locally.co.uk

Tag: Facebook

  • Facebook is changing: an UPDATE

    Only the other day, we were checking over our Facebook news feed and we came across something we thought would be useful to us. We clicked on the link but we were not taken to the website or the story we thought it was. In all honesty, the page we landed on was a little ‘risqué’, not to our taste at all. Neither was it about content marketing, as we thought it was.

    After we had navigated away from it, we were left feeling rather annoyed and foolish; we had been lured by a false promise. We had been hoodwinked, fooled into clicking on a link that took us to a false website full of spammy rubbish and adverts.

    Within a few days, a pop up window from Facebook asked us if we would be willing to take a short survey about what was useful and relevant to us – and we filled it, getting our back on all the rubbish links and statuses that seem to be littering our news feed.

    But it seems that Facebook has been really listening, announcing in late August 2014, some sweeping changes to how its ranking system will work from now on. This effectively means that spammy links and rubbish statuses that clutter up the news feed should start to disappear. But, as an online local business, if you use Facebook as one of your social media platforms, you need to take note too as these changes will start to take effect very soon (if not already!).

    From the horse’s mouth

    So what is Facebook saying? In a nutshell, the team at FB want to ensure that the ‘right content is delivered to the right people’. Feedback from users has been that spam statuses etc. tend to swamp their news feed, meaning that the stuff they want to see from friends and family, as well as a few brands, are lost within their timeline. The improvements coming in these next few weeks are three-fold…

    • like-baiting

    This is where a post explicitly asks you to either like it, share it or comment on it. By doing this, Facebook users effectively give the post credence and this mean that is ‘looks’ and ‘feel’ popular hence it gets bumped up the news feed.

    But, when Facebook asked users what they thought they found that these like-baiting stories were ‘15% less relevant’ that other stories which were far more useful to the user, but further down the news feed. Users, it seems, told Facebook that they found these like-baiting stories made using the platform less pleasurable.

    Social media is supposed to be fun, enjoyable and informative hence when a platform is told that stuff on it prevents this enjoyment, then they must do something about it! And so the improvements are that these stories will be detected and should no longer take precedence over statuses from family and friends.

    However, do not lament the passing of such like-baiting for long as the changes will not affect companies who genuinely use Facebook as a platform to connect and converse with fans and customers, just don’t partake in those nuisance posts that ask you to like and share the photos of the puppy with sad eyes…

    • like- baiting screen shots or graphics

    This brings us nicely on to other nuisance like-baiting statuses, which use graphics to try and get us to converse. You know the ones – like if you ‘vote’ for the pony, share if you ‘vote’ for the parrot and ignore to vote for the crisp packet. They are rarely relevant to the company or the business to which it is linked and is another way of tricking likes, shares and comments (even if they are not favourable!) from users.

    Users can ‘hide’ this content, something that Facebook has noticed people are doing more and more. They want to filter out these like-baiting screenshots so that relevant stories are on your news feed, not this annoying rubbish that seems to have gathered pace in recent months.

    • Spammy links

    And this is how we started this blog post, with our story of the recent click we made on a link we thought would be of use and relevance to us. It seems that many users are feeding back their annoyance to Facebook, with the platform pledging that by monitoring genuine shares and links between ‘friends’, that they can detect these rubbish links and effectively filter them from your news feed; great news for those of us who find such things incredibly annoying, especially if they masquerade as something else.

    Will it affect you?

    According to Facebook, if you are a genuine user, inviting discussion and opinion on matters and issues that are relevant to your page and business, then no, there will be no negative impact. In fact, they suggest that your news feed and reach should increase as these statuses that are created with intentional spam to ‘catch’ users will effectively start to disappear creating more ‘room’ on the news feed.

    Will it impact content marketing?

    Yes, and in a good way – or so it is predicted.

    Many search engine optimising experts suggest that this means companies and brands will have to take another look at their content marketing plan, especially in relation to Facebook; the days of brands being able to gather ‘vanity metrics’ – likes and shares that mean nothing to their business, except tap push them up the rankings – are gone . It is also a positive change in that it will reward those brands that do post original content that is useful, informative and well-written.

