Transcript for Cutting Through podcast Episode 4

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Jonathan Holt   Welcome to episode four of Cutting Through, the podcast for corporate digital communicators from Bowen Craggs.

Today on the podcast, TikTok refugees, troll armies on X, and the end of fact checking on Facebook and Instagram. As a new year begins, social media has entered a remarkably unpredictable and chaotic phase. But could all the changes bring about new opportunities for communicators to connect with followers and get their messages heard?

What to know about the state of social media is our topic on this episode of Cutting Through.

I’m Jonathan Holt, Head of Strategic Insights at Bowen Craggs. Joining me again in the virtual podcasting studio are Georgia Barrett, Vice President USA and Scott Payton, Chief Executive.

Scott and Georgia, I think we have to start with TikTok. TikTok briefly went dark in the US in late January after a ban took effect. But as we record this, the site is back up, though the app can't be downloaded by new users or anyone who deleted it thinking that was the end.

TikTok's longer term license to operate, of course, remains very much up in the air in the US and some other countries have already banned it.

I'm really interested in the way TikTok users responded to the possibility that the app that many of them spend hours each day on might suddenly be gone. What do think we've learned about TikTok users from this cultural moment?

Scott Payton   Hi Jonathan. So, for one thing, I think we've learned that a lot of TikTok users have a delightfully mischievous sense of humour. For example, a lot of in the days when it looked like that TikTok was going to kind of be banned permanently in January, lots of TikTok users joined another Chinese social platform called Red Note in protest. They were kind of trolling the US government, I suppose.

And for one day in January, Red Note was the most downloaded app on Apple's US App Store. But I think seriously, one of the big lessons for corporate communications teams about this whole TikTok saga, which is not done yet. We still don't know what's really going to happen to it. It's vital. It's a great reminder that it's vital to avoid betting the farm on a single social platform if you're a company, if you're a corporate communications team, because as TikTok shows, the future of a social channel is uncertain and totally outside your control.

Georgia Barrett   Yes, and as a TikTok user myself based in the US, I must admit I was one of those silly people who deleted the app thinking there was an issue and that I could redownload it and now I actually can't redownload it so I do not have access to TikTok. So, I think maybe that's quite good from a time and health perspective to not have access to TikTok. But I think the ban has really showed that TikTok will have a very deep legacy on social media from a corporate communications perspective. And mainly it's the enduring success and popularity of these short form videos that are authentic and funny. And I think regardless of whether or not TikTok stays around, that type of video, the format can be carried onto loads of other platforms, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, loads like this thing, Blue Sky has launched a recent vertical video feature. So, I think if you're a social media manager tapping into that buzz around the format of a TikTok video can still be useful whether or not TikTok is still here.

Jonathan  Well, I was struck by an editorial I saw in the New York Times by a young woman who was actually saying that she was relieved that TikTok had been banned. This was published in the very brief moment in between, you know, when the ban took hold and the site went back live. And the reason was because she was spending several hours a night on the app. And she wanted to be free from that. And she had tried deleting the app but couldn't keep that resolve because all of her friends were on it and so inevitably, she would get back on it.

So, what I'm getting at though there is that there's something really addictive about the format, isn't there, of those mostly vertically oriented short snappy videos. It's not a format that, before TikTok, a lot of corporate communicators would have really thought to use or been particularly adept at. My question is, who's doing that kind of content well? Because it's not easy, is it? The addictive quality, the essence of what makes those TikTok feeds so addictive to people. Are there any companies that are particularly strong on that?

Georgia   I'd say that Verizon is a very good example of using TikTok style content. They put this the vertical video, person speaking directly to the camera kind of selfie-style authentic video that's on their corporate website. It's on their Instagram feed, which is called Inside Verizon, and it's just full of these authentic employee videos. Walmart is another example they have Walmart world on Instagram and TikTok and it's all about sharing employee stories and the aim which they say in their bio is fun and inspiration, and I think that builds trust with a variety of stakeholders from job seekers to employees, but investors, media professionals, customers, anyone who is interacting with these companies.
But it's also other companies, it's kind of less surprising that Verizon and Walmart, these companies have huge employee bases and building community amongst the employee base is a goal for these companies. But there are other companies in other industries such as pharmaceuticals, energy companies, who are also embracing this very candid short form video style. And it really builds trus,t as I mentioned, but it also gives that authentic glimpse behind the scenes into what life at this company is like.

Jonathan   Well, you know, one thing that strikes me is that it's not just the format that has evolved for corporate videos and all videos as a result of TikTok's massive influence over the culture, but also the kind of aura around everything that's communicated because, well, I was looking at McDonald's TikTok feed and Instagram feed, which are somewhat similar, I think. And I was noticing that the comments on the videos there, which try to be the kind of short, snappy, irreverent content that seems to do well on TikTok, were often accompanied by short, snappy, irreverent comments, a kind of ironical, you know, back and forth or roasting almost. Do you think that that aspect of corporate communications is here to stay as well.

Scott  I think it is done... It kind of reminds me of the early days of Facebook where you had some pioneering companies sort of putting on their metaphorical baseball cap and trying to beat down with the kids. I think it can either work really, really well or it can kind of backfire depending on whether you get the tone right. I've seen, we saw last week or earlier this week, Microsoft kind of got it right on Bluesky. It posted as you pointed out to us, Jonathan. Yesterday they posted and they set up an account on Bluesky and they their inaugural Bluesky post was a joke. It was a kind of deliberately geeky joke. It was kind of was funny and it landed well. So, I think it just it kind of depends as we've discussed before about humour. If you get it right, it can land really well, but it's quite easy to get wrong.

