Live video needs to be a part of your social strategy.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/309290

Facebook announced it was ending a news feed test called the Explore Feed. The test allowed users to choose from two news feeds. One feed was dedicated to friends and family. The second feed was for public pages. Ending the test signals that Facebook is committed to the newly updated Facebook feed. That may be bad news for businesses and other organizations who have seen their traffic levels plummet with Facebook’s current news feed.

The test began in October 2017. It was designed to help Facebook members see more friends and family in their news feed. But member feedback indicated they were less satisfied with their feeds. The announcement was made by Adam Mosseri, head of Facebook News Feed.

“The Explore Feed was a trial response to consistent feedback we received from people over the past year who said they want to see more from friends and family in News Feed. The idea was to create a version of Facebook with two different News Feeds: one as a dedicated place with posts from friends and family and another as a dedicated place for posts from Pages.”

What This Means for Businesses with Facebook Pages

This news confirms that Facebook is satisfied with the direction they are taking and will continue with the new algorithm. For businesses dependent on Facebook traffic this means understanding how Facebook’s new algorithm works and to implement changes to adapt.

Will Facebook’s New Algorithm Revert Back?

Facebook has a history continually refining their news feed. This new feed algorithm will probably continue to evolve. In fact, this focus on friends and family is a continuation of a news feed algorithm announced in 2016, that was intended to increase the visibility of news “posted by the friends you care about… higher up in your News Feed.”

So yes, it’s quite likely Facebook’s algorithm will continue to evolve. But no, it very likely will not revert back to the previous algorithm. So it’s fairly safe to assume that the old business model of relying on passive consumption of viral content for traffic has quite possibly come to an end. Passive consumption of content was named by Mark Zuckerberg himself as one of the things Facebook wanted to decrease in his January 2018 announcement:

“I announced a major change to encourage meaningful social interactions with family and friends over passive consumption.”

According to Facebook’s latest announcement:

“We think our recent changes to News Feed that prioritize meaningful social interactions better address the feedback we heard from people who said they want to see more from friends and family. Those changes mean less public content in News Feed like posts from businesses, brands, and media.”

Facebook’s official announcement can be read here.

Images by Shutterstock, Modified by Author

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/8461473

By now, there’s very little disagreement that the Russian government has been pursuing an organized social media campaign within the US. But there are still significant arguments regarding the goals and impacts of that campaign. Most of these center around the presidential election, but the Republicans on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology are doing their best to get people to consider an additional topic they argue has been specifically targeted by the Russians: the US energy economy.

According to a report released Thursday by Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the Russian efforts were part of a specific campaign to suppress US development of fossil fuels. But the evidence presented in the report is pretty weak, and it seems to indicate the Russian troll farms were simply trying to get Americans to argue with each other.

The report released by the committee is a majority staff report, which means it was prepared without the Democratic members of the committee. And it’s an odd mixture of reasoned argument and selective interpretation of evidence.

Its overall conclusion keeps with the tendency of the majority in general, and Smith in particular, to promote fossil fuel interests: “Russian agents were exploiting American social media platforms in an effort to disrupt domestic energy markets, suppress research and development of fossil fuels, and stymie efforts to expand the use of natural gas.”

Why would Russia want to suppress US fossil fuel extraction? Here, the report’s reasoning is a bit mixed. Overall, it presents this as a matter of competition: “America’s emergence as a global energy exporter presents a significant threat to Russian energy interests. Such competition reduces the revenue and influence generated by Russian energy exports. This adversely affects the Kremlin’s ability to leverage Eastern Europe’s reliance on their energy and their ability to carry out their geopolitical agenda.”

Is the US’ rapidly expanding energy production a major threat? The answer is mixed. Russia only produces roughly a third of the coal that the US does, and the country isn’t a major player in that market, so coal is largely ignored in this report. The US’ booming oil production will have a small influence on global prices, but those were already extremely low due to overproduction by OPEC nations.

The one case that could be made is for natural gas. That’s largely shipped via pipeline, which is why parts of Europe are heavily dependent upon Russian supplies. But, as the US fracking boom continues, there are plans to liquify the natural gas and ship it overseas, which could influence the European market. Exports of liquefied natural gas, however, are just now ramping up, so it’s not a major issue at the moment. Still, suppressing US natural gas production could help preserve the status quo.

