1. #hashtags may no longer be clickable. (9to5)
2. A new feature may allow you to turn off mentions for your username. (Blog)
3. New Audio Chats within Twitter Communities may enable users to engage even more. (Tweet)
4. Video Creators on Twitter may make 10 percent more than on YouTube. (Forbes)
5. “Link Spotlight” is live and offers a link button with 7 Different CTAs. (Check)

Does your company need a strategy team that keeps you current? Contact Theresa Collington tcollington@evoqueag.online.

During an aircraft incident, airports, airlines, manufacturers, and affiliated agencies should have a crisis plan in play that includes the following three goals for social media communications:  

1. Distribute timely, reliable information 
2. Help control anxiety 
3. Suppress the spreading of rumors 

Let’s look at a real-life scenario. In 2018, Southwest Airlines flight 1380, a Boeing 737-700 en route from New York’s La Guardia Airport to Dallas Love Field, experienced an engine failure 20 minutes into the flight. Debris damaged the fuselage. It smashed a window, causing rapid depressurization of the cabin, and killing a passenger. 

During this unfortunate incident, a passenger streamed images of the unfolding crisis and potential disaster in “real-time” using the airline’s onboard Wi-Fi service. Passenger Marty Martinez went live on Facebook, said goodbye to his family and friends, and was the first to stream and post graphic images and video of an aviation incident live across social media to a broad audience.

Within minutes of the incident, the Southwest communications team began receiving calls from the media. Immediate next steps included posting confirmation of the incident on Southwest’s online channels and publishing updated statements and videos internally and externally throughout the day.

Southwest’s plan included temporarily changing its digital platform branding to a ‘dark’ version pre-produced in the event of a crisis–a plain blue with a monochrome logo. Southwest canceled advertising and other promotional activities and halted publishing the next in-flight magazine so the CEO could rewrite a sensitive column. The communications team also removed all photos, logos, and other assets from its digital properties and any platforms that could appear inappropriate or tone-deaf. 

Supported by the appropriate steady stream of messaging published across Southwest’s social media, media and press interest focused on two key storylines–the investigation of potential metal fatigue in the engine fan blades and the exemplary performance of the crew, captained by a female former US Navy fighter pilot. 

While the news coverage was mainly negative, conversations on social media were more balanced. In particular, the airline’s social media response was praised as timely and transparent.

With proper planning before an incident, social media communication during and after an incident can distribute timely information, help control anxiety and work to suppress reputation-damaging rumors. While IATA offers Social Media Crisis Guidelines, Tucker Hall can work with you and your company to develop a tailored crisis plan that includes a conscientious digital strategy and leveraging social media to help meet these planning goals and protect your reputation. 

Tucker/Hall VP Theresa Collington has over 20 years of deep digital and social media strategy experience. She is a guest lecturer for Media Relations in Aircraft Accident Investigations at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. Theresa can help you develop or review your aviation incident crisis plan, perform tabletop exercises, and update your incident strategy to include the latest best practices on digital and social media platforms. You can reach Theresa directly at tcollington@evoqueag.online.

There are some best practices for using social media no matter what industry you are in. After decades of working with transportation and logistics companies throughout Florida, we know it is essential for truckers and their companies to understand that social media use must be an important element of their risk management planning. 

After all, social media has broken down the barriers between people’s personal and professional lives, so what truck drivers and other employees post can definitely affect your company. But the trucking industry has a few characteristics that make it particularly vulnerable to reputational and legal harm via social media. 

A poll released at the American Trucking Association’s Management Conference and Exhibition in October showed that voters consistently report a favorable impression of the trucking industry, and in 2020, their support was even further strengthened by the contributions truckers made to keeping our economy moving during the pandemic. However, trucking has obvious inherent risks which threaten that surplus of goodwill. Any accident can be the subject of litigation, and poor use of social media on the part of truck drivers can leave their employers vulnerable in court, potentially exposing them to expensive settlements and judgments. 

