Belle Strategies Marketing Agency

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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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Get More Attention – Facebook’s New Ranking Algorithm

Hey everyone!  This week I am writing about Facebook’s new algorithm…why I love it and also sorta hate it. Mom always taught me to sandwich an insult between two compliments so let’s go with that theory and start off with this:

Love It: Story Bumping – one of the new features – pushes stories that users haven’t seen above the ones they have. Before Story Bumping, Facebook ranked all published updates since a user last logged in. That user’s News Feed would display the best ones, effectively burying stories that Facebook didn’t deem relevant. You might have also seen the same stories over and over when logging in multiple times over a short span. Story Bumping won’t let that happen anymore! It will bump all the updates a user hasn’t seen to the top of the feed since last logging in even if they aren’t super new.

Hate It: Story Bumping – ok don’t be confused but I also kinda hate this. From a professional perspective this is so awesome! But personally, I am a process nut and a detail freak. I want to see the most recent stories and scroll down my feed in chronological order…it’s ironic that Story Bumping gives me the opportunity to do my job more effectively but goes against my first-to-last, loves-making-lists nature.

Love it: Last Actor – another new feature – is a huge win for businesses/organizations using facebook to create an online community. Without getting too technical, Last Actor keeps track of your last 50 interactions, then shows more (or less) of people/pages based on that. For a company this means a) the more a user interacts with you (likes, comments, shares) the more likely your posts will show up in their feed moving forward and b) it increases the likelihood of that user’s friends seeing information about your company too (for example: “Rachel Creveling likes Belle Strategies” will show up on my friends’ feeds more and more as I interact with the Belle Strategies fan page).

What it comes down to is this: Post relevant and engaging content that will prompt your facebook fans to interact! More social, more sold!