The International Public Relations Research Conference (IPRRC) has been the place for intriguing and fascinating new social media research since Mark Zuckerberg was in college. This year was no different: IPRRC presenters studied social media’s impact on brand affinity, the motivation behind brand interactions, and of course, social media’s impact on crisis (United are you listening?). Here are six new ideas about social media that I learned at IPRRC 2017.
1. They are just not that into your brand: Customer service, deals, and opinions drive brand interaction, not relationships.
Exactly why do people engage with brands? I’ve wondered about that question for quite a while. I so seldom partake of the practice that it’s always puzzled me why people spend time interacting with their favorite brands on social media.
Lisa V. Chewning of Penn State Abington answered it. Here’s the harsh reality for brands: People do not want to have a relationship with your brand. They do want information from you, or an opportunity to express their opinions about you.
Chewning surveyed 607 people between the ages of 19 and 98 who interacted regularly with brands. 61% were female 39% were male. Most said they engaged to seek information about the brand, to get up to date news, and to get information about how to use a product or service. The second most frequently sited reason was to get coupons, shop, or to get ideas about how to use products. In third was to voice an opinion regarding a product or service, or or complain about the organization’s policies or actions.
And, while brands cling to the belief (frequently reinforced by metrics) that people interact because they want to have a relationship with a brand, that ranks second to last on the list of reasons. Even fewer are interacting because they want a relationship with other people who like the brand.
2. Brands use Snapchat to reach millennials.
Why do more and more brands have Snapchat on their radar screens? That’s the question that Christopher Wilson and Pamela Brubaker of Brigham Young University School of Communications set out to explore.
The short answer is that brands see Snapchat as a way to reach millennials. They want to build loyalty with a younger audience that later will become customers. People go to Snapchat for “behind the scenes” information, the kind of in-the-moment details that brands don’t normally share. Snapchat feels more authentic. And authenticity is what brands and the millennials they seek are all screaming for these days.
The interesting aspect of brand involvement in Snapchat is the prevalence of using brand employees and ambassadors, once again to boost authenticity. As Snapchat becomes more of a content hub, look for more and more brands to post their stories there.
For the most part Snapchat seems to exist in its own world, and isn’t integrated into other social media efforts. And of course, no one is yet measuring anything.
3. Protest “cluster tweets” aren’t as effective as personalized tweets.
Tiffany Gallicano, Ryan Wesslen, and Jean-Claude Thill of UNC Charlotte did a fascinating analysis of tweets in the wake of the protests in Charlotte, NC, in response to the police killing of Keith Scott and the withholding of police body-cam video.
By analyzing the use of hashtags in the full firehose of social media, they identified a series of “cluster tweets”—prewritten twitter content that users were invited to post. Using a machine learning algorithm, they identified three primary organizations behind the social activities: MomsRising, the ACLU, and colorofchange.org.
They classified each sentence into a category based on the message of the post. They included images as well as considering the persuasive aspects of the images.
The similarities were fascinating. They concluded that there were three common features of these cluster tweets:
- The first sentence builds pressure by pointing to an injustice,
- The second sentence issues a call to action, and
- The call to action always includes a link to a desired action.
The social aspects were not used in isolation; all three organization also used email alerts and their websites to invite supporters to post messages.
Interestingly, the size of the organization did not dictate the volume of cluster tweets used. Even though the ACLU had far more members, Mom’s Rising generated nearly as many retweets. Equally interesting is that these cluster tweets were less likely to be retweeted than regular tweets.
The biggest takeaway is that while cluster tweets may appear to be an easy way to get your messages across, using a person’s name and personalizing the message is more effective.
4. Social media use continues to climb.
Michelle Hinson, of the University of Florida, and Donald K Wright, Harold Burson Professor at Boston University, have been carrying out a longitudinal survey of PR’s use of social media for more than a decade. This year, using a web-based survey of PR professionals in cooperation with PRSA, they received 556 responses.
As we’ve seen year after year, the amount of time PR professionals are spending working with social or digital media continues to increase. 40% now spend more than one quarter of their working hours on blogs and social media. Mostly they’re on Facebook, and to a lesser extent on Twitter and LinkedIn. Surprisingly, use of YouTube declined while use of Instagram increased.
In contrast with other studies, Hinson and Wright found that 64% of respondents said that PR and/or communications remains primarily responsible for managing social and digital communications. I’m guessing it’s “communications,” not PR, that is in charge, given the findings from Simply Measured’s State of Social Marketing Report and others that say that only a tiny fraction of social media departments remain under the wing of PR.
5. Activists are having an impact on CSR.
Sasha Dookhoo and Mellissa Dodd, of PAN Communications and Nicholson School of Communications at the University of Central Florida, conducted a series of in-depth interviews to investigate the role that activists are playing in shaping corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies within organizations. Turns out that activists are playing a bigger role than you think.
The first “Aha!” from the research was that activists are activists, whether they’re on Facebook or in the streets. And smart brands understand that they play a key role in shaping your messages and your reputation. Most see activists as a checks-and-balances system; they keep organizations focused on key initiatives as well as provide a reality check to the standard CSR corporate-speak. Frequently they prompt changes in CSR strategies and/or priorities.
The CSR experts warned that you need to “listen, engage, and be open-minded.” Not listening is a sure-fire way to get activists riled up. And finally, take CSR seriously. Experts said that the biggest mistake organizations make is not realizing that CSR is a core part of business strategy. Stakeholders expect it and you better get it right.
6. Spreading good health one tweet at a time.
The crackerjack research team of Jeanine Guidry, Shana Meganck, Marcus Messner, Alessandro Lovari, Vivian Media-Messner, Jay Adams, and Scott Sherman, of Virginia Commonwealth, conducted an in-depth global analysis of how health issues are being communicated around the world. Twitter, it turns out, is an important source of health information, and frequently used by public health departments.
The most interesting factoid to me was that cardiovascular disease is one of the top causes of mortality worldwide, but is almost never mentioned. Most tweets about health focus on specific infectious diseases. Nigeria, Brazil, and India each dedicate 20% or more of their tweets to infectious diseases.
The good news is that the hyperlinks included in most tweets point to either a health department-owned site or other related overall sites.
The researchers found distinct differences between the twelve nations studied:
- Chile’s health department produces the highest median number of tweets, with India not far behind.
- Brazil and South Africa mention health dangers in far more posts than the other countries.
No doubt because danger resulted in significantly more frequent retweets, the researchers concluded that governmental health organizations should increase their focus on chronic diseases and use visuals more frequently. ∞
Thanks to Tumisu on Pixabay for part of the image.
