Facebook Lowers Age Rule to Allow Teens to Post Publicly
Facebook is giving its teenage users a public voice on the platform. For the first time, beginning Wednesday, users between the ages of 13 and 17 will be able to post publicly and obtain followers of their profiles.
Previously, teens using Facebook were only able to share content with friends, friends of friends and custom groups like “family.” Now, they can choose to share posts to anyone on Facebook, just like users 18 and older.
“Teens are among the savviest people using of social media, and whether it comes to civic engagement, activism, or their thoughts on a new movie, they want to be heard,” Facebook wrote in a blog post. “While only a small fraction of teens using Facebook might choose to post publicly, this update now gives them the choice to share more broadly, just like on other social media services.”
Any teenager wishing to share a status update or post publicly must first manually change the audience setting on his post to “public” before sharing. After doing so, a pop-up explains that the post will be visible to everyone on the site. The post will go live once the user clicks “ok” on this pop-up box, acknowledging he has seen the warning and intends to share publicly.
Facebook’s audience settings remain unchanged from post to post for all users, including teens. For example, if a user shares a post publicly, the audience setting will remain on “public” for the user’s next post. For teens, a second reminder message will pop up if they choose to post publicly the next time around.
Teenagers can also change settings to allow non-friends to follow public posts. Users who choose to follow a teenager will be able to see these public posts, with the exception of posts that have not been shared with them. Teenagers will not be followable automatically, and will need to manually update their settings to enable follows.
A new teenager who join Facebook will have his audience settings automatically set to “friends,” and will need to manually change that setting in order to share with the public.
Wednesday’s update will not impact existing Facebook posts from teens, and it won’t automatically change the audience for any future posts. That must be done manually. The update simply gives teenagers the ability to share publicly, just as they can on other social sites like Twitter.
The new update will begin rolling out slowly to all users starting Wednesday afternoon.
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Image: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
4 Best Practices for Social Advertising – Social Media Marketing
If a tree falls in the forest, it’s debatable that anyone hears it. When your ad fails on Facebook, though, there’s no confusion. It was a dud.
A lack of interaction tells the tale. Clearly you paid good money to expose lots of people to this particular piece of content, but most gave it little mind.
That doesn’t have to be the case. There are people who do nothing but study the performance of social advertising all day. We talked to some and gleaned a few insights. If you want to run an ad with a halfway decent chance of getting a social lift, check out these pro tips.
1. Think About Who You Are Targeting
While we’ve established that an ad with no Likes is an embarrassing failure, it’s also true that an ad with a lot of interaction from the wrong people is a waste of pixels. Lucky for you, Twitter and Facebook both have sophisticated turnkey programs that let you target users by demographic, location and affinities, among other variables.
For instance, say you wanted to target all the feta cheese fans in New Jersey. Facebook lets you do just that.
As Peter Goodman, VP of Social.com at Salesforce.com, notes, a successful social media ad program relies on good customer data. Who is really buying your products? What are they interested in? “You really need to start to think more deeply about these amazing targeting features,” he says. “Concentrate on the demo you know are going to work and then build that out to scale.”
How to do that? Back in March, Facebook released Lookalike Audiences, a program that uses Facebook’s data to identify people who aren’t currently fans of your site, but who have similar characteristics to your fans.
2. Not Every Ad Has to Be Social
Take a look at most advertising you see. Is it something you would want to pass on to a friend? No. That’s because most ads are not entertaining in themselves, but are either formulated to propose a call to action or as a branding exercise. “If you think of the typical ad with the shot of the car driving on the mountain against the sunset, there’s nothing particularly social about it,” says David Berkowitz, CMO of the marketing agency MRY. “You have to consider if there’s anything social about it.”
There doesn’t have to be. A very targeted ad with a call to action will be social because people seeing the ad are in the market for the product or service. Similarly, a branding ad might go over well with rabid fans of the brand.
Jimmy Kimmel notwithstanding, creating a viral video, though, is nearly impossible Berkowitz says. Jim Squires, director of ad product marketing at Facebook, says that video probably wouldn’t do much for your business anyway. “Stay on point,” he says. “Funny cat videos may pull likes, but they won’t help you achieve a business objective. Make sure you’re crisp on the business objective — as you would be for any ad campaign — and create content that is relevant and supports your story.”
