Vine - PRNewser

7 Tips for Building a Better Hashtag Strategy

Patrick Coffee — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:22:42 +0000

Hashtags aren’t just for tweeters anymore. Now that Vine and Facebook have announced “trending hashtag” features, every social media promo campaign must have a well-chosen hashtag, and yesterday an amusing story reminded us how important the strategy behind these tags can be. Basically, some wise guy tweeted #nowthatcherisdead to announce the passing of former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher and scared a bunch of Cher fans (calm down, everyone: she’ll be playing Vegas well into the 22nd century).

It all seems very simple, but the fact that Budweiser thought this billboard was OK only two months ago shows us that hashtagging is still a little too complicated for some:

The budweiser ” #taste is ” billboard-hashtag is such an amazing fail. Was someone drinking too many @blackcrown s? twitter.com/adland/status/…

— Adland (@adland) February 17, 2013

Half of the ads that aired during the last Super Bowl had hashtags, but that number should have been 100% because the strategy is no less important today than it was a year ago. And now it’s time to make some helpful suggestions!

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Looks Like Vine Is Here to Stay

Patrick Coffee — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:55:17 +0000

Our readers may be forgiven for responding to Twitter’s Vine app with a shrug and a “meh.” When we first saw it, we were very skeptical of reports that it was the hot new thing among the kids who’ve apparently grown bored with Facebook and don’t follow politics or tech news closely enough to bother with plain old Twitter.

One thing we will say: it’s somewhat difficult to create truly interesting content with Vine! There’s a real art to it, as you can see by our failure to convey the awesomeness of these massive koi pond goldfish on our first attempt:

Those are some big goldfish. vine.co/v/bdYUY0Y5MHM

— Patrick Coffee (@PatrickCoffee) March 16, 2013

At any rate, this week’s numbers should give the haters pause: Vine has achieved the #1 app spot on the iTunes store just six months after its release. In other words, get familiar with this little app as soon as you can, because your clients will start asking about it if they haven’t already.

What’s to know that we haven’t already reported?

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

5 Tips for Creating Great Multimedia Press Releases

Patrick Coffee — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:11:49 +0000

Today we bring you a guest post via Sheldon Levine. Levine is community manager for Marketwired/Sysomos, an innovative social intelligence company offering global news distribution and reporting services as well as state-of-the-art social media monitoring and analytics powered by Sysomos. Marketwired and Cision recently partnered to allow Cision customers to connect with media, influencers and customers through Marketwired’s distribution channels.

With thousands of news releases being distributed every day, PR pros are constantly looking for opportunities to reach a broader audience and drive more views. Incorporating multimedia is one of the most effective ways to accomplish this goal — especially when some sources credit multimedia embeds for traffic bumps of up to 77%.

Perhaps we can, armed with this knowledge, officially declare text-only press releases as a thing of the past. We know visual storytelling is a critical pillar in any effective communication strategy. Just look at how brands continue to invest in image-driven social networks like Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr. At Marketwired, we believe this best practice shouldn’t be limited to social media. Creating multimedia –photos, video, audio, or infographics, for starters – is a smart PR tactic. As an added bonus, the fresh content can be shared on blogs or across social channels, thereby spreading a release’s main messages even further.

Whether we’re considering products, food or information, we consume with our eyes. Multimedia often offers the extra “sizzle” journalists and bloggers are looking for in their content, and in some cases such releases become stories in their own right. Here are five tips to make your multimedia press releases “pop”:

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Meet the World’s Greatest Vine User

Patrick Coffee — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:59:18 +0000

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

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Green Works Urges Fans to Play St. Patrick’s Day Charades on Vine

Patrick Coffee — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:21:26 +0000

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?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Vatican Uses Emoticons, Too

Patrick Coffee — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:46:40 +0000

As of this moment, The Vatican hasn’t announced exactly who the new Pope is, but we thought we’d take the time to share this tweet and to apologize for our failure to create the world’s next Vine sensation, “6 seconds of white smoke”:

