10 Things That Changed in Social Media

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Announcements and changes continue to come quickly in the Social Media World. Are you prepared to advance your business or career through Social Media? Keep up with the changes through our e-newsletter and upcoming social media workshops. Pass this along to a friend or associate.

1. Facebook

• Look for OFFERS to start showing up for brand pages to start using.
• Is getting back into the App business. There are some powerful apps to be used for your new TIMELINE.
• GM pulled out of ALL advertising on Facebook this week. Ford affirms they will spend more.
• Now has the burden to show profits to shareholders each quarter.
• You will see more changes as it pertains to engagement on the part of the user.
• More changes for marketers to place ads as they look for additional revenue streams.

2. [NEW] Google Search Feature

• The Google Search of the future is here.
• Just got smarter with the new “Knowledge Graph” it is starting to roll out.
• According to Google, search users will see these new knowledge graph results at least as often as they see Google Maps in results. In fact, this update will have a greater initial impact than the updates that brought Google Images, videos, news and books, combined.
• It’s big and it’s probably going to be everywhere.

3. LinkedIn

• They are considering buying MONSTER the online job site.
• The world’s largest professional social network just got a wider reach – and it wants to be in front of your face for more of the day. Recently launched an iPad app.
• Now has over 150 million users, in third place behind Facebook and Twitter.
• LinkedIn shares down 5% same day as Facebook starts trading.

4. Twitter

• Twitter on Thursday announced it will offer a “Do Not Track” option that will let users opt out of being tracked through the service.
• Given Twitter’s high rank in Google Search, it’s likely that your profile there will be among the top results for your name.
• A new iPad application called Thirst might reinvent how you look at your Twitter stream. Using its own natural language processor, Thirst filters, organizes, and presents your Twitter stream in an engaging way, helping you find the tweets you want to read quickly and in context.
• Forget old clothing and canned food – you can now donate your unused Twitter characters to a good cause. A new application called Hashtags4Heroes auto-populates the unused characters in your tweets with messages raising awareness for the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP), an organization seeking to honor and empower veterans wounded since 9/11.

5. Blog

• In a report released Friday, Nielsen found that women, overall, are significantly more likely to engage with social media than men.
• Websites with a blog have 55% more traffic.
• Blogs allow you to control content and keywords which in turn affect your Search Engine Rankings.
• Different areas of endeavor require different qualities of leadership to be successful.
• The qualities of leadership necessary to start and build a successful entrepreneurial business are very different from the leadership qualities necessary to run a large organization.

6. YouTube

• Alex Tanney became a viral video star when a montage of him completing a series of jaw dropping – if impractical – football throws hit YouTube. Nearly 2 million views later, he’s getting a shot at the NFL after being invited to a Buffalo Bills offseason minicamp.
• Televised talent show America’s Got Talent returns May 14 for season 7 and it’s again letting skilled fans audition via YouTube submissions.
• Google, which has already pledged $100 million to create a slew of premium video channels on YouTube, announced on Wednesday it will sink another $200 million into marketing them across its various ad networks.
• Google has been integrating its social layer Google+ into all of its products lately. Gmail and YouTube have gotten the social treatment, but the latter made a bit of a tweak today.
• Starting today, we’re updating the way you can share with your Google+ circles from YouTube. Just click ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ as usual, and you’ll see the new Google+ Share link, as well as other popular service.

 

 

 

 

Come join me at one of my upcoming workshops, and learn firsthand about implementing a Social Media successfully in your company!

Social Media Giant Facebook Launches Timeline for Business Pages.

Choosing leap day to start rolling out Timeline, with a full implementation date of March 30th for all business pages.
Here are the takeaways for business.

• Companies can star posts to expand their appearance to widescreen or pin posts to appear in the Timeline’s top-left area for seven days.
• Companies can also add to their pages what Facebook refers to as “milestones.” These widescreen content boxes featuring photos and text can detail specific points in a brand’s history.
• The Timeline format is the same as your current personal profile.

Cover Photo

Ford Timeline Page Cover Photo

The cover photo is the new landing experience. Facebook is giving you access to prime real estate to customize your page and improve on user experience. Before you jump into this, there a couple of things you need to consider before uploading your Cover Photo:

• The specs: 850 x 315px, which is a lot more space than you had before to customize your page.
• You can’t use it for calls-to-action, promotions, website promotion and other things like that.
• Think creatively on what you want to portray with your brand cover photo.
• Here is the full list of items you can’t include on your image.

Profile Photograph

• Your profile photograph or “avatar” on the sidebar is gone.

No more Landing Tabs

• The biggest angst for Page owners at the moment, and their marketing team.
• The possibility to setting up a default landing destination for non-fans is gone.
• Going forward, all visitors will land on the Timeline by default.
• This means welcome landing tabs are gone.

You will have to come up with new creative ways to deliver a better user experience for first-time visitors. A welcome video pinned to the top of the timeline sounds like a good idea, and of course the good use of the cover photo.

Custom Tabs and Apps

• Tabs are more prominent now since they’ve been moved to the top just below your cover photo.
• You can organize the order of these elements so people see what’s more relevant.
• The only one you can’t move is “Photos” but other than that, you can display your apps/tabs however you want.
• There is a little button with an arrow pointing down on the right, this panel reveals the rest of your tabs, and you can also arrange the order there.
• The new dimensions for your custom tabs and apps icons are 111 pixels x 74 pixels.
• You can have a max of 12 Apps running on your page.

 

Custom Tabs New Specs

• Understand that you can still have Custom Tabs; they just can’t be set as “Landing”.
• Old width use to be 520 pixels is now 810 pixels, giving you 35% more photographic real estate to tell your story.
• Old tabs with the 520 pixels will be centered on the page.

Pages Historical Activity

• Like your personal Timeline, ALL historical activity will be showed –both positive and negative.
• Brands should hide historical content that might reflect poorly on your brand.
• Visitors to a brand’s page will be able to see Facebook friends’ interactions with that page, such as when a friend links to a page in Facebook post.

Admin Panel

• The new pages also feature an admin panel for page managers to view notifications and page analytics.
• Respond to messages and edit page content.
• The feature makes more insights visible to brands. Previously, visitors to a brand page could see how many people liked or were talking about the brand.
• Now brands can see more of the page’s demographic breakdown—including age ranges, the most popular week for the brands and the cities driving the most visitor traffic.

New Pin Feature

Wonder if Mark Zuckerberg borrowed this from Pinterest?

• Pin feature can be the key to improve engagement on your page.
• There is always a post on your page where you wish you had more control over; the pin feature allows you to keep it at the top left on your page.
• That post is limited to seven days.
• There will be a little ribbon added to the top right of the post.

 

Highlight a Post

• You can highlight a post within your timeline, by clicking on the star when you hover over the post, it will change the dimension to a full width.
• If you post your blog content on your page, this is a good way to make it stand out from other posts.
• Great way to highlight milestones in your page.
• Great way to highlight relevant information and content.

Private Communications

• Also new, users can send a message to a page privately.

• This should improve your communications.
• This feature is accessible from the admin panel.
• This feature is optional; Pages can opt-out by disabling the messaging system in your page settings.

Closing Comments

Change is inevitable, and is happening at lightning speed in today’s business climate. Be clear about your Goals & Objectives; however be Flexible about the Process. How will you implement Timeline for your Business Pages?

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

– Francis Bacon