That could turn out to be a big mistake as Bluesky has been capturing widespread interest following its launch in private beta in March. Early users claim it’s the antithesis of the often toxic and chaotic experience of Twitter under the stewardship of new CEO and owner Elon Musk. 

Whether you’re new to Bluesky, which had just 50,000 users at the end of April 2023, or you’re still waiting for an invite to get in, we’ve taken a closer look at why access to the network is in high demand, and how you can get the most out of it if you’re one of the chosen few.

What is Bluesky?

Bluesky is a social network that feels like a stripped down version of Twitter, and this could be the reason for such high levels of early interest in the platform. Simply put: large numbers of Twitter users have been searching for an alternative, and Bluesky certainly is that. 

If you imagine Twitter in its entirety – minus ads, video, spam, trolls and audio – then you have Bluesky. It’s a mobile app at the moment so there’s no desktop version, but functionality-wise it works almost identically to how Twitter does. You have a Twitter-esque profile that you can customise, you publish posts (known as ‘skeets’ - Sky/tweets) with a limit of 300 characters, and you can attach up to four images. Then, to fill your timeline, you follow others – which, at the moment, means regular people, a few famous people, and some news media and brands.

How to get into Bluesky (it's invite-only)

First, you’ll need to download the app from whichever app store you use. You can do this without an invite. 

However, to set up an account requires an invite code – and access is currently being limited so the network doesn’t become flooded with users while it’s still being built. To get an invite code, head to the Bluesky website where there’s a waitlist to request one, or ask around in case anyone you know has one spare. These codes are hot property and are even being sold on eBay, but if you’re patient and ask around, it shouldn’t be too long before you’re in.

How does it work?

Once you’re in, you need to set up your profile. There’s the usual bio to write, profile pic and background image to choose – just like Twitter and other platforms. 

You’ll also need to choose a handle, or username, but this bit is more like Mastodon than Twitter as usernames are triple-barrelled by default, and consist of your chosen handle alongside a URL. For example, I chose the handle ‘@drewb’, but on Bluesky this displays as ‘@drewb.bsky.social’. The ‘.bsky.social’ part of the username is default for all new users, but can be customised for branding or verification purposes. You can easily do this yourself by following Bluesky’s guide. This is Bluesky’s approach to verification – an interesting pivot from the blue tick route that other networks operate, instead giving users the power to verify themselves through their own URL. 

Then it’s time to start following some accounts, which you can look for in the ‘Search’ tab. Once you’ve added some interesting connections, your ‘Home’ tab will show a timeline of posts from the accounts you follow in chronological order, rather than being algorithmically mixed like on other networks. 

At the top of your ‘Home’ tab, you can switch from the classic view of your connections’ posts which is called ‘Following’, to ‘What’s hot’ – a selection of posts on Bluesky that are receiving lots of engagement, again in chronological order. 

Regularly adding new connections means your experience on the platform will be better, because with Bluesky being so new and the user base so small, you’ll need to find friends or interesting accounts in order to make the experience you want to have on the network.

Getting started: some accounts to follow

Whether you’re looking for someone high-profile, a news channel, sports club, journalist or politician, there are plenty of recognisable users that are already on Bluesky. Here are the handles of some Bluesky accounts that you might find interesting to follow.

Business, politics, tech, celebrity & entertainment

• @jay.bsky.team Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky 
• @support.bsky.team the official Bluesky support channel 
• @aoc.sky.social AOC, aka US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes 
• @chrissyteigen.bsky.social Chrissy Teigen, TV personality 
• @jimmykimmel.bsky.social Jimmy Kimmel, TV host
• @anildash.com Anil Dash, tech entrepreneur
• @dril.bsky.social Dril, writer and comedian
• @dallasmavs.bsky.social Dallas Mavericks basketball
• @jack.bsky.social Jack Dorsey, former Twitter CEO and co-founder, and generally recognised as co-founder / inventor and board member of Bluesky
• @mcuban.bsky.social Mark Cuban
• @para.ga Parag Agrawal, former CEO of Twitter and, while there, manager of Bluesky as a project when it was being built
• @grimes.bsky.social Grimes, musician and Elon Musk’s ex

Media outlets

• @washingtonpost.com The Washington Post 
• @bloombergnews.bsky.social Bloomberg 
• @techcrunch.bsky.social TechCrunch
• @opinion.bsky.social Bloomberg Opinion
• @theintercept.com The Intercept 
• @theonion.com The Onion
• @techmeme.com Techmeme

