Don’t Hold Up Signs on the Internet…

Sam Harrelson on December 1, 2015

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We’ve all seen them before and I’m seeing more and more of them now that the Holiday Season is upon us (and today is “Giving Tuesday”).

I know I’ve seen a number of well-intentioned pictures of people holding up signs to support a specific cause on social networks this winter. A large number of those, especially on Facebook, have been churches and religious groups.

I hate to be Donald Downer, but be careful with such postings, especially if they include your face. It’s very (very very) easy to take those and do less-than-well-intentioned things with the images after they’re found via Google Image Search or a Twitter Search or Instagram hashtag search etc.

You’re not Michelle Obama, but that doesn’t mean that your own perception of your network size (or good intention) protects you from the wilds of the internet in 2016 and beyond…

Michelle Obama gave the Internet a sign—here’s what it gave back: “But once Reddit got ahold of the photo, its users—well-known for hosting Photoshop battles such as this—went wild adding anything and everything to the blank page”

So be careful, or you could be espousing something you probably wouldn’t agree with.

Fusion’s 8 Person Snapchat Team

Sam Harrelson on November 24, 2015

Fusion is a popular “millennial” lifestyle news / site and has a team of 12 devoted to Snapchat, Vine, and Instagram (8 alone for Snapchat).

I talked about the how’s / why’s news and lifestyle sites are devoting such resources to these networks recently, and this is further validation:

Fusion’s got a 12-person distributed news team: “The digital news site and cable network for millennials on Monday announced a new team to create stories and videos meant to be read and watched exclusively on social platforms. The social newsroom of 12 people includes eight who are focused on Snapchat alone. Others work on Instagram and Vine. Fusion hired Laura Feinstein, a former editor in chief of Vice’s Intel-backed Creator’s Project, to lead the group.”

“News” as we know it in its commodified post-industrial state is changing its delivery mechanism on an increasing pace from newspaper to newspaper delivery to radio to television to cable to the web to social networks to messaging…

Why WordPress Still Matters

Sam Harrelson on November 24, 2015

Good thoughts from Om here about the place of having your own website (whether it’s at WordPress.com or a self hosted WordPress installation for more flexibility) and feeding the beast:

Some Thoughts on the New WordPress.com and Mac App – Om Malik: “Most of those platforms are built to be silos, Facebook and Instagram being the worst offenders. Their approach is a threat to the open web as much as the rise of the app-centric internet. As someone who feeds the monster, I should have the ability to keep a copy of what I create. To stay relevant, WordPress.com has to become not only a publishing tool but also a means for me to route my sharing. Its role is that of an information router. I am looking forward to what talented developers do with the new capabilities of WordPress.com.”

WordPress Reboots and Opens Up Code Base

Sam Harrelson on November 23, 2015

Today we’re announcing something brand new, a new approach to WordPress, and open sourcing the code behind it.

Source: Dance to Calypso | Matt Mullenweg

I frequently talk with clients or perspective clients about the differences between having a site on WordPress.com and having a self-hosted site on WordPress (I’ll write more about that soon). The biggest difference being that if you have your site on WordPress.com, you’re trading off some functionality and customization for a more “set it and forget it” approach to having a site or blog. Of course, both options have their advantages and disadvantages (again, more soon on that).

I’m glad to see WordPress.com code being opened up and the switch from PHP and MySQL to Javascript and an API for backend power, but I’m a little cautious about what that means for the self-hosted sites (WordPress 4.4 is coming) in terms of the amount of work I’ll be doing in December to update our clients’ sites 🙂

Regardless, glad to see the open web taking on the likes of Medium and Facebook.

Visually-Driven Information-Rich Explainers

Sam Harrelson on November 23, 2015

It’s an opportunity for visual storytelling that you won’t find anywhere else on the web.

Vox’s email announcing their arrival on Snapchat included this:

We’re using it to create a new form of deep, visually-driven information-rich explainers that we’re really proud of, and we think you’ll really like. What’s more, they’ll only exist on Snapchat, and they’ll only last for 24 hours each.

