Spreading Emotions: Two Studies Touch On Social Interdependence

As social beings, people are naturally interdependent. Just how interdependent isn't entirely understood, but one study and one report — one from the University of British Columbia and the other by the American Psychological Association — demonstrate that our ability to share emotions runs much deeper.

At the University of British Columbia, Christiane Hoppmann, professor of psychology, gleaned insights in the Seattle Longitudinal Study. This long-term study has followed more than 6,000 individuals since 1956. Their emotional state, according to the findings, is often tied more to the emotional state of their spouse than their own personal success, good health, and inner peace.

The study was recently covered by the MSNBC. While the study focused primarily on married couples, researchers theorize that it happens the same in friendships or with individuals who share a lot of joint experiences.

Stress Spreads Rapidly Through Immediate Social Circles.

This seems to be supported by a recent report from the American Psychological Association, which reveals that 90 percent of children and adolescents surveyed said they can tell when their parents are stressed based on how they act. The actions do not always have to be direct; people who are stressed exhibit less patience, irritability, and forgetfulness.

But parental stress doesn't end with the parents. As many as 47 percent of preteens (8- to 12-year-olds) and 33 percent of teens feel sad when their parents are stressed. The Dallas News recently spoke with several psychiatrists who believe such stress can lead to stress or even depression in children.

Social Media Magnifies The Emotional Charge.

Dan Zarrella tracked the impact of overly negative remarks and attitudes online over 100,000 accounts. His findings suggest that while negativity might create a spike in attention, negative people tend to lose followers over the long term.

Recently, Zarrella expanded on his tracking to conclude that people don't like spreading negative news on Twitter or Facebook. In fact, he rightly suggests that is why people turn increasingly to social media as opposed to mainstream media for their news. They've reached their threshold.

Marketers Might Consider What This Means.

When you visit a Facebook account like Delta and a Facebook account like Coke, you will find decidedly different experiences. The members of one are mostly positive. The members of the other are mostly negative.

It's pretty easy to guess which is which. What is more difficult to ascertain is how many members don't take the time to "unlike" the account. They just don't go back, unless they have another negative experience to share.

Imagine what this might do to anyone visiting an account looking for positive information about a company. Otherwise happy people could easily become hyper-sensitive in looking for more problems. Ergo, you reap what you sow. And every now and again, it really pays to consider what you might be spreading.

After all, if spouses and parents can spread stress and depression, it stands to reason that they have an equal shot at spreading kindness and happiness too. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean everything you write about or talk about has to be another Kumbaya session, especially if it is faked. But it certainly might give you another reason to remain constructive in your approach while tempering how many "Debbie Downers" you enable or even how often you watch the news.

Varying Story Structures: PR Needs More Than Vanilla

If blog posts had flavors, most of them would taste like vanilla. Public relations can accept part of the blame. By any other name, the vanilla blog post would be called the "inverted pyramid."

"...in my opinion there is nothing more important then applying the 'Inverted Pyramid' to your writing." — Chris Bennett

"The inverted pyramid becomes even more important since we know from several user studies that users don’t scroll, so they will very frequently be left to read only the top part of an article." — Jakob Nielsen

"Structure your paragraphs in the inverted pyramid style. This means stating your conclusion first, then supporting it with the sentences that follow." — Brian Clark

"The ‘Inverted Pyramid’ writing style, where the most important information or conclusion is at the beginning of the post, lesser information towards the end." — Eamonn O'Raghallaigh

"Creating content using the inverted or upside-down pyramid is one of the top secrets for creating content that sticks and gets read or watched." — Scott Scanlon

Vanilla, vanilla. A thousand times vanilla.

So where did the all-vanilla rule come from? Conspiracy theorists might suggest it was planted by the vanilla bean growers, but journalists embraced the inverted pyramid because of the telegraph, and later because it was easier for editors to snip stories to fit whatever space the paper had available with no one being the wiser.

It made sense. As papers grew and people had less time to read, they skimmed the opening content. In many cases, readers were able to get the gist of the story, and then self-select themselves on whether they would read the whole thing. Nobody really cared whether they did or not. Newspaper circulations are based on delivery not readership.

It also made sense for public relations pros to adopt this format for news releases. There is nothing worse for a journalist than reading a dry, boring marketing-laced story that never seems to get to the point because it has no news value except for the owners of some copy and the public relations person. But then again, let's not forget that press releases are not meant to be published. They are meant to be one step up from an outline.

Not everybody likes vanilla. At least not every day.

While the majority of people like vanilla, it's a thin majority consisting of about 29 percent of the population. I suspect the same holds true for inverted pyramid readers too, regardless of what search engines and shares might do. It gets boring.