Journalists

• @zsk.bsky.social Zoe Kleinman, tech editor, The BBC
• @timbradshaw.bsky.social Tim Bradshaw, global tech correspondent, Financial Times
• @mshannahmurphy.bsky.social Hannah Murphy, tech and social media reporter, Financial Times
• @taylorlorenz.bsky.social Taylor Lorenz, tech columnist, Washington Post 
• @drewharwell.com tech reporter, Washington Post
• @genepark.bsky.social Gene Park, games reporter, Washington Post
• @oremus.bsky.social Will Oremus, tech writer, Washington Post
• @davelee.bsky.social Dave Lee, US tech columnist, Bloomberg Opinion
• @davey.bsky.social Davey Alba, tech reporter, Bloomberg
• @jamestitcomb.bsky.social James Titcomb, tech editor, The Telegraph
• @ebakerwhite.bsky.social Emily Baker-White, tech journalist, Forbes
• @paris.nyc Paris Martineau, tech reporter, The Information
• @mikebutcher.bsky.social Mike Butcher, editor-at-large, TechCrunch
• @sarahp.bsky.social Sarah Perez, reporter, TechCrunch
• @caseynewton.bsky.social Casey Newton, Platformer
• @emilybell.bsky.social Emily Bell, writer and academic, former editor of The Guardian

Battenhall team

• @battenhall.com Battenhall 
• @drew.bsky.social Drew Benvie (me)
• @nica.bsky.social Nicole Mezzasalma
• @marks.bsky.social Mark Stuart
• @thomasfalconer.bsky.social Thomas Falconer
• @rmathew.bsky.social Rhea Mathew 
• @abdxl.bsky.social Abdul Abubakar
• @kaylasnyder.bsky.social Kayla Snyder
• @sjam.bsky.social Sam Mead
• @anthonylwolf.bsky.social Antonino Lupo

What's next for Bluesky?

As the Bluesky community grows, it will be stretched in every direction that other social networks are. 

There will (inevitably) be more accounts to follow that will make the whole user experience more relevant and interesting, but this in turn means more irrelevant and harmful content will pop up too – an unfortunate side effect of all social networks as they begin to grow. 

To ensure a healthy balance, Bluesky will need to work hard to cultivate an ecosystem, while also giving users the customer service and protection they have come to struggle with on many other social platforms – Twitter being the highest profile example of this.

One thing is for certain: demand for access to Bluesky is outstripping supply of invites, so there is growth ahead, and with that growth we’ll definitely see the best and worst of the social media landscape emerge. 

Keeping social media safe and balanced will no doubt be right up at the top of the to-do list for team Bluesky. We recommend getting in there while you still can.

For more of our social media insights, sign up to receive our daily WhatsApp updates or subscribe to the Battenhall Monthly newsletter here.

The post How to get started on Bluesky appeared first on Battenhall.

How does it work?

Battenhall Studios runs as a core part of our creative teams in London, Los Angeles, New York and Dubai, becoming a centre for the agency’s content production unit. This expansion is set to help us grow and develop our offerings in social media production, design, creative, insights and AR services, along with offering the space in London for influencer and creator brand collaborations.

What does this mean for brands?

Battenhall Studios will be instrumental in equipping us to service our growing global client base, and we will be offering our services to non-clients too. The London studio space is an exciting extension to our HQ, doubling its size and providing room for our 50+ person team to grow into.

The new studio offering brings high quality creative services to brands on a wide range of social media, photography and video briefs. Our existing clients are already finding the new resources invaluable for content creation for social and digital platforms, and we’re looking forward to growing it further and adding new services to suit client demand in the months ahead.

The global team

Battenhall Studios begins with a team of 50 multidisciplinary social media specialists, including producers, designers, developers, strategists, photographers, creatives and videographers, all positioned to deliver full-service social media content for our rapidly-expanding global client base. 

Our plans

This is the latest chapter in Battenhall’s rapid expansion, as we celebrate our 10th year in business. We want to keep exploring new ways to collaborate and innovate creatively with our diverse set of clients across industries, including consumer, media, sport, tech, healthcare, gaming and corporate.

With record business growth over the last 12 months, the launch of Battenhall Studios is a key focus in strengthening our integrated capabilities. We’re now focused on continuing to offer state-of-the-art facilities and bringing specialised services and expertise to our clients across multiple platforms and locations.

If you’d like to learn more about Battenhall Studios and how we can help you, email us at studios@battenhall.com. 

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TikTok has changed the way social content is consumed. It has been the catalyst for an explosion in short-form viral videos, a format that has since been emulated on other platforms, including Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. 

The potential to ‘go viral’, coupled with a more human and authentic tone, has enabled companies to use TikTok in their employer branding strategies too. As a result, many brands are now using creative video formats and reactive trends to showcase why they’re a great place to work.

The need to adapt

LinkedIn has traditionally been the go-to platform for employer branding content, but as other platforms have grown in popularity, companies have begun shifting their focus to multiple social media channels. 

This approach means they can reach new audiences, but it’s not as easy as just repurposing and cross-posting content. Instead, posts must be carefully adapted to suit the platform, or content won't look native to users, which can lead to lower engagement. 

At Battenhall, we’ve been very conscious of applying this strategy to our own social content on TikTok. Our LinkedIn profile posts have a more slick and corporate tone, on Instagram we use high quality imagery that is carefully curated, while on TikTok we’ve embraced the fun, irreverent trends of the platform. And it’s worked. This post that highlights our total flexible working policy got more than 3 million views! As a result, TikTok has been our biggest driver of speculative job applications.

Reactive trends and employer branding

Employer branding isn’t something you’d typically expect to see in trending content. But with massive changes in content consumption and audiences, and the rise of meme culture, it’s never been more important to tap into the latest viral moments – and employer branding should be no exception.

