The great “tweet scheduling” boogey man

I agree with much of the advice that’s given here about Twitter etiquette. Some of it more than others, but this part in particular stuck out at me as being something I disagree with quite strongly:

8. Avoid automation if possible. Scheduling tweets is tricky. It’s not the worst thing in the world, as long as the tweets still sound human and there’s someone to engage with people once the tweets are sent, but something about it just feels icky.

This is part of the same mindset that says all social media comments from customers deserve – nay, necessitate! – a response from the brand they’re directed toward. But that overlooks the reality that neither of these pieces of advice are really achievable at any sort of scale, at least not as part of a core, multi-pronged program.

See corporate publishing programs need to be fed. They need to be fed around the clock. And there’s content – blog post links, photos, videos and more – that needs to be distributed on Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere inbetween all those idyllic responses and conversations.

This sort of advice assumes that every program has a 10+ person team that can cover all aspects of publishing, with a full team on duty 24 hours a day to push out links as soon as they pop, instead of being scheduled for an optimal time and in the context of everything else that’s going on.

So I’m sorry if some people think this “feels icky” but tools that allow for scheduled publishing (and the managed ed cals where such publishing is planned) are largely necessary for any program that operates at scale.

(I realize I’m kind of picking on a fairly innocuous comment, but this sort of thinking really raises my hackles.)

Quick Takes: 5/31/13

This piece about why niche media is important is not only spot-on but also more than a little distressing as it evaluates some recent mainstream foul-ups. But aside from that I think it exemplifies why newspapers in particular missed an opportunity back in 2003 or so to reach out to the emerging independent blogger field and work with subject matter experts, bringing them into the fold in a way that was mutually beneficial instead of playing around with paywalls and so on.

An interesting perspective on why Marissa Mayer is making the moves at Yahoo she is.

Poynter has a great rebuttal of Buzzfeed’s much-discussed “The Social Media Editor is Dead” piece. In my opinion there’s still a strong need for there to be one – two is actually better – who act not just in a traditional editorial capacity but who also are kind of the heart and soul of the program, who keep it true to itself, who know what the goals are, who knows the nuances of the fan base and more. This is’t a dead role, it’s one that is vital and necessary if if the responsibilities are and will continue to evolve over time.

I think this hand-wringing story about the demise of high school newspapers falls victim to the trap of getting hung up on form-factor. So what if a high school is producing a Tumblr blog instead of a print paper if the content is similar? It’s not about the printing press (or the blog platform or anything else) it’s about training kids to be writers, photographers, coders and more in a way that gets them excited about the process, not the distribution form.

This article shouldn’t be necessary as everyone should already be in complete agreement that The Monkess are and always have been cool.

Medium is a platform that I’m super-intrigued about. The closed beta that it’s been in for an extended period has allowed it to highlight and curate some high-quality material from some great folks. But when it does open up and it loses the mystique of being a high-end, prestige magazine of sorts it will have to use it’s cool set of tools and functionality to compete with WordPress, Tumblr and everything else in the platform market.

Movie theater chains want to force studios to make trailers shorter by 30 seconds, or about 1/5 of their current running time. The hilarity starts when the theater owners start talking about shorter trailers creating a better movie-going experience when they’ve done everything in their power to make that experience almost excruciating while grabbing every ad dollar they can.

Long story short: We’re not going to Mars any time soon, though it will be super cool when we do.

No, we don’t want Facebook – or any other company – deciding what is hate speech. That’s largely because at any scale it needs to be algorithm-driven and that leads to an incredibly faulty system that will penalize a lot of innocent people while still letting lots slip through.

Storify expands its feature set

I’m super-interested in Storify’s announcement of a VIP level of service that brings with it lots of cool features.

While the basic product will remain free, VIP will give publishers access to advanced tools, including the ability to customize the display of their stories and more. Most interesting to me, though, is that publishers can use it as a live-blogging platform. That could make Storify a very cool alternative to products like CoverItLive and others. The way publishers can embed their Storify stories on-domain and pull in audience comments, photos and videos gives this the potential to be pretty exciting and a new and innovative way to provide live feeds in a curated manner that’s cleaner – and less intrusive – that if you’re pushing all that to Twitter.