Source: Find Vox on Snapchat Discover – Vox

I read lots of tech jargon and buzzword filled studies and announcements everyday, but “visually-driven information-rich explainers” is a new one. I’ll have to use that myself in a meeting sometime soon.

Explainers aside, it’s definitely interesting to see how Vox, Vice, Buzzfeed, The Verge, Gawker’s sites etc are pivoting. Their once advertising and story heavy front page sites, that more resembled a traditional print newspaper than something like a “blog” or “news website” (I think of boing boing), are being put on the back burner to the flow outward of their news.

There are very good reasons for this that we can all take something from despite our business goals. Advertising revenue on that mode of website is drying up as ad technology gets smarter, marketing directors get wiser, and viewers start going elsewhere for their information binges or check-ins. That shift of advertising revenue probably doesn’t concern your business or group etc.

Those elswewheres, however, do. And for the time being, those elsewheres are social networks.

You probably arrived here from seeing this post on Twitter or Facebook or Google+ (hey, some do). “Social” traffic on this blog and many of the client sites we manage has proven to be “stickier” than traffic coming straight from a Google search, unless the search was for a highly targeted keyword (say “visually-driven information-rich explainers”).

However, reaching people on social networks and getting their attention is not as easy as it was just four or five years ago. That’s obvious if you have tried to put up a Facebook post on your company’s page and waited for the highly qualified traffic to come rolling in without any further effort (hint: it won’t).

Vox gets this as do many of the news / destination sites in their genre of web writing. Companies and groups successfully leveraging (to use another buzz term) social media networks for traffic, engagement, or leads are also aware of the challenge.

To be honest, the ability to tap into social networks is only going to get more difficult and … bizarre in the coming years. Again, Vox etc understand that their their websites are transitioning into “dumb pipes.” It’s the same thing we all want from our cable companies or internet providers… don’t fancy up the service, just give us fast access to the web. We’ll find all the entertainment we need without Comcast throwing in a package deal.

Except websites are dealing with content and information, rather than bandwidth, for their flow outward. Why does Vox etc care about having their “explainers” going out to Snapchat? Because that’s where we’re increasingly going to find the news and content and opinion that we want to have when we want to have it. I’d venture to bet that Vox.com’s traffic coming in from mobile Safari on iPhones isn’t as stimulating to their bottom line as the traffic coming in from social sites.

Social networks aren’t just about pictures of your friends’ babies or cat pictures anymore. Something like 35% of Americans viewed Facebook as their main news source last year and 8% viewed Twitter as the same. That’s only increasing:

How do social media users discover news? Facebook is an important source of website referrals for many news outlets, but the users who arrive via Facebook spend far less time and consume far fewer pages than those who arrive directly. The same is true of users arriving by search. Our analysis of comScore data found visitors who go to a news media website directly spend roughly three times as long as those who wind up there through search or Facebook, and they view roughly five times as many pages per month. This higher level of engagement from direct visitors is evident whether a site’s traffic is driven by search or social sharing and it has big implications for news organizations who are experimenting with digital subscriptions while endeavoring to build a loyal audience.

Interestingly, we’re running into a unique situation in that social networks as we know them are morphing into something else just as news, content sites, and companies are figuring out how to use them for traffic back to their own sites.

In the last year, we’ve seen the rise of Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News, Google Now, Snapchat Discover etc. “News” is blending in with editorial content and the method of delivery based on a person’s preferences is where the money is going to flow.

If you haven’t already, check out Nuzzel and you’ll see why.

That’s because our social preferences and our media consumption preferences are coalescing in this third generation of the web. “Going to” Facebook to check our newsfeed will seem as antiquated as picking up a newspaper from a newsstand to check the day’s news. However, once newspapers started being delivered to our homes, we started viewing the news differently. The same thing is happening here with social. The news / content /info we want (and the algorithms think we need based on our bank balance, location, heart rate, travel speed, or upcoming schedule) is going to be coming to us, via messengers and notifications on our mobile devices.

