Fran Stephenson – Step In Communication

Fran Stephenson March 19, 2020 Leave a Comment

Work From Home: Sharing Our Virtual Team’s Daily Tips

New to working from home? We’re not! Our team is virtual and geographically dispersed across three time zones! And we have spouses, kids and fur babies in the mix too! Earlier this week, we shared our top tips on Working from Home on our Facebook page . We got a lot of positive feedback on them, so we have combined them here into a brief bulleted list. Questions? Ask away and we’ll do our best to help.

Fran Stephenson, Texas

10 years in a Home Office

Use the time chunking method
Minimize distractions like answering the door, picking up mail, etc.
Be aware of how much you are sitting and change position/location frequently
Don’t forget to eat lunch.

Jennifer Hatton, Colorado

9 Years in a Home Office

Prep family lunches and snacks the night before
Use an app like boomerang for reminders
Be realistic about “to do” lists
Use a planner for “All the Things”
Set time blocks for working and schedule things for my kids.
Be flexible to change up kids activities as needed
Your pets will tell you when it’s time to take breaks!
Set up a place to work, even if it’s small. Make it pretty!

Brittany Perry, Texas

5 Years in a Home Office

Shower and get dressed every morning, even if you’re not going anywhere
Make your work station personal – candles and an awesome playlist are my faves.
Take breaks and spend intentional time with your family.
Family communication is important too. Check in with everyone.

Claire Larson, Maine

6 Years in a Home Office

Doors are your friends. Everyone needs some space.
If you can, get your kids outside in the yard or driveway, in a space where you can still see them. Set rules for when yard time is up.
Be creative with phone meeting locations – I’ve used the shower and a closet in a pinch.
Use an online calendar to help structure your day and schedule your tasks into time blocks.
Give yourself a start and end time to your work – you now live in your office and have to create boundaries for yourself (and others)

Most Valuable Takeaways

A space with a door, but improvising works too
Routines but with flexibility
Organize, organize, organize

Final Thoughts

Our virtual team is amazingly productive and so flexible. We cover for each other when someone has a sick child, a family emergency or just needs down time. When your team is this fabulous, it’s easy to take them for granted. I try to find unique ways to connect with these three valuable women. We’ve sent care packages with themes like “it’s time for Fiesta” and “Summer Survival Kits” and check in via text and call. Memes keep us laughing too.

Are these coworkers amazing or what?

Fran Stephenson March 2, 2020 2 Comments

Checklist for Communicators: Prepare for A Prolonged Crisis with these 5 Tips

Here’s a checklist for crisis communicators to assist them in being truthful, succinct, accurate and understandable as they gear up for prolonged crisis communications in anticipating the spread of Covid-19.

Lead with the Headline News

Start with the items that will reassure and calm the general public. The first broadly communicated information from the CDC unfortunately led with the possibility of widespread closures and then, midway through their communications, stated that the risk to the general public was still low.
Say it and say it again!
Many news outlets are live-streaming these events and people come and go throughout the webcast and can miss the important news. If possible, have someone from your team re-stating the key message on the live feed, so they appear as your audience appears.

Create an Information Hub

It shouldn’t be too hard to create an online information hub. Update as often as possible. In short form communications, always link to the hub for the full story.
Make the hub easy to read and visual.

Point to Authority Sources

Who is leading or from whom are you getting instructions? Point to the local, regional or statewide authority. Audiences often believe trusted officials at the local level as they are known faces.

Here’s one local hub, but it hasn’t been updated for two weeks:

https://www.sanantonio.gov/Health/News/Alerts/CoronaVirus

Here’s the CDC hub with a date stamp right under the headline:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html

Check All Outgoing Communications

It may seem like a carnival game of Whac-A-Mole, but as communicators we have to try to correct the most egregious misinformation when it is on our owned or social media sites. You can’t be everywhere, but you can enhance monitoring on your own properties in a professional manner and move people to your information hub.
Scrutinize your communication pieces more thoroughly – read everything out loud to eliminate jargon and tongue twisters.
Date and time stamp everything so the newest info is first.
Prepare to keep repeating your key messages or latest information
Assign someone to screen all incoming communication

Breathe

Take a deep breath.
Clear your head and clear your desk.
Wash your hands. You’ll be at this for awhile.

