So now you can ACTUALLY manage more than 5 Instagram accounts on your phone.
One Login to rule them all!
It’s a pain most Social Media managers have faced at some point. Instagram only lets you log in to 5 accounts on one device, meaning any more than those accounts you manage for clients involve a second device or the login hokey pokey.
Of course the pros use a social media tool to help with this, but what about if you want to post on the go, answer your DMs or see your Story analytics? Not all tools do all the things (we’re all hoping one day they’ll be a tool to rule them all) but until that day comes I have stumbled on a solution that I don’t think it new, but I also know it’s not widely known about.
One Login
As its name suggests, you can set up one login for all your accounts, and this allowed me to be logged into 7 Instagram accounts on my phone (Android, Galaxy Note 8)
I decided my “One Login” would be my personal account to keep it neat and not connect any of the business accounts together.
So all you do is go to your settings…
Choose the Multi-account login options, which will take you to here the option to choose which account is the multi-account login. Or the ‘key’ if you will.
Then hit next.
From there you’re all set and you can add a sixth account like I’ve shown here:
And that’s it!
No more account hokey pokey, no more missed DMs – and definitely no more second devices to lug around.
Let me know if this works on your device, and share it with a Social Media Manager to save the day!
Social Media is a great way to stay connected, be
entertained and informed and promote your business.
But it can also be a massive time suck and bad for your self-esteem. Like most things in life, it’s about balance. You might need a Social Media sanitise.
If you’re feeling bummed out after scrolling, you’re NOT ALONE!
But there’s some things you can do to spruce up your accounts and get a better experience from Social Media.
“A couple of weeks ago I unfollowed over 600 people. They were just random people I was sick of seeing on my feed.
I wanted more friends than acquaintances.”
–Joe, 26
Unfriend
Do what I did and go through your Facebook friends on your personal
profile. If you haven’t done it for a while you’d be surprised how many names
you don’t even recognise.
I only had just over 400 friends, so it’s not like I had been collecting them, but still some people were added to gain access to their accounts for Social Media services years ago, didn’t work and the client company anymore and had got married and changed their last name.
If I need my detective skills to figure out who you are, you don’t need to be here.
And it’s not as if these people were annoying me with their
posts – those ones get flushed out in real time, but evaluating each friend and
how much you’d be willing to share with them in real life can really make your
feed feel more welcoming.
I thought to myself “if I saw XXX in the shops, would I keep walking, just wave, say hello, or stop for a chat” I found it helpful to have a scale.
Unfollow
Same concept, but with your other accounts. As Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn and Instagram are all less personal than Facebook (not sure why, maybe because it was our first?) it’s fine to not recognise your followers or the people you follow – especially as your accounts grow.
“My Insta feed constantly changes because I’m always following and unfollowing different accounts, like I’ll get obsessed with a TV show, follow all the stars and then a few weeks after I’ve binged it I don’t care about them and I’ll unfollow. “
–Alana, 26
So there’s less at stake – unfollow anyone who makes your feel bad.
Someone you compare yourself to that makes you feel like you
come up short, your sister, whoever. It doesn’t matter who they are. If it’s
unhealthy, leave.
I don’t want to go into the ins and outs of mental health, I’m
not qualified to do so except in terms of my own anyway, but there’s healthy competition
and then there’s stuff that does damage.
Some posts might inspire you and spur you on. Others might
make you feel inadequate. That’s the danger zone.
It might not even be what this person or business posts – it
could be you’re not receiving it in the manor it was intended, but if it’s
making you feel bad UNFOLLOW. You can always check back with them when you feel
up to it.
And it’s important to remember that just because someone’s great at curating a perfect Instagram aesthetic doesn’t mean they are happy in their life.
They likely have the same securities the rest of us have.
Follow & Connect
Find people and accounts who inspire you. And I don’t mean the hashtag blessed Insta-babes that pat each other on the head about everything. Unless that’s what you’re into…
I mean accounts who make you feel good about yourself.
Work out who they are and find more of them. Follow their
followers.
Connect with like-minded people. Interact with stuff you’re
passionate about. Tell the social algorithms what you like, and they’ll do
their best to find you more of it.
This sounds hard, but the more you put yourself out there,
the more of your people you’ll attract, and you’ll be so busy engaging with
them you won’t even notice you forgot to look at your old bosses account this
week.
I think one of the hardest things is to recognise when, so if you thrive on a schedule, schedule in your Social Media times.
Take the apps off your phone and log in through the web
browser.
Use the stopwatch to set a specified scrolling period.
Charge your phone out of reach, or simply switch off all
your notifications, or your phone (if you can – some people need to be on call)
Don’t forget – you are in charge of what you see on social
media, you don’t have to just see what’s served to you. Go make some positive
changes, it’s a new year after all.
There’s so many ways to improve your Social Media experience, I’d love to hear how you do it!
