Facebook has once again quietly made adjustments to its page guidelines and the rules surrounding cover photos.  However this time, the changes actually work in favor of brands as Facebook has loosened the rules a little.

As of March 6th, Facebook page administrators can now include contact information, purchase information and even a call-to-action on their Facebook cover photos.

The current Facebook cover photo rule:  All covers are public. This means that anyone who visits your page will be able to see your cover. Covers can’t be deceptive, misleading, or infringe on anyone else’s copyright. You may not encourage people to upload your cover to their personal timelines. Covers may not include images with more than 20% text.

The one rule that does remain from the original set – much to the dismay of our design team – is the dreaded 20% text rule. Facebook cover photos still can not have more then 20% text. The same 20% rule applies to images used in Facebook ads and promoted posts, which we somewhat agree with. We don’t want to clutter up user feeds with text-heavy ads. But why only 20% on the cover photo and no limitations on “regular” none-promoted photos?  For that, I have no answer. However, I do make sure to follow the guidelines. Do you?

Here is a link that will help you better understand exactly what 20% text looks like:
www.facebook.com/help/468870969814641/

What do you think about the 20% rule when it comes to the cover photo? Tell us below.

——-

Read more Facebook’s “20% rule” in the latest 360Social Digital Download, a round-up of digital marketing news for brands.

FTC Crack Down on Social Media Advertising - The FTC is heavily monitoring advertisers on Twitter and Facebook to protect consumers from misleading ads. If you suspect that your ad may be misleading, add a disclosure or rephrase the copy. Remember that disclosures need to be clear and visible on all devices and platforms that consumers may use to view the ad.

Facebook Lessens Regulation on 20% Text Rule - Brands are now able to include calls to action, contact info, or references to price or purchase information in the cover photo, but there is still a 20 % limit for text overlay. The new guidelines offer brands more flexibility in the sort of content included in cover photos.

#Facebook to Incorporate Hashtags? 
- Twitter created the hashtag to allow users to collate tweets relating to a single topic or news event, and Instagram quickly followed suit, but is Facebook next? Facebook is testing the hashtag feature, which would allow Facebook users to click on the hashtag (#360PR) to pull up all posts about similar topics or events so it can quickly index conversations around trending topics and build those conversations up, giving users more reason to stay logged in and see more ads.

Brands Start Using 6-Second Video App Vine - 6-second video sharing app Vine was acquired by Twitter in December, making people wonder if it could be this year’s hot new app on the block. Hopeful of its rise in popularity, many brands have jumped in to create their own microvideos to share both on Vine and Twitter. Mashable ranked the 10 Best Brands on Vine. Stop Motion videos are beginning to define the Vine tone between both users and brands. Brands are creative, inspiring, and funny.

Google Reader Out. Feedly In - Since Google announced that they would be killing off Google Reader, many users turned to the app Feedly to get their RSS Feeds. A few performance glitches from Google Alerts have thrown users into a whirl of speculation that Google may terminate of Alerts next. Google has said nothing about ending the service, but everyone is in search of a back up free email alert system.

Filed under: Design, Digital Digest, Digital PR, FaceBook, Internet, Mobile Industry, Social Media, Social Networking | Add Comment →

By Mike Rush, 360PR @Home Practice Leader

My trip out to Chicago for the Housewares Show was fitting.  With inclement weather following me wherever I seem to travel (which I   dodged by a hair), I hunkered down on my flight with 360PR’s latest book club read, What The Dog Saw by Malcom Gladwell, which details the rise of Ron Popeil, inventor of the Chop-O-Matic and king of direct response TV infomercials.  I couldn’t help but think of our favorite As-Seen-On-TV brand at 360PR, The Snuggie, and how we PR folks are all pitchmen (and women), too.

For those of you that have never attended the Housewares Show, especially foodies, there are a number of questions you find yourself pondering in awe:  “Do I have enough storage space below my kitchen countertop to fit this?”  “Will a magnificent lime green mixer still look good in 10 years?” and “If only they were passing out samples…and I had brought an extra suitcase or two.”

After a full day of combing the show floor (which could have easily been a week), I was able to surmise a few emerging trends for 2013:

Colors.  Lots of them.  Retro colors on appliances started to pop up a few years ago – and I wished my mother had held onto her avocado-colored blender from the ‘70s.  But, this year, housewares are emulating ‘80s fashion, with turquoise, fuchsia, baby blue, and hot pink to even KitchenAid mixers in leopard and zebra prints.  Every year, PANTONE, the world’s authority on color standardization, selects the Color of the Year – and for 2013, it’s Emerald Green.