What would you add to this checklist? Drop a comment below to help everyone with their latest crisis challenges. Or share a resource that will help others with better communication.

Resources

***Updated with new resources on March 5, 2020***

From Doug Levy, author of Communications Golden Hour, a tip sheet for prolonged crisis:

Communication Resources

https://on.douglevy.com/long_duration_communications

From Seth Godin, some interesting thoughts on the spread of viruses in general. Good read to center your thinking:

Thoughts on a virus

An example of an organization being proactive, without being scary or alarmist:

http://www.magnetmail.net/actions/email_mobile_web_version.cfm?recipient_id=4144780198&message_id=18249834&user_id=AFPNET&jobid=47142319&fbclid=IwAR3OO-PZZrn315XrI6IUBaQew2haLOSDW1jwYeVf7R5flSCmCG3Hr5R-OU8

Associated Press communications guidelines:

https://www.apstylebook.com/topical_most_recent

Resources about COVID-19

A continuously updated document on meeting cancellations:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oPL0-Q9lIMm-dWouTqEpCHQeNvUQRzjSzzFCxpg16NU/edit

A Seattle high school student has build a real time website tracking the virus here: https://ncov2019.live/data

Fran Stephenson February 13, 2020 Leave a Comment

Four Tips to Manage A Facebook Page in Meltdown

I recently assisted two small business owners with crisis response. While I’m still processing everything that happened for one of them, we could actually see it coming and were able to do several things on social media to prepare for critics bombarding their Facebook page (which they did for 7 straight days!)

This owner posted a response to a tragedy that happened at her place of business. We all thought this would give a bit of closure to everyone involved. Nope.

Within the hour, a very long, inflamed and inaccurate post was shared by someone who was a third party to the tragedy. We starting watching the page very closely. Soon, the mob appeared and started a cycle of heated words, accusations and (wait for it) more inaccurate information.

While the response was complicated and involved, here are the four things we did to mitigate the public outcry.

Enhanced monitoring on the channel for 48 hours and aggressively remove anything that was clearly profane, spam or plagiarized.
Used the “three strikes” rule. Any person who posts the same message three times on the page, is banned. This is a common protest tactic and is meant to spike the Facebook algorithm.
Turned off the Reviews function because they cannot be removed and in crisis, people leaving a rating have rarely used the business. They are merely expressing their discontent.
Changed the page settings to moderated. So no one could make a post to the wall, only comment on existing posts.

So how can this help you during your next crisis? Now is a great time to check your settings and make sure you know how to turn on and off all these features if and when you need them.

Want To Rock Social Media for Your Brand? Here’s How:

Our online course, Mastering Your Brand On Social Media will take your social media from beginner to brilliant. Take it at your own pace. Four sessions with 38 lessons and 17 downloadable templates, checklists and guidesheets. Get it today. Click below.

Buy the Course

Fran Stephenson October 9, 2019 Leave a Comment

10 Questions to Help You Evaluate Your Social Media Performance This Year

It’s nearly the end of the year and many organizations are taking stock of how they did this year and making plans for next year. If you’re a social media manager for an organization, you should be doing the same. But what questions should you ask? What should you look at to gain insight into what’s working and what’s not working?

Social networks make changes all the time, so you need to continually look at your channels, evaluate results and make changes to stay ahead of the game.

Here are 10 questions you should be asking as you evaluate 2019 and begin to prepare for next year.

How is my engagement on Facebook? Is it better or worse than it was at the beginning of the year? Should I trim the output on this channel?
How are my posts doing on Instagram? Are they getting seen in the feed and getting lots of comments and likes? Am I overposting on this channel?>
How are my Instagram stories doing? Are they getting seen more frequently or less frequently than my Instagram feed posts?
How am I doing on Twitter? Can I see a difference now on RTs and likes compared to where I started earlier this year?
Is LinkedIn a viable channel for my organization? How is it different? Did my content stick this year and what kinds of views, likes and comments did I get on my posts?
If you’re on Pinterest, what is the standout pin of the year? Which boards are getting more traction? Can you see improvement over time?
What types of content are the best performing content on each channel? Why?
Are all my channels performing to set objectives? If not, what changes are indicated for next year?
Should I launch a new channel or a new group in the coming year?
How will I report on these successes and challenges? What metrics will help me explain success to my leadership?

