Facebook is Squeezing Out Small Businesses
If you manage a Facebook Business Page, take note:
According to a statement released by Facebook, “A lot of the content people see as too promotional is posts from Pages they like, rather than ads.”
This means that Facebook is getting feedback from users saying they find Business Page posts more distracting than Facebook ads in the News Feed.
Facebook explained that their goal is to make the user experience inviting, and stated, “Now we’re bringing new volume and content controls for promotional posts, so people see more of what they want from (Business) Pages.”
Here’s what Facebook said they consider “too promotional” (meaning they will limit News Feed visibility of these post types):
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Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
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Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
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Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads
If you’ve already put a holiday sales strategy in place that includes a lot of these posts, don’t worry. Facebook says these changes will not affect the News Feed until January 2015.
You want to make sure you use these kinds of posts sparingly anyway – remember social media is about connecting, not hard sales!
Facebook Isn’t Showing Your Posts
If you’re running a business, you’re probably getting a bit fed up with Facebook. How come you have 1000 fans, but barely 100 people see your posts? We get this question a LOT – so let’s get to the bottom of it.
Just a few days ago, THE Mark Zuckerberg released a statement saying:
“There’s this inherent conflict … Are we trying to optimize news feed to give each person, all of you guys, the best experience when you’re reading? Or are we trying to help businesses just reach as many people as possible? And in every decision that we make, we optimize for the first.”
In a nutshell, the Zuck doesn’t want Facebook to get bogged down with companies pushing their agendas. Behind the scenes, they’re making sure only the fans who truly care about you see your posts. “Well, how do they know which ones care and which ones don’t?” you ask. It’s simple! If a fan engages with your post, Facebook shows them more. If they scroll right by, Facebook cuts you from the line up. Ouch. Cold right!
Zuckerberg also revealed: the average Facebook user is eligible to see ~1,500 news feed updates per day, but only ends up seeing ~100. That INCLUDES all of your friends’ pictures and Buzzfeed quiz results. Facebook is constantly redesigning the algorithm that determines what your fans see, making it more and more tailored to what your fans “tell them” they want through engagement.
So now you know the secret behind why your posts aren’t being seen. Wondering how to get more engagement on Facebook? Check out this blog for that! Or this one!
Instagram News: Embedded Photos and a New Look
Great news for those using Instagram as a marketing tool: Captions will now be embedded!
This means your copy will automatically appear below your photo or video. Prior to this change, embedded photos (in blogs or articles) did not make the original caption visible. I’m sure you can imagine how this update will positively effect your marketing efforts!
Here’s what you’ll see next time you get the embed code for an Instagram image:
Instagram, which turned four the day before this news broke, also announced it’s new embed code includes javascript that resizes the embed to fit the site your image is on, depending on what device a viewer is using.
Along with the caption changes, Instagram also made tweaks to the design making images bigger, cleaner, and more defined.
We saved the best for last: It’s easier than ever for readers to follow your instagram account directly from that embedded image! The new design includes a follow button.
Awesome right!
October Awareness and Social Media
It’s officially Fall now – and as we welcome in my personal favorite time of year, we also usher in a month that highlights many worthy causes. As social media continues to be the best way to spread a grassroots message, I see some very inspiring and unique ways different organizations are kicking off their “MONTH” of awareness. Throughout the month I will be featuring different causes and what they are doing to raise awareness and funds for their causes.
Breast Cancer Awareness and the Susan G. Komen Foundation:
The foundation set this image as their Cover Photo on Facebook and introduced the month long hashtag: #WhatGivesMeStrength and asked people to post using it. Here are just a few of the most touching posts:
Sadly the odds tell us that Breast Cancer has touched you personally in your life. Consider donating to the Susan G. Komen Foundation (or others – there are many wonderful organizations supporting this cause).
Pinterest Tips for Social Media Marketing
Time for another Secret Series installment!
Using Pinterest is often times a big part of a social media marketing strategy (and it is a HUGE part if your client is an online retailer). There are a few insider Pinterest tips and tricks to making your time there useful; let’s get started!
1) ALWAYS make sure your pins have the source section filled out.
Without this, people clicking on the pin will not end up at your/your client’s website. You can fill it out by selecting your pin and clicking edit.
2) Brand your pins!
Add the web address (and logo if it fits!) to extend your reach and continue branding. Use tools like photoshop, picmonkey, and others to add your personal touch.
3) Use keywords in your descriptions.
If your pin is about a bridal veils, you better say bridal veil somewhere in the description. It sure grinds our gears when we see veil retailers just saying “so cute!” – that isn’t going to show up in search results. Here’s a great example of the right way to do it.
