The latest rumored change in the Facebook model is hashtags. The company hasn’t confirmed it yet, but most observers expect a hashtag option nearly identical to the one we all overuse so often on Twitter to launch in the near future. Marketers and PR pros are pretty excited about the potential change, and we spoke to Stacey Acevero, social media manager at Vocus, to figure out why.

While Acevero hesitates to call what may or may not happen a “social network war”, it’s pretty clear that Facebook is looking for new ways to make bank — and that its redesign could make the whole experience less frustrating for brands and social managers. Here’s her take on the three possible benefits of the Facebook hashtag function:

1. Makes all of Facebook more searchable: Not only would it make your brand’s own original content easier to find for users who don’t “like” the brand, it would also make the act of conducting market research on Facebook by subject or keyword a whole lot easier.

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We missed this social media branding win last week, but when the words “Oreo” and “social media” showed up together on our Twitter feed this morning we knew we had to check it out. Seems like the team at 360i (see below)** won again in a friendly exchange between the cookie guys, sort-of rival Kit Kat and a fan who can’t get enough of either. It all started with this:

Can tell I like chocolate abit too much when I’m following @kitkat and @oreo hahahahahah

— LauraEllen (@Laura_ellenxx) March 11, 2013

Kit Kat saw an opportunity and grabbed it two days later:

The fight for @laura_ellenxx‘s affections is on. @oreo your move #haveabreak twitpic.com/cb1g84

— Kit Kat (@KITKAT) March 13, 2013

That evening, Oreo came back and killed it:

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You’ve probably heard that everyone’s talking about Coca-Cola‘s social media reveal this week. According to the soft drink giant, the fact that more people are discussing its brand on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube doesn’t necessarily mean that more of them are buying Coke products. But maybe “How many people bought a Coke after retweeting a call to action?” is the wrong question to ask.

In an effort to clarify its points and counter the media’s collective freakout, Coke’s SVP of integrated marketing Wendy Clark wrote a blog post arguing that social does, in fact, play a large role in boosting brand perception and audience engagement–which leads to more sales.

Her point, of course, is that the fact that data can’t directly link the number of comments on a Facebook post to the number of people buying Coke does not diminish the value of said content. This kind of “buzz” is only one part of Coke’s extensive branding/PR puzzle, which uses earned, shared, paid and owned media to encourage the brand’s ultimate goal: driving consumers to buy more soda in the long run.

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The biggest PR/marketing story of the week so far involves Coca-Cola‘s surprising announcement that social media “buzz” doesn’t translate to short-term boosts in sales. On the television front, however, research comes to the opposite conclusion: yesterday we learned, via our sister blog Lost Remote, that Nielsen finally released a yearlong study firmly tying Twitter mentions to increased ratings for popular shows.

How does that relationship work? Let’s check out the numbers:

The Twitter effect is least influential on season premieres. an 8.5% increase in buzz (or related tweets by volume) leads to a 1% bounce in viewership among the 18-34 set, while a 14% increase creates the same gains among viewers aged 35-49. For midseason episodes, however, the numbers are more impressive: the amount of buzz required to create a similar 1% ratings bump is almost half the size for episodes airing midway through the season.

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We are sad to report today, via various sources, that the nascent Brooklyn Nets PR department has (at least temporarily) abandoned its incredible Twitter account. Some speculate that the decision to “go in a different direction” on the social media front came after pretty much everyone on the Internet mocked truly amazing tweets like this one:

#Nets now 32-0 when outscoring opponent this season

— Nets PR Dept. (@Nets_PR) February 20, 2013

and this one:

Race to 5,000 is over. @nets_pr (5,000 followers) is victorious … @deronwilliams still 27 assists shy of 5,000

— Nets PR Dept. (@Nets_PR) January 28, 2013

and this one:

RT @nets_pr The #Nets remain undefeated this year

— Nets PR Dept. (@Nets_PR) January 9, 2013

Yes, the account retweeted itself. Oh, and by the way, this announcement came after the team’s first game. They were 1-0.

The Nets communications department appears to have pushed PR manager Calder Hynes a little further away from the spotlight, though he still manages his personal feed. But why? Doesn’t everybody love humor? Didn’t you guys notice the thousands of shares and favorites on that first tweet? Most of the tweets weren’t even funny. They were just updates of individual games, stats and players’ statuses. You know, standard sports PR stuff.

Finally, can a team really be concerned about the public taking it more seriously when its roster includes Kris Humphries?

Over the last few weeks, we’ve posted several stories about Apple‘s newer, more aggressive PR strategy in the post-Jobs era. Not only is the tech giant focused on pushing its own products; it’s also giving its executives more leeway to take shots at rivals like Samsung as they see fit.

