Facebook Fights Back Against Myth That News Feed is Limited to 26 Friends by @MattGSouthern

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Facebook has come out swinging against those perpetuating a myth that its news feed displays a limited amount of content.

A persistent meme keeps popping up which has forced Facebook to respond and debunk false claims.

The meme claims that Facebook has a limit on the number of people who show up in the news feed.

Usually, the number is said to be around 25 or 26 friends.

People are copying and pasting the meme, in the form of a block of text, in an attempt to bypass a limit that doesn’t exist.

The meme encourages people to leave a comment on the post in order to show up in the other person’s news feed more often.

Facebook is advising users to stop spreading the meme because there is no actual limit on the number of people who show up in someone’s news feed.

The meme usually goes something like this:

“News feed recently shows only posts from the same few people, about 25, repeatedly the same, because facebook has a new algorithm.

Their system chooses the people to read Your post. However, I would like to choose for myself, Therefore, I ask you a favor: if you read this message leave me a quick comment, a “hello”, a sticker, whatever you want, so you will appear in my news feed.

Don’t just “Like”, Facebook requires a “Comment”. Even one word! Thanks!!!

Otherwise Facebook chooses who to show me and instead I don’t need facebook to choose my friends!”

Facebook wants to clear things up and stop the false claims from spreading further.

Facebook’s News Feed Has No Limit

Facebook Fights Back Against Myth That News Feed is Limited to 26 Friends

Facebook Fights Back Against Myth That News Feed is Limited to 26 Friends

A Facebook product manager in charge of rankings released the following statement:

“The idea that News Feed only shows you posts from a set number of friends is a myth…

If we somehow blocked you from seeing content from everyone but a small set of your friends, odds are you wouldn’t return.”

People may be led to believe this myth because the news feed is algorithmically generated.

It prioritizes posts from people, pages, or groups that a person interacts with most frequently.

So, if you engage with a limited number of people, chances are you’ll see them more often in your news feed compared to others.

However, you can always scroll down further to see posts from a wider group of people.

If you want to make sure you see everything from a certain person or page, you can use the ‘See First’ feature to put them at the top of your feed.

The company says it’s continuing to build new ways for people to control what they see on Facebook.

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Facebook Introduces New Ways for Businesses to Communicate with Customers by @MattGSouthern

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Facebook will soon be rolling out two new ways for businesses to communicate with customers via messaging and groups.

Receive Instagram DMs in Facebook Messenger

Facebook is going to make it possible for businesses to receive and respond to customer messages using the same service.

Instagram direct messages will be integrated with the Facebook page inbox. So DMs sent through Instagram can be read and responded to using Facebook.

This will give businesses the ability to respond faster while ensuring they never miss a message from a customer.

According to Instagram internal data, 150 million people on Instagram have a conversation with a business every month.

Facebook’s latest quarterly report revealed that 10 billion messages are sent between people and businesses every month on FB Messenger.

This feature is said to roll out over the coming weeks to businesses in the US and Brazil.

To be clear, this feature will only be available for business pages, not personal accounts.

There has been talk lately of Facebook combining Messenger with Instagram and WhatsApp, but that’s not what is happening here.

Facebook Pages Can Participate in Groups

Facebook pages will soon be able to communicate with customers in group discussions.

Currently, pages can create groups but they cannot post content in the group as the page itself.

Of course, representatives from a Facebook page can participate in groups with their personal accounts.

But that’s not quite the same as communicating directly with the business page.

This change is also rolling out in the coming weeks.

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Facebook is Changing the Way Advertisers Set Campaign Budgets by @MattGSouthern

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A major change is coming to the way Facebook advertisers set campaign budgets.

Starting in September 2019, all Facebook ad campaigns will be migrated to campaign budget optimization.

That means advertisers will have to set one central campaign budget across all ad sets.

Facebook will automatically distribute the budget to top performing ad sets, which is said to generate the best results for a campaign.

Here’s a visualization, provided by Facebook, of how campaigns work with and without campaign budget optimization.

Facebook is Changing the Way Advertisers Set Campaign Budgets

Facebook is Changing the Way Advertisers Set Campaign Budgets

The forthcoming change will apply to all new and existing campaigns.