Jonathan   Another big story in social media recently was that Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, has announced that it's getting rid of its fact checkers and replacing them with something called Community Notes. What do you think this is going to mean for digital corporate communications?

Scott   The importance of being truthful and factual remain, even if Mark Zuckerberg is firing all of his fact checkers and Elon Musk has already, I think, already fired all of X's fact checkers. But I think when it comes to if community notes are replacing human fact checkers, it's likely going to mean that it's going to be more important for companies to sell their version of the truth harder, sell the truth harder and to defend the truth harder to win over the majority of the Community Note makers. So, I guess it's more like the truth and the tussle over the verification of facts and figures and information on Facebook and other channels is going to be more of a popularity contest, I guess. So, it's important to sell the truth.

Georgia   Yes, and what's happening with Meta and the end of fact checking is really interesting and it really shows the importance of having the corporate website, if you are a company, as your mothership of truth.

And all of this stuff with social media being in flux, it's so important now more than ever that the corporate website is a piece of digital real estate that you have complete control over, you can tell your story. And we actually have some data from, well, it's about how AI is feeding into this but we are seeing that these LLMs are increasingly relying on editorial media and owned media when they're learning about companies so if you're asking ChatGPT about companies saying is xyz company trustworthy apparently 65 % of these answers are influenced by editorial coverage and 44 % by owned media so this is kind of things that you're writing on your corporate website are being fed into chat GPT and other AI search engines. So, I think it just shows the importance of your corporate website and your thought leadership materials and your editorial content at a time. I guess it's a separate issue to social media being in flux, but it sorts of links back to if we're questioning the truth and facts, then this is your opportunity to have this as your home for the facts.

Scott   Yeah, I completely agree. I was when you share that data, 44 % of LLMs rely on owned media for 40%, 44 % of the content. And that compares to less than 1% for social media and also 2% for books. Poor books. That's quite tragic, isn't it? I thought books would be quite useful source of information.

Jonathan   Yes, that is kind of shocking and suggests, you know, maybe we really are coming into a whole new information age. It seems to me too that if the facts are no longer, if there's no longer even an attempt to verify facts, then it all becomes relative, doesn't it? It all becomes a shouting match and it all becomes about what your perspective is and your slant on it.

So presumably people are certainly going to be better off not relying on social media for as their source of information, but maybe as a place for entertainment and connection with people they perhaps already agree with.

Unfortunately, of course, we know that a lot of people do get their news and information from social media. And we'll speak a little bit later about the, I think the rise of YouTube as an information source, especially for certain demographics. maybe there's a point to be made there about the truth matters on the company's social media channels too, doesn't it? I mean, there's an opportunity to influence the truth through those channels, even if the LLMs aren't paying attention to them right now, to the influence of what people perceive as being the truth. 

Georgia   Yes. That is true, I think we've spoken before about how a company's social media channels are held to a different standard than just your average run-of-the-mill social media posts that you might encounter on something like TikTok or Twitter or X. So, if you see that the post is from a company, I think you're more likely to assume that it is true because it's coming from the company. Do you know what I mean?

Like: it's more they're verified and I'll just say a point about the Next Generation research that we conducted quite recently where we asked young people you know what do they want from corporate digital communications, how are they using social media and lots of young job seekers said that they will look at companies LinkedIn before anything else as a way to get high level breakdown of what the company is doing. So instead of looking at the press releases or the latest news section, a lot of these job seekers are going straight to LinkedIn and they can see the headlines. So, LinkedIn has been seen as this place to get the latest news about a company.

Jonathan  There's something perhaps about the wisdom - or unwisdom -of crowds. I mean, once upon a time, that was the whole promise of the internet was that, you know, the truth would win out because there would be this sort of great democratic airing of things. And perhaps that does happen a little bit. I mean, in the McDonald's TikTok posts that I was mentioning earlier, for example, was one, a funny short one about cage-free chickens, and I noticed that some of the comments were taking issue with the definition of cage-free. In other words, there was, there's a kind of fact-checking that occurs in the form of dialogue, which maybe is a healthy thing, particularly if the company chooses to fully engage with that, you know, and perhaps in the best of all worlds offer up some links back to corporate website where there's lots of factual information to prove their case.

Scott   I must admit that when I read that Meta was going to replace its fact checkers with community notes, my heart did in fact sink. But then I thought of Wikipedia and Wikipedia is kind of built on community notes, isn't it? It's a crowdsourced encyclopedia of everything. So, I agree with you, Jonathan, could can come out of crowdsourcing information.

And I think for companies, McDonald's and others, going back to this point of the increasing importance of selling the truth harder and defending the truth harder, I think it's going to be more important than ever to when you make an assertion and you make a claim or you make a promise, you need to kind of contextualize that and back that up with data and evidence and examples because that does actually make in this war for the definition of the truth. It's going to be much harder to dispute if you back up your claims with evidence. And once again, providing citations and sources and links to the website is a great way of doing that, because that's where you have much more space and time and real estate for going into things in more depth that you can't really do in a tweet. Is a tweet still called a tweet now? No, X is called X. Is it called a tweet?

Jonathan   It's I think it's a gray area and it's far from the only gray area in relation to X, which I'm glad you brought up because that was going to be my next question is to just raise the spector of which we've spoken a little bit about in previous episodes of the podcast but what's happening on X or rather really what's happening not on X for and to a large degree Elon Musk seems to be doing all sorts of things that are ruffling feathers and making people wonder whether his social media platform that he owns and is highly active on, maybe is a little bit beginning to be too hard to handle. So, we know that a lot of companies have at least paused their activity on X, but a lot of companies continue to be active on X as well. So, my question is, what do you think about this? What's the state of play?