Messengers are the next wave that is quickly coming to the US (already happened in much of the world outside North America just as texting, video chat etc took a while for Americans to catch on). These initiatives by Google, Facebook, Apple, Snapchat etc are a very real signal that they want to be the distributor of the content that we’ll inevitably be receiving via Facebook’s Messenger or WeChat or Whatsapp or whatever we all network shift to for our social spaces in the next 3 or so years.

What does that mean to your small business selling widgets or your nonprofit?

Everything if you’re doing any marketing on the web in 2015.

Quality Means More Than Quantity Even on Social Media

Sam Harrelson on November 18, 2015

Sometimes we think that just putting out a consistent number of things will just create some outliers that’ll help us win. Heck, I even believed this for a long time and advised people to just focus on quantity. I don’t think that’s true anymore. Yes, we need to output things at high quantity, but we need to treat every single piece of output as the one that’ll be a breakout hit.

Source: Buffer’s Marketing Manifesto in 500 Words

Quality > Quantity despite what other social media experts might tell you.

Hearts on Twitter and Secondary Orality

Sam Harrelson on November 3, 2015

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“We are changing our star icon for favorites to a heart and we’ll be calling them likes. We want to make Twitter easier and more rewarding to use, and we know that at times the star could be confusing, especially to newcomers. You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite.”

Source: Hearts on Twitter | Twitter Blogs

Interesting connection between Twitter and its rebranded hearts with the concept of “secondary orality:”

“In the era of electronic media it is difficult to keep the distinction between oral culture and literate culture, since there are more and more hybrid forms of culture that spread on the internet. The secondary orality character of applications like Twitter is a manifestation, a consequence of humans’ desire to group, not out of a survival instinct but as a deliberate, rational act of re-integration, as statement of self-consciousness and declaration of identity within neo-tribal cultures.”

Source: Liliana Bounegru | Secondary Orality in Microblogging

When people ask me how Twitter is different than Facebook (or Pinterest, Instagram etc), I like to present my admittedly boiled-down take on the phenomenon of secondary orality in a trans-literate global culture.

Charity has changed (listen up, churches).

Sam Harrelson on October 28, 2015

“One thing is clear: Giving has changed, says JoAnn Turnquist, president and CEO of the Central Carolina Community Foundation. “People want to feel ownership of how their dollars are being used,” Turnquist says. Previous generations, Turnquist says, “were brought up to give to institutions, organizations that had secured the community’s trust,” she says. “The donors trusted that their dollars would be used appropriately.” “Move forward to 20- and 30-somethings that are tech savvy, get their information differently, from peers and online — they are motivated more by peer influencers,” Turnquist says.”

Source: Flood Shows How Charity Has Changed – Free-Times.com

And churches wonder why “giving” is down among members and supporters? It’s because churches aren’t keeping up with the “how” part of stewardship and giving and being inflexible.

Social Media Marketing’s Decline

Sam Harrelson on October 25, 2015

“It feels weird admitting this, too: We as a Buffer marketing team—working on a product that helps people succeed on social media—have yet to figure out how to get things working on Facebook (especially), Twitter, Pinterest, and more.

And that’s super scary to admit.”

Source: We’ve Lost Nearly Half Our Social Referral Traffic in the Last 12 Months

Brutally honest (but incredibly smart) post by the Buffer marketing team. If you don’t know, Buffer is one of the services out there that allows you to easily share your content from one place to another by hooking everything up together. It’s a great service (I use competitor dlvr.it here but I do use Buffer with a few clients).

So often I have these sorts of conversations with existing or potential clients that have to do with the dwindling returns on using Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn to try and get more pageviews back to a site or newsletter.