Currently, campaign budget optimization is an optional setting.

Advertisers also have the option to set budgets for individual ad sets.

In September, campaign budget optimization will be the default setting that cannot be turned off.

It’s likely this will be a significant change for most advertisers which will require a period of adjustment.

Although Facebook claims campaign budget optimization can generate more results and lower costs.

Facebook highlights the following benefits of campaign budget optimization.

  • Capture the most results for your budget and lower your total cost per result.
  • Save significant time with an automated process that eliminates the need to manually shift budgets between ad sets.
  • A simplified campaign management process with fewer budgets to track and re-allocate during optimization.
  • More efficient spending across audiences with a process that finds the lowest cost opportunities across all ad sets and the markets they target.

Facebook is giving advertisers plenty of time to get familiar with campaign budget optimization before it becomes the default.

It may be a good idea to start experimenting with it now if you’ve never used it before.

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7 social media monitoring tools to check out in 2019

The beginning of a new year is as good a reason as any other to try something new: a different lifestyle, a new hobby, a brand new marketing strategy.

And, of course, a new tool, since it’s both exciting and rewarding to discover awesome software that helps you deal with work and, sometimes, with life as well.

This is a list of social media monitoring/listening tools you should check out next year.

Some of them have existed for a while, some are new and fresh on the market.

But all of them are worth trying out and using in your marketing tool set (if social monitoring is in your marketing strategy at all, as it should be). So let’s start:

Which social media monitoring tools should you check out this year?

1. Awario

awario dashboard, a social media monitoring tool

Awario collects mentions of your keywords from a large range of sources (that keeps getting larger).

It monitors all major social media platforms, Reddit and other forums, news sites and blogs, and the Web.

It works in real-time: whenever your keyword is mentioned, it will immediately appear in your mention feed, and you’ll be able to check it at any point and reply to the mention straight from the dashboard. All reviews, complaints, questions and comments can be dealt with as quickly as you like.

Awario also does its fair deal of analysis. It analyses the growth of mentions, their Reach (how many people do mentions reach), its sentiment (a percentage of positive, negative, and neutral mentions), mentions’ locations, languages, and sources.

You can also generate reports on mentions’ statistics, compare analytics with your competitors, and see your industry influencers.

One of the features that makes Awario stand out is Awario Leads – a recent addition made specifically for finding hot leads online. It brings surprisingly good results and can properly transform the way you sell!

Price: Starts with $29/mo. You can also sign up for a free 14-day trial.

2. Mention

mention dashboard, a social media monitoring tool

Mention is one of the oldest and tried out social media monitoring tools. The French company had the time to mature, discover what the users need, and make sure it delivers the best possible results.

Its main goal is real-time search: you get the results from the past 24 hours after setting up an alert. Historical data is only available on request.

Mention is a good choice for large companies: it monitors all main sources, lets you tag and organize mentions, build your own custom reports and export them in PDF and CSV.

There’s even an automated reports feature: they update you on what’s happening with your alerts on a regular basis. The tool also finds influencers in your industry, reveals their interests, locations, and follower count, and makes it easy to jump into influencer marketing.

Mention is integrated with Slack and Zapier which makes marketing workflow smooth and simple.

Price: Starts with $29/mo. You can sign up for a free 14-day trial.

3. Brand24

brand24, a social media monitoring tool

Brand24 is a solid social media monitoring tool for small and medium-sized businesses.

It has existed for a while on the Polish market, but focused on the English-speaking part of the world fairly recently. It monitors Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, the web and saves historical data for up to 12 months.

Similarly to Awario and Mention, Brand24 filters by countries and languages, provides mentions’ statistics, and Influencer reports. However, reports aren’t white-label and data export is only allowed in the Premium plan.

Brand24 allows multi-user access for up to 99 users, which is great for large social media marketing teams.

Moreover, they have Slack integration and a mobile app, making social media monitoring a process that anyone from the team can do at any point of their day.

Price: Starts with $49/mo. You can sign up for a free 14-day trial.

4. TweetDeck

tweetdeck dashboard, a social media monitoring tool

TweetDeck isn’t quite on the same level as the tools mentioned before, as it only just monitors Twitter.