Answering these ten questions will help you start evaluating your social channel performance this year. What other questions are you asking about your social media ecosystem this year?

Fran Stephenson September 14, 2019 Leave a Comment

The Complete Guide to Disclosure for Brands and Influencers

Disclosure is the hottest topic in social and digital media and is the least understood by brands AND by influencers.

Full Disclosure: I am not a lawyer and am not offering legal advice. Anyone who has questions about disclosure and how the law applies to them, should consult a licensed attorney.

Now that’s out of the way. (See what I did there!)

So, what is disclosure? By definition, it’s identifying or exposing an act or instance of something. In today’s social media environment, its theoretical underpinning is this: to help social media users identify and separate organic posts, stories or videos from posts, stories or videos for which compensation has been given. But it’s not just about compensation. The law covers material relationships which include gift cards and discounts. It also covers family and business relationships too.

In practice, the term “Wild West” doesn’t even begin to describe how it’s really being used.

What is the Law?

The “law” comes from the Federal Trade Communication and has been revised several times, as social media has grown and changed. The most recent update was September, 2017. Their website features a set of Endorsement Guides which give examples for a wide range of situations including payments, contests and soliciting product reviews.

You should bookmark this link FOREVER.

In case that feels like a bit too much to digest, the Truth In Advertising organization has distilled it to a set of bulleted lists that explain what they call the “material connection” and offers suggestions on how to comply with the law.

The Scoop on Social Media Influencer Disclosure Requirements

Disclosure for Agencies and Brand Representatives

Full Disclosure-AGAIN: I am not a lawyer and am not offering legal advice. Anyone who has questions about disclosure should consult a licensed attorney.

As a communicator, I am extremely motivated to follow the law. So I counsel my clients to do the same. But every day, my team and I see examples that are clearly paid engagements that lack the necessary disclosure.

Examples:

Facebook and Twitter posts that feature a company that the poster clearly represents with no disclosure.
Agency comments on an Instagram post where there is clearly a client relationship and no disclosure.
Sending products or services to influencers to use/share/discuss and telling them – don’t bother to thank us or mention we gifted this to you.

Disclosure for Influencers

If you accepted something, you need to disclose it. It’s that simple. Familiarize yourself with the guidelines and start to implement them on your next brand activation.

And you need to make sure that the contracts you sign with brands contain disclosure requirements. We use disclosure language with a link to the FTC Guidelines in every influencer contract we manage.

Our team is hyper-aware about this topic. One of our team members participated in a course by a major Instagram influencer who is making significant income from paid engagements there. She was horrified to see a thread in the accompanying private group in which the group advised in a q/a that there is no need for disclosure when a brand “gifts” something to you. Others in the chat advised “it’s up to you if you share that it’s a gift or not.” And they even suggested that you should post something about the gift, then show the post results and pitch further business to the brand. Every single piece of advice in that thread violates the disclosure laws.

My team member was horrified.

Besides the complete ignorance about the law, the additional issue is that this group is selling their “expertise” to others who are following their advice, perpetuating bad habits and encouraging others to do the same.

Here are some examples of disclosure featuring influencers I know and have worked with regularly.

*A disclosure from Jill Robbins of Ripped Jeans and Bifocals*

*The disclosure on a Facebook post from Sara Phillips of Sensibly Sara*

*Another disclosure on a Twitter post from Sara Phillips of Sensibly Sara*

It’s not that hard.

“I see a lot of influencers use brand partner, hosted, or my personal favorite, “spon” to disclose the relationship with the brand, says Jill Robbins of Ripped Jeans and Bifocals. “My interpretation is that only “ad” or “sponsored” meet the FTC’s disclosure requirements.”

What if You Are Not Sure?

It’s anyone’s guess who the FTC might fine when disclosure isn’t obvious. The agency has been criticized for the guidelines being confusing and open to interpretation. Government agencies are often very measured in the actions they take to enforce laws and this law is no exception. Since the September 2017 guidelines have been released, they’ve sent 22 “educational” letters (which is the step prior to a warning letter) to celebrities, according to this story in the Morning Consult.