If we’re going to have hashtags we may as well do something with them

Yesterday I wrote this post for Voce Nation about how hashtags are becoming the new taxonomy for the social web but how what was still lacking was a universal, platform-spanning search that can bring together conversations that happen on Twitter, Google+ and other social platforms.

One thing I didn’t include in that post, though, was how lacking the ability to see with, say, Facebook which posts dealt with which topics, business areas or more what brand publishing managers can do is create that sort of categorization themselves.

Personally I’ve done a bunch of work recently revising editorial calendars I manage to include this sort of information. So I’ve created headings for Topic, Business, Category and more. They vary depending on the program, but it’s an attempt to bring a little order to the chaos.

More than that it will hopefully allow me and my team to look back at a period of time and see better what we’ve published and how it matches up against some of the content goals that have been setup. So how often are we supporting X business area. How often are we appealing to X type of fan? Since that sort of bundling is missing from networks’ native insights and analytics we’ve had to do that ourselves.

Organizing a successful brand editorial calendar

With all the sturm and drang about “real time marketing” that has emerged since Oreo got a bunch of headlines with their quickly-turned-around Super Bowl ad, what hasn’t been discussed much is what role these sorts of updates play within the bigger picture of a brand’s publishing program. Todd Wasserman at Mashable asks if brands should have an editorial calendar for such a program and I’ll put in my vote as a resounding “yes.”

I know there are people out there who say that pre-planning social media updates runs counter to the very spirit of the social media world. Those people say things should be very spur of the moment, spontaneous and conversational. I don’t necessarily disagree. But the reality of the situation is that companies have certain goals they are trying to meet and by planning out content publishing and distribution means they can be sure to get certain messages out while also leaving room for those more spontaneous moments.

It also allows brands to schedule updates throughout the day. Often a bunch of news will break within a short period of time. But it’s not good (in all cases) to then push out seven Facebook updates inside of an hour. It’s better from a number of perspectives to space them out over the course of the day, with each update getting a time-slot that’s appropriate for its topic, priority and other variables.

But what should a brand editorial calendar do and what should it look like?

Form
I’d love to be able to share a “must use” type of template that everyone should use but the reality of the situation is that it depends. The best form for an ed cal is what’s working for everyone involved. I swear by a Google Docs spreadsheet but if there’s something else that fits with everyone’s workflow then by all means go for it. A lot of publishing suites come with ed cal management as a feature so if that works for everyone then so be it.

However, a good ed cal I’ve found should certainly contain a few things:

1. Platform designation: What platform is something being published to.
2. Date/Time: When the message is being published.
3. Topic: What is that message about. It’s going to be important to setup a good taxonomy or set of categories that everyone agrees on and understands.
4. Message: What is ultimately being published.
5. Approvals: Someone needs to be the final sign-off on things, and your ed cal should have this layer of accountability built into it for everyone’s sake.

Optional items to include are:

1. Audience segmentation: If you’ve been dividing up your audience, whether it’s by message type or platform, it will be good to track this here so you can measure it against your program goals.
2. Shortlink tracking: Keeping a record of the shortlinks you’re using will allow you to easy go back and see how one performed after a period of time. It also allows for another level of accountability since it’s so easy to use the wrong link or make another easy mistake.

Workflow
Again, this is going to vary from program to program. In some cases an agency or the program owner within a company will have relative autonomy to operate within agreed upon program parameters. In others there will need to be multiple layers of approvals that are needed.

What’s important is that everyone knows what this workflow is and is holding up their end of the bargain. If approvals are needed within X period of time then everyone needs to commit to that and then be held accountable to it.

There need to be clearly defined roles on a publishing team. Who is writing what? Is it broken up by time of day, platform type, topic or something else? Whatever the case everyone on the team needs to know what they’re responsible for and when they need to be delivering what they owe.

Flexibility
A good ed cal should absolutely be editable. On more than one occasion I’ve completely blown up an ed cal I manage in order to rearrange things and balance them out a bit, whether it’s because there are suddenly a glut of updates in one period of time or some other reason.

It’s also important that items be identified as being something that’s time-sensitive versus something that’s evergreen, so when things do need to be rearranged there’s a sense of priority that guides the process.

Ideally there’s also room in the planned updates – the kind that can be scheduled for publishing in software like Adobe or Hootsuite – for those sorts of ad hoc conversational moments. And whatever scheduling is done should be in line with the best practices which have emerged for that individual program, meaning how many posts per day is the tipping point at which fans start to see you as spam and other considerations.