Science Committee vs. evidence

It’s hard to square Russia’s interests in the global energy economy with the analysis presented in the Science Committee report. It mentions that Russian social media posts targeted six different pipeline projects. But five of these are devoted to oil or petroleum products; only one will transport natural gas. The problems only begin there.

The report goes on to suggest that Russia is injecting money into environmental organizations that oppose fracking, turning them into what it terms “useful idiots.” But the only document this report has to support such a claim is a Republican Senate Committee report with a title that sounds like the product of paranoia: “How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA.” Searching that document for instances of the term “Russia” draws a blank.

Then there’s the matter of the Russian-generated social media posts presented as evidence. Nearly all of the anti-fossil fuel examples in the report come from a single source, an account named “Born Liberal” on Facebook and Instagram. Many of these posts received a dozen shares or less, and its top Facebook post was shared fewer than 200 times. The account’s biggest success seems to have been an Instagram post that picked up 1,600 likes by falsely claiming that the state of Iowa had decided to get its power entirely from renewables.

Stunningly, the report also claims the Russians were being divisive regarding climate change. Congressman Smith has accused climate researchers of engaging in scientific fraud, and the committee he leads has misled the public about climate science. Yet the report spends a paragraph complaining that the Russians were muddying the waters:

Numerous Russian posts focused on the ongoing debate about climate change by linking catastrophic weather events to climate change and divisively labeling one viewpoint as right and one as left. One post characterizes Americans as ignoring major events that are allegedly signs of climate change. Additionally, these posts frame the conservative viewpoint regarding climate change as a “liberal hoax,” all in an effort to generate further domestic controversy surrounding the issue of climate change.

Alternative explanation

The last sentence of the quote above suggests a possible alternative explanation: the Russian bots and trolls were simply trying to create arguments among US citizens, and the accounts took both sides of the argument to do so. In fact, the report cites several examples of this, such as “numerous posts from a Russian account named ‘Heart of Texas’ advocated for pro-drilling and oil positions,” and “several Russian posts focused on the counter-narrative and sought to exploit anti-activist sentiment by propagating content supportive of pipeline construction efforts.”

In fact, the report approvingly quotes an article that describes the Russians as “intent on exploiting existing divisions and social movements in the United States.”

In other words, energy was just one of the many topics that the Russian groups identified as a political fault line within the US, and they attempted to exploit it by inflaming tensions rather than arguing for any specific policy. This conclusion, oddly, is better supported by the evidence presented in this report than the report authors’ favored conclusion.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1268843

Instagram may soon add a new feature that keeps users in the app longer (if that’s even possible). According to a TechCrunch report, icons for “call” and “video call” lie buried in the Instagram and Instagram Direct APKs. This may signal that Instagram is close to debuting voice and video chatting options in its apps, features that have been rumored for the past couple of months. Instagram would not comment on the unearthed icons or its future plans.

In January, the WhatsApp blog WABetaInfo spotted a video chat feature in a non-public version of Instagram, and that discovery sparked rumors of a forthcoming calling feature. This new discovery in the app’s APK could mean that Instagram plans to push out voice and video chatting in its app soon.

Such features would heighten the competition between Instagram and Snapchat, a battle that has been raging for a few years. Snapchat introduced text and video chatting in 2014, and those have been some of the few features Instagram hasn’t yet implemented in its main app. The closest that Instagram has come is Instagram Direct, a standalone app it began testing late last year that lets users send photos and videos to individuals, rather than posting them to a profile as they would in the main Instagram app.

The most blatant copying of Snapchat to date was the introduction of Instagram Stories back in 2016. Similar to Snapchat’s feature, Instagram Stories lets users take ephemeral photos and videos, string them together in succession much like a slide show, and broadcast that creation to their followers. All photos and videos in Instagram Stories disappear after being live for 24 hours.