Cisco is an example of a brand doing this well. It’s traditionally been a serious technology company, but has successfully tapped into trends on TikTok, such as this comedic adaptation of ‘One kiss is all it takes’ CapCut trend that has clocked up close to 1m views and an engagement rate of nearly 7%. 

Microsoft has also used reactive trends in its TikTok strategy, taking the popular ‘Abbey Lee Miller ranking’ trend and adapting it to suit a Microsoft feature. This made the post instantly recognisable to a wide demographic, helping it achieve an engagement rate of 10%.

These are just two examples of how brands can pivot to incorporate trending moments in their employer branding content.

Creating an employer branding TikTok strategy

TikTok presents brands with an opportunity to challenge existing perceptions of their company, while attracting new talent to consider working for them. 

When building a strategy to harness this, brands must look outside of their wider social strategy – and instead take a platform-led approach. What makes content successful on TikTok is completely different to the formula used on LinkedIn or even Instagram.  

Google has recognised the importance of this and created a native strategy specifically for TikTok – with content that shows a playful side to the brand. And while Gen Z is increasingly using TikTok as a search engine, Google is using its TikTok channel to promote Google as a search engine with hacks users can try the next time they need to search something.

The difference TikTok will make to employer branding

Despite targeted bans of TikTok by individual countries and organisations, an ever increasing number of brands are migrating to TikTok to make the most of the opportunity to harness viral and trending moments to boost brand awareness. 

TikTok is constantly evolving, and with trends changing every two to three weeks, brands must adapt to the demands of the platform and its users – or risk fading into the background. Those that can keep up can expect to reap the rewards – with a broader reach and increased brand popularity both within their grasp.

For more of our social media insights, sign up to receive our daily WhatsApp updates or subscribe to the Battenhall Monthly newsletter here.

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Even before the pandemic, the way brands worked with content creators had started to change. They had become a central point in marketing strategies, with a hybrid mix of organic and paid content, and a focus on authenticity. Brands had started to move away from years of perfectly curated and polished social content.

That shift has continued in recent years and creators’ power has increased. During the pandemic, many social media users viewed creator content to relieve boredom and as a distraction from everything going on in the world that felt out of control. 

This shifted the purpose of social media away from friend updates towards being ‘social entertainment’, with creators the driving force behind every cultural phenomenon and trending moment.

While the social media landscape will continue to evolve, we’ve identified three key trends that are having an impact on how brands are working with talent right now.

1. Is TikTok the new search engine?

According to recent data and news reports, TikTok (and Instagram, to a lesser extent) are becoming the preferred way to get information – particularly among Gen Z. A Google exec admitted that “40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, don’t go to Maps or Search – they go to TikTok or Instagram”. 

This is because the path to discovery looks very different in 2023. Younger generations favour visually-rich formats that inspire and show them first-hand what they’re buying into – whether that’s a product, recipe or holiday. 

This means searchable, trend-driven social media content is key to a standout strategy. TikTok and Reels both provide huge opportunities for organic reach – with TikTok in particular showing a higher organic reach to accounts that aren’t following you than any other platform. 

TikTok has smashed previous conceptions around metrics and the importance of follower numbers (especially for creators): it’s possible to have zero followers and still go viral with millions of views for one great piece of content. 

That means any content creator, with the right idea, can help a brand become an overnight success – like this auto repair shop in Florida, which posted a cat meme video as its first ever post and led to more than 50m views of the account in a week!

2. Brands and platforms NEED creators

It’s been reported that more than 50 million people worldwide consider themselves a ‘creator’, and in 2022 it was predicted that the creator economy could grow to more than $100bn. Meanwhile, platforms and brands have significant challenges, which puts creators and influencers firmly in the driving seat. 

Platforms are vying for creators’ attention – in many cases paying them to create content and share it on their platforms. A number of creator-focused funds and subscriptions have emerged alongside new ways to ‘Tip’ creators during TikTok, Instagram and YouTube live streams. More recently, TikTok has launched a ‘Series’ feature that enables creators to put their content behind a paywall. All these features offer creators great opportunities to monetise their content, with platforms at their mercy.

Brands continue to face two major challenges: pace and personalisation. Keeping pace with rapid cultural change is challenging; before brands can craft a strategy to align with the latest cultural trend, it’s already changed. That’s where creators can help – by connecting with moments in a different way and driving new interest with their audiences.

The second challenge is personalisation. People-driven platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, have algorithms that branded content can’t cut through. This is where personalised content that resonates with a target audience comes in. And who knows a target audience better than the creators themselves, who already have a loyal following?

3. The 'creator career'

No matter how much they enjoy what they do, or love the products they get to try, being a creator is a full-time job – and now a respected career. Creators with as few as 50,000 followers are quitting their day jobs and going full-time. We’re also seeing a new generation emerging who are starting their entire career off as creators. 

As a result, gifting a product is no longer seen as an incentive or remuneration – it’s simply a tool to help a creator do their job. Crafting quality content that resonates with the right audience takes time, effort and hard work – and creators’ platforms and skills are in such demand that they no longer need to work for free.

