Tag: social media management

Is your Business using Hootsuite?

If so, make sure you’ve read the following changes recently made to Hootsuite policy.

To keep users’ information safe and secure, Facebook is changing the way all partners like Hootsuite access data.  Hootsuite is in full support of these changes because they believe they are critical to maintaining trust between social media users. Some of these changes have impacted or will impact Hootsuite functionality.

As of April 4th, changes to the Facebook and Instagram APIs have impacted Hootsuite in the following ways:

  • Facebook Group, Event, and Page Search streams will no longer display identifiable user information such as username and profile picture.
  • Facebook Page Search streams will be deprecated. It will no longer be possible to add streams for Pages you do not own.
  • Facebook Events and Groups will be deprecated from the dashboard, including:
    • Events streams for Facebook profiles, groups, and Pages.
    • All Facebook Group streams: Timeline, Scheduled, and Activity.
    • Publishing to Groups.
  • Facebook Pages added or reconnected in Hootsuite after April 4 will no longer support Facebook private messaging functionality. This means that the following will no longer be available:
    • Messages stream for Facebook Pages.
    • Automation and assignments for Facebook private messages.
  • Mentioning Instagram users, Facebook Pages, or Facebook users in posts will no longer be supported.
  • Tagging Facebook branded content will no longer be supported.
  • Liking Instagram posts or comments will no longer be supported.
  • Following or unfollowing Instagram users will no longer be supported.
  • Commenting on Instagram posts will no longer be supported, except Instagram Business profiles who can continue commenting on their own posts.
  • Instagram user search streams will be deprecated.
  • Instagram data will no longer be available in Hootsuite Impact’s Brand Tracker module.

As a social media manager, these changes are sure to impact the day to day management of our client’s social media platforms and the implication of this will only be felt in the coming weeks.

Is this the start of the end for all third-party apps on Facebook?  I think so.

Karen Twomey is a freelance Public Relations and Social Media Consultant with Communications Hub  For further information Tel: 087 7642576 or email: Karen@communicationshub.ie

Online Crisis Management – Be Prepared!

In this era of social media and mobile devices, news spreads faster than ever before.  The web has removed control from those who create content and a crisis can develop in seconds. 

This is why it is vital that companies have an on-line crisis management strategy in place – long before it is ever needed.

When developing an online strategy, we must understand the ethics and rules of digital media and how crisis management on-line may differ from that off-line.

According to Chris Norton online crisis management can be separated into three stages – pre-crisis, crisis response and post-crisis evaluation.  An online crisis typically creates a spike in comments, shares and engagement, the conversations around which are generally negative.  During this crisis, it is essential to monitor and track what is being said and respond immediately.

An online crisis typically creates a spike in comments, shares and engagement, the conversations around which are generally negative.  During this crisis, it is essential to monitor and track what is being said and respond immediately.

When putting together a strategy to deal with on-line crisis, the following should be included:

  • Those who will form part of the crisis management team.
  • Pre-draft templates for on-line content – these can be pre-approved by legal teams to speed up their delivery.
  • The communication channels to be used.
  • An outline of how people can and can’t behave across on-line communication channels.

Finally, a crisis management strategy should have a strong focus on internal communications.  Those associated with the party will need to know what happened, what they should do and how the crisis will affect them.

All information regarding the crisis should be shared and updated regularly with all those who communication on behalf of the company to ensure all outward communication is consistent.

It may be impossible to pre-empt every online crisis, but we can certainly make sure we’re prepared for when one does occur and that the right procedure is followed.

Contact Communications Hub now and let us help you put together an effective crisis management strategy.

The Importance of Online Monitoring

The rise in citizen journalism means that organisations need to constantly monitor what is being said about them on-line.  Public relations professionals need to be the ‘ears’ and ‘eyes’ of an organisation and seek out what is being said about the brand.  

Here at Communications Hub we use many free tools to monitor what is being said about our clients online  – Twitter advanced search, Google alerts andsocialmention.com.

And while it is possible to mostly control what appears on a company’s own social media news feeds using word filters and administrative pre-approval of comments, it is impossible to control hashtags associated with an organisation.

McDonalds learned this the hard way when in 2012 they created the hashtag #McDStories in the hope of inspiring people to share their memories and happy experiences associated with the fast food chain.  The company soon discovered that it is the public who control the meaning of hashtags, and theirs was quickly hijacked to become the hashtag for horror stories involving McDonalds.

Burger King suffered a different kind of social media crisis when in 2013 its Twitter account with 82,000 followers was hacked.  The hacker changed their logo and twitter handle to that of McDonalds and tweeted a huge number of tweets containing inappropriate contents and images.  The hack went unnoticed for hours, by which time the incident had gone viral. The company not only learned an important lesson about password security and the need for moderators, it also experienced first-hand what happens when you are not constantly listening on-line.  On the plus side, the food chain gained thousands of new followers because of the incident.

Despite often having ‘expert’ social media teams, some of the biggest and most tech-savvy organisations continue to suffer social media fails.  Last year The Guardian published an article on The top five corporate Twitter fails and it makes for some very uncomfortable reading.

The moral of the story is, it’s no longer just your P’s and Q’s you need to mind, watch your Hashtags too…make sure your company is monitoring its online profile.