Jean-Louise Gassée worked for Apple throughout the 80′s as the head of its French division and later directed Macintosh product development before leaving due to strategic differences with other executives. On Sunday he posted an op-ed on the Monday Notes tech blog with the ominous headline “Apple Is Losing the War–of Words“. Gassée‘s conclusion will surprise many in the tech world, because he thinks the Apple PR team should take a few cues from Microsoft and hire an outside firm better versed in the art of “verbal warfare.”

Wait, what? Let’s explore this a little further, shall we?

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Last week we wrote a couple of posts about brands creating cool promotional campaigns with Twitter‘s Vine app. Yet, when we wrote about the (excellent) clips from brands like GE or Clorox GreenWorks, we hadn’t yet encountered the work of Yell Design‘s Matt Willis. His profile consists of stop-motion pieces that use food to achieve some incredible visuals–and it is leaps and bounds ahead of almost anything else we’ve seen on Vine.

Breakfast in bed #food #magic #loop vine.co/v/bdXxThZ0ZY9

— Matt Willis (@YellDesign) March 15, 2013

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On Monday we gave you a list of brands doing cool things on Vine, Twitter‘s six-second looping video app. Today we have to add Clorox‘s Green Works to that list for their St. Patty’s day-themed campaign urging fans to “go green” by playing charades. Tweeters who guess each charade correctly will then be entered to win $500 (which they will presumably use to buy everyone a round tomorrow night). And yes, this is Lance Bass (aka the taller Justin Timberlake).

Tweet #gwxcharades with your guess for this Vine charade for a chance to win $500! greenwor.kz/XDiXA9 vine.co/v/bwmzeIXJQaM

— Green Works (@greenworks) March 11, 2013

Rebecca Boston Sobel, head of PR and digital strategy for Green Works, explains:

With the recent relaunch of our marketing campaign, we’re focusing mostly on creating digital activations that are timely, deliver on our core message – that green can be for everyone – and ultimately fun for consumers. Playing St. Patty’s Day charades on Vine for a chance to win a pot of “green”  was an engaging way to highlight that you don’t have to “put on a charade to be green” and delivered across the board.

So another step in the evolution of Vine as a PR tool. What do we think?

We’re going to take a wild guess here: many of our readers have felt some pressure to more fully utilize Pinterest as a PR tool but hesitate due to a lack of the quantifiable ROI stats that mean so much to clients in our Big Data era. Fret no longer, social brand managers: you have no more excuses!

Today everyone’s favorite pinning site launched Pinterest Web Analytics, a free data management tool that mirrors the ever-popular Google Analytics and Facebook Page Manager tools. What will it do? It will give page runners (not personal pinners) the numbers that matter most: how many users re-pin your pins, how many view each pin and how many visit a given company’s site from its Pinterest page.

This is all part of Pinterest’s long-term plan, and it’s a natural next step after the service introduced company pages last November. In fact, if we had to guess we’d say the Pinterest team is laying the groundwork for a public offering–and they’ve learned from the great Zuckerberg’s mistakes. Last month company founder Ben Silberman told The Wall Street Journal about his plans to “monetize”, and facts like “Pinterest leads to more referrals than Twitter, StumbleUpon, Bing and Google” and “Pinterest users are 10% more likely to make a purchase from an ecommerce site” than surfers who arrive via other sources are sure to make the service even more attractive to all those Wall Street all-stars who are still trying to get rid of all their Facebook stock.

Here’s the most important question, though: will you, as a PR pro, be more likely to use Pinterest to promote your clients now?

Today we’re happy to bring you a guest post by Lindsay Goldwert, a senior program executive at a global tech PR firm. Before she leapt to the dark side, Lindsay worked at the New York Daily News, ABCNews.com, CBSNews.com, CourtTV, Glamour and Redbook. In her spare time, she writes short stories.

As a communications vet who’s worn both the “journalism” and “PR” hats, she provides us with a very unique take on the delicate dance that we call “media relations.” Enjoy!

I have a confession: until very recently I was a working journalist–and I was very cruel to PR people.

Who could blame me? Tasked with writing and producing “life & style” content for the New York Daily News’s bustling website, I could not be bothered with endless email pitches that had nothing to do with my beat. I got snippy when people called to ask me if I had received their e-mail, yet every time I cleared my inbox it managed to fill up again within the hour.

By mid-morning every day, I already had a slate of content to work on–most of it stories that bounced off the day’s news. Yet PR people still called me (always when I was on deadline) to ask whether I might have time for a desk-side client interview or a three-hour lunch event.

Didn’t they know that, as a digital reporter, I never left my desk? Soon, I didn’t just ignore emails from PR people — I deleted them en masse without reading them. Eventually, I got so frustrated with the ill-timed telephone calls that I just stopped picking up my phone altogether.

Sound familiar?

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