Consequently, creators have become incredibly business-savvy. They know how to monetise their audience and their influence, and many even call themselves ‘founder’ or ‘entrepreneur’. The challenge of the creator economy is now about how this group can differentiate themselves in a crowded and competitive landscape, as more and more people build businesses based on their passions and talent.

With this comes an expectation. The creator industry is big but close-knit, and those in it aren’t afraid to share their experiences with brands – with a rise in campaigns exposing brands for underpaying or not paying talent fairly. There’s also an ongoing debate around the gender pay gap, and diversity and inclusion in the industry. 

This makes it important for brands to be aware of negative feedback and factor it into activation planning. A negative creator experience isn’t just damaging for the brand, it’s damaging for everyone involved.

How should brands budget for creator marketing?

We recommend comparing it to other streams of marketing you’re considering. For example, two of the most expensive streams of advertising – TV ads and billboards – work entirely off audience predictions. You’ll have a good idea of who will see your ad, but you can’t guarantee exactly how many, or how relevant that audience will actually be.

Compare this to creator marketing, which is one of the most hyper-targeted forms of advertising you can use. Giving a quality creator the freedom to make high-quality content that’s tailored to what their audience likes will give you guaranteed results. Combine all approaches in one, and it’ll complement your entire marketing ecosystem.

Revamping your creator strategy

Now you know why creators are important, here are three approaches to how to use them strategically:

1. Test and learn. Experiment with different approaches and find out what works for your brand. For example, longer-term deals might work better than tried-and-tested brand advocates, and result in better content with stronger loyalty. In addition, reserve a portion of your creator allocation for ‘wildcards’ – perhaps those who are reactive and present within trends – to position your brand as part of social entertainment.
2. Establish a consistent creator journey. No carrot-dangling: create a structured and tiered approach to working with advocates. Top-tier creators are ideal, but ensure you factor in smaller creators with incredibly engaged audiences too – they’re both valuable.
3. Facilitate a two-way, mutually beneficial relationship. With the power creators now hold, it’s no longer just about what the brand wants or thinks. Lean into your talents’ expertise and skills, make the most of them, and include them in the whole process – the outcome will be so much better.

Want to stay in the loop on the latest in social media? Sign up to receive our daily WhatsApp updates, and subscribe to the Battenhall Monthly newsletter here.

The post Under the influence: 3 ways brands can crack the creator economy appeared first on Battenhall.

Lineker has been in the headlines for criticising the UK government’s migrant policy, which resulted in the BBC taking him ‘off air’ last weekend and triggered a mass walkout of fellow commentators, pundits and presenters. The BBC’s flagship sports programme, Match of the Day, aired with no presenters in the studio and a host of other BBC football TV and radio shows had to be cancelled. 

This week, we saw the BBC back down, and successful talks with Gary Lineker mean the former England striker will be returning to screens this week. Importantly, though, a new independent review of BBC social media guidelines will now take place to remove any ambiguity over what is acceptable for the organisation’s staff and talent to talk about online. 

What has quickly become apparent is that there should be no blurred lines in a company’s social media policy. You might not fall foul the same way as the BBC and Lineker have, but every company has the potential to get into hot water if someone says the wrong thing in the wrong place. And with 4.6 billion active social media users in the world, everyone would benefit from getting their house in order. 

The blurred lines narrative is key here, and has cropped up repeatedly in the commentary of this BBC Lineker story. There can be no room for ambiguity when it comes to a social media policy;  at best, it can mean limited use of social media through fear of breaking the guidelines, but at worst can bring a brand into disrepute and result in lost business. 

So what should be in a good staff social media policy? Here we share five key tips for every brand to consider.

1. Define acceptable use

Most people use social media to share news about both their personal AND professional lives and it’s important that the content reflects the values and policies of their employer. In Lineker’s case there was, and still is, ambiguity about whether he is representing the BBC, given his employment as a freelancer. In most cases, employees will be expected to do nothing that could anger their employer or bring it into disrepute. 

It can be useful for users to include ‘all views are my own’ on social profiles, but it doesn’t offer users a great deal of protection. Posts can still cause reputational harm to a company and carry legal implications for an individual if any comments or images are deemed to be offensive, harmful, or fall foul of libel laws. Help your staff to stay on the right side of the law and company policy with strong and clear guidance of what you deem to be acceptable.

2. Sharing news about your brand

It’s important that all staff know what company news and topics they can and can’t share externally. Define what is safe ground and what’s not. Many companies want their employees to help promote the brand in an authentic and positive way, but sometimes that can mean accidentally sharing confidential information, data intended for internal use only, or promotional content that is unlawful. While it’s important for staff to engage with company posts on social media, it’s also vital that brands spell out exactly what they allow their employees to say publicly and what they require them to keep private.

3. Provide safety advice

Most social media users aren’t aware of the vast array of privacy and security settings, so it’s important to educate staff in how they can protect themselves – and, in turn, the company. Employers should ensure their staff know how to carry out a sweep of their social media channels and make sure what’s private remains private. That might mean protecting family photos on Facebook, a contacts list on LinkedIn, or private tweets/DMs on Twitter. 