Anyone who runs a business knows they must have a brand presence on Social Media to reach new segments, support existing customers and be part of the conversation happening around their brand and the wider industry they’re a part of.
And something else that’s abundantly clear is that organic reach just isn’t what it used to be. Once upon a time, you could post on your business page and your fans had a good chance of seeing it in their newsfeeds.
Both Facebook’s big Social platforms (Facebook and Instagram) have been declining organic reach for brands for some time, meaning business owners who want to generate higher reach have been opening their wallets.
But this isn’t the only reason people choose paid distribution methods. It may be that your target audience is quite specific, requiring a more targeted approach that organic Social posting can achieve.
Or perhaps you’ve created some amazing content, why take the risk of minimal exposure?
Get it out there!
If your video auto-plays in the forest, and no-one is there to read the captions – did it even play at all?
Deciding to promote your content isn’t the hard part, but how to do it effectively can be confusing. So let’s look at the difference between Ads Manager and Boosting Posts!
There’s a little bit of jargon to learn when paying to distribute your content on Facebook (and Instagram) and the first thing is that Boosting Posts and Sponsoring a post via Ads Manager are quite different.
Facebook Boosted Posts
Facebook’s defines a boosted post as:
“…a post to your Page’s timeline that you can apply money to in order to boost it to an audience of your choosing. This is the simplest way to advertise on Facebook.”
Boosting a Facebook post is straightforward as pressing the blue “Boost Post” button under the post you’d like to put the budget behind and following the prompts.
Boosted Posts start off as organic posts – and have budgets applied.
Boost Post is the big blue button you’re often prompted to push
Facebook Ads Manager
Running ads via Facebook Ads Manager gives you more control over your campaign.
Facebook describes it this way:
“Facebook ads are created through Ads Manager and offer more advanced customization solutions. There are many advertising objectives to help you reach your specific business goals and the audiences you care about most.
Where a boosted post may initially optimize for Page likes, comments, and shares or overall brand awareness, Facebook ads can optimize for app installs, website conversions, video views, shop orders and more.”
Running Ads via Facebook Ads Manager requires an Ad Account, preferably set up inside a Business Manager account set up for your business.
You’ll get access to more robust targeting, more features, and greater support from running ads this way.
Running ads via Ads Manager means they don’t ever display on your page itself unless you deliberately share them there.
Running ads via Ads Manager will give you access to many objective options, under 3 main headings.
Awareness:
Brand Awareness
Reach
Consideration:
Traffic
Engagement
App Installs
Video Views
Lead Generation
Messages
Conversions:
Conversion
Catalogue Sales
Store Visits
Boosting posts will only give you 3 ad objectives; website visits, Engagement and Messages.
So now that we know the difference, which is better?
It depends exactly what you want to achieve.
Facebook explains it this way:
“It’s important for any business to identify exactly what they’re hoping to achieve with an ad.
For example, if you want audience engagement on your Page or to develop your brand awareness, boosting a post is a great way to maximize visibility and grow your audience.
To create more advanced ad types and campaigns, use Ads Manager.
In almost all instances, running ads via Facebook Ads Manager is preferable to boosting posts.”
Boosting Posts is certainly quicker, easier, and requires a less steep learning curve.
But there’s only 3 times I’d ever use it myself
If I wanted my content to only be seen by people who already like my page​
Seems counterintuitive, but if you were offering a promotion or discount to your page fans only the most effective way to do this is via a boosted post to current fans of your page.
If you already have your Facebook Custom Audiences set up in Ads Manager
You can access your Custom Audiences and Saved Audiences in your Boost Post options if they have already been created in your Ads Manager. This way you have the same targeting options, and it’s quick and easy to promote your post on the go.
For Social Proof on your Ads
If you’re going to run an ad that’s possible to do as a Facebook post (E.g. Engagement, Link Clicks) you can create first as a post on your page, and Boost to build up reactions, comments and other Social Proof before running as an ad via Ads Manager.
In all other instances I’ll take the extra objective and targeting options of Ads Manager any day of the week!
The other point to note with Boosting Posts is that it’s only effective if your post meets certain parameters.
If your post has performed well organically
A clear call to action – don’t leave people confused over what to do
It’s relevant, timely and optimised for your target audience
Boosting a post that doesn’t have these factors is a complete waste of your Facebook Ads budget!
Ads Manager Advantages
Controlling who sees your ads (and who doesn’t) is one of the main attractions to advertising on Facebook – not using this targeting to its full potential isn’t making the most out of your Facebook ads budget.
Not only is it counterintuitive to use the more limited targeting of Boosted Posts, but placement options are incredibly important to running successful Facebook ad campaigns. Placements determine where your ad is displayed. Will your target market be more likely to be compelled by your ad in Messenger, on Instagram Stories, or Facebook’s mobile newsfeed?
