As I’m the ‘social media person’ at my company I was just sent this video by a colleague and had to share it. Massive cringer all round but a fairly accurate representation of the various social networks and an apt summary of social networks as a whole.
Understanding when the best time to post can have a huge impact on your engagement rate and consequently increase the reach of your content. A recent study by social campaign management company OfferPop looked at approximately 500,000 Facebook posts by major brands using their platform, examining the day of the week and time of the post to look for how engagement levels were affected.
They found that engagement level – calculated by the number of fans who liked, shared or commented on a post – on a Friday was 64% higher than posts added on a Monday. Continue reading
Yesterday it was announced the Facebook are launching their own search engine known as “graph search” which is designed around the concept of discovery and making it easier for Facebook users to find information. This is designed to allow users to make “natural” searches of content shared by their friends for example “photos of Tom in 2000” or friends who live in Brighton. At the moment Search Graph isn’t going to be available on mobile but once it does there’s going to be one of the most powerful search moderators in history available ‘near me’.
Watch Facebook’s introduction video for an overview – It’s all a bit euphoric for my liking but you get the idea of their bigger vision.
“One way of thinking about Graph Search is less like a search engine but more like a super-powerful filter of the newsfeed of the past.”
So I’ve been meaning to write a weekly post on all the useful things I’ve learnt each week as I’m constantly reading blog posts and news articles on all things social and I’ve finally got round to it!
This time it seems to be pretty Facebook focused as Facebook HQ appear to be having something of a shake up and there a few important updates to be aware of. I also came across the following Social Media round up summarising global trends in social usage.
This week Insights consulting released their ‘Social media round the world’ report which highlights some great insights into how we are using social media on a global scale and what the key trends are.
To summarise This year’s main conclusions are:
Facebook now accounts for 52% of the 4bn pieces of content shared everyday through social which means marketers need to work hard to understand how to make the most of this opportunity and maximise the exposure and engagement around their content.
Additionally, social “signals” on Facebook and Twitter, such as likes, tweets and shares, are now know to correlate “very strongly” to higher rankings in Google search. The idea being that as more people share content on social networks it becomes a better indicator of the ‘best’ and most valuable content the search engines want to return.
The presentation below from the Facebook Marketing Conference 2012 by Nils Mork-Ulnes and Judith Lewis highlights the 7 types of ‘social sharers’, explains why and where they share and offers some explaination for how marketers can use this information to shape their content strategy.
A useful slide presentation I put together for a webinar on how to incorporate social media in to your marketing.
So the day we have all been waiting for has arrived rather suddenly and without much fanfare but Facebook have finally revealed the new brand pages.
First impressions are that they are somewhat similar to the new profiles and have a huge potential for brands to get creative with a large cover photo which can be used to showcase logos, products or just amazing design.
The pages don’t officially launch until March 30, but for now if you want to you can have a play around to preview the new look and review your page before the changes take effect. They have also released new ‘Learn about Pages’ guide to help you on your way.
According to Timeline product manager Sam Lessin, ‘Timeline for profiles was designed to make Facebook a better medium for individuals to tell the stories that create their identities, and the philosophy for brands is no different.’
There are a number of immediate changes that I am immediately aware of and feel will have a significant impact on how we manage Facebook campaigns. In a nut shell the main changes are:
- Additional of a cover page
Cover pages are fantastic in that’s they allow far more space for brands to be creative but Facebook have already outlined strict guidelines for what you can and can’t do one them.
They must not contain:
We’ll just have to wait and see how far they will go in reinforcing them.
- Tabs have moved
Tabs are no longer down the side of the page but displayed under the cover page. You can select the change the order they appear in and also the image that is displayed rather than the generic app logo.
- No more default landing tabs
This is a bit of a nightmare as I am a big fan of having an optimised ‘like us’ branded welcome tab and frequently use this for clients. The other thing this will impact is the running of campaigns and competitions which will typically be the default landing page whilst they are running as a way of increasing fans.
However you can still link people to this by copying the URL and you can also ‘pin’ this to the top of your page.
- The ability to ‘Pin’ posts you want to prioritise
Pinned posts are Page posts that admins have chosen to display prominently at the top of their Page. A pinned post will always appears in the top left of your Page’s timeline and has a flag in its top-right corner. Once you have pinned to the top of your Page it will remain there for 7 days. After that, it’ll return to the date it was posted on the Page’s timeline.
- Highlight Posts
In addition to pinning posts, you can also highlight posts you want to feature more prominentl. This also extends to Milestones which are key moments you’ve decided to highlight on your Page. Milestones are automatically expanded to widescreen and are visible to everyone visiting your Page.
