Creating Custom Content for Each Social Platform

In order to have a high performance, multi-platform social media campaign, Brands must do their best to understand each social platform and how its audience consumes media in order to provide rich, engaging content.

While there is no fool proof formula, this infographic developed by My Clever Agency provides tips on how to make the most effective social posts.
A few highlights include:

• Facebook: Use simple imagery posts that can be easily seen on mobile devises as 70% of fans view posts on their phones 
• Twitter: Retweet relevant content for your audience and be sure to leave 20 characters so people can add content
• Pinterest: Images that do not have a human face are shared 23% more while images with red or orange get double the repins
• Google+: Use full sized images to make posts stand out on the page compared to thumbnails
• Although not mentioned, using “Auto-Awesome” (a tool from Google that enhances images) on photos also helps increase engagement
• Instagram: Reply to people who have liked/commented to drive two way conversations
• Vine: Use popular hashtags such as #loop and #howto to gain the most engagement
• Tumblr: Like and reblog posts to interact and ensure visibility throughout the site

Facebook Algorithm Updates Again: Focus on Media & News

According to Facebook, traffic to media and news sites increased over 170% in the last year.  So, Facebook is taking this insight to make another update to the News Feed Algorithm which recognizes that people want to see more news content. (As a reminder, these algorithm and overall Facebook functionality updates further move Facebook into becoming an even more open forum, globally).

The updated algorithm plans to show: 

• More relevant articles in the feed: The feed will now include more article links along with suggested articles for continued reading.
• More comment stories: Articles will resurface in the newsfeed if friends have also read and commented on it, leading to more conversations between people and their friends.

To further optimize your content strategy, you can use this as an opportunity to curate more content for fans in order to ensure we continue to appear in the News Feed. Also, if your brand has any additional resources, news articles or even a blog, it may be a great time to further test this content on the platform.

 

For the full release and other related articles, please see below:  

News Feed FYI: Helping You Find More News to Talk About
Facebook Tweaks News Feed for More 'High Quality' Content
Facebook: Here's How Your News Feed Works

LinkedIn Launches Showcase Pages

Image fromTNW.

LinkedIn is looking to help companies get the right content in front of the right users with their latest addition to the site, Showcase Pages.

Showcase Pages will allow companies to control and share content to a more focused and interested audience. As a result of this new publishing tool available to businesses, LinkedIn users will soon have access to a wider range of professionally curated content.

With Showcase Pages, companies can now:

·         Create custom pages for niche divisions or business units

·         Focus content to specific audiences, who have already shown interest in the company and/or related products

·         Businesses can monitor the performance of their page through LinkedIn’s analytic tools

·         Participate in advertising opportunities that aim to increase the Showcase Page’s total followers as well as promoting posts and content in from of others who aren’t following the page, similar to other platforms like Facebook & Twitter.

To learn more about this announcement, please click here.

Facebook Like & Share Gets Redesign

According to Facebook, the Like and Share buttons appear on over 7.5 million websites and are seen 22 billion times per day. They are also important drivers for Facebook referral traffic. For the first time since their inception, the Like and Share buttons have a new design.

The new design utilizes the Facebook “F” icon, instead of the thumb. They will automatically updated across the web, meaning no additional work will be needed for website owners. But, a Like and Share combo button is available for embedding on websites.

Further details can be found in the links below:

Introducing new Like and Share buttons

Facebook Like Button Gets a Redesign

Foursquare Announces Advertising for All

Today, Foursquare announced that all businesses can now advertise on the platform using the self-service page.

Businesses, large and small, will share their needs and projected budget for these efforts on Foursquare’s self-service page – Foursquare will do the rest.

What are the benefits of partnering with Foursquare?

• Foursquare can become a resourceful tool for reaching consumers who actively ‘check-in’ using the platform via paid advertising.
• Metrics will be provided by Foursquare including number of views, actions, action rate and cost per action.
• Geographically targeted advertisements, which help increase local traffic to businesses who run ads that target people near their locations.
• Advertisers can now employ Foursquare ‘tips’ left by users about the companies as user-generated content in future creative.

Advertising on platforms like Foursquare helps brands connect with consumers within a select community of users – becoming a part of the user experience on such platforms increases brand awareness and reach in the digital sphere.

For more information see:

Mashable article: here

AdWeek article: here

Foursquare announcement: here

For Brands: Now is the time for Holiday Communications

According to a study by Crimson Hexagon, 2012 saw a 30% lift in holiday shopping communications on Twitter over 2011. Surprisingly, those conversations are starting before October.

An infographic from Crimson further reveals:

·         Holiday shopping conversations on Twitter start early.

o    30% of Twitter users begin thinking- and tweeting- about holiday shopping before October

·         Twitter influences product consideration, discovery and purchases.

o    55% of users discussed gift ideas on Twitter

o   64% of users have purchased a product because of Twitter

·         Twitter plays a key role in how and where people shop.

o    57% of shoppers use Twitter to determine what stores to visit

o    62% of shoppers tweet about the purchases they’ve made

o    45% of shoppers would rather take Twitter shopping with them than their husband or wife

Most brands will begin trickling in their holiday messaging now, but for B2B customers, time is of essence. 

For more information, please see the full study below:

Study: Twitter’s influence on holiday shopping

Instagram Announces Ads

Instagram finally announced plans to roll-out advertising to US users over the next few months.

The Ads Will:

• Focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community
• Appear in users’ feeds that do not currently follow that brand on the platform
• Give users will have the option to hide the post as well (similar to Facebook)
• As a user, you will still own your photos and videos (only brands' content can leverage paid promotions)
•  Create the need for brands to develop even more beautiful, compelling custom content that feels consumer-centric

Ads here present a big opportunity for real-time marketing for brands.  It will be interesting to see how the analytics tracking, and user behavior will evolve around this new initiative as well.  Stay tuned!

For More Info

Business Insider Article

Instagram's Official Announcement