Something else that’s important to achieving a return on ad spends (ROAS) is split testing – which you can’t do with Boosted Posts. How will you know which creative works best, what copy inspires people to click, which placements are most effective if you can’t split test them?
Plus, Ads Manager can do almost everything Boosted posts can do!
In fact – following this process will give you the same result as a Boosted Post (for the Engagement objective) but with more robust targeting options:
In Ads Manager, click the green “create” button and select “Engagement” as an objective
Choose “Post Engagement”
Define your Audience, Placements and Budget
Click the drop-down menu to designate a pre-existing post
Confirm & launch
This method generates better results, at a more cost-effective rate. Go ahead and put it to the test – I’m confident you’ll appreciate learning how to promote a post on Facebook using the platform’s Ads Manager tool.
Using Facebook Ads Manager to run your advertising is a lot to get used to, but when you’re going to be paying Facebook to find your target audience isn’t it worth spending some time familiarising yourself with the platform that’ll get you the most bang for your buck?
I’d love to know what you think! Drop me a comment.
5 Things You Can Do To Boost Social Media Presence
A guest blog by Elaine Bennett
In a social-media-driven world, where everyone and their grandparents have a social media account, there is really no viable excuse for your business not to be present in the SM arena as well. After all, some three billion people use some form of social media on a daily basis, it only stands to reason that you should try to tap into this wealthy pool of opportunities – you can bet that your competitors are doing the same.
But you need to be better than they are. With that in mind, here are five things you could be doing to boost social media presence, reach new audiences and transform them into paying customers.
Developing a personality people will love
The days of faceless corporations with cheesy slogans are long gone. Nowadays, customers expect brands to have a personality, a unique tone of voice, and an aesthetic presentation that is relatable and portrays the right values to the public. Needless to say, your brand cannot afford to be just another face in the crowd – it needs to stand out.
Uniqueness is the key to brand recognition in the online universe, which means that you need to build a brand personality audiences can connect with on a profound, emotional level. Only by striking an emotional chord with your demographic can you hope to transform them into loyal brand followers.
Building SMART goals for your SM strategy
The concept of SMART goals has been around for decades, used by managers from every department to keep the cogwheels turning and keep the higher-ups happy. Now, you can use the SMART concept to optimize your social media strategy and take it to new heights.
Succinctly, in order for your SM presence to thrive, your goals need to be:
Specific – what is the goal, specifically?
Measurable – how do you measure effectiveness?
Achievable – the goals need to be realistic.
Relevant – creating a positive impact internally and externally
Timely – setting a realistic timetable.
SMART goals will allow you to build a comprehensive, realistic social media strategy. However, setting these goals will require constant feedback and social media monitoring.
Gather relevant insights to boost your SM game
Knowledge is power. The more you know about your audience, as well as your brand’s performance in the online realm, the better the chances of your marketing team crafting a winning SM strategy and improving upon past results.
Strategies such as media monitoring have become an integral part of every brand’s social media strategy, as it provides you with the relevant insights your company needs in order to eliminate any guesswork from the equation. Also, it is important to consider where your audience comes from. For instance, if they’re based mostly in New Zealand, you should use a media monitoring platform or a media portal from New Zealand to collect this data. This real time information will help you safely plan for the future and mitigate any risk, allowing your brand to gain the traction and recognition it deserves.
Post engaging, quality content across the board
In the online world, content will always be king. No matter how much money you pour into advertising or sponsorship deals, nothing will be able to save your brand’s reputation from the backlash that inevitably follows a poorly-written blog post.
This is why complementing your posting schedule with stellar content across all social media channels will be essential in portraying your brand in the best possible light. What’s more, if you want to take your game to the next level, be sure to diversify your content pool by introducing various blog content, images, infographics, videos, podcasts, and more.
Be consistent and drive innovation
Finally, a silent social media feed is soon to become a barren one in terms of followers. There is no better way to lose your audience and push them into the loving embrace of your competition than to post seldom or irregularly, so make sure you have a tight schedule in place, jam-packed with engaging stories and visuals.
Moreover, you also want to retain a hefty dose of spontaneity, and keep your followers coming back to your page, by being innovative, always offering something new and exciting for your audience to experience. Remember, only by staying on top of the latest trends and changing with the tide can you hope to stay afloat and surpass the competition.
The race for social media dominance is a never-ending one, especially if you consider that the number of social media users is only expected to rise in the years to come. With that in mind, now is the time to implement these solutions into your SM strategy and pave the road to long-term recognition in the SM universe.
Elaine Bennett is a regular contributor at Bizzmark Blog.
She’s a marketing specialist, focused on branding, social media marketing and small businesses.
She’s also a tech enthusiast and a video games lover.
Content Marketing can have some incredible benefits for your business
But a lot of people still underestimate the value of Content Marketing, or indeed don’t fully understand what it is or why they should invest in bespoke content.
