. It’s my goal to keep working on getting tumbld and find more followers that way. I search tags of things that I like or I’m influenced by and find thousands of people who like the same thing and want to share it. It gives me confidence that we’ll reach the right people eventually if we keep working at this.

As for Facebook it’s been really great for gaining a grassroots following. I have a great network of friends in NYC and across the country who, when they repost from Facebook tend to get a positive response, which leads to a new follower on the fan page, or YouTube. It’s very typical that I’ll post something on Facebook, a friend reposts it, and a minute later my I Hate Being Single page has a new follower that I don’t know who is connected to the friend that reposted. It really is social networking!

What words of advice do you have for those looking to find an audience for their creative work?

My advice to creative people looking for an audience is to first concentrate on the product and make it as good as you believe you can. Imagine yourself in a public place with like-minded people, like a concert or art gallery, find them online and get the work in front them. I always think about who my inspirations are, and find people who have that same inspiration. They’re more likely to associate with what I do. Get specific.

You’ve gotten quite a bit of great press on the series. How did those pieces come about?

The press has been awesome. It’s a mix of things. Some people contacted me out of the blue from seeing posts on Facebook through friends, a few were through friends of friends who were recommended to check it out. I sent out press releases on the morning of most of the full-length episodes, which came out biweekly. I sent about 200 emails each day with a press release about the series, and that particular episode. I targeted NYC blogs that would cover it for the topical NYC stuff and other sites that I saw had coverage of indie film, web series, comedy, TV, and fashion. I feel like the show has a flavor, and if there’s any outlet that has a similar flavor, then I’d contact them. Some of the press didn’t get back to me until the 3rd or 4th episode/email, which is worth mentioning because I’m the kind of person that feels slightly uncomfortable emailing someone repeatedly with no response. I learned that the persistence is important and not be discouraged to get no response, for it may come a while down the road and be totally positive.

As Friday winds down, I recommend Aaker’s post as excellent weekend reading for everyone interested in the foundations of what motivates one to recommend a product, service or brand on either a personal or professional level. In the meantime, take a look through Dichter’s key findings as summarized by Aaker below, and think back to times over the past week when you’ve either recommended a brand or been on the receiving end of a brand recommendation.

A major Dichter finding, very relevant today, was the identification of four motivations for a person to communicate about brands.

The first (about 33 percent of the cases) is because of product-involvement. The experience is so novel and pleasurable that it must be shared.

The second (about 24 percent) is self-involvement. Sharing knowledge or opinions is a way to gain attention, show connoisseurship, feel like a pioneer, have inside information, seek confirmation of a person’s own judgment or assert superiority.

The third (around 20 percent) is other-involvement. The speaker wants to reach out and help to express neighborliness, caring and friendship.

The fourth (around 20 percent) is message-involvement. The message is so humorous or informative that it deserves sharing.

Beyond these four motivations, what other factors dictate what you and your friends are sharing on Twitter, Facebook, with you in person or through other channels?

Image by ohtheclevernessofme.