3. Social Ads Don’t Have to Look Like Ads
Facebook’s Promoted Posts and Twitter’s Promoted Tweets look more like communication with consumers than ads. That’s by design. The top social networks are pushing a native advertising experience, which translates roughly to branded content.
“Take the time to do great creative — asset planning and creation is often overlooked for this new medium,” says Squires. “Sharing thoughtful, timely, iconic pieces is important, since it’s being seen alongside compelling content from friends and family.” At Facebook, they call these interactions “stories.” Squires says marketers should think of them the same way: “Tell stories –- people remember stories, not facts.”
Sometimes social ads don’t even need to be ads. Berkowitz points to the Audi Instagram feed as an instance of non-advertising advertising. “Almost every image has an Audi logo in it,” he says. “And there are thousands of interactions with each post.”
4. Optimize for Mobile
Obviously, a desktop-first model for advertising won’t work in a world in which Facebook’s mobile ad revenues are on track to supplant its take from desktop. How do you make sure your ad works as well on a phone or tablet as it does on the web? Says Squire: “Make sure posts are succinct — your key point should be made in the first 90 characters — and ensure that any photo or video works well on mobile.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Image: Red Bull, Facebook
Pinterest Drives More Traffic to Publishers Than Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit Combined
When it comes to referral traffic from social networks, there’s Facebook and Pinterest — and then there’s everyone else.
Facebook accounted for more than 10% of overall traffic to publishers in September, by far the most of any social network, according to data released Tuesday from Shareaholic, a social plugin service that collects data from 200,000 publishers reaching 250 million monthly unique visitors collectively.
Pinterest drove 3.68% of traffic to publishers in September, the second highest of the social networks on the list and three times as much as Twitter, which ranked third. In fact, Pinterest’s share of overall visits increased by 66% year-over-year, more than any other social network. Pinterest now drives more traffic to publishers than Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit and Google+ combined.
While most of the social networks tracked in the study showed significant year-over-year gains in referring traffic to publishers, referral traffic from Reddit and StumbleUpon declined 35% and 27.5%, respectively. Google+ remained essentially stagnant year-over-year and continues to refer the least traffic to publishers of the major social networks included in the study.
Image: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Source : Mashable
Facebook Radically Simplifies Ad Buying
Facebook ad buyers have cause to celebrate: On Tuesday, the social network unveiled a major overhaul of both its basic ad-buying platform, Ads Manager, and its more sophisticated offering, Power Editor, both of which now boast a more streamlined interface.
Those who have used Ads Manager and Power Editor in the past know that neither tool is the simplest or most logically designed. Previously, ad buyers were asked to choose from a range of ad options and then select their campaign objectives and optimization methods.
Now, more reasonably, advertisers are first asked to identify their objectives. That could be a sales conversion on a website, for example, or an increase in mobile app downloads. Other objectives include increasing total page Likes, increasing engagement with particular posts or a Facebook app, boosting in-store Offer claims and upping RSVPs to a Facebook event.
Once an objective has been identified, Facebook guides advertisers to the most appropriate ad. It’s up to the advertiser to choose where that ad appears — in the News Feed, for example, or alongside it.
In addition to the new ad-buying interface, users can also now upload multiple images for a single campaign, allowing five different ads to run at once. In the analytics dashboard — also part of the overhaul — they’ll be able to quickly assess which images are performing best. They can also easily sort all of their campaigns to see which delivers the best conversion value.
Although their interfaces are the same, the Power Editor will continue to offer additional functionality to ad buyers. In addition to the new streamlined buying process, Power Editor users can also manually select their ads.
“Ad managers know how to buy ads already; we don’t want to make ad changes forced,” David Baser, product manager at Facebook, said.
Images: iStock, hh5800 and Facebook
Source : Mashable
Facebook Improves Tools for Measuring Brand Pages
Facebook is making it easier for brand marketers to gather insight and engagement metrics surrounding their Facebook pages.