It’s therefore vital that companies provide straightforward advice to employees on how they can access and stay abreast of privacy settings across all main platforms. It’s also advisable to explain how to hide social features, such as location sharing, and ensure employees set up two-factor authentication.

4. Know your customers

All staff should be mindful of their customers when posting on social media too. Whether a company’s customers are more conservative or liberal, it’s important to consider a wide range of views when publishing anything online. Employers can help their staff with clear advice on what is acceptable. Even when playing by the brand rules, it’s still possible to lose a customer by not being mindful of what they might think too.

5. Privacy and respect

Some employees are happy to share lots about their lives online, while others aren’t. Employers should create guidelines for how colleagues should interact with each other online, including privacy from being tagged in a message, included in a photograph, or appearing in a video. It is always best to seek consent in advance than have to apologise when the damage is done. In addition, it’s important to have clear rules on harassment and bullying on social media. What might seem like harmless fun to one person, may be embarrassing or insulting to another.

Personalised policy

A good social media policy takes into account the nature of your business, your workforce, customers and macroeconomic factors too. It also must be built around the social media platforms in use by your team, so lean more heavily on the ways one is used over another depending on the location, age and habits of your team.

If you would like help creating a comprehensive brand social media guidelines policy, email our team of experts at hello@battenhall.com.

The post In light of Lineker: why every company should have a staff social media policy appeared first on Battenhall.

In fact, nearly half of all UK students are worried their lack of self-confidence may impact their future employment prospects – with 26% fearing their degree hasn’t adequately prepared them for working life.

That’s why Battenhall is launching a new initiative to offer free advice sessions for young people wanting to start a career in PR and social media.

Career advice sessions

Many of us at Battenhall were lucky to receive support from friends, family and connections in the early stages of our careers. Now we’re looking to ‘pay it forward’ for Random Acts of Kindness Day. 

We understand that many young graduates and professionals don’t always have access to people in the communications industry. Having an informal chat about career options with someone who’s been there could make all the difference. It may provide that extra bit of motivation to take the leap and pursue a career in PR and social. 

This is exactly what we’re aiming to achieve with our career advice sessions. 

The 20 sessions will run during the first two weeks of March, and participants will be matched with a senior Battenhall team member - from senior account manager to senior associate director - for an hour-long informal chat.

How the sessions will work

When booking, all participants will be able to select from three options - Social, Social + PR, or PR - to match them to the team member who’ll be best placed to offer them tailored career advice. The sessions are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

These sessions won’t be job interviews, but we’ll be providing participants with guidance on what the industry and roles are like, potential career paths, required skills, interview preparation techniques, the best places to look for jobs, and much more.

Battenhall's 20% time

All our volunteers taking part in these sessions are doing so thanks to Battenhall’s 20% time. This is an initiative we’ve had since day one, and it gives all employees the opportunity to spend a fifth of their week on passion projects, research and development, and work with a range of charities and not-for-profit organisations.  

Want to get involved? Sign up for our career advice sessions.

The post Battenhall to host free social media and PR career advice sessions appeared first on Battenhall.

Some are naturally excited about this technology, its potential, and the way it augments human work. Others are concerned about the role it may play in the proliferation of misinformation online. Meanwhile, marketers and content writers are somewhat fearful for their livelihoods if a ‘robot’ can do their jobs. As with many cutting-edge technologies, however, the reality falls somewhere in between.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a Large Language Model (LLM) augmented with a conversational interface, developed by tech startup OpenAI. In layman terms, it’s a complex artificial intelligence capable of predicting how words should be placed next to each other – and a rather accurate one at that.

Drop any kind of written request in ChatGPT’s chatbox, and you will see a complex, structured and fleshed out reply in seconds. But with each idea ChatGPT’s Assistant generates, there are growing concerns around reliability, bias, trust and ethics – not to mention creativity and human emotion.

Is ChatGPT really going to make our jobs obsolete? Is it the revolutionary tool so many believe it is? We’ve spent some time with this new technology to understand what it means for the future of marketing.

The promise

It’s hard to ignore ChatGPT’s capabilities – at least on the surface. Its database was scraped from the web itself, with thousands of terabytes informing its replies. It’s less overwhelming than a search engine, it understands writing style and tone, and it’s great for generating ideas.

Give ChatGPT a topic, some extra details and a very specific command, and it can easily generate a number of ideas. It’s great to brainstorm some creative ideas quickly; most of them won’t work for your specific case, but there are always a few that stand out.

It’s also a useful tool to automate some tedious and manual tasks. ChatGPT can summarise articles, generate keywords, even proofread a podcast transcript to adjust punctuation. Many content creators are using it to draft emails, write scripts and compose outline structures that they can then adapt to their specific needs.

ChatGPT can’t remember every single conversation you ever had with it – but it can remember the one you’re having right now. That means it can reference something you or it said earlier on, so that it really does feel like a conversation with an assistant.