Should it happen soon, a voice and video chat launch from Instagram would come at a bad time for Snapchat: the company has come under fire from users who have complained about the app’s recent redesign, claiming it’s confusing and not as easy to use as the old version. While Snapchat is far from dead, Instagram has given it a run for its money—Instagram Stories has proven to be a success for the image-sharing app, gleaning 300 million daily active users last year. According to Snap, Inc.’s 2017 annual report, Snapchat as a whole sees 187 million daily active users.

Voice and video chatting is undoubtably important for Instagram, regardless of Snapchat. Its parent company Facebook understands the important of chat functions in its own apps: Facebook Messenger has millions of users that use not only its text chat, but also its voice, video, and group video chat features. Adding similar abilities to Instagram could encourage current users to spend more time on Instagram as they would be able to share permanent and disappearing content with their followers, as well as make direct calls to close friends, all in one app.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1268473

Vero co-founder Ayman Hariri tried to clear the air with Entrepreneur about some of the backlash Vero has received.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/309748

BuzzSumo Director Steve Rayson today released Content Trends Report 2018, a 36-page report on the state of content marketing and how it has been promoted on social media over the past several years.

Rayson examined the social sharing and link-earning stats of 100 million posts published in 2017, and compared them to a similar sampling from 2015. His overall conclusion: “If you’re sticking with your content approach from 3 years ago, it’s now 50% less effective.”

Here are a few of the most interesting revelations from the report:

Social Sharing Is Down 50 Percent

Rayson measured the number of social shares on 100 million posts published in 2015, and then again in 2017.

He found that the median number of shares in 2015 was eight, but had fallen to four by 2017.

In 2017, 90 percent of the content sampled had fewer than 62 shares.

2017 top 10 percent shared content

Rayson points to two other factors exacerbating this overall decline in shares per post:

1. A rise in private sharing. He cited a Business Insider report showing that use of private social messaging apps has surpassed use of public social networks, and GetSocial research claiming that so-called “dark social” sharing (sharing that takes place outside of public spaces) was more than double all other sharing combined in 2017.
2. Declining organic reach on Facebook. As the largest public social network by far, Facebook’s continual throttling of brand organic reach has fed the dramatic decline in social shares.

Rising Engagement Competition

As the amount of content published in most topic areas increased exponentially, the average number of shares declined.

Here is an example of a topic where the number of articles published rose steadily since 2015:

What this really means is that there is always a finite number of shares to go around for any given topic. Put another way, people will only share so much about a topic, so if the number of available articles on that topic increases, the average number of shares per post will go down.

Moreover, as the previous section demonstrated, it is likely that the lion’s share of those available shares is going to less than 10 percent of those posts.

As Rayson says in his report, “…if you enter the topic area towards the right of the chart, it is much harder to gain traction and social engagement.”

The Rich Get Richer

Rayson’s research shows that only a tiny minority of posts and sites get the vast majority of the shares for a given topic. The situation for earned backlinks is even more abysmal.

BuzzSumo data show over 70 percent of all published content never receives a single backlink.

However, some publishers buck the trend, and seem to have found a sweet spot where they consistently earn above average amounts of both shares and links for their content.

One example cited is the New York Times, which has seen the number of average shares and links actually increase over the past year.

Rayson notes that in 2017 the New York Times pursued a particular political stance in a controversial time, and at the same time carried high authority with the tribe who agreed with that stance.

The combination of a journalistic approach and high reputation and authority with a particular tribe is one way to achieve this “sweet spot” that goes counter to the overall trend, and it can be adopted by many content publishers, not just overt news sites.

If your site can establish itself in the early stages of a trending topic, as both authoritative on the topic and willing to take a stand on it, your content can buck the trend of declining shares and search engine power.

Evergreen Wins

Another type of content that seems to beat the declining social share and backlink trend is evergreen content, that is, content that continues to attract an audience long after its publication date.

While the vast majority of content gets whatever social shares and links it’s going to earn (if any) in a short time after publication, some content continues to gain both over time.

Rayson listed some common characteristics of high-performing evergreen content found in his study:

• Research-based content.
• Reference-style content (content that becomes a benchmark reference point for its topic, and is regularly updated).
• Long-life topics (topics that don’t go quickly out of style, such as “How to build the perfect team”).
• Updated content (content that is updated regularly, so readers can trust the information is not outdated).

