It’s been a busy month for tech as many innovations and updates were released for the past few weeks. Social media joined that scene, too. September was full of exciting changes for almost every social media platform there is. Here are a few social media updates that you might have missed out.
Pride Month is here – and brands are kickstarting their campaign all over social media. This is one of the best months you should campaign for. It is for a greater cause and it is a fight that everybody should participate in. It’s tike to break the stigma and embrace all genders – whether it is through taking the fight in the streets or in your online marketing campaign.
There are a lot of issues with brands riding on the coattails of a highly-anticipated, month-long event. But one that every online marketer and brand should worry about is SINCERITY.
There’s been a lot of backlash on companies lately in their marketing strategies for Pride Month. While your intentions are pure, you can’t blame the audience if they doubt your gesture. Some would think you’re just trying to gather support for your brand from the LGBTQ community or simply just for clout.
We are all for representation and visibility but we want to make sure your marketing strategies are right on track. Here are some tips and ideas on how to market your brand this Pride Month.
How many messaging apps do you currently have on your phone? Do you feel it is becoming too cumbersome maintaining all those? Don’t you wish messaging integration would be a thing? It would surely solve everything, don’t you think?
During the advent of social messengers, people have been crazy on the platforms they prefer. Some use WhatsApp, Viber, WeChat, etc. Then, social media platforms now allowed users to send private messages to each other. Facebook has one stand-alone in Messenger, while Instagram and Twitter have integrated messaging in their respective applications.
Given a plethora of choices, many people shift from one app to another to communicate to different people for different purposes. Facebook Messenger seems to be the easiest pick since you can now send messages even to people you are not friends with. Other choose Viber to share photos because, as they say, it doesn’t deteriorate the quality and resolution of the photos. And many other reasons for each app.
But as we said, it can be cumbersome to maintain all apps at once. Not only does it eat up storage or memory on your phone, it can draw in confusion when you have to contact people all at once.
Messaging integration seems to be the answer to this. And, luckily, Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg has thought about doing this.
Facebook is trying to brew up something new for Facebook Pages out there, especially those who love to use Stories as part of their online marketing strategy. They are currently testing a call-to-action feature right straight in your business’ stories.
Currently, pages are only allowed to post Stories like everyone else – a simple promotion photo or short video. But soon enough, businesses can now push their customers to act (or react) to their advertisements right away. Through call-to-action buttons, online marketers and various businesses can now make their Stories more than just a display of promotional creativity.
This feature is something that advertising or marketing are looking for. Something that would boost the purpose of a Facebook Story. Not only does this change the game in online marketing, but it pose a new and exciting challenge in Story production.
First, let’s get to know what are the available call-to-action functions for now. Next, we’ll discuss how you can maximize these functions to help you boost your online marketing efforts.
It’s official!
Social media has now risen above newspapers as a source of news for Americans. In a recent study released by Pew Research Center, 20% of American adults now turn to social media to get news compared to the 16% who get their news through newspapers.
Past studies show the steady decline and the steady increase (respectively) of both platforms with 20% of Americans turning to newspaper while 18% turn to social media last 2016.
Business advertising used to be very expensive during the times when popular media platforms were newspaper, radio and television. It was quite impossible for small businesses to publish a business-related advertisement because the rates were not affordable.
But with the advent of the internet and social media, businesses (small or big) are given the chance to promote their products.
One of the most popular and viable platform for business advertising is the social media giant, Facebook. With billions of users around the globe, your audience reach can be limitless (theoretically).
If you’ll take time to observe your Facebook account, you can see your business minded friends are already taking advantage of the platform. For instance, one of your friends might have posted some of her pre-loved clothes for sale or you might be seeing posts of another friend promoting her baked products.
In cases where you’re looking at short term business, Facebook can be very helpful. You sell products and promote it without spending a dime. But if you are looking at a long-term and a more sustainable business, that’s not necessarily the case.
If you want to maximize the potential of Facebook as a marketing tool, then it is a misconception to think that you don’t have to spend money for it.
Let’s take the case of Julia who decided to stop working full time to focus on selling her baked goodies online. She posted pictures of her items in a Facebook Page she newly created for her business. She even set the privacy setting of her posts to public, so it can be easily shared and will be easily viewed.
She didn’t want to spend money, so she invited her immediate family and friends to her business account.
But it is important to ponder on the following questions: Was she able to reach her target audience? Was she able to maximize the potential of Facebook as a marketing platform for her business? How can she set herself apart from other online clothing stores? How can she draw more followers or more clients to her Facebook page?