So let’s start by working out exactly what it is!
CONTENT MARKETING – a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.
But I prefer Content Marketing Institute’s definition:
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Especially the line following that definition which says “Instead of pitching your products or services, you are providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.”
So Content Marketing is a way to talk about your products or services in a way that’s audience first and user driven. It’s less about you, and more about them – a good place to start.
What can be content?
Anything your audience can consume can be content.
Blog posts
Video & Slideshows
Graphics & Animations
Podcasts
Quizzes
Ebooks & Whitepapers
Resources & Workbooks
Playlists
Q&A or AMAs
Facebook/Instagram Live
Branded Filters & Camera Frames
And the list goes on!
The type of content you create for your Content Marketing efforts will depend completely on your audience and objectives.
Great Content Marketing can have a multitude of benefits to your business, let’s look at some of them.
Traffic & Search Results
Everyone wants more traffic to their website, or at least more qualified traffic. When you publish or host quality content on your site, people hit your site to consume it. And you know they’re more than likely interested in your product or services because that’s what your content (even if loosely) relates to.
When you offer something of value to your audience, they’ll come to you. This is the complete opposite of traditional marketing where you go to where they are and interrupt them. If you content is strong enough and valuable enough you might not even have to pay to promote it. You can publish it, and let people come to you in their own way and their own time.
Here’s a great example – Jon Loomer’s Facebook Image Dimension Guide. In case you don’t know who Jon Loomer is he’s a Facebook Ads heavy hitter who runs online training and a couple of membership clubs for exclusive content. In fact, everything Jon does is an example of excellent Content Marketing.
I read in one of his emails a while back that this page on his site is the most visited. It comes up if you Google “Facebook Image Specs” and in creating it, he knew that anyone who visited that page was looking for information on how to optimise their creative to best display on Facebook.
Whether they were marketers, or business owners, or entrepreneurs – they all had that in common. And they were coming to him. For free!
Imagine you’re in a competitive niche; all clamoring to get to the top position in a Google search, but your content – perhaps a simple “how to” video is what people are visiting? That’s YOUR brand getting ahead. Standing out without pushing people away with a hard sell.
We’ll talk more about what you can do with this traffic in a sec.
Brand Awareness & Recall
Word of mouth is still an incredibly powerful way to get your business noticed, and you’ve probably heard the phrase “word of mouse” said too. It’s so important to be known and remembered.
How can people use your services if they don’t know who you are?
How can they recommend you to their friends if they can’t remember your business name?
Create content that resonates with your audience and they’re more likely to remember you. And if they hadn’t heard of you before it’s an even better way to make them aware of your brand!
The idea is that it’s not only valuable enough for them, but sharable as well. Any time you can get people to share your content as a brand you’ve allowed them to represent you and vice versa. They’ve thought whatever you created was good enough for them to put their name to and pass along to their friends and colleagues.
And with Content Marketing you can do this without the rude interruption of more traditional types of advertising.
Brand Affinity & Loyalty
Something else you can achieve with Content Marketing is affinity from your audience, and loyalty from your current customers.
This isn’t just touchy-feely (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but in a crowded market you want people can choose your brand, over others and their affinity for what your brand stands for could be the deciding factor. But they can’t do this unless they know what your brand MEANS.
You content can explain your brand positioning, and win your audience over into fans and purchasers.
Tell your brand’s story and let your audience fall in love with you.
Then once you’ve earned their support you want to retain them!
Great content can remind people why they choose you and not your competitors. It can help deepen the relationship they have with your brand and make them less likely to stray.
Audience Segmentation
Content Marketing can help you segment your audience and only show them what they want to see more of.
You can track and tag pages of your website and/or individual pieces of content, to build audience pools from your different content themes into remarketing segments.
That way when you pay to promote a new piece of content you can target the people who’ve consumed similar content. Facebook targeting allows us to differentiate traffic that’s visited certain pages of our website and not others, and also people who’ve spend a certain amount of time on a particular page so we can serve ads to people who interacted with particular content this way.
It’s the same concept ecommerce stores use when they offer you similar items to the ones in your cart. They know you like xyz product with certain attributes, it follows you’ll like other products with similar attributes.
This segmentation keeps your audience seeing the content that resonates with them, and prevents them seeing content themes that may not.
Funnel Content
If you have a sales funnel you need to fill that funnel with content.
This content needs to be relevant to the audience AND their buyer journey.
Content Marketing can attract people to your brand and fill the top of the funnel.
And it’s especially important during the consideration phase (middle of the funnel) to make sure people choose your brand over your competition.
Thought Leadership
Content Marketing can position you (as a personal brand) or your company as the thought leader in your niche.
Great content will ensure your fans know you’re the “go to” source for information on your product or industry and give you an edge over your competitors, just like in the Jon Loomer example.