Overall
When it comes down to it an editorial calendar for a brand publishing program is something that benefits everyone, from the brand itself to the readers. The people involved in the publishing can’t *always* be on call and so scheduling items in advance helps them plan ahead and make sure important news gets out when it needs to. And it helps upper management see that a nice, balance program is being run as opposed to something that’s all willy-nilly, which is a preconceived notion social publishing has to fight against enough as it is.

That being said, it is just a means to an end. But with so many things that can’t be planned for, an organized and maintained editorial calendar helps manage those that can be executed in a more efficient manner.

The hashtag has evolved beyond Twitter

At a recent event a Twitter VP made the case for that platform still being the primary home of the hashtag, despite the fact that it’s also in use on other networks like Instagram and Google+. And Facebook just non-announced it is looking to bring hashtags to that platform in an effort to bring some immediacy there.

While my own thinking on the use of hashtags on status networks has evolved over the years from “never, ever, ever” to “I get where they’re useful for specific things, though most people still don’t understand them and therefore have a tendency toward overuse” it’s obvious that they are becoming more and more mainstream. A plethora of companies, whether they’re consumer-packaged goods manufacturers, movie studios, TV networks or just about anything else have seen their value as rallying points for audience conversations. So you see them in Super Bowl ads, in movie trailers, as additional “bugs” in the corner of your screen as you’re watching “New Girl” and elsewhere.

But what’s lacking is a consisten experience, and the widespread adoption of hashtags by multiple platforms could actually do more to dissuade companies from making them part of their marketing efforts. After all, if it’s not clear what experience I as a marketer am asking the audience to participate in then I’m less likely to make that ask. Let’s think this out:

I, watching TV, see a moment on X show that I’d like to discuss with my friend. Since the producers have helpfully suggested a hashtag to use in that discussion I go over to Twitter and do so. But while there is other conversation happening I don’t see any of my friends doing so. That’s because they’re over on Facebook talking about it. I missed out on an opportunity because the hashtag is now universal currency and in this case the call to action didn’t include “Discuss on Y platform” specificity.

I’ll admit that’s a bit of a straw man argument. But I don’t think that makes it any less likely. There are two ways to avoid this fate that come to mind:

1) An open hashtag standard. Yes, this might sound ridiculous. But the best possible user experience is that for clicking on a linked hashtag to take them to a central repository of updates on that topic that is platform-agnostic, pulling from everywhere to present the entire conversation regardless of where it’s taking place. This…is not likely.

2) An emphasis toward on-domain aggregation. So as a follow-up to the initial call to action to use a particular hashtag in the first place there’s another one telling people to head to moviestudio.com/#hashtag to view the entire conversation. This is more likely, though considering the advertising-centric motives behind hashtag adoption by status networks it’s not going to be their favorite option.

Interestingly, a service like Storify could be well positioned to take advantage of either scenario. It’s great at aggregation across networks and the “Stories” that are created are easily embedded elsewhere on the web. And, with what would admittedly be a lot of work, it could leverage its position as a platform-agnostic aggregator to pioneer some form of open standard.

Hashtags seem to have caught on, despite the protests of those who feel they’re an ugly and annoying intrusion onto the user experience. If more platforms are going to start using them then that user experience needs to become much better and more intuitive or this will be just another social media fad whose time comes and goes.

Sesame Street’s amazing content engine

Last week Sesame Street’s YouTube channel hit the 1 billion views mark and celebrated with a post on the YouTube blog written by, of course, The Count and a fun video marking the occasion and thanking fans. Because the internet loves Sesame Street this got a lot of pickup, and rightly so since it was a great special treat for the fans that had propelled it to such success.

But what was overlooked in much of the discussion is just how amazing Sesame Street’s content production engine is. They’re constantly churning out fun things, from original material like this to executions like their recent Twitter-based re-telling of the classic book There’s a Monster at the End of This Book. How are they able to do all this? A few things come to mind:

1. They have creative people and let them do their thing. There has to be a willingness to throw stuff out there and see what sticks. For every one execution that reaches the front page of Mashable there are probably 20 that appeal mainly to fans, and even within that there is sure to be material that’s more popular than the rest. But they keep the machine rolling and the best stuff bubbles to the top.
2. They remain true to their brand. There’s not a thing that they do that wouldn’t be right at home on the core show, which at this point is as much of an intellectual property repository as it is an educational kids program. None of it feels forced, none of it feels like they’re stretching to reach a broad audience with something “edgy” or anything else. It all fits.
3. They look for ways to put a new spin on old material. The Monster at the End of This Book execution is a great example of this, but the team as a whole seems to be constantly mining the archives for material they can dust off and refresh for a new generation and a new audience.
4. They understand that nostalgia is a driving factor. How many of those billion views are from adults who still find the show charming and full of warm memories of their own childhood, regardless of whether or not they have kids of their own.