Effectively, ChatGPT puts machine intelligence to the service of our personal and work needs. In the tech industry, this is referred to as ‘hybrid intelligence’ – the combination of human and machine intelligence, expanding the human brain rather than replacing it.

On the surface, this sounds great – but anyone spending enough time with ChatGPT will start to spot some potentially dangerous patterns and perils...

The perils

Alongside the widespread fear among copywriters and content experts that ChatGPT is coming for their jobs, the tool’s users have already spotted some other worrying downfalls.

Reliability, bias, and danger

One emerging issue with ChatGPT is its reliability. Users have reported that the bot’s responses aren’t always accurate, and this is no surprise when you consider its knowledge cut-off point of 2021 – meaning it doesn’t know about events or developments after that time.

The bot is also configured to maximise the similarity between its outputs and the datasets it was trained on. But without an internal mechanism to fact-check its outputs, ChatGPT’s answers are prone to being misleading or, in some cases, totally wrong.

And if you need further proof, turn to ChatGPT’s prompt page itself, which warns that the bot “may occasionally generate incorrect information,” and “may occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content”. Go figure… 

Inaccuracy is one issue, but more concerning are the tool’s issues with bias.

All AI systems carry biases, but some of ChatGPT’s can be harmful: users find it easy to get around guardrails and prompt the bot to share discriminatory language. This is a problem enough in itself, but when you consider the growing reliance on AI in important sectors like healthcare, finance and politics, biased algorithms have the potential to spread inequalities and misinformation at an unprecedented and dangerous pace. There's also a security issue, with cybercriminals beginning to use ChatGP to quickly develop malicious code. Interestingly, it seems to be less skilled hackers who are manipulating the tool – showing the worrying potential for cybercrime to spiral out of control among ChatGPT’s users.

The future of copywriting

And now for the burning question: will ChatGPT replace copywriters? 

Not exactly. While the tool has great potential to provide relevant, interesting and useful blocks of text, it’s not yet mastered the art of human emotion – making it pretty impossible for ChatGPT to replicate the headlines, articles and social posts that win awards, stop thumbs, or jerk tears or laughter. 

It may get you a pass on a school essay, be competent in writing a generic email, and even pen some basic marketing lines, but ChatGPT lacks the creativity and individuality to produce anything more show-stopping. ChatGPT may give a bad writer the potential to masquerade as a good one in certain scenarios, but it won’t replace the craftsmanship that goes into unique and original content – so copy and content specialists can rest easy and treat the tool like an assistant rather than a replacement.

What's next for ChatGPT (in the words of the bot itself*)

ChatGPT is an ambitious AI tool with a wide range of potential applications, from brainstorming creative ideas to automating manual tasks. However, there are also significant concerns around its reliability, bias and the potential for it to spread misinformation.

Much like previous tools (such as AI art generator DALL•E 2), OpenAI will release new iterations of ChatGPT, and a new version based on neural network GPT-4 is expected soon – which should at least bring a bit more safety and reliability to the tool. But the popularity of AI generators in 2022 has given rise to even more efforts from the wider tech industry, and there’s reason to think that the trend isn’t going away any time soon.

As with many new technologies, it's important to approach ChatGPT with a healthy dose of caution and to always fact-check its outputs. While it can certainly augment human work, we should always be aware of its limitations and potential dangers.

ChatGPT is a promising tool with great potential, but it’s important to use it responsibly. Marketers who approach the tool with this mindset are more likely to use it to augment their work and develop a new specialism – without the fear of ever being replaced by a machine.

*This conclusion was partially created using ChatGPT.

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The post ChatGPT: What is it, and how will it change brand communications? appeared first on Battenhall.

Battenhall's team has pored through the data flowing through the social media ecosystem since 2013, publishing our annual social media report every year since, and we can now look back to analyse what has panned out so far, to understand what we think now lies ahead. Our analysis this year focuses on the two most active social networks for brands, and builds on our data from previous years across diverse sources from Twitter and YouTube to LinkedIn and Snapchat.

What has emerged this year is an evolution in how content is produced by brands and consumed by increasingly diverse audiences. It’s social media 2.0, with platforms reinventing themselves and adapting in order to reflect these changes in usage.

We’re seeing a notable transition from the highly polished Instagram posts of recent years to the more ‘real’ content on TikTok as Gen Z takes control.

But what unifies the highest-performing brands on social media today is engagement. Successful content is entertaining content, whether that’s a video, an image, or the written word. To succeed in the age of the algorithm, entertaining social media content must engage. It is this relationship between entertainment and engagement that we have examined in our social media report this year.

Our latest study was conducted during October and November 2022. We analysed more than 7,500 pieces of social media content across 10 sectors to understand how some of the biggest brands are driving engagement.

The report has 20 pages packed full of data, insights and learnings, with sector-by-sector breakdowns of information, which you can download here.

To give you a flavour of what to expect, here are six key takeaways from the report:

Six key findings from the Instagram and TikTok Brands 100 Report

1. Video use is surging

It now makes up 56% of Instagram feed posts – a 75% increase on its 32% share in 2021. But static pictures haven't disappeared yet! Nearly a third (29%) of Instagram posts include still images, while 15% are carousels.