But more importantly, there are two other considerations to make. Most blogs are not just trying to report the news, giving people the option to read a little bit and move on. Engagement matters. There are not ten news stories competing for attention on the page (unless it is a paper). If they are reading your content on a regular basis, they are already there. And circulation (traffic spikes) ought not to matter as much as your readership.

Of course, that is not to knock the inverted pyramid out completely. Everybody uses it now and again. It especially works like a charm when you have less time to write a post. At the same time, I think we can all agree that scanning half a dozen blogs that read like press releases with the letter "I" sprinkled about gets old. It's gets old writing like that too.

Alternatives to vanilla posts to reward your readership.

1. Focus. Focus on one individual's story before ballooning out into a broader perspective. And then circle back around and conclude on the individual's story to summarize what the reader might take away from the story.

2. Scenic/Anecdotal. Recreate the scene or experience surrounding an event (without a focus on an individual), drawing the reader into the story and then transitioning to the bigger picture. Then, circle back to the opening.

3. Dialogue. Emphasize the speech or confessional of the person or persons in the story, demonstrating their plight or pain or point of view. This doesn't mean starting off with a quote; paraphrasing works too.

4. Chronological. Tell a story sharing a chronological series of events from varying points of view, bouncing back and forth between the subjects. It can be tricky to make it coherent, but it tends to work especially when you have cause to show varied perspectives that unite otherwise very different people.

5. First Person. While it is common among individual blogs, organizational blogs (except consultants) make it more interesting. If you are personally touched by a story, write from the heart like you might tell a personal story, even if it spills into participatory journalism.

6. Analogy. This post is just as much a story about vanilla as it is about the inverted pyramid, and the consequences of having too much of the same flavor.

What public relations professionals need to learn.

Just as many copywriters have to get over writing copy that demonstrates how clever they are as opposed to how clever their client's product might be, public relations professionals need to slowly move away from the inverted pyramid because you're not simply pitching a story — you're telling it.

Right. Public relations professionals communicating direct to public have to realize that they are no longer communicating to a busy journalist who will build upon or kill a story based on the first paragraph (even if story leads still matter).

If consumers are on your page, give them a reason to read past the opener because wherever they might go next will not be on the next page of your blog. It will be the next blog on their list.

Exploring Networks: Two Accounts, One Upside Down

When most people look at a social network account, the first thing they notice is numbers. The general assumption is that someone with 10,000 followers is more important than someone with 1,000 followers than someone with 100 followers.

The thought process is so ingrained, some public relations practitioners even subscribe to the idea that bloggers need to have a certain amount of followers before they will work with them. Some social media practitioners claim there is a follower threshold colleagues must reach before becoming experts (as if). And even otherwise bright individuals seem to be locked into their own notions of who ought to rank where and when; the same people who called for others to throw off authority years ago.

Last week, I had an opportunity to look behind the scenes at two social media programs, using Twitter and Facebook. For the purposes of this post, we will call the accounts Program X and Program Y. Both are relatively new, about three months old.

Program X, by the numbers.

Twitter, 201. Facebook, 184. (TwitterGrader, 83. Klout, 32. TweetLevel, 34.)

The account can best be described as moderately active and reasonably responsive, with more than half of its followers seeming to be a logically connected by common interests. It is obviously still in its infancy, doubling in size every few weeks.

Program Y, by the numbers.

Twitter, 2,567. Facebook, 1,539. (TwitterGrader, 98.7. Klout, 36. TweetLevel, 35.)

The account can best be described as more active than average but not always appropriately responsive, with more than half of its followers seeming to be unrelated to any common interest. At a glance, it seems successful, growing in a much more erratic fashion, with brief leaps and long plateaus.

Program X, behind the numbers.

If you shared common interests that the account Tweets about, you might meet other people who have common interests. While small, there seems to be several areas for common ground that all the followers share. And, when the account is mentioned, it responds appropriately and also engages other people about topics you might expect (beyond talking about itself).

When it links to created content, it has an average number of shares. The visitation percentage to the content, however, is much higher (something 'influence' systems do not measure), around 20 percent. Even more telling, as a location-based business, are social check-ins. People seem to check-in with increased frequency, doubling every month since Facebook added the feature. More frequency would probably propel the account forward.

Program Y, behind the numbers.

Even if you shared common interests that the account Tweets about, you might think twice. Assuming you don't look at just numbers, there is almost no common ground between the followers. While the account is also mentioned frequently, some of the mentions seem to ring hollow, almost as if automated accounts are talking to each other.