On Wednesday, the social network released a new version of Page Insights, a dashboard that allows page managers to monitor traffic and engagement. The tool’s newest version breaks down engagement metrics into individual tabs, such as check-ins, likes and the number of people engaged. Managers can also compare these metrics to previous weeks or months to better understand how engagement on their brand page is changing.
The updated Insights tool also lets managers view positive (i.e. likes, shares) and negative (i.e. blocks, reports) interactions side-by-side to determine which content is performing well with visitors. The hope is that these new features will enable managers to populate their pages with content that Facebook users most want to see, making the experience better for both parties.
Facebook created a video — which you can watch, here — explaining the new features, and how page managers can use them.
Image: Acid Pix
Source : Mahable
Do Social Media Referrals Have A Future In Your Business?
Social media referrals are living on the edge – or at least they are somewhere near according to a Monetate’s data for the first quarter. The analysis shows that search optimization and email continues to bring in most referrals, while social media is the ‘last-click channel of attribution’.
Some businesses say otherwise. Wixon Jewelers Online Marketing Director Jayme Pretzloff thinks that social media is going to be more important for sales than any other metric in 2013, as the platform continues to receive user acceptance and integrates into the overall marketing strategy.
70% consumers suggested that social media didn’t have any impact on their purchase decision in 2011, a percentage that was cut in half in 2012. Such statistics provide helpful insights to marketers as they look to make the most out of their time and investment.
Policies of social media companies also had a significant impact on referrals. There was a time when a post on Facebook fan page was seen by every follower/fan of the brand, but after policy changes, any post shared by a brand today is only seen by 10% of the total number of people following the page. Unfortunately, and fortunately for Facebook, you now need to pay for greater outreach.
This also shows that just because a particular social network has a huge user base doesn’t mean it’s an ideal place to get referrals. For example, tech sites usually concentrate a lot on Facebook, but they would be better off with Google+.
Likewise, a DIY jewelry brand may not get any retweets, but drive loads of traffic from Pinterest. Trying and testing the engagement ratio (the percentage of fans responding/number of fans present on the page) on different sites can help your brand to create a better online experience.
It is also important to note at this point that though referrals through social media are crucial for brand awareness, you shouldn’t give a wide berth to other referral resources. Doing so would be a BIG mistake. This is because social media doesn’t have the same level of intimacy as other sources of referrals like face-to-face networking, phone call, live chat etc.
The right approach
Some brands are smart enough to use all sources. For example, Blinds.com, told us “We encourage customers to refer Blinds.com on social media, and we also invite customers to contact us via phone or live video chat if they have any questions about our products. Referrals are important to us, as is customer retention; over 60% of our business comes from referral or repeat customers.” Food for thought.
However, other forms of referral networking can turn out to be inefficient, which is the main reason why social media referrals have a future in business marketing. It’s not a surprise to see businesses, especially new ones, struggle at networking events. The end result can be hours spent at a networking, only to walk away with a couple of business cards (Zoinks).
Social media, when being used as a major referral tool, should be supported by creative and relevant content. Businesses that establish themselves as credible and trustworthy providers of fun, inspiring and highly engaging content will be able to reach thousands of prospects through social channels. It requires a significant amount of time and investment, so it’s time that you take a closer look at your customer preferences and content sharing strategy.
Photo Credit: Social Media Referrals/shutterstock
Source: socialmediatoday.com
What Do You Think of Instagram Ads? – Instagram Marketing
Your beautifully filtered photos will soon have companions within your Instagram feed.
Instagram announced on Thursday that the company will bring advertisements to the photo-sharing app in the near future, and frankly, it’s surprising it took this long. Unlike Facebook’s famous mantra, “Move fast and break things,” its subsidiary Instagram seems to be taking a slightly more subtle approach.
“Seeing photos and videos from brands you don’t follow will be new, so we’ll start slow,” the company wrote on its blog. “We’ll 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.”
Facebook has capitalized on mobile ads over the past nine months — the company’s mobile ads brought in $655 million last quarter alone — and now Instagram will look to do the same. Instagram says it will do its best to make the ads blend in with the content users already see, and it will be in the best interest of advertisers to ensure their ads feel natural within the platform. Facebook’s mobile ads have done well for the company’s pocketbook, but some users have complained to Mashable that they can be overbearing or irrelevant.
