Facebook Ads allows geo-location targeting…

This is a no brainer and to be honest I can’t believe it took so long to happen.

Facebook will only know where users are if the user has allowed this in their Facebook settings. Understanding this, ads will not be shown to everyone and in fact most people knowing this change may turn this off. Facebook users are becoming numb to ads and this is a last ditch effort for Facebook to try and rein in more dollars.

If all users had geo-location switched on this would be a far more affective tool.

For small business I believe this could be a useful tool. The ad will need to have a strong offer and should help to bring foot traffic into their stores.

What are your thoughts on this?

New Facebook Feature – This post will self-destruct in…

With the success of SnapChat, Facebook are going to trial posts that will disappear, you will have the choice of 1 hour to 7 days.

For us marketers this will be an interesting feature if rolled out to everyone. Allowing for sale and offer messages to only last for a certain amount of time. I’m unsure if the engagement of those posts will disappear as well.

Looking forward to testing this once it’s out. Facebook are rolling this out to mobile app users first.

Game on!

Facebook Videos, I’m not sold yet…

Whilst I’m slowly turning off Facebook, I still can’t delete the app due to FOMO.

At present Facebook still has a purpose as a news first platform. It’s increasingly becoming more like Twitter and now Facebook is trying to take on YouTube as a place where people will consume videos. It’s an interesting battle at the top as they all copy each other. What’s common is us users are becoming more and more visual.

You would have noticed your NewsFeed being littered with videos of late, as Facebook is trying to push these down everyones throats. It can be frustrating as videos aren’t everything that I want to view. Understanding that Facebook is pushing this feature extremely hard brands need to strongly consider adopting video in it’s infancy stage.

Video can be an expensive tool for brands, as shooting a video off your iPhone probably won’t cut it for most brands and paying someone to do a cheap video, well just looks cheap. As brands you need to be mindful of video execution vs just doing a video just because everyone else is doing it. They take time and cost money, so they’re not for everyone.

Videos that are working on Facebook are news and viral videos. Brand videos might fall into either of these categories, but at first you may see uptake being light on. I would test this out and see organically how your videos are fairing. If you’re finding the reach and engagement is low your next move is to promote the videos. This again is more money, so I would argue not to do this.

Facebook is about to release Facebook Video Views. Telling their users how many times a video has been viewed. This is a naff release to me, yet still interesting for the users to determine if they should watch your video or not. I think for brands that have less plays it might be a negative feature.

Image: Inside Facebook

I’m in two minds with Facebook videos for the brands I look after (heavily retail). Unless the content is relevant, timely and has share-ability, the cost to produce this video just might be not worth it. Your money may be better spent on social photography.

Facebook Videos, what are your thoughts?

Further reading on video optimisation best practice.

Facebook Update – Post as yourself or the brand.

In the past once you’re admin on the page it was quite painful to post as yourself to the page if you wanted to. This is typically called astro-turfing so it’s not advised, however at times it’s needed.

 

Under each post simply click the drop down and change it to you or if you want another brand page you manage.

A quick and simple update but a handy one for you social community managers.

SnapChat all the cool kids are doing it!

With Facebook still leading the way with overall users, it quietly being taught a lesson from SnapChat. Whilst the below trend is from the US you can best be sure it’s the same down here.

 

IMAGE: SUMPTO

Whilst this isn’t new, it’s great to highlight this and express key opportunities in SnapChat for brands. Especially those brands with a younger audience.

This channel is yet to be taken advantage of and I feel it’s one that is not only cheap to execute but could potentially help brands with instant on and offline sales.

 

 

Facebook Ads, why are brands paying for them…?

STOP PAYING FOR FACEBOOK ADS!

I’m not sure if brands realise this or not but to put it simply, the more likes you have have the more money it will cost to reach them all. Facebook have you by the balls and are laughing at you right now as you’re now stuck in the money pit that is Facebook.

So you’re paying for likes cause you believe having a bigger community size means your brand is killing it… WRONG! This is a vanity number and means nothing.

If you’re paying for ads, you will need to spend even more money to reach your community through promoted posts.

