Two Apps, Two Screens, Two Somethings

Ah the joys of social media and separating one's personal life from professional.  More than a few will say it can't be done, but I'll recommend at least making a physical separation on those social accounts you can.

Facebook's native environment is bad for this -- and I can't tell you how many times something for the institution came out on my personal by accident.

By the grace of God, I'm not in the shape of these two folks.  Twitter tends to be where this happens most, and you can do what I do (and many other pros): use two apps.  I know folks who go so far as to separate those two apps onto different screens on their mobile devices -- a work screen and a personal screen.

The Washington Post famously told the world about one of their social media team's feeling about the upcoming March Madness.  More directly in the sports world, one of UTEP's SIDs mistakenly gave his opinion about a player intended for his personal account.

If It's Digital, It's Not Anonymous

Here is a truism of online life:

"I love [SERVICE] because I can say what I want."

Guess what?  Fill in that sentence with anything -- and it simply is not true.

SnapChat? Nope, they were caching all along.  Screen names? Ask GeauxJudge about that.  Text messages?  Check in with B. Petrino.

Today, the latest epic security fail:  the conviction of a Michigan State student for his bad behavior on the supposedly anonymous YikYak.

Here is the important note from the Lansing State Journal:

He is among at least a dozen college students across the country who since September have been charged with using Yik Yak to post threats, according to news reports.

I do enjoy these I told you so moments -- digital assets are easily copied and extremely transportable.

Send This Link to Every Student-Athlete You Know Now

"This is not Twitter’s fault or the Internet. That’s like blaming Ford for someone being run over. This is people."

Truth spoke by enraged father Curt Schilling in USA TODAY talking about his online revenge campaign against the unwarranted assault on his daughter's commitment to play softball for an East Coast private college.

If you want to see the unexpurgated worse Tweets, of course, Deadspin has them all.

So far, cost the jobs of a part-time Yankees ticket taker and a part-time sports talk host who was a community college student suspended from school.

But the mind-blowing part of this isn't that guys say cruel, misogynistic, heinous things about famous (or in this case, the children of the famous) women.

No, it's that at least a couple of the haters are strongly rumored to be future fellow student-athletes at the college where Schilling's daughter was about to attend.

Let that sink in.

As the former BoSox pitcher himself said:

“It’s idiotic on their part. I know how hard they had to work to get there. They’re going to use 140 characters and let it cost a $140,000 scholarship.”

What was a minor Twitter-Meme among athletic departments late last year, just became real life.

Go.  Go now.  Grab your athletic directors, your coaches, your student-athlete support staffs.

Put this story in their face and dare them to think it couldn't happen here.

Because it can.

To my fellow blogger and father of a high school senior at 38 Pitches, kudos.  Take a moment to read Schilling's dad-rant.  It is angry.  It is in the face of anyone who doubts his point of view.  And on
many, many points -- especially how this kind of digital wilding can lead to teenagers doing physical harm to themselves -- he is spot on.

The Storytellers

The Brothers Grimm captured the concept centuries ago: a truth told through story.

This is a timeless principle.  But since we find ourselves in a world in constant need of reinvention, here's two links to articles that relate the social to the storyteller.

Edelman's quick read on Storytelling in the Age of Social is a great starting point.  Social Times adds some tactics to the strategy with 8 Ways to Become a Better Storyteller.

And as always, you can just apply the Facebook Five to any platform.

Shocking News: People Like to Interact

It's good to have your notions confirmed by research.  You'd think it was obvious, but this article provides some numbers to back the belief that companies and organizations that interact with their fans and followers fair better than those that don't.

Long Time, No Rant; Well That Changes Today

2015 belated greetings, my friends.  What is the one of the longest standing lessons from this space when talking social?

Know the platform, don't automate.

From the "I Told You So" File today, a slice of advice on how to get your inner Taylor rolling.  The highlight quote from this DigiDay story (courtesy of our good friends with the daily PRSA email).

#EachSocialNetworkIsDifferent, or, learn the difference between platforms
The audience on Twitter is different than the audience on Tumblr, which is different than the audience on Facebook. This truism is regurgitated over and over in countless articles on how to achieve social media success for your brand, and yet we continually see the same content cross-promoted on brands’ social networks. If your social team isn’t creative enough to take one piece of content and craft that story differently on each platform, then you need a new social team.

OK, my bold and under at the end.

The Cautionary Study, 2014

They come around with regularity, so I offer up the recent edition of "I told you so" for colleagues related to social media policy and preparedness.  Good friend C.K. Syme makes The Chronicle of Higher Ed's newsletter this week with her summary of a CoSIDA study on best practices for college athletics in social media.  Check out the link here.

The question for you, dear readers, is which side of these numbers are you on?  Perhaps you've got administrative and/or legal constipation that prevents you from formalizing a policy?  Might be time to share some of these kind of surveys with them in hopes of loosening the log jam.