What should companies be doing with X and are there any that are still managing to do good things on there?

Scott   We've seen a lot of companies, a lot of big companies, in the last year or two, essentially go dormant on X. So they're keeping their accounts open to messages and tags, but they're not actively posting themselves. And this might initially seem like a potentially good compromise, but it is an issue if you're still signposting your X account prominently, for example, in the foot of your corporate website and lots of companies are because that does sort of set up the expectation that the link will lead to a fresh feed. And if you click on it and it leads and the latest post is from May 2022, then that's kind of a bit of an issue. So, I think a lot of companies are they don't want to switch it off because in some parts of the world X continues to be a popular customer support route or contact route but they're going dormant, but I don't think that's a sustainable solution. And meanwhile, I have thought of a new word for tweet, but it's probably un-broadcastable. So, I'm not going to say it. You can guess what it is.

Jonathan   Well, we'll just leave that hanging there. Georgia, what are your thoughts on the state of X? 

Georgia   X is a really interesting one, and it's difficult to predict the future of the platform, which I think is why we're seeing so many companies just putting it on pause and seeing how it all plays out. Because if you look at X and Twitter historically, it was the domain of journalists and business leaders and politicians. Lots of people and key stakeholders are going there to get news about companies and our own survey data from over a million responses over the past decade shows that it's the analysts who are researching companies, it's the shareholders, its investors, it's IR professionals, it's media professionals, they are all the ones who were turning to Twitter to get latest news about a company but also to connect and engage with a company directly and ask questions. So, it's kind of unclear if it's still going to have this role. Twitter is also the least popular social media channel in the US or up there

Scott   That's so interesting because I started using Twitter. I was a reasonably early adopter of Twitter when I was a journalist and it was journalist heaven, really, because journalists can talk to other journalists and they can get a good dopamine hit of news. So, I was a fully, fully fledged Twitter addict and I think a lot of journalists are. And I think a lot of media professionals and press relations professionals inside companies are. And I think that does give a, it risks leading media relations departments to have a distorted and disproportionate view of the importance of X outside the media world and the professional world that you just described, Georgia, because the fact of the matter is a lot of consumers, job seekers, they're just not on there. They're not on there. And I can't see that kind of getting any better.

And in addition to all of that, you do have the overt politicisation of content on X. And it's just when I go on to X now, it's just it's largely a lot of people shouting at each other and shouting about things. So, it doesn't feel like a safe or stable corporate communications environment for me at all at the moment.

And add to that the huge amount of flux and uncertainty about social media generally. really don't see, I would deeply question the idea that X is a robust and growing corporate communications channel. I think it is shaky, unpredictable and risky at the moment.

Jonathan   But is there a case for right now though that some companies if they've got a thriving base of journalists or customers on X should continue for the moment? Or is now the time maybe to be thinking about making an exit?

Scott   I think if you've got traction, if you've got a large number of followers, the right followers who regularly follow you and you're using X in a structured and effective way to communicate results, announcements or corporate news or anything else. If you've got traction, then I don't think it would make sense to kind of press some kind of red emergency button and switch it all off.

So, I think it's still there's still a role for it, but I don't think it's the time to start a new X account. That's for sure. But if there's a kind of legacy there that still has a role to play, then that seems sensible. But also, it's probably time to contingency plan for a situation in which X did become unviable. going back to the TikTok, it's a reminder that these things are not they're not they're not here to stay forever and their future is beyond your control.

Jonathan   I'm glad you raised the question of alternatives, Scott, because that's what I wanted to talk about next. There are some that have popped up and just as there have been opportunistic moves on the part of competitors to TikTok in the wake of the potential ban to try and introduce features that they're hoping will woo TikTok users.

There's been a lot of movement on attempts to capture X users as well, of course. The first of those the first big one of those was Threads which boasted about having a lot of users after it's immediately after its launch but though of course a lot of those users turned out to be passive users who had simply you know been automatically signed up or had ticked a button from their Instagram accounts and I was on Threads last night and noticed and realized and I was on Threads last night and so that's the way Threads is being described now is as a kind of add on to Instagram in a sense. Of course, there's also BlueSky, which we talked about a little bit last time. And the notion that Twitter and now X is a place where journalists hang out is increasingly not true because many of the major media outlets, the New York Times, the Guardian, CNN, basically all of the mainline players in the US and the UK seem to have either opened or completely migrated to Bluesky accounts. my question for you is what does this mean for corporate digital communications?

Is it time for digital communicators and companies to be making that leap as well?

Georgia   I think it's a time to be definitely thinking about it and it's a time to, if you're a company, make sure that you have a clear policy on social media use and it could mean grabbing the handle on Bluesky or Threads preemptively so that if the time comes to set up the account you can use that handle without someone stealing it.

Scott   Yeah, I completely agree that grabbing account handles on emerging channels is a prudent step for any company to take. And you can, once you've set that account up, you can simply, as a first step, provide a simple post directing users to other channels on which the company is currently more active. So, we can kind of have it that you can do something kind of active and useful quite simply, I think, on a new channel, particularly one like Bluesky. And I think it's also important for the social media team to continue to play with and experiment with and familiarise themselves with all of these new channels. So, if and when the time comes to become more active on them.

There's some deep understanding inside the company of the strengths and weaknesses and eccentricities and characteristics of each of these new channels.