Business Opportunities
Checking the data from your Content Marketing efforts can point you in the direction of new business opportunities.
If you’re looking at expanding or even narrowing your offerings, the data on which content your audience consumed can help you refine your business to offer what has most resonated with your target market.
Content Marketing & Social Media – BFFs
Why am I telling you about Content Marketing?
Because Content Marketing and Social Media are BFFs. Your content can be distributed on Social Media, and content themes can be established based on your social posting.
Think about your most popular Social Media posts – what were they about? What can you learn from this to inform your content offering?
Social Media gives us the power of community for our brands, and it also allows us to target with a high level of accuracy people we want to reach beyond that community where we know our content will resonate.
So put some thought into your Content Marketing efforts and invest in some quality creators if it’s not your thing. The work of an excellent copywriter, graphic designer or videographer will elevate your content and you’ll reap the benefits.
But make sure to leave some money in the budget to ensure this content sees the light of day with the people you made it for.
I was going to call it report-ier in reference to Die Hard – but decided not to. Anywho, part two of the Yellow Social Media Report is out and I’ve got to say it’s really got 3 main takeaways. If you missed my wrap-up of Part 1 you can read it here.
I could drag it out and fill this blog post with all manner of stats and insights, but unless you’re a Social Media Advertiser you’re probably not going to be interested. So I’ll keep it on-topic 🙂
So what are we talking about then?
Well I didn’t say there wasn’t anything valuable in it! After reading the Yellow Social Media report and thinking on it for a couple of days, and re-reading it there really are only 3 pieces I think you need to know.
1. More Than Before
Quite simply, there’s more businesses than ever with a Social Media presence.
The Report states that for small business it’s 51%, medium is 58% and large is the highest with 85%.
On average 90% of these have Facebook, and they are optimistic about Social Media’s ability to effect their business with 6 in 10 believing it will increase their sales between 11%-16%Â in the next year.
2. Adding It Up
According the the Yellow Social Media Report, Australian businesses are spending more on ads, with 52% of respondents declaring they have used paid social and 9/10 reported they had run Facebook Ads.
1 in 3 small businesses are using Social Media advertising, and with medium and large businesses this increases to 1 in 2.
3. We’re Coy About ROI
The findings of the Yellow Social Media Report point to the fact that we don’t really know how to measure our ROI – or return on investment. Which is pretty bad tbh…
Only 21% of small business, 32% of medium and 35% of large businesses measure their ROI!
That’s an average across the business segments of 29%, so only around a third of businesses are actually calculating if the money (and time) they put into their Social Media is making a return.
WOW.
And the ones who do measure their Social Media efforts are looking at likes, followers and subscriber numbers to indicate success – not sales.
But nevertheless they’re saying they’ll spend the same if not more in the coming year…
It’s also outlined in the report that half of businesses Social Media budgets go to paid ads, 1/3rd to content and the rest to management of the platforms – which are overwhelmingly managed in house.
What else?
I did say there were only 3 main takeaways, which I’ve covered – but there’s a couple of minor ones.
One is that interestingly businesses are posting less often than previously recorded (probably due to algorithmic changes making their posts seem less effective) and that businesses are stating that most of the traffic to their Social Media platforms come from the company website.
Which means you need to check your site’s Social Media icons are working, and your Facebook pixel is up and running to track your website users’ journey.
That’s It…
I hope this has been useful and has saved you reading the 30 pages of the Yellow Social Media Report for yourself.
There’s a lot more stats to pour through if you’re inclined, you can read the Part 2 in full here.
The much-loved Sensis Social Media Report has changed its name. It’s now the Yellow Social Media Report. But what’s in a name? It’s still going to give you the same delicious stats and facts as always, just with a brighter background.
If you’re into Social Media, or data about the way businesses are using it, this report has something for you!
For the last 2 years I have brought you a TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read) summary of the report, and it’s always one of my most-read posts! This year I’m doing it again. I’ll highlight my main takeaways of the report from my opinion as a Social Media practitioner in regard to the way Western Australian’s and WA businesses are using Social Media.
Why the Yellow Social Media Report?
Why do we love this report so much?
The main reason the Australian Social Media community gets excited about this particular report is because even though there’s a LOT of data out there, it can be tough to find anything that reflects an Australian audience. We’re a big country with a small population and we just aren’t like anyone else.
Another reason is it’s incredibly important to stay up to date in this fast-moving industry. Trends shift in the blink of an eye, and as a Social Media professional (or a small business owner looking after your own businesses Socials) you need to keep up with usage trends to get the best from your efforts.
The Yellow Social Media Report has been asking (mostly) the same questions for the past 7 years, so it’s become somewhat of an authority piece.
Start to Finish
Did you know that the first thing nearly 60% of Australians do every day is use Social Media? It’s how they finish their day, too! I know I’m in that 60%…
62% of Australians use Social Media daily to connect to friends and family – and 60% open their Social Media more than 5 times per day, across an average of 3.5 “internet connected” devices.