Just because you’re not a celebrity doesn’t mean you should ignore the law. Overcommunicating your relationships in social and digital posts is better than no disclosure at all.

I’m a community manager for Texas Travel Talk, a community of travel influencers. We work with brands to bring bloggers to Texas destinations and tell the destination story through blog posts and social media blitzes. These are paid relationships. We’re not perfect but we constantly review and revise our disclosure guidelines. For example, we used to put the disclosure about our financial arrangement with a destination at the bottom of each post, but because the requirement is for a disclosure to be up front and clearly noticeable, we’ve moved those on all blog posts to be right after the first paragraph and in bold font.

Disclosure on a blog post from Texas Travel Talk

We also struggle as to the appropriate disclosure that we, as community managers, need to pursue. Since I’m not the actual influencer, I often use a more narrative disclosure like “So thrilled to be working with #client [insert name] or something like the tweet below.

If you’re not working with influencers or find disclosure necessary, I am willing to bet that you’re following someone on Instagram or Twitter who talks about products, restaurants and experiences. Are THEY getting paid to promote those things? Maybe it’s worth asking.

Just last week, The Truth in Advertisiing group (the same one we linked to earlier in this story) filed a complaint with the FTC against Ryan ToysReview You Tube channel managed by the parents of 8-year-old Ryan who is often cited as You Tube’s highest performer with 21 million followers. They argued that children under age 5, the primary target of this channel, could not possibly know the difference between paid and organic content there. Read the full story here on the Today show website.

If there’s one thing you can take away from this discussion on disclosure, there’s a lot at stake. So, let’s go out there and be law abiding social media users.

How have you struggled with disclosure?

Fran Stephenson June 26, 2019 Leave a Comment

Impressions: The Metrics Clients Love and the Measurement Standard We Need to Stop Abusing!

People forming the shape of the Earth's continents

Impressions are becoming an increasingly attractive metric for clients who are trying to distance themselves from using the outdated Advertising Value Equivalencies (AVE).

It’s hard not to love a metric that has the ability to be gleaned from websites, digital publications and every social media channel we’re using. But guess what? The way many organizations are reporting impressions today is as convoluted and inaccurate as the AVEs are.

How did we get to the point where impressions became the answer to all our measurement problems?

The Rise of Impressions in Reporting

Digital advertising is the first place I recall seeing this metric used. Particularly when paid media teams began to report on digital success. In some ways, we traded circulation figures which were used in print magazines and newspapers for impressions. The difference is that circulation figures were careful vetted by an audit board. A third party verified that you sold the number of magazines you said you sold. There is no such third party for today’s digital publications. We are reliant on in-built tools that report page views, impressions and others.

At some point, someone got the brilliant idea to add them all up. It’s a bigger number, it’s more impressive and summarizing a campaign is so much easier with a single large number. Clients love it! Donors are impressed. Awards panels say wow! This is the point at which the “sin of measurement” becomes widespread. The simple math equation is almost always overinflated just for that wow moment.

How NOT to Count Impressions

When we take a series of publications and add up all the impressions to get a campaign total, that’s when we get into trouble with using the number. Here’s an example of how impressions should not be counted.

Everyone loves football. In July 2015, the Washington Redskins communications team released a report on the coverage they received during the previous years’ training camp. Dan Steinberg reported on it in the Washington Post. You can read the full article here but this is the key quote that sums up the simple math we’re getting wrong with impressions.

“With the help of third-party media monitoring services Meltwater and TVEyes, the team put out a fancy 13-page report on its findings. That report determined, among other things, that there were “7,845,460,401 unique visitors of print/online coverage of the 2014 Bon Secours Washington Redskins Training Camp from July 24-Aug. 12.
That’s a big number. To put it in perspective, that’s considerably more than the population of Earth, which the Census Bureau estimates at 7.26 billion. Apparently, a lot of folks on Pluto were really interested in Colt McCoy’s progress.”
Dan Steinberg in the Washington Post

Further down in the story, the reporter shared that when he contacted one of the monitoring services, they explained that the number was a count of impressions, so anytime a person saw a story about the event, it counted.

The report concluded that the value of that media coverage was more than $76 million.