These are some of our favorite pinterest tips, stay tuned for more in our Secret Series! Check this one out for some of our best Twitter tips! You better know those.
TESTING: Twitter BUY Button
Twitter confirms today they are beginning testing on their newest advancement: the Twitter BUY button.
Businesses can embed the Twitter buy button into a tweet, which will allow followers to purchase an item instantly through the service. According to Twitter, a “small percentage” of users in the US will start seeing the Twitter buy button today! “This is an early step,” Twitter said in a blog post, “in our building functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient and easy, hopefully even fun.”
The best part about this advancement into e-commerce is that companies do not have to advertise these tweets in order to use the Twitter buy button. Promoting the tweet is certainly a good move, but not required.
Stay tuned for more information about this new feature as it comes out.
Thank you to WIRED for this photo:
If you’re a social media marketing professional, this is especially great news. Twitter just became a much more effective tool for online sales which makes it easier for us to explain the value of consistent, strategy-based management. We recommend reaching out to your clients with online stores immediately and integrating a plan for utilizing the Twitter buy button as soon as possible. This plan should include determining their most popular product (start with that), possibly a first-time buyer discount, and of course…high-res images to attract the buyers.
We can’t wait to see how this affects our world!
What’s all this talk about Subtweeting?
Subtweeting: it’s the internet equivalent of talking about someone behind their back or insulting someone via stealth.
A subtweet means you are commenting about someone who you have not @ in. For those people who are new to Twitter, an @ symbol followed by a person’s Twitter username is known as a Twitter mention. This means that they will receive a notification whenever you include them in a tweet, and other people will be able to see the link to their Twitter account. The person mentioned will keep receiving notifications related to the tweet in which they were mentioned.
Here is an example of Chris Brown displaying his maturity while he subtweets a woman he got in a car accident with…
Subtweets are distinctly not what Twitter set out to encourage, but they’re here and they’re happening. It once again shows how social networks are always more controlled by their users than by their infrastructures.
5 Reasons to Use Vine to Help You Build Your Brand
If you really want to make a splash in the social media waters, you should try making videos with the mobile app Vine!
Vine has more than 40 million registered users, that are telling their stories in short, continuously looping six-second videos.
Vine is much more than a shiny, new social toy. It’s got a lot more going for it than novelty. Vine presents brands with an innovative, surprisingly powerful way to take advantage of the fact that visual content performs well on social media. Here are seven reasons why you should use Vine to build your brand.
1. It’s simple
All you need to do is hold your finger on the screen to record and take it off to pause. It’s that simple. You can record straight through uninterrupted or use the stop-motion feature to shoot your own impressively animated shorts.
2. It’s spur of the moment
The simplicity of Vine makes it possible for you to capture news as it’s happening without any preparation whatsoever.
3. It’s instructional.
You can share your secrets for doing what you do best, positioning yourself as the expert.
4. It’s promotional.
Win your followers over with enough genuinely interesting looping video clips, and you’ve earned their loyalty. Run contests. Show off your team. Take viewers behind the scenes of your work place.
5. It’s measurable.
Not only do you see how many times people have liked your Vine videos, you can now get a count of how many times each of them has looped as well. Along with comments and revines, these two metrics provide you with a fairly good gauge for your clips’ popularity.
Facebook introduces ‘missed call’ ads for feature phones
Facebook is going to debut its ‘missed call’ ads in India, in a bid to connect advertisers with a large untapped market of feature phone users in the country.
The feature allows users to press a button to place a call to relevant advertisers and then disconnect it. The user then receives a call back playing a pre-recorded message, detailing offers and discounts by the advertiser. These ads will allow users to request content, such as game scores, music or celebrity news, by clicking on a mobile advertisment and placing a missed call company. This way people can recieve branded content without using airtime or data.
The missed call unit was part of an announcement Facebook put out Wednesday touting its expanding reach in markets outside of North America and Europe. Often called “the next billion,” the market includes areas in which feature phones are still the predominant mode of mobile communication.
It will be interesting to see if the ‘missed call’ ad makes its way to our neck of the woods.
Twitter: Flush Your Unfollowers with Tweepi
I recently got turned onto a new FREE Twitter service called Tweepi. Tweepi helps you clean up your Twitter account and figure out all sorts of great things. Let’s talk about it!
Tweepi Flush
This feature shows you who you follow that is NOT following you back. You can aggregate the info alphabetically, based on location, number of followers, or the last time they tweeted. I recommend listing them by the last time they tweeted (ascending). You will be amazed how many people you follow who haven’t tweeted in YEARS! My rule of thumb: If they haven’t tweeted in 15+ days, flush ’em.