These are important content lessons any brand publisher can learn. Not everything can be a ball-out-of-the-park success, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with playing small-ball. When you add up a handful of doubles and add in a couple home runs while sticking to fundamental skills and best practices you’ll win many more games than you lose and you’ll amass a lot of fans in the process.

Visuals increase Twitter engagement rates

Not surprising that putting a photo or other image in a Twitter update increases engagement with that update significantly. It’s the same logic that applies on Facebook and is the reason Pinterest and Instagram have such high engagement rates: Visuals pop.

The consistent display of multimedia updates has been one of the driving factors behind Twitter’s clamping down on the ecosystem of apps in the last six months or so. It wants photos and videos to display in a uniform way for readers since it knows that people like visuals and it wants to encourage that as it looks to attract more media company attention.

Three short stories about online publishing

There’s a lot of meaning about the nature web content packed into this sentence from Tumblr in their announcement of a redesigned publishing interface:

After months of careful crafting, we’ve reduced creation on Tumblr to its essence, while carrying over every single feature and making room for some BIG new ones (like completely customizable drag-and-drop photoset creation, faster uploads, and inline reblogging!).

There’s so much about the state of online news media that is summed up in this paragraph in a story about Slate and the pivots it’s trying to make:

In this regard, Slate is like other high-minded publications navigating a tough, even contradictory mission. On one hand, they promise smart and independent ideas; on the other, they’re heeding social media metrics that could tug them to the lowest common denominator. While news sites like BuzzFeed cut their teeth on silly cat photos only to climb up the intellectual and media food chain, it’s unclear whether this process can work in the opposite direction.

The ending of The Verge’s piece on the current state of traffic and editorial direction at digg is all about how the site, at this moment, isn’t giving people enough power and say in what stories are surfaced on the front page and how there aren’t profiles people can set up. And it ends with this conclusion:

The last time Digg took some control back from users was in 2010, when the “version 4″ redesign caused a revolt and mass exodus to Reddit. That level of disaster hasn’t happened with this redesign. But without empowering its users, Digg may have trouble making a real dent in the online conversation.

I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.

Mike Isaac gets at the core problem with building your business on Facebook – or any other platform that ultimately wants to grow its own business:

So what does that mean for a startup building on the platform? Facebook may not be dabbling in your space today, but if the company decides to stomp into your territory, do you face the risk of being cut off? That doesn’t bode well for a company looking to build a future on top of the Facebook platform.

There’s a similar post on GigaOm that strikes another good point, which is that Facebook is actually encouraging in some cases the kind of app development that it either has or one day could ban because it eventually winds up competing in an area Facebook has decided to expand into.

Striking a similar tone, this quote from the recent betaworks 2012 Shareholder Letter has the company’s head talking about the value of open over closed:

“Platforms are typically trying to control and centralize experiences with the opposing tension being the pull of their users at the edge. As billions more users join these networks over the next few years, the pull of the edge will get even stronger. That pull will make centralized architecture models hard, if not impossible, to execute against. There will be exceptions, but the islands won’t prosper like the oceans.”

All of this comes together to reinforce the reality that when we are publishing to Facebook or Twitter or anywhere else we’re not even renters on the land that’s being allotted to us. We’re something more like indentured servants, being given a plot of land to work on in a way that we’re told is to our benefit but which is really meant to provide value to the overseer, who can change the terms of our arrangement at any moment.

That being said, the values (at least for the time being) continue to outweigh the downsides of doing so. Yes, there’s a case to be made that the very idea of only select Facebook updates making it into any given user’s Newsfeed is a break of faith between Facebook and brand publishers, but as long as Facebook continues to own the network businesses are seeking things will continue as they have been. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a point where the situation becomes untenable but we’re not there yet.