No matter how well Instagram’s upcoming ads look, though, they are still ads, and the impact on user experience is hard to predict. So what do you think? Will Instagram ads be a dud, or will they offer valuable content to your Instagram feed?
How to Optimize Your Profile Photos Across Social Media
Choosing your social media profile photos is an important task. They represent the physical you in the online world, while providing an all-important first impression to anyone viewing your profile.
In order to make the most of the available space, we took a look at how you can optimize your avatars and cover photos on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+.
Read our guidelines below, which include the optimum sizes for imagery across all sites, and some handy tips and tricks to bear in mind when choosing the right photographs.
Facebook profile photos are cropped square, so we advise you to use an image that is already in this ratio — that way, you can avoid hastily cropping it right after you upload it. Profile pics are displayed at 160 x 160 pixels, but the image you upload must have minimum measurements of 180 x 180 pixels.
Cover photos come in at 851 x 315 pixels. While the minimum size is 399 x 150 pixels, images that are smaller than the optimum dimensions will get stretched and look awful.
Your profile photo is the one that’s seen most around the site (next to posts, comments, etc.), so it’s important that your choice works well as a small, standalone image. However, if you want to get creative by making your profile pic and cover image work together, note that your profile image displays 23 pixels from the left side and 210 pixels from the top of your cover photo.
If you’re all about fast load times, it’s worth noting that Facebook recommends your cover photo be an sRGB JPG file that’s 851 pixels wide, 315 pixels tall and less than 100KB. If your image is logo- or text-based, then Facebook suggests using a PNG file to get higher quality results.
Twitter displays profile photos really small, so it’s important to choose an image that works in miniature. Twitter also uses square profile pics, so be sure to scale yours appropriately before you upload it.
While the maximum file size for a Twitter avatar is 2MB, it will show only as 73 x 73 pixels on your profile page and a teeny 48 x 48 pixels in tweets.
However, if people click through to your profile and then click on your avatar, it will show up larger (as it will in some Twitter clients), so it’s worth uploading an image that will display bigger than the small, default sizes.
Twitter header photos can be up to 5MB in size. The recommended dimensions for these images are 1252 x 626 pixels. Bear in mind your Twitter account name, handle, bio, location and URL will all appear over your header image, so you need to consider choosing a photo that will work behind text and will not obscure the text.
Google +
Photos are a bit different on Google+, where the network crops profile photos as circles. You’ll need to consider what kind of image will work in a round format.
Your avatar is displayed 120 x 120 pixels on your profile, but not all of that will show up due to the round crop. With images showing up as small as 48 x 48 pixels in posts and just 28 x 28 in comments and other activity, this is another example of needing to choose a pic that will work well on a small scale.
The Google+ cover, or feature photo, is a tricky one, as it dynamically resizes depending on screen area. As far as measurements go, the minimum size is 480 x 270 pixels, and the recommended size is 960 x 540 pixels, but if you want your image to look good on large or retina displays, you’ll want to upload a photo that’s 2120 x 1192 pixels.
However, keep in mind that unless anyone takes the time to scroll up on the default desktop view, there is only a small area of the cover photo that will be seen on your profile — the very bottom.
YouTube
Since Google linked Google+ page identities with YouTube, your YouTube “channel icon,” or avatar, is linked to your Google+ profile photo.
YouTube offers detailed information on how to optimize your other channel imagery though, including downloadable templates to help.
Similar to Google+, your cover photo, or “channel art” as YouTube calls it, will auto-rescale to fit the size of screen on which you’re viewing a video. In order to get “optimal results on all devices,” YouTube recommends uploading a 2560 x 1440 pixel image (including a “safe area”).
The minimum display size for channel art is 1546 x 423 pixels, so you can be sure nothing within this area, such as text and logos, will be cut off.
As a professional social networking site, LinkedIn has some official guidelines as to what kind of photo you can use. The site states that “a photo can be removed by LinkedIn if your profile image is not your likeness or a headshot photo,” so it’s best to stick to the basics.
With a max file size of 4MB, you can upload a square JPG, GIF or PNG. The default size for a LinkedIn avatar on your profile page is 200 x 200 pixels, but users can click to enlarge the image up to 450 x 450 pixels.
