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.

It's not Engagement Without Interaction

A follow-up thought for my colleagues who attended the Association of Louisiana Alumni Executives talk last week.  You can message all day long, but the interaction comes when you do two things.  The obvious one: enable and answer comments.  The second, sign your posts.  Here's a recent and somewhat random example.  I'm putting out the note about how friends and followers can do a little to beat the Facebook algorithm and see more from us by clicking to "Get Notifications" (BTW -- have you been promoting that to your Facebook followers?).

That's not what Susan Littleton wanted to know, and she used that opportunity to ask her question.  I didn't have the answer, but took the time to acknowledge her question and say when we might have an answer on honor roll lists.

And, see you liked the comment?  What do you think the chances are that we got one more dedicated follower?

More Reasons for Caution!

For some time I've encouraged the avoidance of ! in social media posts based both on research (see my Match.com image -- a staple in my social media presentations) and personal preference.  Today, a couple of new items supporting the sparing use of ! -- but also one meme that is promoting it.

Like the use of more than two hash tags, spam filters are looking for the use of ! to replace "i" in subject lines, and may catch your enthusiasm as well.  They are really looking for the multiples as this column on how to avoid the spam filter notes (irony: of the 10 bullet points, three of them used an exclamation point).

A little Australian flair to stress the downside of the multiple marks, and another on PR writing technique (see item four) that using them along with all caps undercuts credibility.

No less than the New York Times weighed in against the exclamation in emails back in 2011 -- no surprise for the stuffy Old Gray Lady -- but gives me a great new piece of ammunition courtesy of Mark Twain.  America's storyteller brings it all home:

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.

The judicious use of the mark, however, may be something we have to consider.  Arguing a similar line of thought that I preach -- that digital communication strips off all the context, Drake Braer points out they can be useful to take the harsh off a cold read.  Then again, the friendly in this example gets to the point of sounding like you're yelling at me:

This infographic and it's back-up research tends to support the idea that adding them gets you retweets -- so is this a platform specific plus?  Reading into the article to me affirms the my original position.  For all the good an exclamation may bring in a retweet, it has the same deleterious effect on click through rate.  I want you to read something or see something -- and the ! has demonstrated negative impact.

Future from the Past

They promised me jet packs and robot housemaids.  So my vision of what a future should look like is framed by what childhood popular culture abounded.  Results in a primary colored pop world of the 80s and 90s.

Wondering out loud -- when so much of the vision of the future was presented as dystopian to Gen X and Y, is it no surprise that their graphics are dark and stoic?  My Batman wasn't nearly as goth as my kid's Dark Knight.

A roundabout way to this new nugget -- how much of today's networked world was foretold in some report from 1982.  My first cynical question is: how many other reports that said we'd see a blossoming of craft printing are forgotten.

Still, a lot of where we are is correct as the Pew Research folks point out.  How close?

“Electronic home information systems…create classes of people based on interests, skills, and even specialized languages. As it becomes easier to link with various others of these classes, to establish relationships with members of these classes, to identify with them, ties with traditional peer group members may break down.”

Or, as the kids say, social cra-cra friends.

Another moment to plug my favorite single book and my favorite quote.

Kansas Follows Through with Policy

After backing away, the Kansas Board of Regents moved ahead with a strong social media policy for its faculty and staff.  Read from the local media.

From The Told-You-So Files

Remember back in the day when this space foretold and advocated for branded journalism?

Another reminder that the future is now.

Here is both the lede and the takeway from an article that you really should go ahead and click above to read fully:

One former USA Today editor says that he's jumping ship to the world of content marketing because editorial is dead. Is there any business model that can save the future of news?
 

The Most Expensive Free Thing in the World is . . .

Social media.

Without a doubt.  Reminded of this fact listening to the pitch session for one of our design classes.  Our College of Fine Arts graciously asked if I'd serve as a "judge" for four branding designs, and one of the teams made social media their lead creative.  Outstanding, I'm thinking, until one of the presenters says:

"Because social media is free, and we know we won't have a large budget."

In the Q&A, I asked them, why did they think social media was free?  Cause it doesn't cost anything to sign up for Facebook, Twitter, etc., etc.

Dose of real-world now, kids.  What does your time as a design cost?  Um, not sure.  Is your creative time not billable?  Not valuable?

They got it pretty quick -- and today, here's a link off PRSA's daily digest of info that reinforces once again, the great myth that social is free.

And, the only free thing more expensive than social media?

Bad social media.

Want to Believe Facebook Can Do Better

Many recall my earlier questioning of the brilliance of the "related stories" tab.  Here's one from a friend in Natchitoches.  I wonder is this is driven by lack of base -- Northwestern State is a smaller school, they're doing some very bad regional demographic profiling and they can see "demon" is the mascot.  According to this story from Inc, Facebook is improving this area.

Example like this don't give us lots of hope.

Difference Between Being Digital Native and DigiSavvy

One wonders, and this from The Chronicle is an excellent overview of the belief that the rising generation of youth is so "in tune" with what it means to "be digital."

The title says it all: Confronting the Myth of the Digital Native.