I’ve been in charge of publishing content for my agency, since 2014, and I’ve noticed the efficacy of all of the above.

A number of our digital marketing research studies and other posts taking a strong stance on an issue in our industry, backed up with data and regularly updated, have earned evergreen status. Those posts have become a gift that keeps on giving, bringing in high levels of links, social shares, and traffic long after their initial publication.

Other Trends

Rayson’s report touches on a number of other content and sharing trends emerging from his research that we won’t detail here, but include:

• Changes in content discovery: People are accessing content in many ways now other than the big public social networks.
• Old tried-and-true hacks no longer work: Clickbait, listicles, and other staples of viral marketing have declined sharply in effectiveness, especially on Facebook.
• LinkedIn sharing: It’s actually rising.

Key Takeaways

A few of Steve Rayson’s takeaways from his data:

• Build authority and audience before the trend: When a topic like “bitcoin” gets hot, the number of articles published about it explodes. No one can read all that content, so people tend to turn first to the sites that have already established some authority on the topic.
• Forget clickbait: Don’t chase shares with so-called viral content and headlines. There is strong evidence that these practices lead to audience fatigue while bringing little business value.
• Focus on the long tail: It’s more difficult than ever to get traction on big, trending topics, unless you already have high authority in the area, as noted above. Instead, identify sub-trends early on, and start building high-quality content around them so you have a better chance of establishing authority and riding the wave to the top as it builds.
• Work on your direct distribution networks: Your customer lists, email subscribers, and other pre-engaged audiences that you can contact directly will never be subject to vagaries of social network algorithm changes and content oversaturation. Don’t abandon social, but spend more time cultivating your private audiences.

Image Credits

All charts and images copyright Steve Rayson and Buzzsumo.com, used with permission.

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/8425141

Facebook’s new algorithm change has affected a Facebook page called LittleThings that was popular for it’s viral content. It is reported that the business owners claimed their traffic decreased by 75%. It remains to be seen how many other businesses that depend on Facebook will begin to wither as the toll from the algorithm takes effect. Jonah Peretti of BuzzFeed recently offered his insights on how to thrive in the capricious and constantly changing social media environment and to avoid becoming another social media business casualty.

Jonah Peretti, CEO of BuzzFeed, discussed building a viable business with social media.

Jonah Peretti, CEO of BuzzFeed recently commented in a live interview that it was important to diversify revenue streams:

“…what we saw and didn’t fully realize when we first undertook this… distributed content model was that… we would need to move to a multi-revenue approach to generate enough revenue on these platforms.”

Perhaps failing to build a multi-revenue business model contributed to the collapse of the LittleThings viral Facebook page. The entire business model revolved around the Facebook Page doing the same thing over and over, with followers sharing and reacting to the viral content.

Single Focus Business Models are Vulnerable to Change

A similar thing happened to businesses when Google introduced the Panda Algorithm. Business models based on mass producing content (content farming) lost substantial traffic. This is what happens when businesses fail to diversify their revenue streams, fail to cultivate multiple sources of traffic and fail to experiment with creating different kinds of content.

It is important to always be trying new things, just like BuzzFeed does, in order to cultivate new sources of business. This is the quality of adapting, to constantly be in a state of change and innovation. Some directions are fruitful, many may not.

The Importance of Continuing to Adapt

The CEO of BuzzFeed also emphasized that a secret to Internet business longevity is the ability to adapt:

“I think a lot of people are asking Facebook for stuff… I think that traditional media companies… have an expectation that they can take something that works in print or take something that works on their website, stick it on Facebook and get a big check from Facebook and that’s what they want and they don’t really want to change or adapt.”

LittleThings focused on doing one thing over and over. They were successful at that one thing. But their business model did not represent the kind of content Facebook wanted in their news feed. And when the news feed algorithm changed, the LittleThings Facebook audience collapsed.

You Can’t Go Wrong Engaging Your Audience

What Facebook is asking from content creators is to create content that engages people, that Facebook members will discuss with each other. Jonah Peretti stressed that focusing on the user reaction is at the top of considerations. It’s not important that a user shares or reacts to content. His goal was for content to engage readers offline, as well as online.

