Mad 4 Blog

Last Thursday, Facebook revealed its plans to restructure the look and layout of its “newsfeed” page, which is the first page that viewers land on when they log onto the site. This page is where a person can see the top posts from their “friends.”

CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that this move correlates with Facebook’s agenda to feel like a personalized newspaper, with stories and content that are relevant specifically to the user based on the interests of his or her social sphere. Thus, the organization of how content appears will also gain greater significance. Facebook hopes that making the appearance easier to navigate, people will stay on the pages longer and navigate them more skillfully.

One key aspect of implementing this new agenda is a renewed focus on the appearance of photos on the newsfeed. Rather than tossed in among other content, the newsfeed will be segmented so that photos (and other niche media, such as music files) will have their own display area.

Because images will now be further emphasized on this section of the social media website, it also means that advertising on Facebook (such as through traditional banner ads) will also have the opportunity to become more prominent. Ads have been directly incorporated into the newsfeed since 2011.

Since then, however, the amount of Facebook content being posted has surged. Facebook has been adapting its algorithm to try and cull the mass of stories posted so that users can find the items that are most relevant to them with greater ease. However, the appearance itself has been largely unchanged since the newsfeed’s inception. And some advertisers have complained that it’s far too easy for their ads to get lost in the shuffle due to visual cluttering on the page.

The new look and specialized sections are expected to lead to greater user engagement from Facebook’s approximately 1 billion members, which could be reflected in more click-throughs and greater traffic (and thus, profit) for Facebook’s ads.

A focus on images also makes sense given Facebook’s ownership of growing photo-sharing service Instagram.

Staying one step ahead of its looming public offering, Twitter is now making it easier than ever to advertise with its social media platform.

As of last week, it’s launching an application programming interface (API) for advertisements. That means that marketers who use their own advertising software (HootSuite, Adobe, etc.) can synch it up with Twitter’s platform in a direct way — making it easier than ever before to plan, schedule and launch advertising campaigns on Twitter.

“With the Ads API, marketers now have more tools in their arsenal to help them deliver the right message, to the right audience, on the desktop and on mobile devices — all at scale,” states a blog entry by April Underwood, product manager

Marketers will also be able to expand their abilities to target tweeters based on their profiles and interests. Twitter hopes to capitalize on a broader and more efficient marketing base that some have been complaining it lacks since the 140-character social networking platform took off.

Twitter makes money when promoted/sponsored tweets are retweeted or clicked on. Marketers will now be able to efficiently organize and automate the “promoted” tweets that are sent out, making it easier for them to send more in a timely and calibrated manner — to the mutual benefit of their businesses and Twitter.

If Twitter’s API has an impact that’s anything like Facebook’s was two years ago, then it’s sure to see a quick, positive response from marketers and a steep, rapid increase in ad revenue growth.

Last week, we talked about how social media was playing a big role in this year’s Super Bowl. But who’s really the standout in social networking, now that it’s all said and done? Despite the analysis of popularity (Facebook fan page “likes”) and views (YouTube re-watches), Twitter was arguably a winner due to its sheer presence. The 140-character social media site was directly mentioned in half of all Super Bowl commercials (compare that to Facebook’s mere 8% mentions).

Surprisingly, it was also the first place that many companies turned when they wanted to immediately take advantage of the unexpected blackout in the third quarter. One great anecdote is Oreo’s quick five-minute response, which is how long it took to conceive of the tweet “you can still dunk in the dark” and get it into the Twittersphere. This brought even more attention to Oreo’s Super Bowl “Whisper Fight” ad, featuring a debate about cookies that takes place in the sanctuary of a library. Bloomberg also reported that Twitter saw bidding on the search term “power outage” almost immediately.

Also during the game, Budweiser asked fans to tweet using the hashtag #clydesdales to name its newest colt, which served the dual purpose of capitalizing on its long-term brand association with the grand horse while also hooking a new audience who might feel like they can be part of something from the ground up. It dealt an emotional card to viewers who may have otherwise been shell-shocked from sports jokes, slapstick, toilet humor and the ever-popular use of sexuality to sell ads during the Super Bowl.

