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Scott Monty - Strategic Communications & Leadership Advisor

Scott Monty - Strategic Communications & Leadership Advisor
 

A roundup of relevant links affecting our industry.

Each week, 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 our 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+. And if you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links in the This Week in Social Media Magazine.

Yahoo gets with the program, Google makes some major overhauls, Nutella goes nuts on a fan, teens know how to use privacy settings (and Twitter!), why we can't embrace the truth about online video and more - it's This Week in Social Media.

Industry News


Content

The Platforms

Legal/Regulatory

  • The seven year-old fan-created website World Nutella Day will be going dark on May 25, in response to the cease-and-desist letter received from Ferrero, SpA., the maker of Nutella. It's not clear what drover Ferrero to issue such a request (there are legitimate reasons for doing so in some cases), but it's always a concern when well meaning fan-generated advocacy gets shut down by lawyers. [UPDATE: Ferrero has reached out to the fan and has lifted the order.
  • It should be no surprise that smartphones are infiltrating the workplace. A quick look on Vine, the 6-second video sharing app, searching for terms like "hatework," "bored" or "work" can bring up some unsavory footage related to employers.

Metrics/Measurement/Big Data

Bookmarks/Read-Watch-Listen Later

  • Social Media Examiner surveyed over 3,000 marketers and developed the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. The report delves into platforms, resources, questions and more and is available for free download until May 30.
  • Pew Internet and American Life Project's latest report: Teens, Social Media, and Privacy uncovers a wealth of information about how much data teens share, including photos, school or town names, email address and cell phone number. It's a fairly savvy group when it comes to privacy settings: 60% of teens set their profiles to private, so that only their friends can see their updates.

Commentary

Humans can be pretty slow sometimes. We have the answers staring us in the face, yet we refuse to take action. David Maister made this point in his book Strategy and the Fat Smoker; Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy [disclosure: affiliate link]. The point is that you know what you should be doing, but somehow, you can't do it - because of distractions, a sense of comfort in the familiar, or short-term temptations.

I was reminded about this when I saw a couple of articles this week. In one, eMarketer picked some numbers from a Brightroll survey that indicated advertising agency executives think online video ads are equally as or more effective than television ads at reaching audiences. They even went so far as to indicate they expect to see as much as 25% growth in this area (the largest growth rate of any advertising tactic).

Similarly, the 2013 Social Media Marketing Report (referenced above) noted that for the third consecutive year, YouTube is the channel where most marketers plan to increase their spending. In the previous two respective years, 76% and 77% planned to increase their YouTube efforts. "Great!" I hear you say, "It's a consistent concerted effort."

Not so fast. In fact, YouTube adoption has remained flat. In 2011, it was at 56%, with 57% using it in 2012 and back down to 56% this year.

Marketers continue to pay the price of advertising on the almighty platform known as television - a medium that has only estimates on a good day and questionable metrics overall. We acknowledge that online video may be more effective and yet at the same time, we refuse to completely embrace it. What will it take to get the monkey off our backs?

Image credit: cenz (Flickr)

 
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