Jonathan   I was rooting around on Bluesky yesterday and noticed that if you search for any given company, you're going to already find that some of the handles have already been snapped up. 

But I think there's kind of a note of urgency there because as Bluesky grows, that kind of thing is likely to be happening more. And it is growing rapidly, I think. When we spoke of it just a few weeks ago, I couldn't at that time find any evidence of a corporate entity brand that was active on there. It's possible there were some, but now there are. And you mentioned one, Scott, that Microsoft has gone that way. Another one is GitHub, which is really quite active on there.

So, I think what that says, partially, is that just as in the first wave of the great global rollout of social media, tech companies may be at the leading edge and it may be useful for digital communicators across sectors to keep an eye on what those companies are doing because they're probably going to be more likely to embrace innovation on these new channels.

Scott   If you look at the demographics of early adopters on a channel like Bluesky, it can actually be a positive in itself to be seen to be innovative and set up and start to engage in with that with that demographic. If that demographic is relevant to your company, you know, I think that's why we're seeing a lot of the tech companies increasingly dipping their toes into Bluesky because they are they like to be seen to be early adopters and there is an audience of early adopters there for them to have a dialogue with. So, if your company wants to be seen to be innovative in the way it communicates with emerging tribes and communities online, then it can make sense maybe to take the plunge ahead of your competitors. So, in its the act of setting up a presence on a new channel can send a positive message in and of itself.

And if you look at the changing attitudes towards the uses of different social media platforms by different demographic groups, it's just really important for social media teams and communications teams to continue to look closely and monitor how social media is changing, how use of social media is changing and in a constant way adapt their presence and their plans for social media accordingly. really is the ever-changing and it's changing faster than ever at the moment.

Georgia   It just shows the importance of having people on your social media team who are chronically online and who are in these spaces use it every day as part of their personal life and professional life. And that's the only way that you can really get a handle on the different channels is by being immersed in them.

Jonathan   I wanted to ask you both about Threads and whether you are on there, whether you use it.

Scott   One thing that's really surprised me about Threads is given the if you look at US teenagers and there's the latest Pew research data on social media use by US teens. Instagram is massively popular as we just discussed more than 60 % of US teens say they use Instagram and given that Threads has the clout and the support of Meta and it was launched very much as a sister platform to Instagram. I'm really surprised that only 6 % of US teens say they use Threads. That seems to be really surprising given that it's so seamless if you're an Instagram user. It's so easy to migrate to Threads, but they aren't.

My impression of Threads is I like Threads because it is because all of the people who I initially in my personal life started following on Twitter, maybe 10, 15 years ago. All those refugees have moved over to threats and they're busy trying to kind of rekindle the innocent fun utopia that Twitter was or probably wasn't with rose tinted glasses a decade ago. So, it's kind of my tribe being amusing and kind while X burns. I'm really surprised that it doesn't seem to have gained any real traction at all, or certainly so much less than I thought it would

Georgia   Yeah, I mean, all I can say is that I'm an Instagram user, but I'm not a Threads user and I can't explain why I just have no, there's just nothing drawing me to it. And maybe it goes back to this fragmentation point of there's already so many social media platforms, it's already so difficult to stay on top of everything and even just reply to people or just stay on top of it all without adding yet another channel into the mix. Like your attention span is only so big.

Scott   Yeah, and I think the problem with Threads is, apart from it being not run by Elon Musk and not X, it doesn't seem to have much of a USP. It seems to be launched pretty almost on the nose as a very, very similar to X in functionality. So other than the fact that it's not X, it doesn't have much to bring to the party, I don't think. 

Jonathan  Let's take a short break. And when we come back, we'll talk more broadly about what really good looks like on corporate social media today.

[interlude]

Jonathan   If you're new to Bowen Craggs, you might be wondering Bowen Who? In a nutshell, we help large companies measure and get better at online corporate communications, whether it's websites or social media channels. And we do it through benchmarking, consulting, and visitor research. We also have a global knowledge sharing network with both in-person and online events to help corporate digital communicators all over the world connect with each other and the information they need most.  

The digital corner of corporate communications is specialised, but it doesn't have to be lonely. If you'd like to know more about us or get our take on the biggest challenges in corporate digital communications right now, look us up. We're at bowencraggs.com. 

[back to the main conversation]

Jonathan   Bowen Craggs has introduced a new benchmarking metric for the Corporate Digital Communications Index, focused specifically on how companies are using social media for their corporate messages, and that has us applying our common sense-based reviewing approach to this side of corporate communications in a slightly more head-on way than we have been in the past, and giving communicators a different kind of data point to assess their social media success by relative to global peers.

As you both know well, one question we're monitoring as part of that work is what does a well-rounded social media presence look like today? So, let's talk about that for a minute. Is it still reasonable to expect every company to be active on all of the main social media channels? I'm speaking of the big five there, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, plus more experimental channels like TikTok, Threads and maybe even Bluesky. Is only having one or two social media accounts ever appropriate for a large company? What's your view?

Scott   For me, quality, relevance and frequency of posts on a carefully chosen and well targeted number of social channels beats diluted scatter gun. Let's put everything on everywhere. That approach is inferior every time in my view. 

So, for companies, they need to think about who their target audiences are, what those audiences want from your company and what messages your company wants to convey to those audiences and then pick the best and most appropriate social channels to focus on based on that. And then as we discussed in part one, review this regularly because it's evolving. And there is some interesting data from Pew published last month showing what the next generation of people are using in the US on the social media front. 