Kids as Foodies. With the rise of food TV for the whole family, like Food Network’s Cupcake Wars or TLC’s Cake Boss, kids are becoming serious foodies.  And food creations are becoming a central part of after-school and weekend fun for parents and kids.  Take 360PR client FamilyFun magazine – they nailed this trend early (check out my favorite “Treat of the Month” from February – Punxsutawney Pudding Cup).  Baking, cooking, and even cleaning up the mess that follows are all activities marketers see as a celebrated and fun opportunities for families – from OXO and Bakelicious to smaller companies like Boston Warehouse’s “Smart Cookie” line of kitchenware, which are designed specifically for kids’ small hands but are clearly not toys.

Brands Playing Nice in the Sandbox.   Last year, 360 launched the first-ever Honeywell with Febreze fan, which merged the $38 billion Honeywell brand with Procter & Gamble’s $900 million Febreze® brand to deliver air circulation AND odor elimination.  This year’s Housewares Show spotlighted a few unexpected partnerships.  SodaStream announced a strategic agreement with Ocean Spray for “a portfolio of juice blend concentrates co-developed exclusively for the SodaStream home beverage carbonation system.”  iRobot’s Roomba also now comes with neat accessories – scent strips developed with Yankee Candle so that the mobile vacuum cleans the floor and freshens the air.

Filed under: Consumer Marketing, Events and Conferences, PR Industry, Retail | 2 Comments →

In the wake of blizzard “Nemo” earlier this month, I headed to New York for the perfect storm of fashion, toys and canines – Fashion Week, Toy Fair and the Westminster Dog Show. I’ve always found it curious that these three big events – drawing very different audiences – collide annually. Imagine being the producer at the Today Show or the editor on the photo desk at the Times who has to sort through the myriad of story pitches.

Over at Toy Fair, mobile play and digital integration – bringing technology to traditional toy brands or extending traditional toy brands to digital platforms – was a driving theme. The new Barbie Digital Makeover that uses augmented reality and an array of toy robots with iPhone faces got a lot of attention. Mashable’s Andrea Smith shares a great 60-second tour of these and other tech toys that dominated this year’s Toy Fair.

Whatever the toy, tech or not, digital touch points should absolutely play a role in communicating with parents – and grandparents and aunts and uncles. More people now use smart phones than brush their teeth every day (4.8 vs. 4.2 billion globally), as Hasbro Digital VP Victor Lee pointed out in his keynote at the Digital Kids conference. Where are all those gift-givers looking for toys? Try Google for starters, which logs more than 200 million “toy” related searches every month, according to Lee, who also talked about “the power of the mommy blogger” in influencing play purchases.

Bending gender stereotypes, some of the toy industry’s biggest players are morphing so-called ‘boy toys’ to girls’ play, which poses some messaging challenges, but I, for one, view as a positive. LEGO paved the way with its hugely successful LEGO Friends line last year (image below), and Hasbro unveiled a new NERF line for girls at this year’s Toy Fair. Call it girl power.

There were some toys being marketed as ‘green,’ but more being touted for educational value. And, a parent-appealing message I heard more than once was, how games, digital and traditional, foster parent-child interaction. That’s an opportunity for a lot of brands to endear themselves to moms and dads alike, not to mention grandparents.

Toy Fair was bustling at the Javits and on Twitter – where hundreds of bloggers, journalists, buyers and other industry-watchers shared their “best toy” finds and trends. Check out the stream on these hashtags for more on Toy Fair: #toyfair, #tf13, #tfny and #digitalkids.

Filed under: Events and Conferences | 2 Comments →

How important are your tweets? That is for Twitter to decide! One of the articles in our latest Digital Download discusses Twitter’s recent announcement that they are going to begin attaching value ratings to users’ tweets as none, low, medium and high.

According to Twitter, the new metadata will allow developers to sort through millions of tweets in their streaming API to help them find the conversations that are most useful to them.

Although Twitter did not say how they will actually determine each tweet’s value, it is likely the system will work the same way that “Top Tweets” currently appear in a Twitter search result. Basically, you can get your 140-characters-or-less as a ‘Top Tweet’ if you have a large following or if you manage to rack up a lot of retweets.

As we all know, some streams on Twitter have so much content and move so fast that it can be very hard to keep up. This new system may help brands find the most useful information – and the most influential individuals – in the often-overwhelming Twitter conversations. On the flip side, the new system could prevent great content from being seen if the user (or brand) is new to the ever-growing social platform.

