`

Scott Monty - Strategic Communications & Leadership Advisor

Scott Monty - Strategic Communications & Leadership Advisor
 

A roundup of relevant links affecting our industry.

Each week at Ford, I compose a newsletter that includes a series of links about current events and trends in the worlds of technology, social media, mobile, communications and marketing in order to keep the wider team up to date on changes, newsworthy items and content that might be useful in their jobs. These are those links.

If you have additional links, sources or ideas that might be helpful, I'd encourage you to add some via a comment below or tag me in Google+.

Industry



The Platforms

  • Facebook plans to roll out threaded comments to its commenting system this week.
    • This new feature will help manage multiple conversations on a post, and ensure that people who visit a page will always see the best conversations.
    • The most active and engaging conversations will be shown at the top of posts.
    • At launch, this feature will only be available on desktop, but Facebook plans to make it available on mobile and in the Graph API in the future.
    • Brands can opt into Replies through the Page admin panel starting Monday, March 25. All Pages will have Replies enabled on July 10, 2013.
    • Third-party page management applications will not automatically have this feature at launch but will have access to add it in.

Big Data/Measurement


Legal


Bookmarks/Read-Watch-Listen Later


Commentary

One of the best corporate blogs - bar none - is the Disney Parks Blog. What makes it successful? Ragan's PR Daily takes a look at the three types of content that drive Disney Parks Blog. As a site that got its start to help reduce the number of press releases journalists were receiving, the Disney Parks Blog was well ahead of its time with respect to what we now call content marketing.

The site is rich with content and features three types of posts that make it interesting, relevant and emotionally appealing to fans and guests as well as journalists. First, the blog is excellent at humanizing Disney. Every post is written by a cast member - but not just the communications or marketing teams - real employees who have interesting jobs and take us behind the scenes to see things we normally wouldn't see if we were visiting. So right away, Disney is humanized. Here's a great example from one of my favorite exhibits at the Magic Kingdom:

The next kind of content is what Disney Parks social media director Thomas Smith calls purposeful storytelling. For example, the opening of the new Fantasyland is a great example of putting storytelling to use to describe the history and construction behind that section of the park. And the final category of content is remarkable experiences: giving people a chance to come to the park or attend exclusive events, which helps to spread the word.

So the simple formula: Make your brand more human, tell stories purposefully, and give fans and customers remarkable experiences. Add in some thoughtful planning and you've got yourself a strong content plan.

Image source: zoonbar (Flickr)
 
Top