So, this is this data about what US teams are using. And it does show that over the last 10 years, US teen use of Facebook has dropped from more than 70 percent to 32 percent late last year and more than 60 percent of US teens use TikTok and Instagram. And this is the massive thing that really this is a real shocker for me.

More than 90 percent of US teens use YouTube. And that seems to be across all demographic groups in the US. YouTube is massive. And only 17 percent of US teens are on X. And as we discussed earlier, just six percent are using Threads. So that does seem to be potentially growing, whereas X is shrinking.

But I really do find that Mark Zuckerberg must be pretty crestfallen about the fact that so far Threads has really failed to gain more traction.

Georgia   Does the data say what it means by use? As in like the frequency? Because surely everyone does use YouTube every now and again.

Scott   Mm-hmm. It does. It's true. It's a bit like, "Do you use Amazon?" And it's a good point. And the question is, do you ever use the following apps or sites? So, it's quite difficult to go through life on the interweb, I suppose, without using YouTube. It's a good point.

But think the others are all of the other ones are they are apps; you need to kind of actively use. So, the second most used social channel among US teens, TEENS, not teams, teens (not teams) after YouTube is TikTok at 63 percent followed by Instagram, then Instagram continues to rise in use among US teens. Snapchat, 55 percent, but it's falling off a bit. And then, as I say, Facebook, 32 percent. And this is another thing that surprised me. Among only 23 percent of US teens say they're using WhatsApp, although that is growing slightly. That seems to be quite surprisingly low. 

Georgia   It's because everyone here uses iMessage and I find that shocking and very strange but anyway yeah no one uses WhatsApp - yeah, yeah - especially for group chats. And I once had a situation where someone had an Android and they couldn't join the iMessage group chat and it was just like "too bad sorry you can't join" and they never did. it's very strange.  

Scott   Right? Even for group chat. Okay. Even for group chats. 

Jonathan   Unless they have international friends. 

Scott. Really? That seems to be, I mean, it's because it's so Apple centric.  

Georgia   Yeah, you can't join a group chat unless you have an iPhone. Yeah. But most people, I guess, have iPhones. But yeah, I'd say every single group chat I'm in is an iMessage group chat. Yeah. 

Scott   Wow. Hmm, that's interesting.

And I guess this does all raise the other point, of course, that the other we talked about age demographics and different types of audience groups in terms of choosing the right social channel. But geography is massive, too, isn't it? And there are some parts of the world where platforms that are really barely exist at all in the West are massive. that's the other, I guess, the other really important thing to think about when you're choosing a social platform: geography.

Jonathan   Yeah, I mean, so we would presumably advise companies to have a close look at who's using their channels and that will be affected by all sorts of demographic factors, especially perhaps the region that most of their users are in.

So, we can look at those composite numbers and tell something about the direction of travel. But each company needs to be making those assessments on their own. Of course, I think about a data strand that we're all more intimately familiar with, which is visitor research data from corporate websites and how, when you look at things in composite, when you look at metrics in composite, it can show you one thing, but when you look at any individual company or sector, it can show quite a different set of factors and behaviours.

My question though is, I guess, how many … What's the floor for, is there a number, is there kind of a range for companies that are thinking of maybe getting a bit more tailored in terms of what they're doing on social media, possibly having a managed phase out of certain channels, maybe some of the ones that we've talked about that are problematic at the moment. mean, would just one or two channels be ever okay in your opinion for a big company? 

Georgia   I think it is educational to look at who are which companies are the best in the world at social media for corporate communications, and you will notice that they tend to have more than two social media channels. And I think it is important to have that variety so that you are as we saw it's a very fragmented scene so that you are finding different stakeholder groups at different places where they are.

And an example is Verizon, they have a very large but very carefully maintained range of social media channels all aimed at different stakeholder groups. They have Verizon Green which provides sustainability news. They've got Inside Verizon which is all about showcasing employees and internal talent. It also appeals to job seekers. And they have Verizon channels for consumers and customers and support. And they are on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. And it's all very deliberate and they're not afraid to sunset those accounts that are no longer in use.

And the same with Nestlé, they have a huge array of social media channels and you can see a sign of a well curated and well-maintained approach here is if the social media channels are all sign posted effectively in the site footer or in a social media directory that tells you the purpose, the kind of intended audience and how to find it from the corporate website.

Scott  I think I agree with everything that Georgia has said and I think Verizon is a great example. The other point that I think it's important for companies to remember and to do is to ensure that there's a lot of love and enthusiasm behind their social media activity. It is a sense people can really pick up box ticking, going through the motions, cookie cutter, corporate social media output. So there needs to be it needs to be done with kind of passion and energy and enthusiasm. And I think that's really important. And that's something that does absolutely show through on Verizon's channels.

Jonathan   And on the flip side to that, you can also usually see pretty quickly when channels have become not exactly zombie channels, but the rationale for maintaining them may or may not be there anymore compared to when they were introduced. it seems like a good time right now for companies to be reassessing and possibly shedding or reframing some of their channels.

And Verizon is certainly one of the companies that's showing us a way to do that in a considered way. While we're on the topic of well-rounded social media presences, we should probably talk a bit about the relationship between a company's social media channels and the corporate website. I think too often these can seem like they come from really almost completely different worlds. So how important is it today for the two to be unified and interlinked in some way and what does that even look like?

Georgia   I think the example that comes to mind of when they are interlinked is during a crisis and often companies can respond to comments on social media and direct visitors who have questions back to the corporate website for more detail. So, I think that is a kind of a time when the two are in close alignment as a signage like go this way.