Don’t you just hate spoilers?
How about people who just keeps on talking and posting about things you don’t even care?
Or those posts that are just too hypocritical for you?
We get it. Sometimes, there are just posts that we don’t want to see. Take the first example for instance; let’s say The Avengers: Infinity War.
Those who had the advantage of seeing it first keeps on blabbing about the movie, sharing news, reviews, and other online commentaries, without even the decency to consider those who haven’t seen it. Don’t you just wish you can snooze it all for a day or two?
Well, Facebook’s now got you covered with their new feature that allows you to filter your news feed based on keywords you don’t want to see.
The word’s out. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has indeed deleted some of his messages sent to recipients on Messenger. While this is not possible for others, it is for Zuckerberg. Guess being CEO has a lot of perks, right?
But now the word’s out, Facebook said they’re only testing the ‘Unsend’ feature before rolling it out for public use (or so they said).
How would this feature work? What, then, does this imply to the users and their privacy? Will this affect people’s conversations? Let’s discuss these shortly.
The past week must have been a busy week in the Facebook HQ. After all, any news on data and privacy breach on the biggest social media platform is a huge blow. With billions of users and their respective data, a single entity to get hold of it is like enjoying an all-you-can-eat-buffet for free.
Just to give you a background, Cambridge Analytica and a certain Aleksandr Kogan used an app to gather millions of data from users in 2013. Two years after, their app brought attention to Facebook and the social media giant asked Kogan and Cambridge Analytica a certification that all the data were already deleted.
Fast forward to 2018, it seems like the data were not deleted after all. Even worse, the data were sold. To what intents and purposes, we don’t really know for sure. Even Facebook can’t trace all that.
In a public apology posted by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he mentioned the series of events that led to this breach. He also mentioned that they’ll go over through the rest of the apps, check how much user data they’re getting, and what they could do to improve on this especially with data issues at hand.
Facebook has always kept their environment as healthy and positive as possible. While this may not be mostly in their control, they do everything they have in their power to maintain that within their platform.
For example, when people heard rumors about a dislike button, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was quick to respond that they’re not going to do so to keep Facebook a positive place for content and discussion.
But maybe, some minds were meant to change; including Zuckerberg’s.
Recently, some Facebook users noticed a ‘downvote’ button on comments. According to Facebook, they’re doing a little test on how users would respond and use the button, and how it would affect comments of a certain post.
Is this move necessary? Is Facebook going to the right direction? Would this still somehow keep the platform positive? We weigh in with some of the pros and cons.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced last month that there will be changes in Facebook’s algorithm. Most specifically, with what the people can see in their news feeds.
According to Zuckerberg, they want people to see more of their family and friends in their news feed than ads and posts from pages. That is including business pages. And that speaks a lot for companies who relied so much on their Facebook marketing.
(Also read about Instagram’s new algorithm in Videos, Shopping, & More for Instagram this 2018!)
Obviously, this change is going to affect your business if you’ve been pouring a lot of money and effort on building up the number of followers. And this is the worst news for those who really PAID to gain followers.
But don’t fixate on the problem so much. All is not lost and just for naught.
If you know how to navigate around this new algorithm, you would still be able to target your audience. While it might not be the surefire way to do it (none of the Facebook Pages practices are, anyway) but it will somehow give you the helping hand.
Long gone are the days that you have to personally walk in and submit job applications. For years, technology made sure that it would be convenient to both the applicant and the employer to find a perfect match. Job search websites came, then followed by social networking sites like LinkedIn which lets you create an online resume for recruiters to see.
Early this month, rumor has it that Facebook is going to the same direction as LinkedIn in trying to create a resume feature on their platform.
As to the specific details, Rocket Social only heard of a few since only a few specific people are currently on this test.
However, we’ll share whatever knowledge we have – and our two cents – on his this feature could mean to you and your Facebook profile.
Last month, Facebook rolled out a snooze feature available to some users.
This feature would allow you to ‘snooze’ a specific person, pages, or group instead of unfollowing, unfriended, or completely unblocking them. This means that you can put them on ‘mute’ in a given timeframe; from 24 hours or up to 30 days.
Just by looking at the surface, this feature has a lot of advantages especially for those who want a more informative, insightful news feed.
However, this does not mean that it is immune to negative feedback from others. There might be some areas that people have qualms about.
This time, Rocket Social weighs in if the Facebook Snooze feature is a good or bad idea.