What the report didn’t show (and what the reporter identified himself) is that during a campaign, some of your fans/followers/readers will see your message multiple times. Raw impressions don’t solve for that. If you keep adding up impressions, giving a cumulative value over time, it becomes statistically inaccurate – like more than the number of people on Earth inaccurate.

What You Can Do TODAY to Make Reporting Impressions Accurate and Meaningful

What would have made the Washington Redskins team report more meaningful is taking the sum total of impressions and dividing it by the number of news stories generated to derive an average. Then next year, you do the same thing. Is the average higher or lower? Now you have a benchmark.
Track how your total impressions move up or down over time. For example, if you log the impressions you receive each month on Facebook and it’s around 10,000 and then one month, it’s suddenly 50,000, that’s a cue to look for a reason for the sudden change. It might be a key piece of content, conversation or ad.
Use impression reporting as a gateway metric to dive deeper into more meaningful measurement like engagement and engagement rate on your social channels and in digital content.

Stop adding up those impressions because before you know it, you’ll have more impressions than there are people on Earth. And that’s out of this world.

Fran Stephenson April 12, 2019 Leave a Comment

Time for Digital Spring Cleaning

Are you a digital hoarder? I know I am. I save news stories to read in Facebook later (and never do), I have an RSS reader with dozens of blogs rolling up just waiting for me to read it and yet, I can never find anything. I just got a new laptop, so it was a great time to do some digital clean up.

Here are 5 things I’ve done this month to free myself from the digital clutter.

Purge Client Files

It’s so rare to go back to a former client files to retrieve anything, so get them off your desktop and file them in Dropbox or somewhere else in the cloud under one folder called Archive. I usually save all work from clients for a year, but delete the email folder for that client after three months.

Save the Good Stuff

Before you go crazy and start deleting, is there one thing or a couple of things that you might use as a sample later on or as a guide to format another clients’ communication need? File it on your desktop in a new file called Samples. I started this about a year ago and it’s made building new powerpoint presentations and sharing templates for editorial calendars or other work so much easier.

Filter Content

I am overwhelmed with the number of stories I should be reading to keep current in my field. For the digital stuff, I roll blogs and news feeds into Feedly into categories that are important to my client work and to my learning. The trick is, to go in and purge the feeds out when you no longer need them. Done with the client in a specific industry? Trim it down.

And all those newsletter subscriptions? If you’re not already using Unroll.me, you’re missing out. IT’s an add on that puts every newsletter to which you subscribe into ONE. DAILY. EMAIL. Since I’m now getting a thousand or more of these things, it’s the only way to get your head above water.

If they are so valuable that you want to save it for later, start a Diigo library and keep them all in one place.

Update your Profiles

Now is a good time to check your Twitter Bio, your “about” section on Facebook and your Linked In headline. I would recommend you get new headshots too, but that would just be crazy talk! (It takes me forever to change out headshots. No good reason)

Check Your Privacy Settings

I almost never do this, but this recent story in the Washington Post with EXACT Instructions on a couple of things made it easy. Took me five minutes. Do it now to clear advertising clutter out of your feeds!

Fran Stephenson March 6, 2019 Leave a Comment

How Influencers and Brands Can Find Common Ground

Influencers and brands have been in the news lately and not in a good way. Dishonesty in campaigns – it’s rampant in the world of working with influencers. But it’s not that difficult for brands and influencers to find common ground. Brands philosophically understand why working with influencers can elevate their efforts. Influencers need brands to keep their independent media channels growing.

But it’s clear from recent news coverage that the ocean is choppy and brands and influencers are having a tough time navigating their courses.

Influencers Who are Faking It Make the Rest Look Bad

Two recent examples point to flaws among the influencer community. Rachel Hollis, a blogger turned speaker and author recently attracted unwanted attention after she was accused of plagiarizing quotes on her Instagram channel.

Another recent story involves Aggie Lal, a lifestyle influencer. It came to light after she charged $500 to join a master class, which turned out to be anything but masterful. Some of the 380 participants (do the math on what she may have earned from the project) were so angry they turned to other social networks to complain loudly and publicly.

The Atlantic recently reported on just how rampant “fake deals” are among the influencer community, which should shock anyone in the field of marketing and communications.