- Timeline functionality
I think this is a fantastic addition to the new pages as it allows you to showcase the history of your company. See what Manchester United have done with theirs. From anywhere on your Page’s timeline, scroll to a spot and click to post a milestone or other type of story to a particular date.
Milestone photos display at 843 pixels wide and 403 pixels tall.
- Updated Admin features
They have also improved the admin capabilities and you can now do the following from one pace;
It will be really interesting to see how brands start using the pages and how it effects engagement and interaction on the page. Watch this space. in the meantime, check out this great guide put together by Mashable to see how brands are making use of the new pages.
One of the biggest challenges I have faced whilst working in social media is how to maximise my outreach and measure success. Social media measurement is still a relatively grey area but as long as you are clear on what your goals are then there are a number of social media tools that can be utilised effectively to help you make the most of your campaigns.
Along the way I have come across a number of free tools that I have found hugely helpful. I have listed some of my favourites below and hope they help you too! Any additions are always welcome so if there are any others that you know of, then please feel free to comment below and I’ll add them to the list.
Finding Followers or influencers
One of the biggest challenges people face is finding people who share the same interests or are in the same area so they can start conversations and engage. For brands, this may be finding their target audience so they can better understand their needs or what they are talking about or it could be to find local people to promote an event or launch.
Twitter directories are a great way of finding relevant influencers to engage with, search for people who share the same interests or find followers in the same local area as you.
Those listed below have been the most effective for me but I’m sure there are others out there as well.
http://nearbytweets.com/- Useful tool for finding people in the same area.
My favourites
Exportly is my favourite tool of the moment! It allows you to export a CVS spreadsheet of all your followers. This allows you to have a proper look at who they are, where they are from and who are the most influential. You can do this by sorting the data by number of followers. Once you know who of your followers is the most influential you can target your engagement at them in the hope of increasing your reach.
Klout- http://klout.com/
Calculates the level of influence your Twitter account has taking into account reach, followers vs followees and level of engagement
Kurrently- http://www.kurrently.com
Useful tool for searching for keywords or competitors on Twitter and Facebook.
http://twoolr.com – Gives good stats with regards to tweet times, see followers and recent interactions. Find out what times retweeted the most.
http://twileshare.com/app/share – upload docs to twitter, pdfs, ebooks, images and gives back stats.
http://twtpoll.com/ – Twitter poll. Great different way to get customer feedback. Share poll with twitter followers and Facebook friends. Can later post this onto a blog or Facebook page to gain further followers and fans.
Measurement
http://twoolr.com – Gives good stats with regards to tweet times, see followers and recent interactions. Find out what times retweeted the most.
http://twiangulate.com (gives diagram + compares 3 profiles followers) Great way to compare twitter profile followers and friends. Finds who follows who, who your most influential followers are and compares.
http://apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap/# – great visual of followers/ connected conversations via hasthtags
http://www.foller.me – Shows tweetcloud of @mentions + world map of engagement
http://twileshare.com/app/share – upload docs to twitter, pdfs, ebooks, images and gives back stats.
http://manageflitter.com/ – manage followers
http://friendorfollow.com/ – manage followers
http://twitterfeed.com/- Feed your blog/ news into Twitter
So Facebook have yet again decided to make some changes. No surprises here then. What is interesting to note is that the most recent changes have some uncanny similarities with none other than Google+.
This week they have introduced the new subscribe button. By opening up Subscriptions on your personal Facebook profile, you enable anyone who chooses to subscribe to your profile to see any posts you share with “Public”.
Subscriptions also allow you to:
• Choose what you see from people in News Feed
• Hear from people, even if you’re not friends
• Let people hear from you, even if you’re not friends
Facebook Subscribe
The benefit of which means you can essentially start to pick and chose what appears in your news feed meaning you can potentially remove the incessant daily updates from someone you went to school with who wants everyone to know exactly what she has eaten on an hourly basis. It also means you can follow the posts of a journalist or celebrity who as you are not friend would not appear in your news feed with Facebook’s previous algorithm.
The changes also allow you to decide what types of updates you see. For example, you could see just photos from one friend, no stories about games from another, and nothing at all from someone else.
To make the changes click on ‘subscriptions’ which is a new option below your profile picture. You can chose to subscribe to a person if they have allowed the subscription option. Simply click subscribe by their name.
Get Your Own Subscribers
If you’d like to share your public updates with more than just friends, you can get a Subscribe button on your profile, too. People who subscribe to you will get posts you set as “Public” in their News Feeds. This is an entirely optional feature – you need to opt in.