I’m not saying close your Facebook page as it’s still relevant. I’m saying let your community grow organically and invest money into digital activation campaigns that will see return in brand engagement across all digital touch points.

What are the KEY social stats you should be paying attention to.

I sat down with a brilliant mind for dinner (Simon Doukas, Co-Founder and Director of Lodie) and we discussed at length some major issues with what brands social KPI’s are.

It became more and more obvious that brands are measuring on the wrong stats which is leading them down the wrong path. Below is a look at the stats you should be focusing on, as improving these will help your end objectives which is generally to sell $$$

Facebook

If you’re reporting on reach or amount of likes or  (you’re fired). The true stat here isn’t about eyeballs or how big your community is, it’s about how many people engage with your content.

• Engagement
• Talking About This

Twitter

You could have 1 million followers this doesn’t mean anything. You need to be reporting on engagement. How many Twitter users engage with your tweets, this is the number you need to focus on.

• RT
• Favourited
• @replied

Instagram

Like all channels Instagram posts don’t have a long life span so gramming at the right time is critical. Once you have established the best time to post, your key metric here again is engagement.

• Likes
• Comments

Conclusion

The above is all about engagement and that KPI should be carried out in all your communication channels, this includes email. Email isn’t about how many you have in your database, it’s about how many of them are active and engaging with the brand.

Everything you do needs to be measured against engagement. If your content is not being engaged with, change it, if it’s working keep doing it and tweaking it slightly to make it better.

STOP worrying about these artificial numbers that you think makes you look good. Your KPI’s should be engagement, this is a true test for digital marketing managers. It’s also the hardest test so I know why brands prefer reporting on the fluff numbers.

Let’s get serious about what you’re doing and the moment you change your KPI’s to engagement is the moment your brand will start to see some real results $$$, who knows you may even start to enjoy it 🙂

Facebook, are they not policing the 20% text rule?

Arkade Digital recently ran a test and it appeared Facebook has allowed the below post to be promoted even with the post clearly breaking the 20% rule.

I have mixed feelings about suggesting this to clients as at the end of the day Facebook has the final word, and you don’t want to be the one with egg on your face.

I would suggest testing this yourself and see how you go with pushing the promoted post boundaries. It makes sense that Facebook would chill on these rules as promoted posts is a huge revenue stream for the company.

Let me know if you have success or not? I would like to see if Facebook are more stringent on brands that have bigger followings as it would affect more of their users.

Facebook: Get more reach by tagging another brand

This isn’t new but I feel might have been forgotten by brands.

Brands have been quite angry with Facebook for slashing organic reach a few months ago, but brands have also forgotten a little algorithm change that Facebook quietly released to help brands get more reach.

If brands tag another brand page in their posts that post could be seen by Facebook users that don’t follow your brand but follow the brand you have @mentioned. I would not suggest this is used all the time, but if used correctly should help post organic reach.

Example: if McDonald’s mentions its partnership with NBA star LeBron James, and tags him in the post (as they did below), that post may now appear in news feed for fans of either McDonalds or LeBron.

Facebook Update – New Save Post for Later Feature

Facebook are releasing the ability for users to save a post/page/place for later. Sometimes we just don’t have the time to read content on Facebook and when we finally have the time to we go back to Facebook and we can’t find it, this is rather frustrating for users. This new feature will allow users to ‘flag’ content that interests them and easily find it when they have the time to read it.

Currently finding posts can be done through liking them and looking at your activity log, but there are some posts that you just don’t feel comfortable liking knowing that all your closest Facebook friends will see it. This ‘save for later’ feature works on mobile and desktop by hitting the drop down in the right hand corner of the post it will allow you to save the post. This is currently being rolled out by Facebook to all users over the next few days.

Image sourced from Mashable.

Users can then re-visit their saved items using the ‘More’ tab on mobile, or by hitting the ‘Saved’ link on lefthand rail of the desktop version.

For brands this may help to increase post engagement, brands might choose to use this feature as a CTA in some of their posts that require users to come back later or posts that have important information that is valuable to their community.

How do you think brands should use this new feature?