2. Timing is everything

TikTok videos longer than 30 seconds generate 1.7x more engagement than shorter ones, as audiences are often more invested in the content and want to share, comment or like once they have watched the whole video. 

3. Hashtags do matter!

Our research found they do increase engagement on Instagram, with 3-5 hashtags being the sweet spot, helping to raise the average engagement rate from 0.25% to above 1%.

4. Make your captions count

Short post captions drive engagement. TikTok videos with captions under 100 characters received 1.3x more likes than those over 100 characters. On Instagram, the sweet spot is between 40 and 100 characters.

5. Keep swiping

Instagram carousels generate the most likes compared to any other post format. It seems that people love a carousel to swipe through: they get 1.3x more likes per post than videos and 1.1x more than still images.

6. Industry advice

Sectors including B2B, finance, entertainment, tourism, and transport all generate higher numbers of engagement per post on TikTok than Instagram. This is because TikTok is one of the most accessible places to get advice and recommendations, with FinTok (Finance TikTok), travel recommendations, and trainspotter extraordinaire Francis Bourgeois, all racking up huge views.

Engagement is everything

It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, but TikTok outperformed Instagram when broken down to engagement per post vs followers, reflecting the surge in video content we've seen. Of course, TikTok is all about views, while Instagram is more about followers. But it's a trend worth watching to see whether brands continue to shift their content to TikTok in 2023.

Looking ahead to next year, we think brands and businesses need to pay attention to audience engagement – how they use the platform, and where they are. By leaning into audience data, brands can innovate accordingly and serve content that keeps users entertained. It’s all about creating a memorable brand identity.

We hope our 10th brand social media benchmark helps you spot opportunities that lie ahead. Download the full report here.

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Content moderation concerns and issues surrounding impersonation and verification have left many looking for credible alternatives. Enter Mastodon.

What is Mastodon?

Mastodon is an open-source, decentralised social media platform created in 2016 by German developer Eugen Rochko. It describes itself as a “federated network which operates in a similar way to email”. In practice, this means a number of different servers (‘instances’ in Mastodon lingo) that are independent of each other, but can communicate among themselves by posting ‘toots’ (the equivalent of ‘tweets’).

There are more than 7.7k instances on Mastodon at present, each managed and run by volunteers. The largest is mastodon.social, which has nearly a quarter of the platform’s total users. Mastodon’s current official count is 5.3m users, although it recently announced it has now surpassed 7m. It’s still small fry, however, compared to Twitter’s estimated 450m monthly active users. 

But Mastodon is growing fast. According to Rochko, Mastodon had less than 400k users on 28 October, which means it has grown 1,500%+ in three weeks.

How do instances work?

Mastodon instances are ‘federated’, which means they are independent but can communicate with one another. It's important that you choose the right instance, because each has its own rules and moderation/privacy policies. For example, some ban NSFW content, while others don’t.

This is important, because instances can ban other instances. If you choose a server with lax moderation, you may find others can't see your posts if that server is banned elsewhere.

Fortunately, Mastodon allows you to switch servers at any point. You can set up multiple accounts on several servers, and redirect users that find your other handles to your main one. 

For brands, this offers a challenge. Should you secure your brand name across every instance (a headache for social media managers!)? Or do you get one and monitor the use of your brand name across others, taking imitation ones down as necessary? 

Even though Mastodon has been around for six years, it wasn’t created with brand owners in mind. It’s too early to say if this will prove to be an insurmountable issue.

Verification on Mastodon

Mastodon’s verification system works differently to other social platforms due to its decentralised nature. In essence, if you have a website you just add a line of code that points to your Mastodon profile. 

Mastodon then uses this to cross-check the rel="me" attribute. This is a standard way to verify whether a linked website belongs to a user on a third-party site. This means most brands can follow this process to get verified.

For individual users, it’s slightly more complicated as not everyone has a website. To solve this, verification websites are appearing for those who don’t want to create a WordPress page solely for this purpose.

What next?

With a rapid influx of new users, Mastodon has been facing some teething issues. These include servers crashing and instances being temporarily closed to new registrations. Once in, however, the platform is simpler than it may at first seem.

If you haven’t yet created a Mastodon account, follow these steps to get started:

1. Choose an instance. You can join one because your friends are already there, or pick one based on its moderation policies. You can also pick servers based on interests, geographical location or your profession. There are instances for journalists, data analysts and finance professionals, for example.

2. Create your profile. Add your details, links to websites and other social media platforms, and don’t forget to turn on two-factor authentication for safety.

3. Start tootin’. Create and post your content as you would elsewhere. Mastodon supports images, GIFs and links (although link previews only work on desktop), and new features are added regularly. There is no quoting option, but you can 'favourite' and boost or share other people’s posts.

4. Follow other people. On Mastodon, you have three feeds: Home, for people you follow; a local feed with posts from others in your server; and a federated feed from all users across Mastodon. Curate the posts you see by following interesting people. 

Here’s a list of Battenhall folks already on Mastodon!