Attorneys know this, and the opposing counsel in a lawsuit would like nothing more than to find some unsavory posts to use as evidence in the court of public opinion—which is of course the potential jury pool. It makes their settlement demands seem more reasonable if the defendant is unpopular. You can expect that in any litigation the other side will be combing through your driver’s social media activity as part of discovery. What they find can cause massive reputational harm to both an individual driver and the company as a whole. 

Truck drivers, like many other professions, are also subject to a type of cognitive bias called the “halo effect”: People are evaluated based on the perception of one characteristic, instead of their whole performance. If a driver makes a negative impression about something unrelated to their driving ability, their reputation for safe driving may be harmed as well.  

With this in mind, trucking companies should counsel their drivers to be cautious with what they post online. 

1. Use your account’s privacy options and assume that everything you post or share will become public. Check your account options to ensure that only your friends can see your posts and that you must approve any pictures you are tagged in before they are posted on your wall. Even if you change your account settings in these ways, there’s nothing to prevent a friend from sharing your post with their network or taking a screenshot of it.  
2. Stay positive. No one has ever gotten attacked for posting a picture of themselves with a new grandchild, going out fishing, or with their family at Disney World. Posting a ‘get well soon’ or ‘happy birthday’ on someone else’s wall is fine. When in doubt, remember the old adage, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” And specifically for trucking companies, this cannot be emphasized enough: Drivers should not post photos of accidents on their social media platforms. 
3. Stop commenting. Public comments sections are the worst, most toxic environment online, so just don’t take part. In the best-case scenario, no one sees your comment. In the worst case, people may take notice or misinterpret it, and share it beyond your control. Much like putting toothpaste back in the tube, there’s no rolling back social media content after it has been shared beyond your profile. 

You might decide to codify a social media policy for your company, which is wise: it ensures everyone is equally aware of best practices and the company’s expectations regarding social media use as an employee and insulates the company somewhat if a driver disregards those policies. 

Social media can be a powerful tool to promote your company, but it can also be damaging to your reputation if your employees use it unwisely. Contact Tucker/Hall for assistance with drafting employee social media policies or training your teammates on the effective use of different platforms for your company.

MORE: Social Media Evaluation and Management 

Online Reputation

It can be scary to know that your online reputation is inextricably linked to the opinions of strangers. It’s easy to imagine a situation in which someone holds an unreasonable grudge against your business and goes on an online agitation campaign to “review-bomb” you. Whether an isolated fluke bad experience or an accusation against an employee that has nothing to do with the business, it doesn’t take much to incite the mob.

We deal with it regularly–aggrieved parties usually aren’t interested in apologies or explanations; they just want to take revenge for a perceived slight, and they’re not very responsive to new information. In some cases, the majority of negative reviewers that result from such a scenario have never interacted with your business—they’re just following the herd. Keep in mind that it costs these people nothing except a few seconds to leave a bad review, but it can cost your business much more.

Thankfully, you can mitigate the effects of such negative attention with a sound internal review site policy.

Here are some tips to guard against and recover from review-bombing:

Build a Strong Foundation

It’s harder to tear down a strong reputation than a weak one, so the better you manage your business’s online presence the more resilient you’ll be against negative reviews. This process starts with controlling where and how your business appears online, to the extent possible.

Get Google

Start by getting a Google My Business (GMB) account. It confers a ton of benefits, starting with SEO–Google likes its own products, after all. Your GMB profile is the first thing people see when they google you, so stock it with information. Your location, phone number, hours, website, menu–fill in all the details and it will function as a one-stop-shop for people looking into your business. In addition, it’s where people will review you.

While you’re creating your Google presence, get an AdWords account too. You don’t even have to purchase any ads–the point is to get access to Google’s support services. If you’re having a problem with reviews, call your ad account’s support number and ask to be transferred to GMB support. They’ll do it, no questions asked, and you’ll be able to talk to a real person about your problem.

Because Google reviews appear in search results, they are the most important reviews to monitor. Before anything bad happens, build that five-star reputation! Ask customers, whether verbally or through signs and discounts, to support you by reviewing you. Respond individually to reviewers, thanking those who rate you highly and sincerely reaching out to those who don’t. Goodwill has inertia, just like bad faith, so make it work for you! The better your rating and the more reviews you have, the harder it will be for people to bring it down.