But that’s fair, since it’s a tool By Twitter for Twitter. The tool doesn’t stop at monitoring: you can also schedule posts for Twitter and look at Twitter analytics.

Basically, it’s a handy tool if Twitter is your preferred marketing channel and the one you want to keep an eye on. After all, it often makes sense: most social media crises happen there, and most brands interact with customers on exactly this social media platform.

Price: Free. Sign up with your Twitter account.

5. Keyhole

keyhole dashboard, a social media monitoring tool

Keyhole is a tool that combines a real TweetDeck and a hypothetical TweetDeck for Instagram.

Keyhole does social listening for these two platforms and analyzes the mentions found. It also does automated posting on Twitter and Instagram. Besides these two platforms, Keyhole monitors blogs and news sites.

What Keyhole does especially well is reports. Clear, customizable, and embeddable reports include growth rates, engagement metrics, historical data, social media influencers, and sentiment analysis. You’ve got access to all kinds of presentation forms: clouds, graphs, charts, maps, and so on. It’s a delight for both users and clients.

Price: Starts with $199/mo. Sign up for a free 7-day trial.

6. Brandwatch

brandwatch dashboard, a social media monitoring tool

Brandwatch is a tool made for marketing departments and social media marketing teams that you might find in big corporations. It does social listening across all platforms, blogs, forums, and the web.

It mostly stands out due to its social media analytics and reporting features. Brandwatch collects not only its own social listening data, but also other kinds of data from Hootsuite, Buzzsumo, and Google Analytics.

As a result, you get demographic and psychographic data about your audience, their location and languages, trending topics in your niche, robust sentiment analysis, and all other information you might need to do comprehensive market research.

You also get dashboards that can be exported into customizable PowerPoint presentations.

Price: Starts with $500/mo. There’s no free trial, but you can book a demo here.

7. Talkwalker

talkwalker dashboard, a social media monitoring tool

Talkwalker is another social media monitoring tool that’s made mostly for agencies.

It monitors even niche social media platforms, such as Flickr, Pinterest, Foursquare, SoundCloud, Twitch, and so on, in addition, of course, to all the main ones, such as blogs, forums, news sites, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. It stands out for the ability to analyze images (e.g., find all photos with your logo).

Talkwalker is integrated with Google Analytics and analyses age, gender, occupation, location, languages; identifies main content themes and mentions’ sentiment.

Just as Brandwatch, Talkwalker is meant to work with great amounts of data rather than with specific mentions, and its main uses are market research and reputation management.

Price: Freemium, paid plans start with $700/mo. Start for free here.

Conclusion

So here you go: you’ve got a sample of the best social media monitoring tools for every kind of budget and every kind of social listening goals: from customer service to lead generation and extensive market research. Go ahead and start the year with a new tool that is best for you and your business!

Read next:

Related reading

social media trends 2019

bing ads trending queries and broad match

https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/04/social-media-monitoring-tools-2019117809/




Snapchat is Considering Making Public Posts Permanent by @MattGSouthern

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Snapchat is reportedly considering the idea of introducing permanent photo and video posts.

Also, in another stark contrast to what Snapchat is known for, the platform may also reveal identities of users who publish public posts.

Currently, Snapchat only displays usernames which could be completely anonymous.

Reuters was first to break this news, saying the information was received by “people familiar with the matter.”

These changes would only affect content shared to “Our Story,” which allows posts to be seen by people outside of a user’s circle of friends.

Snapchat built its platform on giving users the ability to publish photos and videos that disappeared after 24 hours.

Users now have the option to create public posts that stay on the network for up to 90 days.

Making posts last permanently would be the total opposite of what Snapchat is known for.

This change is reportedly being considered in an effort to appease Snapchat’s news partners, who say the temporary nature of public posts makes them hard to work with.

News organizations are said to be reluctant to embed Snapchat stories into articles because they will eventually disappear. The content is also difficult to verify as users are anonymous.

Implementing changes that make content more useful to partners serves Snapchat’s interests as a publicly traded company.

In theory, Snapchat could generate more advertising revenue if its content was visible for a longer period of time.