The takeaway quote:

Siva Vaidhyanathan, chair of the media-studies department at the University of Virginia, describes Ms. Hargittai as a "pioneer of empirical Internet studies." It is "absolutely untrue" that young people understand how the Internet works when they enroll in college, he says. "That myth is in the direct interest of education-technology companies and Silicon Valley itself. If we all decide that young people have some sort of savantlike talent with digital technology, than we’re easily led to policies and buying decisions and pedagogical decisions that pander to Silicon Valley."

Just cause you're born with it, doesn't mean you really know it.  Kind of a digital nature versus nurture, wouldn't you say?

Having just conducted a mini-seminar for students here, I can confirm what Eszter Hargittai says in the story.

That a two-year-old can swipe and click on a tablet device is one thing; being DigiSavvy must be taught.

Hodgman's Moment

If you aren't following Alton Brown's podcast, you should take a moment to grab this week's episode which featured John Hodgman, he of Mac-PC commercials, collaborations with Johnathon Coulton, of fake trivia and fact books and his own podcast.

Today, however, I wish to pay homage to genius -- sheer genius -- in the elaboration of that moment when internet life changed for everyone associated with it.  Alton had asked John about the "special" relationship he must have had with Apple during those days, and Hodgman said not as much as you'd think, but he remembered very distinctly the day -- unannounced -- a first generation iPhone arrived at his house:

We all knew it the moment we held it, well, this is the future. Books will be written about how culture flipped at that moment. . . . What it did was put the internet, which until 2007 was still a relatively esoteric niche world of relatively affluent gear heads and nerds, and publishing and media types, and put it in the hand of everyone who had a phone and that meant it expanded demographics of who was using the internet dramatically.

There it is -- Hodgman's Moment.  Books to be written indeed.  Hey kids following this feed, there's your next media studies thesis statement.

The internet into your hand and literally changed the world. The internet penetrated your world and it has never gone away. It left the confines of a tethered world - physically attached to infrastructure, electric, LAN - and became mobile, a digital parasite and we became it's very willing hosts. We became like Chekov receiving his Ceti eel in Khan; or assimilated into the Borg. 

When I first heard this section, it really didn't sink in.  In fact, I thought, why John, please.  We were starting social media, we'd had websites since the mid to late 1990s.

And then on the second pass through while cycling (because I wanted to hear more about the specific BBQ places around Oxford, Miss.), it hit me.  He was right.  I indeed was one of those gearheads.  A media person.  A connected by affluence individual.

Mark it down -- Hodgman's Moment.

It also signaled the end of the elite of news decides, but a utopian democracy did not replace that void. We did not become better by some meritocracy of thought or message. Instead a new tyranny of the deliberately exploitative took control. By algorithm, by advertiser, by monied interest - the public discourse went from the control of the learned elite to the power of the systematic hustlers. (Oh now go find my other guru of these memes, Neil Postman.)

From controlling elite - who themselves beholden to paid special interest thru advertisers, but not always fully controlled by them - to the direct connection of those who could game the system or purchase it. It cannot be reversed. No matter the level of societal control, no amount of Mullah desire to reverse liberal progress or dictatorial power to command a society - once unleashed the society is forever itself lashed to the connectivity. 

The deliciously ironic conclusion of cutting the cords is the maniacal, absurdity of being wirelessly connected. The prison is without walls because the world now becomes the prison. The most Faustian of choices and fates. (Or as Alton admits in listening to John's Apple story -- he has days he carries only a non-SMS, non-data flip phone.  He has to be accessible, but it is without that oh-so-tempting internet in his pocket.)

Hodgman's Moment is diminishing, and in time may be forgotten by the general public. The particular technology - the iPhone - disappears, but no one is left who can remember a time in which everyone was not connected. Once it happens it can't be reversed.  A digital native will have it delayed, but anybody born into an area where Hodgman's Moment has already occurred has no real ability to escape. 

It's like a wildfire as it moves across societies and it can result in a moving definable line; a border defined by the 3G changeover between a pre-Internet network to the device in the hand. We are left with places like the remotest areas of certain countries and regions of the world, or a North Korea where a whole population is still in the pre-Hodgman's Moment by the sheer force of the old political guard, an elite who themselves are digitally connected but fearful of their ability to control their analog masses should the Hodgman's Moment flash across their borders.

Can Someone Explain the Logic?

Please Facebook.  Simple answers.  What relates to what content.  What we can do to tag that content so it makes sense to the end user.

In the classic sense -- I don't trust a media outlet when I know the kind of errors they make regarding me, my interests or my employer.

Facebook -- when you offer up random (and potentially offensive) related content -- you do the same.

Earlier today, I saw a story on the new women's basketball coach at Arkansas.  They served related content with a spoof expansion of football and a feature on craft beer.  Really?

But The Facebook -- like the Honey Badger -- don't care.

Stop more silliness like below (how does Junkyard Dog and King Herod relate . . . .)?

Secrets of the Related Story

As Facebook morphs again, the new feature of related stories after you click on a news item from a friend intrigues me.  Anyone figured out what drives it, and how we get our content into those hoppers?

Meanwhile, we return to a world in which the click interaction of our followers becomes the prime metric.