And we're seeing increasingly this trend of having a social media war and that literally brings that dynamic content which is on social media and it puts it directly onto the more evergreen and static pages of corporate website and this has been around for a while but we're seeing a resurgence of its Verizon again have just updated their homepage and it now has this social media wall which pulls in posts from across their different channels in a live feed so yeah that's quite a literal example.

Scott   Yeah, and one of the many big advantages of the joined-up use of social media channels and the corporate website during a crisis, which Georgia has described and recommended, is that it allows companies to update their definitive response to the crisis in one place, which is the corporate website, and then use social channels to direct people to that evolving single definitive version of the truth. When crises and responses to them are very fast-moving things change quickly. So, if you've got the definitive response on the corporate site, it just gives you the freedom and flexibility to update that in one place and use social channels, whichever social channels you choose to direct people to that. It's actually also the same thing or similar thing is also true for evolving topics outside times of crisis.

So, if you see the if you see the website has the centre of your galaxy, the centre of your universe. It just gives you more flexibility to use social channels to direct people to that.

Jonathan   Well, there has to be a certain amount of coordination internally for that to occur, doesn't there? And my sense often in talking to corporate digital communicators is that there's usually some measure, some amount of coordination between the website teams and the social media teams, but they're also often treated as really separate disciplines.

And I'm never sure in any particular case just how much strategic or tactical crossover there is between the two. So, do you think these teams need to be working closer together than they typically do? 

Scott   Well, talking to our clients and to other companies, my experience is that it does vary dramatically. In some companies, social media and the corporate website are totally separate silos, different departments completely. But in others, there's much more coordination. There does seem to be a quiet trend towards greater coordination. The more coordination route is by far the best option.

In my view, and simply to ensure that the different channels complement rather than compete with one another or duplicate one another. And there's a very simple way of the simple start. If you want to do this is to make sure that the head of the ultimate head of the corporate website is the same person as the ultimate head of social media. So that's a really good starting point. And that's really the best. You can't you can't coordinate properly without that.

Jonathan   When we looked at some research into the behind the scenes and high performing corporate digital teams, we found that some of the very best in the world do have ways of coordinating their efforts and one of them is through information sharing and particularly data sharing.

So, is there a measurement case for closer co-operation? You know, we've been told by some digital teams that some web teams that they feel like social media gets all the glory with senior management because they've got more numbers that they can use to dazzle the higher ups. But of course, the web team has data as well. 

Georgia   Yes, I think. We hear this a lot and it's this idea that the corporate website is in the limelight and social media is in the spotlight, and it partly comes down to the fact that it's really easy to get those quick metrics for social media measurement and it's harder to measure the effectiveness of the corporate website.

And that is kind of the holy grail of communications - is actually putting a number on the effectiveness of communication in this way - and it's what we are doing at Bowen Craggs like we're really trying to provide that measure and same with this new measure of social media that we've introduced with the metric that Jonathan mentioned earlier we're bringing this qualitative angle to social media to complement the data that you already get from your social media analysis and metrics anyway so trying to bring that new angle to it. 

Scott   Yeah, and there has been a lot over the recent years, there's been an awful lot written by psychologists and others about the nefariously addictive dopamine hits that people get from using social media. And I actually think the same is true for corporate social media measurements. think it does give traditional social media measurement does give a nefarious dopamine hit to executives: "our post got a million views on LinkedIn. Yay".

And social media measurement is important for sure. And I don't want to belittle it. But measuring the effectiveness of the corporate website is absolutely vital too. And as Georgia says, that's what all of our services in different ways are ultimately designed to do. Measure, help you measure and improve your online channels. I've been very rude about social media measurement there. Didn't mean to. But I do think there's a you do get a bit of a dopamine hit. I've seen it, you know, the post of the CEO getting 3 million views, everyone jumping up and down, it's dopamine hit.

Georgia   Yeah, well that's why they've turned off the like count on Instagram if you want. If you don't want to see how many posts, how many likes your post got because it can be quite damaging from a mental health perspective and that comparison point and I mean this is for personal use and not corporate comms use but you can, there's the option to get rid of it so you don't know if your post has loads of likes or not.

Scott   Yeah. Yeah. What's the opposite of a dopamine hit? Because I guess if your post gets no likes, you don't get dopamine hit, you get some sad hit. Sad hit. A hit of sadness. 

Georgia   You get a sad, hit of sadness.

Jonathan  No, that's called deleting, deleting the post. Am I the only one who does that? 

Georgia   Yes, deleting it and reposting it at a time when people are more likely to like it.

Jonathan   Well, I noticed on Bluesky as well that they have an option where you can see just people's posts and not all the comments and things around them, perhaps, suspect there a lot of ex-users right now who would probably like to that option. Well, so for a while now, the corporate communicators that we talked to at Bowen Craggs have tended to herald one particular social media channel. This is the point where we dive into a few of the channels that we haven't fully dissected yet in terms of where they are in the current state of play. And that channel is one that originally was designed actually with a narrow focus of helping people find a job. And you could argue that in some sense, you know.

Was it even a social media channel? It's an original conception. Is it even one now? But of course, I'm talking about LinkedIn. The same things that make LinkedIn so reliably useful also perhaps make it in some ways less exciting than some of the other social media channels. It's more of a steady as you go type of platform. But is there still innovation happening on LinkedIn? What does good look like on there today?