Likewise, the amount of RTs seems to have no connection to the frequency of tweets, debunking the notion that RTs are necessarily demonstrative of value. In fact, this is probably why there doesn't seem to be any correlation to site visits and network activity. The number of visits to its content site from networks (something 'influence' systems do not measure) is less than .5 percent.

Value Assessment.

While one account seems to be ten times the size, it has roughly the same value, with Program X undermining its own long-term ability unless action is taken now. One of the side effects from an abundance of low-quality followers (spammers, follower chasers, and auto follows) is that the account creates more noise, but that noise is best described as static.

It's also impacting in that the follow rate of new, unsolicited followers is almost 3:1 between the two. In terms of those algorithms, it's even more telling. Twitter Grader falls right in line with the perception and not reality. Klout and TweetLevel overestimate both accounts in terms of what they call "influence." I am not surprised. Both Klout and TweetLevel tend to perform at their weakest toward the lower and higher ends of their scales (lumping most active people in the middle).

There are dozens of accounts that I follow that have much more meaningful engagement but are 'rated' lower by comparison because they are new, less active, or simply have no aspirations to become "popular" on social networks. You know. They are people, with very different uses for Twitter and Facebook than becoming popular.

So where is the real problem between these accounts? My guess is that one is operating on an erred objective — to create a successful social media program (or the perception of one, banking on the idea it will be real one day). There are a few consultants who do this all the time.

Conversely, what the organization would be better off doing is tying its objective to the organization's output/offerings and then communicating that in a creative and meaningful way rather than wish for buzz and awareness. I sometimes wonder what percentage of professionals know the difference. Or their clients for that matter.

Shopping Online: Clicks vs. Bricks Or Something Else?

"Trust, over getting the best price, is most important to consumers when shopping electronic stores and clothing stores," said Craig Elston, senior vice president, Integer. "This is not a surprise considering these channels offer bigger ticket items and consumers are willing to pay more for quality and experience in these channels."

Elston was speaking about a preliminary finding related to an ongoing shopper experience study currently under way by The Integer Group and M/A/R/C Research. Early research shows that shopping experiences, time saving, and trust are outpacing discounts this year. And, according to the study, department stores are scoring higher for convenient last minute gifts.

Conversely, another report conducted by comScore shows that online retailers already have something to smile about. For the holiday season to date, more than $17.5 billion has been spent online, marking a 12 percent increase over last year.

"Without a doubt, free shipping has become a critical driver of e-commerce purchasing, with the majority of consumers indicating that they will abandon their shopping carts if they get to check-out and find that free shipping is not included," said Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman. "Retailers have increasingly responded to this consumer demand, with market leaders Amazon and Walmart, for example, both offering free shipping on virtually all transactions this season."

Free shipping does more for online retailers than offering a discount. From the consumer's perspective, it levels the playing field, giving the online retailer an advantage in terms of time saving and trust. With the exception of a few items people still hold in their hands before making a purchase, the online shopping option is easier (and sometimes more convenient for returns).

In fact, according to yet another study (StrategyOne's Annual Holiday Shopping Index), while 59 percent of consumers still prefer to do their holiday shopping in stores, the experience is beginning to vary widely among income groups. Fifty-one percent of consumers earning $75,000 or more prefer to gift shop in stores; 63 percent of consumers earning between $25,000 and $40,000 shop in stores.

This doesn't mean department stores and specialty shops are going to have to continue to lose to e-commerce. But it does seem to indicate a need for brick retailers to rethink the shopping experience. When an online shopping cart seems friendlier and most trustworthy than a check-out counter clerk after facing lines of tired bargain hunters, it's time to rethink the strategy.

Researching Sex: Does It Sell Or Smell?

Despite a new study by AdweekMedia/Harris Poll that works hard to prove that "sex sells," there are plenty of case studies that suggest the opposite. The further removed the product is from sex, the less people appreciate the bravado or even innuendo.

In fact, while Americans are known to be more reserved than their European counterparts, many advertisers don't appreciate just how conservative they might be. As a whole, Americans could take it or leave it, with a slight majority hoping to leave it.

• 56 percent are bothered by the amount of sexual imagery in advertising.*
• 37 percent are not bothered by the amount of sexual imagery they see in ads.
• 6 percent say that they do not see any sexual imagery in advertising.

*25 percent say they are very bothered by the amount they see in advertising; 32 percent are somewhat bothered.

Of course, there is a gender gap. Among genders, almost three-quarters of women (73 percent) say they are bothered whereas just slightly over half of men (53 percent) are bothered. Age also plays a factor. Less than half of those 18-34 (46 percent) and half of those 35-44 (50 percent) say they are bothered by the sexual imagery in ads, compared to three in five of those 45-54 (60 percent) and two-thirds of those 55 and older (66 percent) who say the same.