“What I want to do is build new bottles for content that are truly social. And that’s at least with what I want to do is with Facebook and that’s what we’ve always done. We always think how do we make content that people will engage with and share and if we make a tasty video will they actually cook the food. If we do a nifty thing. Will they spend a weekend doing a DIY project, when we do BuzzFeed lists do they tag their friends and joke and laugh with their friends… So we want to figure out how do you make content truly social.”

Takeaways – How This Impacts Online Business

BuzzFeed’s CEO is right on the money to focus on user experience and engagement. Facebook’s new feed algorithm is focused on meaningful interaction, something Facebook has been after for at least a year. There’s are lessons in this event for anyone doing business via social media or through a website. It’s important to diversify traffic streams, diversify monetization streams, and to diversify content (or product) models. But perhaps the most important lesson is to focus on user experience and engagement. It’s not always enough for a user to like or share a page, it sometimes may be important to motivate them to engage in an activity in the real world, offline.

Screenshots by Author

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/8417937

Twitter will soon drop support for its Twitter for Mac desktop app, suggesting instead that Mac users should use the web client.

The app has been pulled from the Mac App Store, and those who currently have Twitter for Mac can remain using it until mid-March.

For the full Twitter experience on Mac, visit Twitter on web. 👉 https://t.co/fuPJa3nVky

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) February 16, 2018

Officially ending its run on the Mac App Store with a one-and-a-half star rating, it’s safe to say the app wasn’t exactly beloved. What Twitter for Mac lacked, users inevitably found in third party apps.

Twitter is aware of the competition its own app faced from third parties, and has even gone as far as to acquire them in some cases. TweetDeck is one such example of a rival app that ended up being owned by Twitter.

It’s possible that Twitter decided to sunset the Mac app rather than get it up to speed with other offerings. After all, the reason why it’s not “consistent across all platforms” is because it has been virtually abandoned.

TweetDeck for Mac is still available, but you may notice that Twitter didn’t even recommend it as an alternative. Coupled with the fact it hasn’t been updated since 2015, one can’t help but wonder if it too will hit the chopping block.

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/8362064

Facebook is making its ad metrics clearer by introducing new labels that show how they are calculated.

Estimated or In Development

Facebook is now labeling some metrics in Ads Manager as either ‘estimated’ and/or ‘in development.’ These labels can be found in a section within the Ads Manager reporting table called “tool tips.”

Labels can also be displayed using the customize column selector for ads running across Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network.

What Are Estimated Metrics?

Facebook explains that its estimated metrics can provide guidance in areas where the end result is difficult to quantify. Real-time data is often provided as an estimation based on sampling. Going forward, when sampling methods are used the metric will be labeled as “estimated.”

Reach, for example, is calculated using sampling methods. Not just on Facebook, however, as reach for TV and other digital ads are estimations also.

What Are In Development Metrics?

Metrics marked as being in development are either new or still in testing. Facebook has to test its metrics before launching new ad products. Therefore, the way an ‘in development’ metric is calculated may change over time.

Then there will be some metrics that end up being both ‘estimated’ and ‘in development,’ as shown in the screenshot below.

Removing Redundant Metrics

In July 2018, Facebook will remove around 20 ad metrics that are “redundant, outdated, not actionable or infrequently used.”

As an example, Facebook will be removing the social reach metric because it is not different enough from the regular reach metric.

Facebook did not provide a complete list of metrics that will be removed, but I expect there will be more details as July approaches.

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/8361600

A new feature has been added to Facebook Messenger that will allow users to invite other people to calls already in progress.

Let’s say you’re on a call with a client or colleague and now you need the expertise of another person on your team. Facebook Messenger will let you quickly send them an invite to join the call.

Previously, if you wanted to add another person to an audio or video call, you would have to end the call, start a group chat with all parties, and begin a new call from the group chat window.

Now when you’re in an audio or video call there will be an “add person” icon. Tap the icon, then select who you want to invite and the individual will be added to the in-progress call.

This new feature is available with the latest update to Facebook Messenger on iOS and Android.

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/8348248