• Battenhall
• Drew Benvie, founder & CEO
• Phil Sheard, director, products & innovation
• Steph Bennett, UK managing director
• Anton Perreau, UCAN president and managing director
• Mark Stuart, senior associate director
• Nicole Mezzasalma, senior consultant
• Emma Hurley, senior consultant
• Sam Mead, software developer
• Antonino Lupo, content manager
• Paige Maguire, senior account executive
• Delia Howe, social media manager
• Molly Redmond, senior account director

While reports of Twitter's demise have been greatly exaggerated, some notable users have already migrated fully to Mastodon. These include English actor, broadcaster and writer, Stephen Fry, and Hollywood actor, comedian and TV personality, Whoopi Goldberg. 

Not many brands have made their presence on the network felt so far, but we expect that to change. To stay one step ahead, we recommend securing preferred handles quickly. It's also important to keep tabs on potential fake accounts – especially as the platform grows.

For help on how to get set up on Mastodon, or any other social media consultancy, get in touch: hello@battenhall.com.

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The event brought together the world’s finest minds to discuss the future of tech. The speaker list was a who’s who of business leaders, including Toto Wolff, CEO of AMG Mercedes; Sir Martin Sorrell, co-founder of S4 Capital and former CEO of WPP; Julia Goldin, chief product and marketing officer at Lego; Apple VPs Lisa Jackson and Sumbul Desai; Brad Smith, attorney and vice chairman at Microsoft; and Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance. 

What’s remarkable though, is the diversity of companies and attendees – from established industry titans to startups pitching for their lives. It's testament to the work of Paddy Cosgrave, CEO and Founder of Web Summit, who has created a special event. 

It was also heartening to see female attendance at 42% – a significant increase on previous years.   

But back to that ‘purpose’ thing we mentioned. It was the key word on many speakers’ lips. And it finally felt like it wasn’t just about paying lip service. 

Here are four ways that purpose in tech became the major talking point at Web Summit.

1. Sustainability

Oliver Steil, CEO of remote access software company TeamViewer, explained the huge benefits to the planet of using remote-first technology. Last year, 37 megatonnes of carbon were saved by companies using remote-first tech instead of travelling. That's the equivalent of an A380 flying New York to Singapore 7,000 times or the carbon produced by 11 million cars a year.

The Mercedes F1 team uses TeamViewer to give the same information to 2,000 engineers back in Oxford as its 19 engineers have on the circuit. The climate impact from F1 is often demonised, but Toto Wolff argued that “the more you do remotely the less you ship. We are using F1’s 1.5bn fans around the globe to show the positive impact that a remote-first approach can have”. 

2. Values

Alain Sylvain, founder of B Corp agency SYLVAIN, left a mark with his presentation on how brands need to behave in the digital world. He was provocative in highlighting the responsibility that brands have – and how virtue signalling is now being called out and seen by a new, wiser consumer base. 

Sylvain set the scene by explaining how the phrase ‘corporation’ has transformed over the years. He elaborated on how the concept of corporation in the mid-15th century was defined as “persons united in a body for a purpose” and compared it to what corporations are doing now. Why are they now often perceived as a group of people only focused on profits? 

He also provided some telling stats:

• 82% of consumers love brands whose values align with their own 
• 3x growth seen by purpose-first business over non-purpose based competitors
• 47% of consumers have stopped buying from brands due to their words or actions about a social issue 

3. Frictionless experience

Disruptive digital channels and a more 'savvy consumer’ is going to keep the industry’s marketing chiefs on their toes. 

With Web3 and immersive digital worlds opening up, how will brands work to satisfy consumers rather than confuse them? 

James Vincent, CEO of FNDR and who worked closely with Steve Jobs at Apple, did a fantastic job of showing the crowd how to develop a three-step program using Apple to overcome the friction that will be apparent in adoption of Web3 tech.

There was also a fascinating debate between former WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell and Lego CMO Julia Goldin, who discussed marketing in 2023. The pair covered everything from geopolitics to when high-quality immersive experiences will be available. 

Sir Martin argued that we were still some way off, but Goldin argued that we’re already on the precipice. She talked about how kids’ brands are already in the metaverse, and that children now get a far richer web experience.

4. Giving back

Finally, our sports team was excited to rub shoulders with former football stars keen to make an impact.

Former Manchester United footballer Patrice Evra delivered a stunning talk on how he is investing time and money in anything that is positive. His commitment to doing all he can to reduce child abuse is truly inspirational.

Meanwhile, ex-Brazilian midfielder Gilberto Silva discussed online abuse and the negativity around social media for the football community. He’s working on a project to provide a safe, moderated platform with no hiding places for keyboard warriors and trolls. 

Finally, Portuguese manager Andre Villas Boas spoke passionately and articulately about the challenges of nurturing talent and the importance of looking after their mental wellbeing.

Summary

Web Summit demonstrated that brands and business leaders are focused on achieving technological excellence that has a clear purpose – with a goal to make a difference in the world. 

We were lucky enough to speak and hear some of the world’s visionaries and we can’t wait to see how those ideas develop over the next few months and years. 

If you’d like to understand more about the ways digital marketing and communications is changing, get in touch at hello@battenhall.com.

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