Scott   I think that Unilever's LinkedIn presence is impressive. It's built up a big following. About 20 million people follow Unilever on LinkedIn. And it's got posts that are visually bold, punchy, largely focused on human stories, which is always important. And crucially, they are often genuinely interesting. So, it's well run and as I mentioned, it does, it really feels like there's a bit of passion and energy behind it. And it's a good mixture of high production values, but without, not at the expense of a sense of authenticity. It's quite a difficult balance to get right. Does it feel authentic? And but also does it feel polished? And Unilever's LinkedIn presence in the round, I feel achieves that.

Georgia   You're right that it's a difficult balance and I was really struck by recent analysis that said that more than half of the longer posts in English on LinkedIn are AI generated.

I guess having said that maybe it's not that shocking. But I don't know, I think it is shocking because the internet is fast turning into this place that is just overrun with AI generated nonsense. The term "slop" has been put around which isn't a very nice term it does describe what is happening and I think we need to really protect the internet and corporate communications from this. Dnd the best LinkedIn presences really do educate, inform; they allow stakeholders to get the latest news about a company but also get a feel for what is happening at the company behind the scenes. They humanise it and that can be through reposting employee posts featuring the leadership team. Yeah, think authenticity is just something that needs to be really remembered on LinkedIn and other channels.

Scott   And there's a big opportunity here because if more than half of longer English posts are AI generated, there's a huge opportunity for communications teams to be authentic and to therefore stand out in a refreshing way.

And it seems that LinkedIn is currently actively encouraging users to use AI to change their posts and LinkedIn has never been the most fun, edgy, distinctive of social media channels. It is quite, because of its roots, is quite corporate. So, to counter that vanilla-isation and the dead-eyedness of all this AI slop, go for it and be authentic if you're a company on LinkedIn.

Georgia  Yeah, it's always been cliche, but it's now cliche but generated by AI, which is arguably a lot worse.

Scott   This is creepy; creepy and cliche.

Jonathan   Well, presumably there are degrees of generated by AI content. mean, if someone is writing their own post and then using the AI button to polish it up a bit, I mean, you know, it's debatable about whether that you come out with something that actually has achieved the objective and is more engaging, more readable, you know, more lifelike or the opposite. But that's maybe not the problem, is it?

I guess if I were running LinkedIn right now, I'd be a little bit concerned that it could become a junk shop for information. But at the same time, I think there's plenty of evidence that it also is going in the opposite direction and becoming perhaps more indispensable than ever.

Let's move on to another big channel important channel as the data talking about earlier suggests, is an enduring one, which is YouTube.  

And, you know, it's another one that has sort of evolved from its original purpose, which was more as a platform for storing and viewing videos, which of course it still is. And for that reason, for a long time, I think a lot of people wondered, it even a social media channel? But I think we can say now that it is. I mean, it’s Pew has spoken and said that it is the one that among, actually we were talking earlier about the teenage data, but actually it's the number one most used channel, at least in terms of, as the caveat was said earlier, that channels that people ever use among adults in the US as well.

So, who's doing YouTube in a corporate context, particularly well at the moment, do you think? 

Georgia   I have an example of Bosch and they are experimenting with YouTube shorts and this is just a really good mixture of product but also corporate content and they have videos about their corporate history which is quite an interesting format to tell those stories.

Scott   Yeah, about I think about a month ago, HSBC launched a podcast on its main global YouTube channel. The podcast is called Power Up and it's a series of interviews focused on how people perform at their best, quote unquote. It's got a dedicated podcast tab on the YouTube channel and HSBC also uses YouTube's YouTube shorts - most of which, if not all of which - are focused on the sports and the sports people that the bank supports.

And the podcast, just after just a month of after its launch, is gaining significant traction on HSBC's YouTube channel. And some of the YouTube shorts are getting hundreds of thousands of views, at least one has passed the million marks. So, yeah, HSBC, financial services firm, making really quite innovative use of YouTube.

Jonathan   On this point of whether YouTube is, in fact, a social media channel or just a hosting platform, one thing I've been paying more attention to myself recently than I used to is whether companies allow comments on YouTube videos or not. Some do, some don't. Some do or don't selectively. Some basically have comments switched off on all of their video content.

What's good practice on this? And is YouTube even legitimately a social media channel if the comments are switched off?

Georgia   There's such a good point about is that, is YouTube a social media channel? And I think the comment is at the heart of that because without the comments, that's the social element and without that it's just a media, it's just a repository of videos. So good practice would be to turn the comments on and it has this effect of also being an important trust signal because if there are no comments it could be perceived as why doesn't the company want us to engage with this? What are they trying to avoid getting into or avoid engaging on and not being transparent?

Scott   I agree that the comments on is the best default policy, but I do think there's times there's potentially times in which it's appropriate to make exceptions to that rule. For example, if specific employees in a video on YouTube are being targeted by trolls in the comments, I think it's important to make it for companies to make exceptions in circumstances like that. But yeah, comment. Comments on should be the default.

Georgia   Yeah, safety first as well with everything.

Jonathan   One way that people are increasingly using YouTube and other social channels but i think especially YouTube is as a search engine.

And we've recently amended our benchmarking methodology to reflect this change on the assumption that this might be yet another consumer trend that inevitably spills over into user behaviors and habits in relation to corporate communications. What do companies need to be thinking about if they want to make their YouTube presidents more search friendly?

Scott   For the titles of YouTube videos and for the descriptions of the videos and in the content of the videos themselves, it's really important to use language that is distinctive and clear. It's important to avoid bland corporate jargon and to avoid cliche as avoiding those things is important for Google SEO.