    For example, on a global scale, American Express produce a whole series of articles for small business, posting these on a regular, daily basis.

    And there are brands, like Locally, who keep in touch with their customers and potential new clients with informative posts, as well as statuses, stories, tweets etc. that are useful, rather than just any old rubbish to draw people in.

    In other words, your statuses – the likes, shares and comments you invite – must lead potential customers to an owned website (yours!), not some random, ad-filled site that just wants to sell, sell, sell nonsensical items to people.

    Take another look at your content; is it genuine, fresh and informative?

  • Social media wars: which is better?

    With the fallout from the Google Authorship and ‘is it a ploy to get us all using Google+?’ question still being bandied around, businesses can be easily confused as to which social media platform is the right one for them.

    It can be tempting to be on everything but the problem with this blanket approach is that you may be using platforms that are not suitable and, keeping up to date with them all can be a timing nightmare.

    In this article we look at Google+ or G+ and what it can offer you, as well as looking at arguably the most powerful and well-known of social media platforms, Facebook.

    Things are changing

    Facebook is the ‘daddy of ‘em all’, with a reach that is phenomenal it has, for many years, held the top notch position; it was and still is, the social media platform you must be on. If you wanted to reach out to the largest audience ever, then FB was the place to be.

    But things change and on the world of online sharing. Once the poor relation, is seems that the ugly duckling is blossoming into the beautiful swan; 2014 has marked the best year for G+ yet, with its monthly active users reaching 540 million across the globe.

    The difference between the two? G+ allows people to search for your business and is obviously geared towards this end of the market, whereas Facebook is more ‘personal’ in its approach but there are reasons why both could be useful, if not essential.

    Circles

    Some people think that circles on G+ are complicated but they are far from that. It’s a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff if you like and rather than being bombarded with every single post or share, you can group people together, choosing what you see and when.

    Facebook has a similar set up now with Edgerank, the algorithm it introduced in December 2013. Rather than users being bombarded with items or posts they may find irrelevant, this algorithm sorts what it thinks the user will like. The only problem with this is that you don’t control it – unlike the G+ circles which you set up – the algorithm checks what you have been looking at and makes the decision for you.

    Reach

    On Facebook, any posts or statuses you make will need to reach a certain level of ‘likes’ over a set number of times before it is available to the masses, hence the almost begging Tweets and messages from businesses imploring you to like them on Facebook.

    BUT, if this doesn’t work, you can always pay for the privilege with various adverts to boost your appearance and views on the platform. But, some say that this is losing sight of its original intention as small businesses may not have the budgeting resources to play alongside the big players.

    The algorithm

    Facebook’s algorithm is a double-edged sword; on one hand it has a positive impact but recent bad press from experiments such as the ‘emotion experiment’ has made some people question the platform and its integrity.

    However, you cannot throw away 1.32 billion users around the world lightly and so, by improving your Facebook posts, from asking questions to running competitions, you do have an excellent way, at your fingertips of attracting new people and customers to your business.

    Is it just about numbers?

    Reaching the masses is great but, if only a small percentage buy your product or service, is it worth it for a local, online business?

    No sale is a bad sale, and so if it reaps the smallest reward then that is not to be sniffed at but if it comes at a cost in terms of both time and money, it may be worth a re-think.

    A G+ ‘hangout’ is as some people say, an awesome resource that allows businesses and customers to connect. Think of it as a modern-day equivalent of consumer research and with G+ and Google being the same, you are sending out some strong signals to the most popular search engine.

    So, who to choose?

    Internet trends change from week to week; it would be sheer folly to predict today what will be right next week or the week after and so on. However, the rub is that, as a business you need to connect to a wide an audience as possible, but balance it against time spent ‘doing’ social media and the return it gives you.

    The answer is this – place the same post across the social media platforms you currently use and see where you get the most responses; do this a few times at different times of the year and it gives you an indication of where your audience is at.

    Once you feel you know which platforms are right for your business, put time and energy into creating a plan so that you have something to offer customers and something to talk about over both G+ and Facebook – and any others too!

    Which platforms do you use? How did you decide which social media sites were best for your local business?