Mostly we’re there to connect with people we know – but 44% of Aussies follow brands on Social (up from 25% last year) and they are using your presence to find out more about your business and check your reviews.
Facebook – STILL not dead.
People tell me Facebook is dead. Or that it “doesn’t work for my business” but maybe you’re not giving your audience what it wants, because it’s the most widely used Social Media platform in Australia – consuming an average of 10 hours per week of our time.
94% of Western Australians surveyed use Facebook, and it’s the same as last years result, despite people saying they’re going to #deletefacebook. This is also way out in front of second placed YouTube at 44%.
Message Me
It’s the same when we move to private messaging services, with Facebook Messenger coming out way in front in WA 79% for Messenger and 30% for Facebook’s other messenger option – WhatsApp. None of the others even came close.
These are the Australia-wide figures
Live and let LIVE
Us sandgropers are not really embracing Facebook live – with 79% saying they have neither watched nor published a Live broadcast. Are we a bit behind? A bit camera-shy? Maybe we’ll catch up in next years report…
Tell it like it is!
We’re also behind all other states when it comes to publishing Snapchat, Instagram & Facebook Stories with 74% saying they have never published a story on the 3 channels.
Down to Business…
Why do we need to know all this stuff about how people use the platforms? Because it’ll help us as brands get our messages seen and acted on most effectively.
33% of us check out a brand’s social media presence before making our first online purchase from them. WHat if there’s nothing there when they look? Or something old and out of date? Not a good look!
40% of West Aussies said they had provided an online review (we’re the second last state for this – coming in last is SA) and people from the ACT shared the most opinions with 52%.
Only 12% of WA folks said they stopped following a brand in the past year. Mostly they did this because their content was irrelevant or unappealing – or they just posted too often.
Western Australians aren’t very trusting of news on Social Media, with only 20% trusting news on Social Media or news their friends posted on Social Media. We prefer our news on the news, thanks.
We’re also the state who cares least about likes, and the least likely to check our phones while eating with family and friends, so that’s good news.
So there you have it – that’s the Part 1 wrap up – Part 2 of the report should be out soon, letting us know more about brands and businesses use of Social Media.
What did you think of my wrapup of the report? Or the Yellow Social Media Report itself? Any surprises?
Facebook set it’s house on fire by changing how the newsfeed works – so what do we all do now?
There’s some things in Social Media Marketing that will always be true. I’m going to start with those, as many publishers and brands will really need to go back to the basics to make sure they are still reaching their audience.
These are simple, but often overlooked and there’s only 3 main ones…
1. Strategy
What do you WANT from your Facebook activity? What does success look like for your accounts?
Is it sales, brand awareness, leads, customer service?
Think about what you actually want to achieve by being on Facebook in the first place. What’s the best way to achieve your goals, bearing in mind Facebook is saying they will be preferencing “meaningful” content that evokes deeper thought and attracts long comments.
I’ll outline a few formats I think will still be viable under this newsfeed change in the next section.
2. Audience
Your Facebook page isn’t for you.
Let that sink in.
It can be ABOUT you, but it’s supposed to be for your AUDIENCE. Facebook’s trying to put the Social back into Social Media.
What does going back to basics here look like? Stop creating content you like, and put your efforts into content that means something to your audience. Keep it relevant, put some thought into who your audience is, what they’re day looks like, when they want to hear from you and you should see success with Facebook’s new focus – creating a meaningful experience, keeping you safe from the newsfeed update.
Dive into your insights and check out who your audience are (you might be surprised) and always keep them central to your content creation (or curation)
You may need to post less often to achieve success here, but putting the extra thought into your content, and cutting down on your frequency could definitely help your newsfeed visibility.
3. Community Management
This one has been around as long as Facebook itself, but it’s lost a bit of shine, at least to me if I’m honest. I’d say this was mainly due to the amount of effort it takes to run a community, the fact that you can’t really measure community ROI, and the declining organic newsfeed reach which pushed all us former Community Mangers into the realm of Paid.
Having said that, it’s always been important to answer the questions, queries and issues of your fans and customers on your Facebook page. It’s Social after all!
In the announcements by Facebook in the previous week they’ve stated that simply replying to all your comments isn’t enough. They say they don’t care about page-to-person interaction (I have a hunch they still keep tabs on it, like they do with answered messages in Messenger, but I have no proof) they only care about person-to-person interaction.
So if you already have a community of active commenters, who participate in thoughtful conversions about the topics around your brand – this is going to be a huge advantage! If you don’t it looks like trying to build one is the key here.
I’m not going to lie, starting from scratch is going to take a lot of effort on your part, especially if you’re a small business. For larger businesses this will mean they might decide to dedicate a Social Media team member to “conversation starter” rather than simply moderating comments or providing customer service.