If people are bothered by sex in ads, why do marketers think it sells?

With the exception of sexually-related products, such as lingerie, sex is an easy way to attract attention when otherwise boring products or boring sales propositions just can't cut through the clutter. So, in most cases, sex has nothing to do with selling.

It has to do with getting noticed. After that, marketers are only hoping that people talk about the provocative advertisements and hopefully the product. But sometimes, this backfires in big ways.

For example, the Monte Carlo Las Vegas tried to reposition itself last year with a "can't think of anything clever, let's use sex" approach. It didn't sell Monte Carlo as much as it sold better Las Vegas hotels. (You might also notice that one commenter mentions it was a rip off from an artist.)

So, the question marketers need to ask, at least in the U.S. where people are more uptight — are we selling X or XXX? And, if we are selling XXX and consumers happen to remember X, then what are they saying afterward? In the case of Monte Carlo, they seemed to have said everything except what the resort wanted them to say. You know, like maybe they wanted to stay there.

Personally, I'm not uptight about sex. I am, however, uptight about bad ads because they are such a tremendous waste of money. Worse, they sometimes make all your other marketing efforts work ten times as hard, trying to undo the damage.

Planning Ahead: Fresh Content Project

When you work anywhere near communication, you will eventually meet scores of tacticians. They are smart people and many of them are needed. They work especially hard developing systems that they can use over and over again. Some of them even like to say "rinse, wash, repeat."

But is life really so easy? Is there some sort of magic formula that anyone can apply and soar to the top? Maybe, but I kind of doubt it. At least not in a tactical way, as important as tactics can be. Just ask the percentage of public relations professionals that used to rely on lists to get the news out (they didn't have a plan for all the turnover). Or, ask the scores of business owners that, sadly, couldn't weather a recession (most of them never planned for one). Or, ask several hundred SEO specialists who recently learned social networks are slowly undermining their coding skills.

As a business owner, you need a plan. And you don't only need a plan that touches on those little daily activities every day, but one that transcends daily actions that can be changed and gamed along the way. You have to build a better strategy, one that gets you from point A to point Z regardless of the weather, economy, or adaptions that occur faster than you can master them.

Best Fresh Content In Review, Week of November 22

• PR Content: A New Architecture?
Although anyone could easily debate Adam Vincenzini's opener that public relations has been responsible for the creation and management of 'news' (we'd like to think actions create news, not a department), there is no mistaking his assessment that the function of public relations is changing again. There is a shift that requires public relations practitioners to understand what news is because they are often charged with developing the content. In other words, some practitioners are learning why their pitches never went anywhere.

• Why We Let Strangers Tell Us What To Buy.
Unbiased (or the appearance of no bias), group intelligence, and reassurance are among the reasons that Jason Keith says we turn to virtual strangers for advice. There is another piece of this puzzle that deserves some notice too. After affirmation (looking for opinions after we've already made up our minds to buy), people turn to the Web because online reviews do not include "us" in the equation like any advice from a friend or family member might. While I don't agree that the quantity influences purchasing decisions as much as the quality of what certain reviews say, Keith still presents a solid consideration of what consumers do every day.

• Do You Have a Plan, or Just a Wish?
Years ago, one of the first things I learned about strategic communication was that setting an objective was never enough. It had to to be reasonable, measurable, and achievable too. Based on what many prospective clients tell us, they often operate in wishes. They want to be market leaders before they ever have their operations in place. Valeria Maltoni pinpoints why we pass on these accounts. They dream of success, but never develop a plan to get themselves there. Sometimes something as simple as outlining the steps you need to take from A to B, as Maltoni writes, can help you appreciate the difference.

•“Social Business” Can’t Replace Product Marketing Skills.
In an unrelated but related post, Geoff Livingston tackles the issue another way, specific to social media. He uses Jumo as an example. There was plenty of social buzz but no real bite. The launch had more than its share of bugs. Lesson learned. Chris Hughes may or may not be a social media genius, but he clearly didn't know how to handle the launch of a network. In contrast, Livingston mentions how Apple doesn't even have a social media program and it still managed to launch a product that has already changed the way we see the Web, at least for those who purchased the product.

• Why Being “Big” On Twitter and Facebook Is Important To Google.
Jeff Bullas recapped Danny Sullivan's interview with Google and Bing, which shed light on why social networks have become increasingly significant in SEO: When people point to articles and blog posts from these networks, it counts. Specifically, Google said it looks at the social authority of a user. It's even more likely to count on Bing's social search, where tweets from more authoritative people flow to the top. One of the reasons both search engine services use this approach is simple enough. It's a lot more difficult to game social networks than spiders.