August 7, 2015
This week featured some big news for social media brand managers and really head-scratching Tweets. Here are my favorite finds:- Managing a brand’s Instagram became much easier. Hootsuite announced this week that the company will fully integrate Instagram into its social media management platform. Brand managers will be able to “schedule and publish Instagram content, monitor and engage with Instagram audiences and create team workflows,” according to Social Media Today. The logistics of managing a brand’s Instagram account has always been a source of headaches for PR people. This news solves most of those problems.
- Yelp adding data on hospital wait times, quality. While Hootsuite may have just cured headaches, Yelp is surely causing a few in health systems across the country, with its announcement (h/t Mashable) that it will integrate ProPublica data into its pages health care facilities. The data includes, according to Mashable, ER wait times, patient satisfaction scores, the number of free beds available and any government fines for not meeting CMS standards. The information is compiled by ProPublica from their own research and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for 4,600 hospitals, 15,000 nursing homes, and 6,300 dialysis clinics in the U.S. and will be updated quarterly.
- Facebook adding live video streaming for famous people. Facebook has added a new feature, simply called Live, that will allow celebrities to shoot live streaming video that will be broadcast to their followers’ news feeds. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Serena Williams, Michael Buble and Martha Stewart all live streamed on Wednesday to promote the feature, according to Mashable. Live video has been the social media trend of 2015, and with this announcement, it appears unlikely Facebook will integrate with live-streaming apps Meerkat and Periscope. The company hasn’t announced if the feature will extend to users other than celebrities.
- NFL teams as tone-deaf as ever. The Minnesota Vikings promoted Family Day at their training camp with a picture of star running back Adrian Peterson kissing his son, and the Indianapolis Colts invited Twitter followers to bring unused or expired prescription drugs to Colts training camp for “safe disposal.”Both seemingly innocuous to the uninformed, but puzzling if you know about Peterson’s well-publicized child abuse case and Colts’ owner Jim Irsay’s struggles with drug abuse.