It also makes me wonder about the Telcos. If you’ve been on a Telco page lately (or ISP for that matter) you’ll find long, detailed accounts of people’s greivances. Is this what Facebook will end up preferencing in the newsfeed? Might be good news for NFPs and cause related communities?
I guess we’ll have to wait and see…
Another thought pops into my head about trolls. Will brands now ‘Fake Troll’ themselves to get longer comments? Yuk. Let’s hope not.
Ok, so that’s my 3 back to basics tips. Bring Sexy Social Back with a re-think about your strategy and why you are on Facebook in the first place, ALWAYS post audience-first, and have a plan to engage your community.
How are you going to stay ‘newsfeed visible’ though?
It’s all very well and good for the answer to be “create better content” but HOW?
Here’s some tips I think will still be effective on Facebook, depending on your niche and audience.
Facebook Live
Facebook Live generates heaps of interaction. I wouldn’t say long comments per se, but it’s an awesome way to get your content seen in the newsfeed. If you haven’t thought about how you could go live with a tutorial, or something that helps your audience then the time is now.
AMAs
Ask Me Anythings would be a good way to get people thinking, writing longer comments and having meaningful interactions in their newsfeed. As a brand or business owner there’s surely things you know that your audience would be interested in. You could always invite guests in your niche to answer questions for your audience to keep it interesting.
You could even schedule these as Facebook Lives! Double whammy.
Facebook Groups
This newsfeed update will affect groups to a degree, but they tend to inspire more thoughtful dialogue as people feel safer to share in a group of likeminded people.
Perhaps your brand could benefit from it’s own group?
Facebook Events
As well as groups, events get a lot more interaction than pages. If your brand hosts events you can use them to help keep the interaction from the event off the main page and in one spot where it’s easily manageable, but more importantly you can promote them too (as long as they have more than 15 “attending” responses)
The final one is pretty obvious…
Facebook Ads
There’s a way you can get your important content into the newsfeed. You can pay for it to appear there.
Facebook did announce they were running out of ad inventory, but everything they’ve mentioned so far in this newsfeed update hasn’t included ads.
But don’t be fooled into thinking you can just boost a post that wasn’t written with your audience in mind and achieve success.
I think this newsfeed update has made sure we all know Facebook is getting serious about the social aspect of Social Media, and with potentially more brands moving into the paid realm, ads may get more expensive.
Over to you readers, what do you think? Have you seen any changes on your newsfeed yet? I’d love to know!
If you use Social Media for promoting your business, chances are you follow a couple (if not tonnes) of Social Media related publishers, and you would no doubt have seen a huge reaction from the community about the latest announcement from Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg (below) where he states they’ll be changing the way they select posts to display to users in the newsfeed.
This update is stated to prioritise user to user interaction and focus on quality of engagement – which appears to mean time spent and meaningfulness, favouring longer, well thought out comments over tagging friends in memes or simple reactions.
Cue freakouts over Facebook page reach.
Facebook seems to be taking aim at the passiveness of users simply scrolling the newsfeed and not interacting, and publishers – including those looking to game the system with engagement bait (which Facebook announced they were cracking down on a couple of weeks back)
BUT there’s so much we don’t know!
Facebook Zero – Really?
Social Media Examiner was one of the first (naturally as probably the most well know Social Media publisher) to get vocal and ask if this was “Facebook Zero” in an 11 minute live video (below)
Would pages get any organic reach? Are we all doomed to the naughty corner? Are our Facebook pages going to be put out on the lawn with the big TVs and DVD players?
Let’s just calm down and look at what we know for a sec, which to be honest isn’t much.
If you’ve been in this world a while you know for a fact every time the newsfeed algo is tweaked people lose their minds, and each time we adjust, measure, test, refine and evaluate our accounts to try and work out a way to stay relevant and SEEN by our target audience, followers and fans – both organically and using paid distribution.
Let’s remember we all use Facebook differently!
You get the newsfeed you deserve.
I have quoted this before, a friend of mine said it to me once and it’s so true. If you hate your newsfeed – I’m sorry to say you did that to yourself. There’s so many options to unfollow people who annoy you, unfriend people you have no interest in, hit “see first”on pages and people you like, and generally reacting to things you’re actually interested in.
Facebook’s smart at figuring out what we like – but it’s not flawless. If you hate cats – stop tagging your friends in cat videos. Facebook thinks you like cats and will show you more cat content, pretty simple right? If you want to know more about the newsfeed read my post here.
You see, Facebook’s ONE JOB is to learn what you like and optimise your experience to that so it can keep you on the platform longer. Mainly to serve more ads (to make more money) but also to make sure you aren’t using the other platforms (except Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp since it owns those)
But so what, Carma? What’s this got to do with this new Facebook Zero announcement?