Part of the problem has to do with the nature of metrics and how things are changing, part has to do with the maturity of social media, and part has to do with the realization of businesses that if you really want to get a vast number of clicks back to your site, you’re going to have to pay for them (organic reach via social is all but dead if you’re not willing to invest in a social media manager or a consultant like me… just saying). Social media has changed and evolved. Social media is not an umbrella. You can’t blast out a post to Twitter and Facebook and wait for the clicks to come.

… and you shouldn’t be waiting for clicks.

Hey Bullfrog

Sam Harrelson on October 15, 2015

The ability to change our minds is one of the greatest human blessings. To see an issue or a situation, take into account the data presented, be reminded of our past history of decisions, and ultimately come to a conclusion is a wonderful adaptation our mammalian brains have come up with to help us deal with the insanity of existing in this overwhelming universe.

“Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles
What makes you think you’re something special when you smile?”

We often don’t share our ideas, thoughts, dreams, or views because we don’t feel as if we know enough on the topic at hand, or there are people who have already volunteered enough of their own viewpoints to suck all the oxygen out of a conversation. With the rise of social media and perceived online anonymity, it’s easy to throw up our hands in the face of the vapid cacophony and decide not to take part in all of the noise.

Although we are all more than capable of making quality decisions on everything from our lunch to our 401k investments, it’s easier to not engage or just have someone else make the decision for us. That’s human nature. It’s also a sentiment we have to daily engage with and overcome. The universe needs our voices and our views. Speak up.

But do so not with an over abundance of confidence or certainty… or fear.

“Some kind of innocence is measured out in years
You don’t know what it’s like to listen to your fears.”

During the recording sessions for The Beatles’ song Hey Bulldog, Paul McCartney began to bark and howl in a dog like voice as the song reached its climax. John Lennon does what any well minded singer might do, and immediately alters his corresponding lyric from the intended “hey bullfrog” (there was a reference to “bullfrog” at the beginning of the song) to “hey bulldog.” And hence, the name of the song changed as well.

Hey Bulldog is one of those songs in which The Beatles sneak an incredible set of lyrics, base lines, and piano notes (it was written as a piano rocker originally). It appears on the otherwise flippant Yellow Submarine album and as a b-side to Lady Madonna (also a piano rocker), and doesn’t make many Top 10 Beatles Songs lists in 2015. However, the song has amazing staying power and has been covered countless times by everyone from Dave Matthews to Dave Grohl. It’s one of my favorites, as well.

It’s not a *nice* Beatles song. John’s lyrics don’t speak of young and un-requited love, or the need for love. Instead, the menacing guitar from Harrison, grandiose bass line from Paul (Harrison was fond of telling Paul to tone down the bass on the songs he wrote as Paul tended to dominate the melody otherwise), and rambling piano backdrop are matched by Lennon’s lyric structure employing a simple but clever repetition of “Some kind of…” at the start and an eyebrow raising cutdown to finish the phrase.

“Some kind of solitude is measured out in you
You think you know me but you haven’t got a clue.”

Loneliness, solitude, innocence… all get measure out in the listener and John doesn’t hold back. He tells us if we’re lonely, we can talk to him in a passive aggressive manner that runs opposite of the sentiment in a song like Tell Me What You See from Help.

It’s a tongue in cheek challenge to misguided reliance on others and false dependency (in my mind, at least… feel free to argue). Even so, there’s the beauty of the interaction and changing of minds happening in a meta real time sense during the recording sessions.

There’s the obtuse and avant-garde rap battle between John and Paul after the barking. And John changed the title mid-way through the song.

The change of the lyric, and ultimately song title, is an outward expression of the creative genius of The Beatles as well as a beautiful testament to the interplay (on the spot sometimes as here) between John and Paul as musicians, friends, and partners.

We have the same opportunities everyday to influence those around us, and be influenced by those around us (or virtually in the case of online interactions). Every major religious system includes an ethical component for these types of influencing and interactions. We’d do well to follow those guidelines. But speak up.