Hyundai had perhaps the greatest sweep in responsiveness following the event, with 15,000 new Facebook fans and the hashtag #pickyourteam used more than 20,000 times on Twitter as fans responded to its call to action.

Then again, one of the social media tactics didn’t have much to do with Twitter. Audi created a commercial about a teen taking his dad’s S6 to the prom — ostensibly to impress his dates — where viewers could vote to choose the commercials ending on the company’s YouTube page, helping them feel like they had a real and visible connection to the brand’s image. (For the record, they went with stealing the principal’s parking spot and kissing the prom queen, showing that happy endings and emotional pull still do have as much of an impact as machismo and hot models — much like Budweiser’s commercial. Advertising agencies of all sizes, take note!)

And oh yes, in case anyone was wondering bout that little football game that took place: Baltimore Ravens 34, San Francisco 49ers 31.

Typically, social media scoops up the traffic reactively as people talk about Super Bowl ads and then re-watch them on sites like YouTube or Hulu — or respond to brand messaging and calls to action by heading online for more information and participation. But this year, top networking sites are getting ahead by having fans vote on or engage with favorite ads and concepts weeks or even months before the big game.

One successful example from previous years? Think of Frito-Lay asking fans to choose which is their favorite amateur-created Doritos commercial to hit the airwaves. And yes, this year that will happen all over again — but it might get a little lost in the white noise of social media-soliciting competitors.

This year is bringing in top-dollar sponsors, who are paying CBS an average of $3.75 million for half-minute spots (think of it this way: $133,333 per second), which is record-breaking (last year was about $3.5 million per same-size ad). One brand even reportedly spent $4 million on NBC, which sold out its 70 spots by the end of November 2012. So we’re sure to see companies making the best of their buck by capitalizing on social media campaigns that will continue to pay themselves off well after the game has ended.

It’s especially important to marketers because social media check-ins and “likes” count as recommendations of a brand. Since people are more likely to pay attention to what their friends and family members are interested in, this is a top priority for big businesses like the soda companies, car manufacturers and beer brands that typically dominate February’s climactic football showdown.

So what’s new this year to help make the best of it? About a month’s work of social media advertising leading up to the main event, to drum up curiosity and interest. Some brands are even showing their spots early, prepared to trade the exclusivity of seeing an ad for the first time live on TV for the sensationalism of starting a campaign well in advance and asking followers to stay tuned with it right up through its premiere — for example, in order to vote on an ending (Audi) or finish a narrative (Calvin Klein teasing a male model who will show off the brand’s latest skivvies only during the commercial breaks sometime Feb. 3 — what a reason to keep your eyes peeled).

So what can you take from these facts? Although you may never be able to afford a pricey television spot like major Super Bowl advertisers, the great thing is that social media is a cheap way to get your message out to the masses. Anyone can capitalize on a great slogan, viral video or online competition thanks to the power of social media. Think about how you can push a tag line or hashtag into your community or industry in as little time as 30 seconds and get a tremendous payout on your investment.

And check back next week to see how these efforts work out for the Super Bowl’s top advertisers.

Continuing a trend of using members’ profile information for such purposes as targeted advertising, Facebook is now taking those analytics and applying them to a user-friendly new tool: targeted searches. It’s known as Graph Search.

Yesterday, Facebook revealed that it’s now in beta testing for an internal search option that allows users to receive results according to the preferences of their friends and family members. For example, it will give you results based on what your “friends” have “liked” — and those results will then be ranked according to the opinions of your closest confidantes first, which is gauged by how much you’ve interacted with them. Results are also ranked according to how many of your top friends collectively have “liked” certain pages, places, photos and similar content.

The Wall Street Journal quotes these as sample search phrases:

• “Music that people who like Mitt Romney like.”
• “Movies my friends in San Francisco like.”
• “Photos my friends took in the 1990s.”
• “Friends of friends who are men and single in Palo Alto.”
• “Languages my friends from college speak.”

That not only means website results, but also photos and business pages. For marketers, this news is important because it would mean that if a business page has a high amount of “likes” within a certain community, then when anyone in that community searches for related content, the business page would be boosted to the top of the search results list on Facebook. Ultimately, it’s an algorithm that rewards popularity and loyalty, which is perfect for social media marketing.