Bad Reviews–What to Do?

If you’re experiencing a flood of unfounded negative reviews, report them all. Google’s policies are clear; if the review indicates that the reviewer didn’t actually have an experience at your business, or that it’s just there to harass or demean, they will remove it. To expedite the process, call Google support and tell them about your issue. It’ll draw their attention to the situation and may result in quicker removal, especially for the more egregious reviews. One unfortunate caveat, however: Google will not remove one-star reviews with no text, as they cannot ascertain whether the person had an authentic experience unless hundreds appear in response to some article or incident.

What About Other Sites?

We haven’t mentioned Yelp, TripAdvisor, or other platforms yet, and there’s a reason for that: Google is far more important. Yelp is the most prominent alternate site, but you’re better served by staying away from them. Although they deny it, Yelp has strong pay-for-play elements and heavily favors advertisers when it comes to support and search results. If you don’t have a Yelp profile for your business, keep it that way–you can’t leave nasty reviews on a nonexistent page! By limiting the number of places people can review-bomb you while getting maximum value from the sites where you do have a presence, you give yourself more control.

If you’re a retail business, you probably have a Facebook page and therefore another place where people can recommend you–or not. Thankfully, the relevant steps for Facebook are similar to those for Google; make an ad account, report harassment, get in touch, and stay vigilant.

Weather the Storm

Because some reviews slip through the cracks in Google’s (or Facebook’s) review policies, a review-bombing incident will likely negatively impact your overall rating. The steps outlined above will mitigate that effect, but can’t prevent it entirely; unfortunately, the online mob has considerable power. The best thing you can do after the storm has passed is to redouble your efforts to get real customers to review you positively. If the incident in question was clearly not your fault, you may be surprised by the level of support your loyal customers will show.

Review sites are the ultimate two-edged sword online. They can showcase your excellence to the world, but also be a source of pain if your profile is targeted with malicious intent. Controlling your presence, staying vigilant, and promoting positive reviews will help harden you against review-bombing, as well as make your business more attractive and accessible.

To learn about how Tucker/Hall can help you fight review-bombing and other online crises, contact Solomon Howard at showard@evoqueag.online or 813.28.0652 x1126.

Facebook and Instagram 

Most people allocate a significant portion of their social media advertising dollars to Facebook and Instagram, which can be accessed through Facebook’s Ad Manager. This is a logical decision because it is the largest social media platform in the world, with 2.6 billion users, and much has been written about changes in its algorithms that inhibit the reach of organic content from Facebook Pages. For both the myriad targeting options it offers advertisers, and the broad audiences it allows advertisers to reach, it is an excellent advertising platform to start with. 

Facebook also offers advertisers the ability to create “lookalike” audiences. Once you have identified a “source audience” from a customer list matched with Facebook users, or people who presently follow your Facebook page, Facebook can create an audience for an ad campaign that is similar to the source audience, tailor it by size and geography (by country), and begin delivering your ad campaign to that audience of people who have a similar profile to those you know have an interest in your product or service. 

While the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League have spearheaded an advertising boycott against Facebook for what they consider to be Facebook’s inadequate response to hate speech on their platform, Facebook has responded by partnering with the U.S. Black Chambers, Inc. to offer free digital training classes, business advice and panel discussions for Black-owned businesses across the country through the month of August. 

However, if your organization is committed to the ongoing #StopHateForProfit movement, there are still plenty of other platforms to consider.  

Twitter 

Twitter may not offer the nuanced targeting options available on Facebook but there are a few mechanisms in Twitter’s advertising platform that make it incredibly useful. 

• Keyword advertising: Interest and topic targeting on Twitter is much less nuanced than on Facebook. However, Twitter makes up for that by offering the option of targeting by keyword, reaching people who have used a specific word or hashtag in their Twitter post, or people who have interacted with tweets containing those words in the last seven days.  

For example, downtown Jacksonville’s Business Improvement District has made the hashtag #dtjax popular—if you are an advertiser interested in reaching people who have an interest in downtown Jacksonville because they live or work there, select dtjax as your keyword for an easy way to reach that audience. 