Cause it's not if, but when, the social media monster visits your campus.

History Made by President

At lunch today, President Obama released a statement teasing his announcement regarding immigration.  Granted, the President can command the airtime from the networks, but he went to his Facebook page to make a video pitch.  OK, that's happened before -- classic be the media work.

CNN ran the video clip in its entirety.  And they didn't say a word.  No complaints about access.  No raising questions about the validity of the President going direct to the people.  No editing of the video or using it as b-roll.

THAT is a change that should be noted by all.

Auto Posting = This

I've railed to all of you about the bad policy, the downtrend impact, the just plain laziness of automatic social media -- whether it is cross platform posting or . . . . .

This: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/patriots--twitter-account-sends-out-racial-slur-with-automated-message-034040725.html

Oh, I give you both the link, and the full text of the link to read.

If this cannot convince you of the moronic nature of auto posting, I cannot help you.

Just Another Crimson Day

It shouldn't come as a great shock that a Harvard utilized photos of students in class as a part of a study on attendance.  After all, as this Chronicle of Higher Ed story notes, Harvard also sifted through resident dean email accounts trying to find a leaker.

Why no shock?  People, please.  The greatest personal data mining operation in the history of the world was invented there.

What Were They Thinking?

A little more ominous than "experimenting" on sentiment and motion with Facebook users, this note from the Chronicle.  Stanford and Dartmouth apologizing for fake mailers sent by political science profs to see if they could alter the outcome of elections in Montana.

Not sure what part of this is the most disturbing.

We get enough manipulative mailers from corporations and dark money groups. How did these academics think it was OK to join in?

Two coastal private schools thought they'd just experiment in Montana? Because it was isolated? It was flyover country? It wasn't California or New Hampshire?

Read more: http://chronicle.com/article/DartmouthStanford/149687/

A political-science study that involved a deceptive mailing to Montana voters raises questions about a new research trend.

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News You Can Use

No less than the Grey Lady of Journalism opines:

About 30 percent of adults in the United States get their news on Facebook, according to a study from the Pew Research Center. The fortunes of a news site, in short, can rise or fall depending on how it performs in Facebook’s News Feed.

It comes from an article on the impact of social on the traditional news world.  (Tip of the hat to the daily PRSA Issues and Trends newsletter -- are you a member? You should be.)

By the way, the study link -- that's to a Pew Research piece we referenced a couple of weeks ago regarding the way we use social to get our news, but I was more focused on the items further down the page.  NYT was all about the very first graphic.

So if the NYT is concerned that the gateway to the public is social, why oh why are you not doing the same?

Gets Worse From Here

An interesting take and a use of a favorite analogy regarding the North Carolina scandal in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education.  The authors, from nearby South Carolina, bemoan the inevitable nature of cheating driven by the desire of boards of trustees, high paying donors and upper administrators to bask in the reflected glory of athletes at Good Ole U.  The trio of authors opine:

The real problem is that, as the days pass and this latest scandal fades, coaches, players, tutors, and administrators will most likely go back to business as usual, and college-sports fans across the country will tune in to ESPN’s College GameDay and savor the sweet smell and taste of their big-time college-sports sausage, all the while ignoring the discarded athletes, as well as higher education’s integrity, that have been ground up in the process.

Ah yes, welcome to the sausage factory.

I call Dr. BS on two parts of this.  First, it didn't take the Athletic-Entertainment Complex to cause this type of activity.  Anyone remember when Louisiana Gov. Huey Long dragooned trains into the service of transporting his Fighting Tigers of LSU around the South?  Didn't think so.  BTW, that was the 1930s for the kids these days.

Second, while Disney/ESPN didn't cause all this, the incredible amounts of money flowing are exacerbating it.

About a decade and a half ago when the first thoughts of a national championship in football begat the BCS and today's playoff, I turned to friends and said:

You thought the hundred thousand dollar free throw was something?  Try the million dollar game.

I think I was off by an order of magnitude.  Anyone who thinks whole administrations won't compromise themselves for the incredible piles of cash available is naive.

Remember, we -- the collective of fans, college athletics and university administrators -- have done this to ourselves by demanding the "ultimate" title game.

Free Speech Isn't Free

Let's add a direct athletics chapter to the "say it social, pay a penalty at work" book.  The Big 12 fined Baylor's SID, Heath Nielsen, for comments made on his Twitter account related to the BU-West Virginia game.

Very notable in this:  it was also what he retweeted.

I know many in the game who will forward a link or retweet and then claim, oh, I was just sending along someone else's comments.  No, by forwarding you just ENDORSED those comments.

Having vented myself on radio as a color analyst, I know there is a fine line between accurate reporting of questionable calls and "undermining" officials.

Kevin Trahan of SB Nation makes another key point.  Fining the Iowa State AD for his video comments was one thing, handing out a $1,000 fine to an SID . . . you might as well add another 0 to that so you could get a sense of what that means to the underpaid and overworked in that field.