The curated newsfeed
I, and probably many other Social Media Marketers might not be typical users – but we know one thing, and that is that Facebook has made a pretty big assumption in the basis for this update: that we want to see more content from our friends in our newsfeeds. For me this is not the case (soz friends)
People think the newsfeed has become a crowded place for ads and page updates, and they aren’t seeing enough posts from the people they care about. I don’t find this the case, as I’d rather read a breaking story from ABC News than another “creative” engagement, pregnancy or gender reveal announcement.
Adam Barrell of The StoryLab Perth put it this way:
Facebook used to be about sharing your whole life and connecting with friends. Now more than ever Facebook is used to engage with pages and publishers. People want to explore and find new things to read and engage with.
When I want to engage with friends and family I use messenger to share photos, articles and arrange catch ups.
Wasn’t Facebook meant to make the world more open? And now Zuck is telling us we’d much prefer seeing posts from friends and family the most?
Just make a Tab/filter that users can select to just see friend posts – don’t go changing the algorithm again.
Good point! Bit hard to connect the world, when people wont accept a friend request from people they don’t know…always too many degrees of separation!
And Jon Loomer (Facebook Ads Legend from Jon Loomer Digital) described it like so:
Not everyone uses Facebook the same way. I purposefully see more brand and publisher content in my news feed than posts from friends. That’s only partly because I’m an antisocial jerk. But it’s mainly because I care most about political and sports news.
That’s the stuff I actually want to see. I don’t comment on those posts. I don’t provide “long and thoughtful replies.” Will I stop seeing that content?
If I do, that would kind of suck. That would be bad for my Facebook experience.
Jon posted a long and very considered post this quote was taken from, you can read the full post here.
So why this change?
Facebook has been trying to prompt us, as users – not publishers, to post more original content since this has been declining. Also it’s no secret the kids don’t think Facebook is cool…PLUS they’re running out of ad space.
Facebook knows it needs to tread a very fine line between showing you what you like organically and what advertisers might think you like. This is why better targeted ads with higher relevance scores perform better. As users we accept there’s ads, we just don’t wanna see ads for things we’re not interested in.
In theory this change prompts less but deeper connections to the people we’re friends with, with less page posts cluttering it up, and would help achieve Facebook’s goal of making us feel better mental health wise than passively (maybe obsessively) scrolling our newsfeeds. We’ve all had one friend say they felt happier after quitting Facebook (or Social Media more generally) so essentially it’s a retention strategy.
Will it work?
IMO? No.
For the way this update appears to work (once it’s rolled out – again we don’t really know til it happens) would be based on the fact that people want to post more, or at least the same amount of original content they do now. Your newsfeed will always be full – so if your friends aren’t posting photos, live video, links, events etc then what will make up the rest of your feed?
Page posts and ads, right?
You probably already interact with the people you want to hear from, so their posts will get upweighted, but beyond that who are we going to see posts from? Old high school acquaintances? No thanks (no offence JFSHS class of ’96)
You can leave me with my newsfeed full of tech pages, recipe videos, and Social Media publishers thanks.
But what do you think?
Will this clear up your newsfeed for more friend action? Good or bad? If you’ve got some thoughts drop a comment, I’d love to know!
Facebook’s got a new featiure and not everyone has it yet – so I’m going to show it to you. Have you heard of Facebook Sound Collection? Neither had I, but I was doing to scheduling this morning and I stumbled across it in my page menu and decided to take a look.
It’s a library of sounds – both track and souns effects and you can download them to add to your content. Awesome!
I wondered if I was the first to discover it – so a quick Google search said that I was about a day behind – but none of the articles I read on Facebook Sound Collections had any screenshots of what it actually looked like.
Welcome to Facebook Sound Collection
Thanks Facebook! So polite, happy to be here 🙂
How do you get there?
In my page it’s under Publishing Tools, but there could be other ways to navigate straight there.
Then What?
You’ll notice it in the menu:
So what’s it got?
Sound Collection is literally a collection of sounds. It’s got 1,00 Tracks (I expect they’ll keep adding to it) in 24 Generes and 21 Moods. Then there’s also Sound Effects broken up into 17 Categories and lengths of between 2sec to 30sec+.
For some reason there’s more different zipper noises than you’d think were required…
Anyway as you can see above you can play the track or download it to your device.
But how is this useful?
Well if you’ve ever uploaded video and had it rejected by Facebook for the audio breaching copyright then Facebook Sound Collection is a good way to get around that as the tracks have been pre-approved.
Although many of us use Facebook with the sound off, anyone who’s ever consumed content knows that the right sound track can make all the difference. I’m seeing this new feature as another commitment by Facebook to removing the barriers of users to create high quality original video content.
Or is this just a play for Spotify’s business?
I guess we’ll see…
have you got Facebook Sound Collection yet? What do you think? Will you use it?