“Lifestyle blogging is all about seamlessly monetizing your good taste and consumer choices, which means it can be near-impossible for laypeople to tell if an influencer genuinely loves a product, is being paid to talk about it, or just wants to be paid to talk about it,” wrote Taylor Lorenz in The Atlantic.

This only scratches the surface of the problem of transparency with influencers. Many influencers who are trying to establish themselves in the space know just enough from a conference they’ve attended or a presentation they’ve heard to bravely approach brands. Often they use specific language about what they’re offering you and what they want you, the brand, to do. Others are more vague, saying things such as “we’d like to partner with you” which means they’d like to get paid, but want you to reveal your budget first.

This ruins it for the influencers who are conscientious, transparent and communicative. Because they are out there. I’ve worked with hundreds of them and it’s a joy to bring to life a campaign that perfectly marries the right influencer with the right brand.

Brands Have Reputation Issues Too

Late last year, shoe retailer Payless created a fake pop up store and tricked more than 80 influencers into thinking the shoes were part of a new luxury brand. The story, which you can read here also describes how they “revealed” the trick to the participants. (Payless recently filed for bankruptcy and is in the process of closing its stores).

While philosophically, brands understand influencers, they just can’t figure out where they fit in. Are they like a journalist? No? Are they like a marketing promotion partner? Sometimes? Are they like sponsored content? Sometimes?

One of the biggest brand hurdles is FOMO – Fear of Missing Out. They want to get into the influencer game, they know it’s on trend, but guess what? Maybe they didn’t do their research. Or they’ve made small advances with a few select influencers here and there and believe they got burned, so that defines how they feel about the future of influencer marketing.

Our team has assisted many brands to get started working with influencers. We help them answer a lot of questions. Who should I choose and why? What do I ask them? Do I pay them? How and when? What can I expect from them?

Making the Right Match between Influencers & Brands

Clearly, there is huge room for improvement between influencers and brands. Here are three things influencers AND brands can do to make the right match.

Do Your Homework

Influencers: Research the brand who approaches you or the one you are targeting. Look at their marketing, their social channels, and visualize where you might fit in.

Brands: Research every influencer you’re interested in AND those who approach you directly. Are they who they say they are? Who have they worked with before?

Clear and Concise Communication

Influencers: don’t oversell to a brand. Be honest about your past work and where you are in your influencer journey.

Brands: Be clear about what your influencer activation policy is and most importantly, WHAT IT IS NOT.

Expectations

Influencers: get your work in on time and do more than expected. Ask questions until you’re clear what is being asked of you and by when.

Brands: be clear and reasonable about what you want the influencer to do. Is it number of words, number of posts, reporting on engagement? Define it.

Make Strategic Decisions

Influencers: Don’t hit up every brand in your industry or in your geography. Be selective and targeted.

Brands: make sure the influencer is the right fit. Just because they’re “big” or well known does not mean they will work for you.

As influencer and brand activations continue to accelerate, it’s more important than ever that we negotiate equitably and honestly. It’s not difficult to find common ground between influencers and brands if you plan and prepare for the project. If you want help getting an influencer program started for your organization, call us. We’re here to help.

Fran Stephenson February 18, 2019 Leave a Comment

You Can Combat Social Media Fatigue

A Social Media Manager with Severe Fatigue!

It happens to every social media manager. All of a sudden, your Facebook posts are boring. Or your Tweets go without a Retweet. Instagram photos have so few likes, you can read every name of those who DID give it a heart.

What could possibly be wrong?

It might be social media fatigue and it happens to everyone who manages social media channels over time. The good news is that you’re obviously paying close attention to your channels because you noticed! The bad news – it’s time to take a minute and shake it off – with or without Taylor’s Swift’s “Shake It Off” playing in the background.

Internal Factors Affect Your Channels’ Performance

Your Content

Look at your content lineup. Is it repetitive? Are the photos high quality? Are your categories diverse enough?

Tip from Claire : Look at how you’re presenting information on different channels – while your messaging should be consistent, each social channel has its own vibe and content needs to fit that specific channel. Have you been copying and pasting? Change things up across channels and see how engagement changes!

Tip from Jennifer: Vary your content types. For Facebook use a mix of video, photos w/link & w/o links. Use graphic only with no caption and sparingly use text only posts. With Twitter, mix it up but don’t forget that Twitter is also favoring video and graphics/photos are valuable for brands on this channel.