HABEMUS PAPAM \o/ \o/ \o/ \o/ \o/ \o/

— VaticanCommunication (@PCCS_VA) March 13, 2013

These aren’t quite traditional emoticons (consider the irony of that phrase for a minute), but the “crowds rejoicing” image is pretty cool. At this point, we’re just glad the Vatican didn’t encourage the young people at St. Peter’s Square to break into the Harlem Shake or unfurl a banner reading “Keep Calm and Wait for the New Pope to Emerge.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

10 of the Best Brands on Vine

Patrick Coffee — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:59:22 +0000

Twitter’s Vine short video sharing service is the new thing. You’ve probably heard of it–you may have even seen what was supposed to be the world’s first Vine press release. And you’re going to keep hearing about it, because six-second video loops are quick, impressionistic and perfect for our social media age.

Laugh if you must, but some brands have already proven this newest buzzy toy to be a worthy tool for spreading the (branded) message around social media. We searched the Internet high and low to find some examples of brands using Vine to get their names out there in creative ways–along with a couple that don’t quite make the cut.

1. General Electric: We don’t even care whether GE’s “six second science” series directly promotes the company’s products. It is awesome.

What happens when you combine milk, food coloring and dish soap? #howto #6secondscience vine.co/v/bXJAmFLBaat

— General Electric (@generalelectric) February 28, 2013

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Is This The World’s First Vine Press Release?

Patrick Coffee — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:51:26 +0000

Today we may have witnessed a first: a press release delivered via 6-second Vine mini-video. The makers of Sonar, a “social discovery app” that allows users to find others by geographical proximity (which Mediabistro profiled in this Elevator Pitch video), just received a big investment from Microsoft‘s Bing Fund–and they chose a unique way of letting the world know about it:

Welcome aboard to our new investors, team @bingfund! ow.ly/i89Nz World’s first announcement via @vineapp: vine.co/v/bXZa5BQj7e2

— Sonar (@sonar) February 28, 2013

TechCrunch hopes this move doesn’t become a thing. What do we think? Can you imagine companies announcing new hires or clients with little clips like this one?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

‘Bang With Friends’ App Makers Not Doing Themselves Any Favors

Patrick Coffee — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:19:20 +0000

One of this week’s creepiest stories concerns the new Facebook app Bang With Friends. In case you haven’t heard, the app promises to help users find Facebook connections who are up for a one-night fling. Classy, right? It’s all anonymous, though, because the only way anyone will know that you use it is if the same friend/friends also independently choose you to “bang.”

Our first response to this development was something of a weirded-out shrug until we encountered a very telling Daily Beast interview with the people who created social media’s latest flash in the pan.

Get ready for a shock: They’re three “college-age males” who “made this in two hours… with a lot of Red Bull and vodka” in order to “take rejection out of the [dating] equation”. Oh, and they insisted on remaining anonymous for the interview. We can’t imagine why…

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Twitter’s Vine Video App: Great for Marketers and Porn Promoters

Patrick Coffee — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 13:25:49 +0000

Never underestimate the porn industry’s uncanny ability to worm its way into every single thing ever.

Twitter made media headlines at the end of last week with the debut of its new Vine video-sharing application, a feature that threatens to make the world’s top messaging service even more addictive by allowing users to post six-second GIF-style videos. What a great development, we thought; who uses words anymore?

You know who else jumped at the ability to immediately share short video clips with thousands of users? Porn promoters! Accounts started posting explicit excerpts along with hashtags like #porn, #sex and #boobs only a few moments after the app went live in the iTunes store.

As New York Times reporter Nick Bilton put it:

Friend: “So are people using Vine for porn yet?”Me: “Nah, I don’t think so.”Friend: “Check the hashtag #porn.”Both: “Holy ****!”

— Nick Bilton (@nickbilton) January 27, 2013

The porn problem quickly became a PR problem:

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.