Snapchat has not released an official statement regarding any of these changes, and Reuters says the company declined to comment.

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Instagram Stories Are Viewed by 500 Million Users Per Day by @MattGSouthern

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Instagram Stories have hit the daily user count of 500 million, which is up from the 400 million reported in June 2018.

Stories are growing amongst advertisers as well, with 2 million now buying Stories ads across Instagram and Facebook.

These numbers were revealed during Facebook’s Q4 2018 earnings call, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg hailed Stories as the company’s latest big game-changing feature.

Instagram’s daily active users were not reported, though Zuckerberg says more than 2 billion people use at least one of Facebook’s properties every day.

So the amount of people viewing Stories each day represents a significant percentage of the company’s daily users.

Yes, Stories are popular, but what’s next?

After spending 2018 focusing primarily on improving security, Zuckerberg says 2019 is all about building new experiences.

More specifically, the company is planning to deliver new experiences in the following areas.

Shopping and Commerce

Zuckerberg says the area he’s most excited about when it comes to Instagram, is delivering “qualitatively new experiences” in commerce and shopping.

Messaging

Messaging is the area growing most quickly, Zuckerberg says. Without revealing too much, he adds:

“…and this year people are going to feel these apps becoming the center of their social experience in more ways.”

He may be referring to the company’s plans to allow Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp users communicate with each other.

Facebook Groups

The way people experience groups and communities will deepen this year.

“We’re going to get to a point soon where people feel like Facebook is about communities as much as it’s about your friends and family…”

Facebook Watch

Zuckerberg is hopeful that Watch becomes more mainstream. There are currently 400 million people who use it every day.

Facebook may introduce new ways for video content to grow outside of the news feed.

For more information, you can read Zuckerberg’s full statement here.

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Creative Social Media Marketing Ideas You Can Implement Today

Due to the information revolution, marketing strategies are rapidly changing. What was in trend a couple of months ago, now is passé. With that along, ways of using the same marketing tools are constantly changing. Just a couple of years ago financial investment in commercials was at its peak – millions were invested in advertisement videos. Nobody could predict that social media would become so crucial in the marketing world.  

it is not easy to keep up with all the trends that are going viral. Here are the most creative ways in which you should use social media if you want your business to keep up with hot trends.

Creative Social Media Marketing Ideas

1. Collaborate With Another Brand

This is a great way of gaining new followers and exposing yourself to a different audience. The only point of partnering with another brand is to choose not a competitor, but a brand with only a slightly different target audience. That way both parties will widen the audience and benefit from the collab.

2. Use The User-Generated Content (UGC)

The pressure of constantly creating good quality content for your social media and website can be a nightmare. Why on earth then you would not use and share the content your followers and fans are literally providing you with. You can make different Instagram campaigns asking your audience to engage and post a photo with certain hashtags. It can be anything from asking a simple question, to selfie with your brand’s product. Also, keep in mind that people will always believe more in your brand’s service if they see other people besides you enjoying it as well.  

3. Giveaway Time!

Did anyone ever say no to free stuff? People love getting things for free. Giveaways and contests are a great way of getting new followers and UGC that you then share on your social media. Conditions of contests and giveaways are usually consisted of liking or following your account, and maybe posting a picture or writing a comment on a certain subject. Either way. it is a fun way of engaging your audience with your brand.  

4. Hop on Hot Trends Wagon

Unlike before, when you only had to think about selling the product, now you have to think about sharing ideas, lifestyles, and humor with your audience. That is why it is super important to stay on track about trending topics and state your opinion here and there. Before you do that, you should be aware of a couple of things. First is that you have to completely understand the trend, and why people are buzzing about it. And second, make sure that it is relevant to your service/product in some, at least vague way. Adding something valuable to the topic will bring you more integrity, and respect from your audience. Plus you will earn some new ones as well. Keep in mind that keeping up with all the different trends and topics is a full-time job. If you want to do it right. It was never a better time to outsource this task to professional managers of social media, than today. Having an advantage of being a remote job, you can even choose experienced social media agency based in Sydney. Location does not matter.  