Your Posting Schedule

Are you repeating the same time slots? Are you missing the peak times when your fans are online? Are you posting on the wrong days? Are you posting too often? Are there gaps between your posting schedule?

External Factors Affect Your Channels’ Performance

Local News Cycle

We get stuck on news stories in social media these days. Look and see if something from the local area has dominated in the channels. It could be suppressing your content.

Politics Paralysis

Like it or not, national stories, especially as election season draws near, also dominate social feeds and could be suppressing your fans and followers from seeing your content.

Taking these steps might help illuminate what’s happening in your channels. If the way through is not yet clear, it’s time to go to the next step.

Three Things You Can Try to Beat Social Media Fatigue

Cut your posting frequency in half for one to two weeks while you keep examining the factors that you have control over, like your content types and posting schedule. Then come back with fresh eyes to review the situation.
Put ONE channel on hold. If you’re managing a social media ecosystem of 3 or more channels, walking away from one channel for a period of time will not sink the ship. Then come back to it, look at it again and think about how you can change it up. Or if that’s too painful to consider, consider auto posting from one channel to another for a short period of time just so your name is out there. This is a great strategy to try between Facebook and Instagram or Instagram and Twitter.
Take an hour and review what your competitors are doing. That usually creates an “aha!” moment.

If you still don’t know how to get out of the rut your channels are in, call us! We do full social media benchmark and channel audits for clients in nonprofit, travel and hospitality.

Fran Stephenson January 11, 2017 Leave a Comment

How To Get Value from Influencer Relationships

For some organizations, working with bloggers and other social influencers is new, maybe it’s even uncharted territory. Other companies have ideas about how to approach these media creators and may even have tried a few things. A third group of companies has sophisticated programs with high visibility.

If your company is new at this, or tried a few things that may or may not have worked, it’s a fair bet you are seeking ways to demonstrate the value of working with social influencers. Here’s how to demonstrate value in the future.

Clear Expectations

Create clear expectations of what you want the results to be. Are you asking the influencer to do social media on the go — spontaneous posting on social networks — as they experience your product or service? Or are you looking for a thoughtful report or image stream after the fact?

Ask yourself these questions:

What do I hope to get out of this relationship?
What volume do I expect?
Are there deadlines I hope to meet?

Fair Exchange

A fair exchange is “I’ll give you X and I expect Y.” What “X” and “Y” are for your organization could be different. If the social influencer is creating content for your digital properties, fair exchange might include compensation and credit for the content. If the content is created on the influencers’ blog or social network, then fair exchange may be your ability to promote that content on your organizations’ channels. Making sure that the “deal” works for everyone and that everyone’s intellectual property is protected, might include an actual contract. Or a clearly defined email. Or as the organization, you might use the photos or works under Creative Commons licensing. There are millions of variations of these ideas and organizations and content creators should always consult professionals related to contracts and other legal matters.

Here are some questions to ask:

Have I been clear about what I expect?
How have I communicated my expectations?
Do I need a contract?
Should I consult a lawyer or contract administrator for assistance?

Nurture The Relationship

Getting to know influencers that may align with your brand takes time and research. There are many ways to find those influencers organically and many tools that help identify influencers using tags and algorithms. Even if you have the best tools, it’s still important to get to know each influencer, their expertise and how they approach brand relationships. It’s no different than joining the local chamber and getting to know other chamber members at networking events. The relationships need to be built over time.

Some things to consider:

How can I develop influencer relationships?
Are there groups to join?
What tools should I explore?

Disclosure

If you want your future influencer relationships to be professional and ethical, they must include elements of disclosure. The influencers, by law, must identify brand relationships with disclosure statements on blog posts, and identify paid relationships using hashtags like #ad and #client on networks such as Instagram and Twitter.

Have I discussed disclosure with the influencer(s) I’m working with?
Are we meeting my organizations ethical and professional guidelines?
Are we in compliance with current laws regarding disclosure?

I’ve matched brands with influencers on a wide variety of promotions and campaigns, and it’s easy to get off track. By creating clear expectations, nurturing the relationships and developing clear expectations including strong elements of disclosure, you can develop value for your organization with influencer campaigns.