Riding the rails with social media

So many brands have jumped on the bandwagon of influencer marketing that it may be losing all association with originality and authenticity. So when Amtrak decided on an angle for reach through social media, it went about it differently. Its goal was to work off people whose social reach run deep rather than merely wide. 

Late in 2018, Amtrak launched its #AmtrakTakeMeThere Social Media Residency Program. It’s intended to showcase the diversity of the trains’ riders by following the stories of individuals who offer a unique perspective on travel. Applicants will be assessed on the basis of their writing skills, photography and videography skills, social community engagement' and online personality.    

Those selected to represent the Amtrak brand get a free round-trip as Sleeper Service passengers. That means they get the kind of amenities one does in a full-service hotel, like meals, bottled water, linens, and a travel allowance up to a thousand dollars.   

Olivia Irvin, Amtrak’s public relations manager shared some insight into what prompted this direction for the brand. She explained, “Today’s market has become saturated with 'influencers' who seem more like ad units than actual people. We don’t want that disconnect — we want stories that resonate.” 

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All Aboard for a New Amtrak Platform

LinkedIn Hops On the Story Bandwagon with Student Voices

Story Time at LinkedIn

LinkedIn has rolled out its own stories feature. Here's how college students are using it

ARIELLA BROWN

 DECEMBER 27, 2018

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We all have our own stories to tell, and some of us choose to share them with the world on social media in video format. That’s why a person’s “story” on Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook refers to a video post.  Now LinkedIn is going to try to be a platform of stories, too, rolling it out first for American college students.

 As TechCrunch recently reported, LinkedIn will allow student to post short videos on their Campus Playlist. They can then be viewed there for one week, though they will remain accessible for as long as the student wishes under the the individual profile’s “Recent Activity.”

If you’re a regular LinkedIn user you might have noticed that it now encourages people who post to add in hashtags, generating several suggestions you can just click. It also does this for Student Stories, according to the TechCrunch report, which is why there will likely be more instances of the hashtag #OnCampus appearing on the videos linked to the school’s Campus Playlist.

To get deeper into this story, I reached out to students on LinkedIn. Cammy Okmin, a student at California Polytechnic who holds the title of LinkedIn Campus Video Editor, graciously answered my questions via email.

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Story Time at LinkedIn

Social and shopping: there is a generation gap

pic https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4318/35933760125_ecef823c7f_b.jpg

Fashion choices are very much influenced by what shoppers see online. One way brands can grab audience attention is through social media.  

GlobalData surveyed 5,000 U.K. shoppers and found 30.4 percent of U.K clothing shoppers are using social media to inspire their clothing choices. The survey revealed that even though Facebook still dominated shopper attention overall, it was not as popular among younger generations. This year’s Piper Jaffray Taking Stock With Teens® survey took note of the preferences of 6,000 teens in the U.S. Only eight percent of teens admit to using Facebook, making it the second least favorite social media platform, ahead of Pinterest.

However, Facebook-owned Instagram has seen so much retail success that it just added that shopping capability to Instagram Stories. The company’s June 12 announcement referred to the 300 million who check Instagram Stories daily.

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Instagram Stories: Shopping For Gen Z

Healthcare Tech Marketing

Telling Effective Stories About Healthcare Tech

New technologies are transforming operations in all industries, including healthcare. But we tend not to hear very much about it from healthcare brands. Melissa Baratta, Senior VP and healthcare practice lead at marketing, social media, and PR firm Affect spoke with DMN tech about innovations in that space and why they should be featured in marketing efforts.

The question is: What accounts for the hesitation to discuss emerging tech applications in healthcare? Barratta believes organizations may be concerned about how to make it fit with their brand image, and with fears that automation will displace human doctors. She referred to a journal article that suggested that radiologists and pathologist will be out of a job in the next five years when AI takes over. “A lot of media picked up on that,” and that may have made some wary of appearing “to promote tech that would eliminate jobs or raise concerns about trust.”

However, Baratta believes that these concerns should not hold brands back from investing in tech and using it for better patient outcomes. The way to go about it is to  “create educational stories, with perspective, that acknowledge challenges” while exploring how the tech “will help patients and help doctors” That includes applying AI to getting a handle on “data overload” and “more effectively mine data,” so that doctors are making better informed decisions for their patients.

The advantage for the brands that discuss their uses of emerging technologies now, she said, is that they “position themselves as thought leaders and innovaters.” It's an advantage “to talk about it when people are trying to understand what it means” and trying to grasp how it is can be used. That's why “now is the time to have a voice for thought leadership.”

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