What do you think? Do you find ‘value’ in Twitter’s new rating system?

Read more about Twitter’s new rating system in the latest 360Social Digital Download, a round-up of digital marketing news for brands.

• Twitter will now decide the ‘value’ of your tweets

  The value judgments will be assigned to the public metadata of tweeters’ posts, and used by Twitter’s streaming API to help developers more selectively curate massive amounts of status updates. More
• Social Fresh claims Facebook is turning into a mobile company

  According to Mark Zuckerberg, in 2013, Facebook is “going to get really good at building mobile-first experiences.” 680 million users access Facebook via mobile at least once a month. 157 million ONLY access Facebook via mobile (15% of the total user base). More
• Twitter launches Vine app – Facebook blocks its fan page

  Twitter has introduced a new video sharing service, Vine, that allows users to record and share brief looping videos up to six seconds in length. Upon its initial launch, Facebook made Vine’s unsearchable on its platform. Even at current date, it is not easy to get to the app’s fan page – and they only have 48 likes. More
• Mashable reports how in-app searches are taking searches away from Google
  Google accounts for two of every three searches done in the U.S., far and away the most of any core search engine. However, Mashable uncovers that more and more in-app searches are occurring on platforms like Facebook and Amazon. More
• Facebook admits critical bugs caused page reach to be misreported for months

  While trying to speed up its iOS and Android apps, Facebook accidentally stripped out too much data about news feed posts by Pages. This caused Page Insights to be misreported, leading admins to believe their posts reached fewer people than they actually did, in most cases. More

Filed under: 360 Public Relations, Digital Digest, Digital PR, FaceBook, Interactive Marketing, Internet, Mobile Industry, Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, Uncategorized, YouTube | Add Comment →

By Pamela Brill

It may still feel like winter, but when it comes to promoting outdoor play, things are starting to heat up in the toy business. Gone are the days when manufacturers relied on print and online-only ad campaigns to attract moms to their brand. Today, companies are expanding their reach by investing in new marketing methods to boost business and maintain their presence in a competitive marketplace.

Melissa & Doug, a veritable specialty toy favorite, hosts spring and early summer photo challenges, inviting its loyal customer base to share their experiences with other parents online. “We like to encourage our fan community to ‘spring into spring’ by doing fun, educational activities with kids outside, and our Sunny Patch line is big part of that,” says Public Relations/Social Media Specialist Anna Ritchie.

Last year, the company premiered its virtual Camp Sunny Patch campaign, inviting bloggers to share their ideas for outdoor play and providing weekly suggestions for activities involving Sunny Patch product. Participants were provided with downloadable badges for their young campers to wear, along with product for review.

One of the bloggers who participated in last year’s Camp Sunny Patch, Valerie of Inner Child Fun, commented on her experience with the program. “You could think of Camp Sunny Patch as a virtual go-to guide for creative summertime fun with the kids,” she says. “We provided the basic framework with imaginative play ideas, easy crafts and plenty of outdoor activities and then encouraged parents to connect with their kids, while exploring a different theme each week.”

“One Cup at a Time”

Enticing kids to get outdoors, while supporting a charitable cause, is also visible at the retail level. This coming summer, Toys “R” Us will be resuming its partnership with Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to finding a cure for childhood cancer. Last year, shoppers were encouraged to make donations to “help fight childhood cancer, one cup at a time” or by signing up to host Alex’s Lemonade Stands. Crayola was among the brands that got involved. As a result, Toys “R” Us and families across the country helped to raise nearly $1.9 million benefitting the organization.

“The simple, yet powerful, act of hosting a lemonade stand, and the story behind ALSF, has definitely struck a chord,” said Sloane Lucas, Director, Corporate Philanthropy, Toys “R” Us, Inc., Toys “R” Us, in an official statement. “We understand the importance of helping kids in times of need and hope that each dollar raised will help Alex’s dream of finding a cure for childhood cancer become a reality.”

Pamela Brill is a professional magazine editor and writer whose work has appeared in such national publications as Parents, Woman’s Day and Girls’ Life. The former editor of Small World magazine, she is currently an editor at large for Gifts & Decorative Accessories/Playthings magazine and produces her own blog, The Talking Walnut, which highlights new kids’ products. As a member of the Norwood Avenue School PTA in Northport, N.Y., Pam recently began volunteering for the Parents As Reading Partners (PARP) program to encourage literacy for young readers.

Filed under: 360 Public Relations, 360PR - MomSquad, Blogger Relations, Charity, Trendletter | Add Comment →