The remaining results will come organically from Microsoft’s search engine, Bing! This could be a bold move for Bing! to come into closer competition with top-ranking search engine, Google. Google has similarly tried to incorporate search engine results with social media through its Google+ services.

You can sign up for the wait list to receive a Graph Search beta invite starting this week.

It’s impossible for anyone to stay on top of every new development in the marketing world throughout the year — especially when it comes to the quick-moving world of social media and technology — much less analyze how those updates can impact your business. The best way to stay sharp is to keep track of the major game-changers over time, and then focus on how those primary targets can affect your advertising strategies.

Here’s a helpful overview of the Top 3 changes in social media that occurred in the past year that you need to know about:

1. Facebook bought Instagram. At a whopping $1 billion, Facebook acquired the photo-sharing social media company in April 2012. Because a large base of its members was using Instagram to upload and share photos, Facebook saw the value in acquiring and managing the way that the two platforms engaged. Then, Facebook seamlessly and created correlating photo-viewing systems so that people would see Facebook as an optimal choice for photo storage and photo sharing. By merging two related brands and creating new ways for them to sync, fans had even better access to their favorite technology, and usage of both grew as a result. Whether your company uses Instagram or Facebook or both, understanding and taking advantage of how photos can be shared between the two — and boost traffic between dual accounts — should be a vital part of your social media strategy for 2013.

2. Twitter offered Tailored Trends. In June 2012, Twitter revolutionized the way that users can keep current with the most popular themes of the day. Instead of seeing trending topics in a sidebar on the 140-character social networking site, users were able to start seeing what topics were popular that pertained to their own interests and lifestyle. Loosely using geocentric information and data about who users “follow,” tailored trends are based on a non-disclosed algorithm. When marketing your business on Twitter, you can now aim for hitting a niche audience with targeted hashtags rather than trying to generate presence that’s big enough to light up the entire Twittersphere.

3. Twitter and LinkedIn Split. After Facebook bought Instagram (see No. 1), one later ramification was that Instagram and Twitter no longer synced. By making it impossible for Twitter users to take advantage of Instagram’s popular services, Facebook thought that it would dominate the photo-sharing stratosphere. Similarly, when Twitter and LinkedIn stopped cooperating in July, it meant that people could no longer automatically send tweets to LinkedIn from their Twitter accounts. However, LinkedIn still allows users to post to Twitter from its pages. So you can still tweet messages without leaving the LinkedIn platform, but you can no longer send messages to your LinkedIn account by using #in.

It’s been a rocky year when it comes to staying safe on social media sites.

For example: When you’re posting images and content about your business on your Facebook page, how secure is that information — and do you even exclusively own it anymore?

It’s easy to set up and moderate a social media marketing campaign if you’re just looking to have a presence. But what about the things going on behind the scenes that take a little more awareness? If you’re part of Facebook, it may be vital for you to keep up with the ever-changing privacy settings and policies that either protect or promote your company’s published assets. Controlling how, when and where your information is distributed is a key aspect of savvy marketing.

Here’s the latest from the Facebook privacy settings forefront, as of December 2012:

The Pros

The good news is that the latest wave of changes does attempt to make things easier for the interactives specialist running your Facebook account. For example, privacy setting shortcuts make it easier to manage filters and block those you’d rather not see your content. With a reduced amount of clicks, you can quickly manage filters guiding what kinds of elements (photos, wall posts, etc.) that certain people can access. You can also block people who try to repeatedly message or solicit you. And it’s important to note that you can now manage what you choose to show on your own timeline, which can be affected by third parties tagging your company into content that you may not have originally approved.

The Cons

One thing that Facebook users can no longer do is eliminate themselves from searches. For the most part, this is only a detriment to private entities, like individuals, who don’t want to be found. For the most part, your business wants to expand its outreach and be highly visible — otherwise, why employ social media at all? If you have a Facebook page that’s in development but not ready to debut, you always can keep a page existing but inactive, blocking it from all users.

Neutral

There are a few tweaks that can be taken as positive or negative developments, depending on how you view them. First: Now when you agree to use an app on Facebook, you’ll be asked twice if you really want to sync your information to that application. For some, this means extra clicks and extra time to get where they’re trying to go; for others, it’s a preventive measure that will keep them from sharing their data with untrusted third-party sites. Similarly, boxes will now appear on your screen to explain what certain agreements mean before the user accepts it, to make sure they really understand what opening an app or changing a setting will mean. You may consider this an unwanted pop-up or a useful tool.