• Follower lookalikes: This option allows you to target people with interests similar to another account’s followers. You may wish to target competitors, brands that complement yours, or media and news outlets that report on your industry, to name just a few examples. 
• Events: Twitter maintains a list of prominent upcoming events that you can select from when building your advertising campaign, reaching audiences that are interested in events related to your campaign. Review Twitter’s 2022 Marketing Calendar here. 

LinkedIn 

LinkedIn bills itself as “the largest global community of professionals” and for that reason, it is by far the strongest B2B advertising option on social media.  

It offers you the option to target audiences by individual characteristics—alma maters, fields of study, job title, function, seniority, skills—as well as by company characteristics—name, industry, size, connections, etc. 

LinkedIn also offers two ad formats that are unmatched by the other platforms listed here.  

• Dynamic ads are tailored to your advertising campaign’s objectives while gleaning data from individual profiles to create customized ads for each viewer. 
• Sponsored messages place tailored content in LinkedIn inboxes along with other organic messages. 

One final benefit: their website tag, a simple piece of code that is easy to install in any content manager, allows you to track what companies are visiting your website, whether to identify competitors or follow up on prospective clients and retarget visitors with subsequent advertising campaigns. 

Contact Tucker/Hall to discuss how a well-designed social media advertising plan could benefit your company or organization. 

A conversion is any significant interaction with a product or service produced from marketing efforts. Some examples of these interactions could be a visit to a company’s website, a like on Facebook, or clicking a targeted link.

Growing your conversion rate is essential if you want to increase your returns and make the most of every cent you spend on digital marketing. Fortunately, there is an ever-increasing amount of information on how to improve your conversion rates.

Here are three effective ways to increase your digital ad conversions:

Track.

You can’t improve your performance if you don’t know how you’re performing in the first place. In order to understand how your ad is doing, you’ll need to have accurate conversion tracking in place. 

One of the best—and simplest—ways to track conversions is Google Ads. This platform lets you measure your own custom conversions with independently generated code that can be pasted into almost any webpage. 

You can start analyzing trends immediately after you’ve set it up. Google Ads will even let you know where your problem areas are so you can fine-tune your strategy.

Socialize.

Social media networks like Twitter and Facebook have become required features of any well-rounded marketing strategy, but it is a waste of time to create corporate profiles if you haven’t developed a clear digital strategy. To use your social media profiles to help you increase conversions, you’ll need to make sure that your brand’s messaging, look, and tone seamlessly blend across platforms. 

Mobilize.

In 2020, it is crucial that your campaign be adaptive and far-reaching. Mobile devices use a larger part of internet traffic than traditional computers, and this trend doesn’t look like it is going to slow down anytime soon. 

In order to be successful with digital advertising, you need to make sure that every part of your online presence is seamlessly accessible across platforms. Whether it’s on a smartphone, tablet, desktop, or anything in between, you want your ads and content to be easy to read.

SEO: Sizzle vs. Steak

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the cornerstone of your online presence—how easy you are to find, and what people see when they do find you. Today’s environment requires agile, crisp content, which has supplanted the 2000s strategy of keyword saturation. No longer does stuffing each page with your optimized terms help boost your ranking; the strategy is sorely outdated, and it comes across as clumsy to those who find your pages. You can also get rid of pages that exhaustively list every community in your region or metropolitan area—they’re no longer providing much value either.

Stop Blasting

Email was the first electronic messaging service to be made widely available, and perhaps for that reason, outdated strategies dominate the medium. Too many companies bombard their subscribers with promotional content that ends up being counterproductive, purely because of the excessive frequency. Consumers like interesting updates, but they hate getting spammed. Email clients have gotten smarter and more optimized along with their users, so your blasts are often ending up as spam or junk. Remember, once someone hits unsubscribe it’s very hard to get them back. Make sure your emails focus on quality rather than quantity.

Don’t Text While Marketing

Excessive text marketing can land you in the same doghouse, perhaps even more intensely. Texting is more intimate; people tend to use it as their daily means to communicate with family and friends. It’s unlikely that they’ll want their smartphone screen invaded by your latest call to action, so have a very clear opt-in for text alerts, and very easy opt-out. If you’re running both text and email alerts, be smart about which announcements you assign to which medium. Because text alerts are more likely to be seen sooner, reserve the most actionable content for them.