Company pages are a little different. The standard company logo displayed on LinkedIn pages is 100 x 60 pixels, and the square logo is 50 by 50 pixels. You can also upload a homepage cover photo-style image to a company page. The minimum recommended size is 646 x 220 pixels.
Image: Flickr, baldiri
How Sports Fans Engage With Social Media – Social Media Marketing
Social media plays a larger role than ever in the lives of sports fans around the world. YouTube is an endless source of video highlights and bloopers. Twitter is a gigantic news wire. And Facebook is a place for trash talk with friends.
But, beyond anecdotal evidence, it can be hard to parse just how many fans use which networks and where the greatest opportunities for marketers are. Catalyst PR, recently acquired by sports marketing titan IMG, is the latest to take a stab at quantifying where sports fans hangout online and how they can be reached.
The results of Catalyst’s survey provide some interesting food for thought.
Released this week, Catalyst’s fourth annual fan engagement study surveyed 2,100 sports fans between the ages of 16 and 64. That group encompasses fans of the NFL, MLB, NBA, college football, college basketball and soccer.
A couple of thousand fans don’t speak for everyone who follows sports, of course. But it’s an interesting starting point for considering trends in the industry. Here are a few of Catalyst’s most interesting findings:
- Nearly twice as many respondents use Facebook compared to Twitter, at 73% to 37%. But on game day, they check Twitter about 1.5 times as often as they do Facebook.
- Google+ and YouTube are on the rise among fans. When fans responded to a question about which platforms they use to “disseminate and acquire sports information,” those two platforms showed the most year-over-year growth, at 94% and 35%, respectively.
- Seven out of 10 sports fans who Like or follow a brand online say they’re open to sharing brand content, buying goods or engaging with social posts.
For more findings, check out the infographic below. Then let us know what you think in the comments.
Image: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images
How Twitter’s Business Compares to Facebook’s
Ever since Twitter revealed last month that it had filed confidential paperwork to go public, the company has been compared to what is arguably its biggest competitor, Facebook. However, the S-1 form that the company filed Thursday shows that the two companies are in fact miles apart — for better or worse.
In comparison to Facebook’s numbers leading up to its IPO last year, Twitter has far fewer active users, far less ad revenue and far greater losses. On the other hand, Twitter is planning a much smaller IPO, which may insulate it against some of the sell off Facebook experienced, and it has at least one key asset that Facebook didn’t have at this point in the process: significant mobile ad revenue.
Here are a few key stats comparing the two companies:
Twitter plans to raise $1 billion from its public offering. Facebook initially planned to raise $5 billion in its IPO, but increased that to $16 billion by the time it went public.
Twitter reported having 218 million monthly active users and more than 100 million daily active users in its S-1. Facebook’s initial S-1 revealed the social network had 845 million monthly active users and 483 million daily active users. By the time Facebook went public, those numbers had increased to 901 million monthly active users and 526 million daily active users and it now has 1.15 billion and 699 million, respectively.
Twitter reported generating $317 million in revenue in 2012. Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue — more than ten times as much — in 2011, the year before its IPO.
In an unorthodox move, Twitter did not disclose revenue per user. Instead, Twitter said its ad revenue “per 1,000 timeline views” was $2.17 in the second quarter in the U.S. and $0.30 in the rest of the world. Facebook generated $3.67 in ad revenue per U.S. and Canada user in the second quarter of this year and $1.41 per user worldwide.
Just as importantly, Twitter is still not profitable. Twitter lost nearly $80 million in 2012 and reported a net loss of $69 million in the first six months of this year. Facebook reported a profit of $1 billion in the full year before its IPO.
Twitter’s S-1 proved that it is already a mobile-first company: 65% of Twitter’s ad revenue comes from mobile products. Facebook, by comparison, had only just started to advertise on mobile by the time it went public and reported that mobile accounted for 41% of its total ad revenue in the most recent quarter.
If the IPO paperwork is any indication, Twitter also appears to be more mindful of Facebook than Facebook was of Twitter at this point. Twitter mentioned the word “Facebook” 9 times in its S-1. Facebook only mentioned “Twitter” twice.
Image: Steve Jennings/Getty
