Athletes see rising social media demands

Skeleton racer Noelle Pikus-Pace has signed deals with Deloitte, Kellogg’s, TD Ameritrade, Under Armour and others ahead of the Sochi Olympics. Each agreement includes the usual contractual obligations such as personal appearances, but they also spell out social media requirements that will see her mention some brands a minimum of 25 times on Twitter and six times on Facebook before the 2014 Games. The requirements highlight a change in the way Olympic endorsement contracts are being written ahead of the Sochi Games. Before the London Games, agents said, companies included loose language about social media, marketing by social media but contracts for Sochi are more prescriptive, spelling out requirements about the number of times an athlete must tweet, make a Google chat room appearance or post to Facebook or Instagram. “There is an enormous growth in the contracts in social media content, demands and obligations,” said Patrick Quinn, who represents Pikus-Pace and oversees Chicago Sports & Entertainment Partners. “Not long ago, having an athlete blog a little or post a little was in some contracts and not in others. Now it’s in every contract, and in some of them it’s ridiculously complex.” Social media has become so integral to sponsor activations ahead of the Sochi Games that some sponsors are even cutting deals that are concentrated almost exclusively on social media. For example, skier Julia Mancuso, who is represented by CAA, recently agreed social media marketing strategy to a deal with U.S. Olympic Committee sponsor Smucker’s Jif brand that will be based almost entirely on social media. “Sponsors might say, ‘I don’t need a service day. I can use stock photography, but I need a Google hangout and a Twitter chat. I need this many Instagrams. I need this many Facebook status updates,’” said CAA’s Lowell Taub, who works with Mancuso. “Now if they want social media, an agent can assign value to it.” Taub said assigning value isn’t as simple as tabulating the number of Twitter followers an athlete has and charging sponsors 25 cents a follower, but he did say that followers and social media requirements become a central component in negotiations. David Schwab, an Octagon senior vice president who helps companies select athletes for marketing campaigns, said that agents pitching athletes now include Facebook, Twitter and Instagram audience sizes in their submissions. It has become one of the first things companies evaluate.

Hillary Clinton Demands Help From Social Media Companies to Combat Terrorism

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton urged social media companies to help shut down the radicalization and recruitment happening online in a speech outlining her strategy for combatting the Islamic State after the Paris terror attacks. “There is no doubt we have to do a better job contesting online space, including websites and chat rooms where jihadists communicate with followers,” Clinton said Thursday in remarks before the Council on Foreign Relations. “We must deny them virtual territory, just as we deny them actual territory.” The former U.S. Secretary of State said private social media companies social media marketing plan should assist in this effort by swiftly shutting down terrorist accounts so they cannot be used to “plan, provoke or celebrate violence.” The hacker activist group Anonymous has taken this project on for itself, claiming responsibility for disabling thousands of pro-ISIS Twitter accounts. The group posted lists of accounts to the website Pastebin and encouraged Twitter users to flag the accounts through the social network’s standard reporting channels. If Twitter receives a report that an account is violating the company’s policies, which ban using the service to make threats or promote violence, it will remove the account, according to the spokesperson. YouTube’s use policy allows it remove videos that feature real depictions of graphic violence when such footage is used without context or educational information. “We work aggressively to ensure that we do not have terrorists or terror groups using the site, and we also remove any content that praises or supports terrorism,” Facebook said in a statement. “We have a community of more than 1.5 billion people who are very good at letting us know when something is not right. We make it easy for them to flag content for us and they do. We have a global team responding to those reports around the clock, and we prioritize any safety-related reports for immediate review.” Once a Facebook user is found to be violating the company’s guidelines, social media marketing Facebook will start proactively searching for inappropriate content related to that account. Here’s how Monika Bickert, head of content policy at Facebook, described it to us last September: “In some [instances], if we find a violation, we’ll then use our special teams to do a deeper investigation into the account that was responsible for that violation. We’ll also use automated tools to try and find associated accounts or [inappropriate] content.”

Social media demands cause teen anxiety

The pressure to respond immediately to texts or posts is causing teenagers to become more anxious and depressed, Scottish researchers have found, blaming this on the 24-hour demands of their social media accounts. Glasgow University researchers found that those with higher levels of emotional investment in social media, and who use it at night, were more likely to feel depressed and anxious, the BBC reported. The researchers questioned 467 teenagers about their use of social media and state of mind and found that many felt a pressure to respond immediately to texts or posts. Teenagers were asked how and when they used socials media and their sleep quality, self-esteem, anxiety, depression and emotional investment in social media were also measured. Lead researcher social media marketing companies Dr Heather Cleland Woods said this related to the pressure to be available 24/7 and any anxiety around, for example, not responding immediately to texts or posts. Dr Cleland Woods said: “Adolescence can be a period of increased vulnerability for the onset of depression and anxiety, and poor sleep quality may contribute to this. “It is important that we understand how social media use relates to these. Evidence is increasingly supporting a link between social-media use and wellbeing, particularly during adolescence, but the causes of this are unclear.” The National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH) has hypnotherapists around the UK who are qualified in helping teens cope with anxiety and stress – and this can be done without resorting to medication. “People can suffer from a wide variety of distressing feelings such as panic attacks, anxiety, jealousy, guilt, anger or inadequacy. Whatever the problem feeling, hypnotherapy can deal with it more specifically than medication – and without harmful side effects,” says the NCH. Sessions with a hypnotherapist will allow the therapist to assess the level of anxiety the client has and its cause. Once this is done, they will work with the client to relieve this anxiety, using a range of different techniques. After sessions with a hypnotherapist the client usually feels relaxed and more confident, social media marketing services often with a higher level of calmness and more clarity of thought. Dr Cleland Woods said: “While overall social-media use impacts on sleep quality, those who log on at night appear to be particularly affected. This may be mostly true of individuals who are highly emotionally invested. This means we have to think about how our kids use social media, in relation to time for switching off.” The NCH agrees that disrupted sleep can lead to anxiety and generally a poorer performance at school too. If you are ‘addicted’ to social media, or know a teenager who is, contact an NCH therapist near you by using the council’s directory. It can make a world of difference.