What do you think of this recent round of changes?

In the second part of our series about how to use retweeting as a tool for marketing, which we ran last week, we discussed how it’s convenient to add to your Twitter presence by merely retweeting someone else’s mention of you. This is an easy promotional tool that doesn’t require you to spend extra energy deriving unique tweets, while also somewhat boasting of your popularity and achievements.

But this week we’d like to mention that on the other end of the spectrum, some people are constantly retweeting messages about them. This has a connotation of “Look at me! Look at me!” and can be a big turn-off to your followers. Boasting about every time someone mentions you is akin to talking about yourself nonstop in real life. It’s important to pick and choose what messages are worth promoting. These would be messages that really reinforce and shape your brand, as well as those that provide pivotal information. If you want people to see every single tweet about you, it’s easy for followers to do with a simple search on Twitter.

One other thing to keep in mind when it comes to retweeting is that you want your Twitter account to be active (albeit not overbearing) throughout the day. To keep your stream of posts steady, even when you don’t particularly have anything new to announce, you can retweet inspirational messages, ideas, jokes, photos, articles or whatever else may be appropriate for your industry and readership. Sharing messages that already come into your feed throughout the day gives you an opportunity to be vocal with interesting, relevant posts that don’t take too much brainwork.

Last but not least, we recommend using a tweet management software like HootSuite. In terms of retweets, it can help you notice, archive and reference tweets about your brand. This will help you find the best mentions to retweet. Look for more information on how to use this valuable tool in the coming weeks.

Last week we discussed what retweeting is and how it’s commonly used — to share positive feedback about your business and promote alliances within your industry.

Another thing that you can do to add content to your Twitter feed is use quoted retweets. Retweeting directly just copies the original tweeter’s exact words and sends it to your followers. But you can customize your retweets a little more. For example:

1) You may want to tweet that message to someone in particular (rather than all of your followers) by adding their handle (starting with @).

2) Or you may want to add your own commentary or opinion via hashtag (starting with #).

3) Another thing you can do is actually comment on the tweet or reply to it, which might look something like this: “You’re very welcome! RT @originaltweeter Your company rocks, thanks so much!”

In some cases, you can use a “Quoted Retweet” button to keep the tweet intact while adding your own words. But some Twitter launchpads don’t come with that option, so you have to manually create a quoted retweet the old-fashioned way: with copy and paste.

The key thing to remember with a manual retweet is to use the “RT” so your readership knows it’s a retweet — plus, keep the original poster’s handle intact so they know you’re appreciating their original post and starting a discourse! They’ll be notified when you manually retweet because you’ll retain that @ toward their handle.

Retweeting is one of the most powerful tools when it comes to spreading your messages and increasing your presence on Twitter. But when is it appropriate, and when is it just an annoyance?

For the uninitiated, retweeting is what happens when you post a message that someone else wrote through your own Twitter account. (This is different from replying, which is when you speak back to someone’s tweet without quoting it again — and thus create a thread, or a “conversation.”) With retweeting, it’s like forwarding one friend’s e-mail to another friend. Similarly, the original poster’s handle remains intact on the message, and the post has “RT” on it to tell your followers that you didn’t originally write it.

One reason that retweets are often used is to share with your followers a message about you that they might not otherwise have the chance to see. Sometimes this serves as a shout-out or thank-you to the original poster. It puts them into the attention of your followers as well, and can be interpreted as a sign of support – so be careful who you retweet, even if it’s a compliment about you. For example, if you’re all about selling pencils and a big pen company says you looked really pretty at the big handwriting summit last weekend, you might not want to promote their messages lest you be taken for a secret pen aficionado. However, if one of your best buyers tweets about loving the lead quality of your pencils, you’ll want to retweet that.

Another great time to retweet is when you’re helping to promote a colleague (who in turn would probably boost you back); this can also bolster your affiliation with them in the eyes of your followers. For example, you might want to share tweets from your favorite stationary company where your business sells a good share of its pencils.