Sure, Big 12 is trying to send a message.  Here's one: don't do it on the backs of the people who make your machine run.

Auto Post is the Deebil?

No surprise to this space, but always reassuring to see data that backs up the idea that automatic cross posting is a bad idea.  This info graphic, courtesy of today's PRSA email, talks about a dramatic negative impact upon your social media.

#4: Auto-posting to Facebook decreases likes and comments by 70%.

OK.  My cognitive dissonance meter went off.  How did they know that?  What's the source?  They cite a Hubspot study.

A little back tracking, and like many stats, this one is a little old.  A 2012 study from Digital Buzz Blog is the source.  In that infographic, Inside Facebook is the source.

Inside Facebook (we're now at Sept. 2011) cites a study by Applum that was really looking into what happen when you used Tweet Deck or Hoot Suite.  That study link is a 404 now, but an editor's note revealed a little more.  Seems this was focused on the mechanics of auto-posting as they noted that EdgeRank/Facebook had a whitelist of OK sources to auto-post from.

At the end of the string, the repeated stat was more about how it was reposted (from an aggregator program) than what was reposted automatically.

Certainly, point four above fits my view of the social world.  What started me down the chase was what happens when Facebook is very deliberately your secondary audience?  For example, football recruits live in Twitter.  That content is of interest to adults following the program who may be predominantly Facebook demo.  Do you really care at that point if the interaction drops?

This needs more current study.  In a world where our regular information from brands is routinely unseen without "boost", the real devil in these details lies within that Facebook issue.

Interaction The Best Boost

Getting your followers to see your content becomes more and more challenging.  After complaints, Facebook is changing the news feed algorithm again.  However, according to Poynter, there is something you can do:  encourage immediate like and interaction.

From the Poynter blog:

They say they’ll fix these problems and surface more relevant posts by emphasizing two factors: whether a topic is trending, and how soon people like and comment on a posts after they’re published. 

We see this on our own content.  When we have interaction in a "news" flow, we see greater spread.  It also leads to better spread on boosted items as well.

Comes back to an older concept -- your external social media teams who like and share everything and provide you a base become very important once again.

Sometimes, Grandma IS the Sentiment

In the Facebook Five, I talk about making sure you have sentiment in your social postings.  Don't get caught up in "Facebook" as a label -- it applies to a Vine, InstaGram or pithy tweet.  Here's a perfect example, that also IS grandma.  Born the same year as A-State (alumni hook), she's got on her red tee shirt for Pack Priday (another student promo connection) and she's trying to get her WOLVES UP gesture.

We got this through calls to action -- repeatedly asking our fans to send us their spirit photos for the Friday "Pack Priday" runs.

What are you doing to get this kind of Facebook Five impact?  Check the numbers in just two hours . . .

Take Them There

A capture at 30 minutes after a simple picture of the football team loading up for a road trip.  At 10:30 in the morning -- even on a Friday -- fans can't always get off to be a part of this.  But with some "Living Social" forethought, you can take them there.

Check a couple of the key engagement numbers here:  Served to about 1400 of our current 33K base, you have 142 like -- over 10%.  I'd anticipate the climb to continue through the lunch window (a nice double -- hitting one of those important "clock" moments).

Keep this thought in mind: it didn't take any extra effort.  The staffer was already there.  It just took awareness.

The Digital Trail

My oft repeated phrase

digital assets are extremely portable and easily disseminated

applies to all aspects of the work place.  Don't believe me?  Ask Jonathan Waters, former director of the Ohio State marching band.  He swore he didn't swear at band members among other things.  Turns out, there's a recording by one of his drum majors of a disciplinary meeting, and The Chronicle covered that last week.

Lois Lerner's ongoing email saga this week moved to her BlackBerry account.  In her back and forth with a friend, she called one political faction "assholes".  While the ability to locate her Outlook-based correspondence continues, the idea of locating things within her phone reminds me of another person, then Arkansas head coach Bobby Petrino, and his question of "can they get my texts."

I'm left once again with the good ole Earl Long School of Communication.  The late Louisiana governor (and many other politicians in other regions -- I recall Uncle Earl because of regionalism -- the phrase isn't original to him) famously advised:

Don't write what you can say, don't say what you can't whisper, don't whisper what you can't wink

EULA Strikes Again

Welcome to Matt's Cafe Internete, where . . . not unlike Rick's Cafe Americain . . . we are shocked, shocked, to learn that your personal data is being used and manipulated.

Please people -- the Zuck and Co. never make a move without having pre-planned (and planted) the change in the End User License Agreement, now known more as the "ToS" for Terms of Service.

Kudos to Forbes who discovered that once again, four months prior to the "manipulation" experiment in some folks newsfeeds that Facebook added that to your EULA.  Read more here.