If you are actively following people hoping for follow backs, you may reach a follow limit. Tweepi flush is great for helping you figure out who to stop following…so you can find better people to follow who will reciprocate!
My favorite part of the flush section is seeing who is not following my clients and making a wish list. My wishlist includes people my client has either directly asked me to interact with, or fits within their target demographics. Users with large followings who don’t yet follow back might just need a personal tweet or two before the follow back comes. Create relationships with these people and watch your retweet and mention numbers soar!
Tweepi Reciprocate
It doesn’t make sense to follow back everyone who follows you – your feed would be such a random mess! But every so often you might miss following back someone in your industry and that’s where this section becomes relevant! Tweepi Reciprocate shows you everyone who follows you that you don’t follow back, and makes it easy for you to follow them right there in the dashboard. Simple!
Tweepi Cleanup People I’m Following
This section is very similar to Tweepi Flush and honestly I never use it. The only difference is that it shows people who follow you and those who don’t (vs. flush which only shows people who don’t follow you). You can skip it.
Tweepi Cleanup People Following Me
This section is interesting because — who wants less followers? Believe it or not some clients really only want VALUABLE FOLLOWERS. 100s and 100s of followers from Russia who don’t even use English characters aren’t going to be retweeting you, and they definitely won’t be referring you business. I love this section because it helps you get rid of the random followers who aren’t doing anything for you. **This section is only available with a paid membership.
So obviously we love Twitter – hope to see you there! @BelleStrategies
LinkedIn’s List of North America’s Most InDemand Employers
Can you guess who took the top spot for LinkedIn’s list of most desirable companies to work for? Google, of course! For the second straight year, Google claimed the top spot on LinkedIn’s annual list of most InDemand Employers, a ranking of the companies LinkedIn members “most want to work for.” Who was runner-up you ask? Apple!
You might be wondering what the average salary for a software engineer at Google is. Well, it’s nearly $119,000 per year, according to Glassdoor, and took the top spot on Fortune‘s Best Companies to Work For list in 2014. Not too shabby right? Google even donates $50 to charity for every five hours each employee volunteers.
Tell us, what company would be your dream company to work for?
You can see the complete list of LinkedIn’s list of most desirable companies to work for here.
#MysteryBeer and Viral Campaigns
It’s only been an hour since Vani Hari, the writer behind www.foodbabe.com, announced her newest investigation and already the social media pages of Anheuser-Busch and Miller Coors are covered in demands to know what’s in their #mysterybeer. Her petition already has over 10k signatures, and the hashtag is trending. Today is not going to be a good day for their social media managers.
Hari has built a loyal following of like-minded people who care about what they put in their bodies. Together with these health crusaders (dubbed the FoodBabe Army), Hari has helped bring enormous publicity to some of the not-so-tasty ingredients in our food. Subway, Kraft, and General Mills are just a few of the brands who have modified their ingredient list after Hari brought their consumers together and demanded it.
From a social media perspective, we enjoy watching Hari and her army wage war on the big guys. Using social media for good is always fun to see, especially since common viral trends bring us celebrity baby news and kitten videos. It always feels like we get to put one in the win column when something worthwhile goes viral.
Successful People
Facebook Audio Recognition
Facebook Audio Recognition is here!
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Facebook’s new update for its Android and iOS app has Shazam-like audio recognition. It can listen and identify the background music/TV show playing when users update status.
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It’s great for Facebook’s data mining purposes because it can further improve its targeted ads campaign.
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The more specific Facebook’s advertising platform is the more effective your ad dollars are.
Adding audio recognition to identify background media when users update their status using their phones or tablets, help Facebook’s data mining operations. Advertisers demand increasingly personalized data for their target demographics. Hollywood and music bigwigs want the Facebook Shazam-like feature to gain real-time or always-updated feedback on what TV shows, music, pop stars, and genres are hot.
Read the full post originally published HERE
Introducing Facebook Context Cards
On Wednesday, Facebook rolled out a new feature to its iOS app that encourages users to share more about what they are doing.
Now, Facebook users will start seeing “Context Cards,” which will appear over their News Feeds and provide detailed information after they check in or link to subjects such as movies or songs in status updates.
Here are some examples:
- If a user checks in to a location, the context cards will show friends who have recently checked in to the same location and when those check-ins occurred, as well as related photos they have posted.
- If a user posts a structured status update referencing listening to a musical artist or watching a movie, the context cards will show friends who have consumed the same media.
Facebook is hoping the cards will provide helpful information and encourage users to interact with their nearby friends.
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