Ephemerality Driving 'Dark Social'

PRSA Boston’s 2017 Annual Social Media Summit, held at Bentley University for the fifth year, featured speakers from Eversource, Raytheon, America’s Test Kitchen, Boston University, Dunkin Donuts, the MBTA, Massachusetts Gaming Commission, Ocean Spray, Planet Fitness and Life is Good.

The keynote was delivered by Josh Benton, founder of MIT’s Nieman Journalism Lab.  He addressed social media’s ability to polarize opinions of the candidates in last year’s presidential election: “You move from low-quality 60’s marijuana to high-grade heroine. Filter bubbles get weaponized. A fake news story becomes so much more powerful.”

Darlene Hollywood of Hollywood Public Relations and Josh Karpf of DraftKings engage in a discussion.

Josh Karpf, DraftKing’s director of social marketing, noted how the prevalence of social media has redefined communications staffing requirements, and he urged companies to boost these budgets.

Karpf theorized that ephemerality is driving the growth of “dark social,” or private messaging shared outside of trackable media, resulting in chat bots, virtual concierge messengers and more challenge.

Karpf recalled recommending a MySpace page to a client early in his public relations career as a reminder that while social media is not new, it is increasingly complex and evolving.

In commenting on virtual content interacting with photography, and geo-filters becoming the new hashtag, Karpf agreed with his discussion counterpart, Darlene Hollywood of Hollywood PR, that organizations need to boost social media staff and resources.

“Digital and social is where our consumer is. It’s incomplete and there is a lot of innovation happening.  Having a depth in digital and social media is super important,” Karpf said.

RF|Binder’s Josh Gitelson pointed out how after just two years Facebook’s video news feeds are generating eight billion daily views as evidence that social media strategy is permanently mainstreamed.

Cultural honesty was a pillar offered by Life is Good’s Amanda Goodwin: “Whatever your story actually is, whatever you stand for… that is what you must focus on in every single post, every single time. What is your authentic story and how are you inviting others to be a part of it.”

More excerpts from the summit can be found on PRSA Boston’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/pg/prsaboston/videos/