It's the same for search optimisation on YouTube. It's also good practice to provide proper closed captions, human edited subtitles, not just auto generated ones. That's going to support good search performance on YouTube. It's also important to promote your YouTube content on your other online channels to maximize awareness and visibility of that content. But probably most importantly, and this is from the Department of the Blindingly Obvious, but it's to provide content, videos that are genuinely interested, interesting, sorry, targeted and focused. And don't just use your YouTube channel as a dumping ground for all the video content that you produce for other channels. So, curate it properly, for example, by using the playlist, YouTube playlist to categorise your videos.

So, there's lots you can do. 

Jonathan   Let's move on to Instagram, which we alluded to earlier as one of Meta's channels and a sort of twin to Threads. But this is one channel that a lot of communicators seem to struggle to know quite what to do with. So, what does good look like on Instagram today in a corporate context?

Can you think of any companies that are doing Instagram particularly well?

Georgia   The best examples do tend to tap into internal talent and have that angle of really showcasing your employees and telling those stories and interviewing people in the company or having an employee make a video themselves, that kind of thing. Because Instagram works very well for this community building and it's often a channel that is followed by a company's employees, perhaps more than any other stakeholder group. And there are numerous companies who does as well but one example is Sky. They have their Life at Sky Instagram handle and particularly for Careers and targeting graduates and job seekers, it's really good at showing that community of what it's actually like to work at the company, what are the culture like, the values, that kind of thing. And it's quite dynamic and engaging even if you're not in the world of Sky, but especially if you are in the world of Sky. And you can see that all the comments are from current employees talking to each other.

Scott   And also, Instagram is a great channel for integrating corporate messaging with marketing. And when it comes to sheer brute numbers of followers, the most popular corporate Instagram feeds do have appeal to customers.

Nike's main Instagram feed has more than 300 million followers. 

And HSBC, going back to HSBC, they are they're doing both what they have two major global Instagram feeds. One is designed as a window to the world at large. And the other is doing exactly what Georgia has just described, which is they have a life at HSBC Instagram feed, which focuses on the real lives of real employees. So it's taking a strategic decision to use Instagram in two different ways via two different feeds. And the main all-purpose HSBC Instagram feed has just over 65,000 followers and Life at HSBC still has, for a focus channel, a still healthy 17,000 followers.

Jonathan   Well, let's finish off this episode of the podcast with a round of, I'm going to try to say this right, social media. Wow. Roundabout. The question is this, what's one thing that you've come across lately that's given you hope that social media can still be a force for good? We've talked a lot about how social media is fragmenting. We haven't really dwelt on it, but there's a potential dark underside to some of the trends that we're talking about, people, groups, factions becoming more isolated. But, you know, the question is, can social media and particularly from the world of corporate communications, I suppose, still be a force for good?

What have you seen that's awe-inspiring or simply inspiring and the kind of thing that makes you want to shout about it?

I'll go first, as ever, so that I don't have the last word. And it's really just to loop back to Bluesky and the green shoots of community that are developing there. There are a lot of people who seem to be relieved to have left behind the vitriol and sort of unsafeness of X and found a new landing spot. It's obviously at least so far, a smaller place, but in a wonkier, nerdier place than X or some of the other channels for that matter. But it's really great to be reminded that social media can still genuinely be a place where communities are built. And of course, that's a messy as well as exciting thing to happen. 

And Bluesky itself seems to be struggling a bit with the infrastructure because some of the things that I'm experiencing on there don't totally work at the moment. We talked earlier about Microsoft entering the fray there and one of the comments that alongside a bunch of more reverent ones but in response to Microsoft's lighthearted post was, you're on here now too. And so, there's a kind of genuine excitement about being in a place where there's a growth of community and that's really heartening. And I guess my message to corporate digital communicators would be to, if you haven't checked it out, then do so. Not necessarily entirely with the view of whether the company should be there, but because it's … you know, interesting to observe what's happening there.

Georgia, what's your social media example?

Georgia   My example does follow on from yours and it is just, I think with the ban and then the return of TikTok, it has really shown the power of social media platforms to, as you say, genuinely build community and it can create real life friendships across different countries, it can make communities. Like it is a very powerful thing and that is quite inspiring.

One, kind of, solid example of good social media practice comes from Unilever and I wanted to flag there is a careers account that they have on Instagram and it differs from the norm in that sometimes social media content can be a bit fluffy or lacking substance whereas this account has lots of facts and figures they're not afraid to use text and Instagram is you know a very aesthetic highly stylised platform but they really go in on this sort of written facts and figures and I think it's just informative as well as engaging. Yeah.

Jonathan   Scott, what have you got for us?

Scott   This isn't oldie but a goodie in my view that illustrates the of the power of corporate use of social media. A few years ago, was actually 2018, the American actress and comedian Roseanne Barr posted an overtly racist tweet on Twitter. And then she quickly blamed the tweet on the fact that she'd taken an ambient sleeping pill called Ambien.

Soon afterwards, Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical company, posted on Twitter this response. It was Sanofi's US division. It said: "People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication". So, I thought that the limitations in terms of brevity of platforms like Twitter can also be a bit of a virtue too. And I think that's quite a bold and punchy example of how companies can use social media to make powerful, concise points.

Jonathan   And I think it illustrates that this is all one great big conversation, isn't it? Well, thank you both. This has been super stimulating, as always.

[Outro]

Jonathan   That's it for this episode of Cutting Through, and you can find links to articles and best practice examples discussed in today's show, plus a variety of further reading at bowencraggs.com slash podcast.

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