What is a Social Media Audit?

Simply put, a social media audit is a critical evaluation of a company’s social media presence. Auditing helps you figure out if your current social media activity is helping or hurting you and how it can be improved to fit your communications strategy.

Review your Current Social Media Strategy

Why are you on social media in the first place? What are the goals you want to achieve with your social media presence? Whether sales, engagement, leads or something else, keep your goals top of mind and build your social media strategy around them. This is the framework you’ll use for the rest of the process.

Demographics

Who is your target audience on social media? You’ll want to align your social media audience and your brand audience to the extent possible. This is crucial for your social media campaign because it will ensure you’re reaching the right people at the right time.

Size Up the Competition

Check out what your competitors are up to on social media by simply visiting their websites and clicking their social media icons. Peruse those pages, note their number of followers, the frequency of their posts, and their user engagement.

After recognizing the content that works for the competition, compare it to your content. What kind of posts attract the most engagement? What doesn’t work at all? Then you can reorganize your strategy.

Once you have all the information in front of you, you can craft a new strategy that will boost your brand and bolster your social media presence.

No Mudslinging

In today’s highly-charged and sensitive political climate, even the most innocent of posts on social media can be horribly misinterpreted or otherwise cause offense. It’s unreasonable for prospective employers to expect employees to have no political or social views, but they certainly don’t want to be associated with anything vulgar, bigoted, or hateful. Mind the online company you keep and try to express your views in a measured and civil way, especially on hot-button issues.

Keep It Clean

It can be tempting to post pictures of every fun activity, but think twice before you do; make sure none show you in any compromising position. If you appear in such pictures, do everything in your power to have them taken down or at the very least reported as inappropriate. Any sexual or illegal conduct in online photos is a major red flag for employers. Even if it’s in the distant past, it still makes for a negative image of you.

Don’t Look Back in Anger

Prospective employers might take a glimpse at your work history to check for sour grapes. Whatever the circumstances surrounding your departure—it won’t always be amicable—make sure not to post remarks on social media that disparage former bosses and coworkers. It’s a red flag to recruiters and hiring managers that you might be a malcontent who couldn’t handle being let go. If it was your choice to leave, play it off as an opportunity to move on to bigger things, or at least a better situation.

Work ‘You’ vs Personal ‘You’

Often, people’s work demeanor differs greatly from their behavior outside of work. They conduct themselves differently with coworkers than they do with friends and family, and there’s nothing wrong with that. People let loose in a lot of ways, and employers expect that, but you don’t want them to be alarmed by something you post or appear in. If there’s something you wouldn’t be comfortable with them seeing, resist the urge to post it.

Conclusions

Social media is a tricky environment, and society hasn’t yet figured out what its rules are, how hard a boundary exists between professional and personal life online, or what the statute of limitations is for indelicate posts. Until a consensus is reached, err on the side of caution. You don’t want to risk a job or miss the opportunity to get one based on your online conduct.

You might not think Snapchat is important in the marketing of your company, but it’s worth understanding and taking a closer look.

A World That Snaps

When Snapchat was first launched in 2012, most businesses ignored it–thinking it was something only kids and teenagers used. But today, there are nearly 160 million daily Snapchat users with more than 2.5 billion “snaps” or videos sent every day. This means the audience is there and could be receptive to a marketing message.

Custom Logo

The Snapchat “ghost” has become a well-known icon in social media, but did you know that you can customize this logo to suit your brand? Using Snapchat’s custom settings, you can set your profile to hold your company’s logo. It is an essential component of Snapchat marketing.

Stickers

Another prominent and useful feature of Snapchat is the ability to use “stickers,” or small images superimposed over the picture or video you take, to make your content more interesting. If you want to get adventurous, you can even create your own stickers that both you and devoted fans can utilize. Taco Bell is a company that has used this feature to remarkable success.

Snapchat is an excellent social marketing tool that many companies, both large and small, are using in their marketing campaigns. If you need help developing your account or marketing presence, contact Tucker/Hall today.