5. Include Behind The Scenes

There is no better way of your audience getting to know your brand in depth, than by letting them see who is behind your products and posts. It is a more intimate strategy that builds trust and creates deeper, more personal relationships with your users. It helps them see your team and working environment in the right spotlight. You can share photos of your team working, having a break, team building… Or even short videos including funny moments with your coworkers.  

6. Create Educational Videos

Good How-to video has never been left unshared. These videos are very eye-catchy, as they are visually appealing and the audience can learn something new from them. Most shareable contents are usually regarding crafts, hacks, and cooking. Try to find a topic that is in some connection to your product or service and that will at the same time be attractive to the audience. It will help you grow your followers and build trust in the knowledge that stands behind your brand.

7. Let Influencer Borrow Your Social Media

This is another creative strategy of using your social media. Basically, you are collaborating with a relevant influencer and letting them post on your behalf on social media for a certain period of time. This creative strategy brings your brand a fresh perspective and adds new faces to your followers. People are identifying with other people much easier than they do with brands. Allowing this takeover, influencer’s audience will be exposed to your brand, and vice-versa.

If you have not already, start implementing these social media marketing strategies. Invest your time in searching for the most effective marketing strategies, and make sure to keep up with the newest social media marketing trends.

Creative Social Media Marketing Ideas You Can Implement Today




Google+ is Officially Shutting Down on April 2nd by @MattGSouthern

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An official date has been set for the shut down of Google+, which will now occur on April 2nd.

Users have slightly over two months to retrieve their Google+ data before it’s gone forever.

“On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts.”

Deleted data includes photos and videos in personal albums as well as Google+ pages. Photos and videos backed up in Google Photos will not be deleted.

For complete information on how to export your Google+ data, see my article here.

Google notes that the process of deleting content will take a few months, during which time content may remain online.

“… users may still see parts of their Google+ account via activity log and some consumer Google+ content may remain visible to G Suite users until consumer Google+ is deleted.”

It was first announced back in October 2018 that Google+ would be shutting down as a result of a data breach and low consumer adoption.

The original plan was for Google+ to shut down by August 2019, however, that date was moved up to April following a second data breach.

Google did not announce an exact date for the shut down until today.

Another date to keep in mind is February 4th, which is when users will no longer be able to create new Google+ profiles, pages, communities or events.

One more date to be aware of is March 7th, which is when commenting via Google+ will be removed from all sites.

Lastly, in early March, Google+ Community owners and moderators will be able to download a full set of data from their communities. You can learn how to do that here.

Google+ for G Suite will remain active, there are no plans to shut down the enterprise version at this time.

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Marketers are Shifting Advertising Budgets to LinkedIn by @MattGSouthern

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Marketers are reportedly shifting advertising budgets away from platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and spending more on LinkedIn ads.

According to a programmatic advertising survey conducted by DigiDay, 42% of media buyers plan to increase their ad spending on LinkedIn.

Around 47% plan to keep their LinkedIn ad budgets the same and 11% said they would decrease spending.

DigiDay’s survey data is based on 290 media buyers who already utilize LinkedIn.

One of the reasons why marketers may be increasing their LinkedIn ad budgets is because the ads are more expensive to buy.

LinkedIn video ads, for example, can be 6 to 8 times more expensive than a video ad on Facebook.

A unique benefit of LinkedIn ads, arguably justifying the added cost, is the ability to target business professionals.

For example, advertisers can target LinkedIn users who work at a large company with over 10,000 employees.

In contrast, Facebook does not allow advertisers to target people by their job title or place of employment.

LinkedIn ads are said to drive more quality leads, while ads on Facebook and Twitter are better for reach and awareness.

Foursquare, a company that spends more of its advertising budget on LinkedIn, says every five figures spent generates six figures in return.

Marketers also praise LinkedIn’s internal ads team, while Facebook’s team is said to be “frustrating.”

New LinkedIn Ad Targeting On the Way

Sources tell DigiDay that LinkedIn is working on a solution for targeting “lookalike audiences.”

This would allow marketers to target potential customers who are similar to a company’s existing customers.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Facebook offers a similar targeting capability on its ad platform.

Most recently, LinkedIn introduced interest targeting, which lets marketers target users based on their professional interests.

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Facebook Enhances Ad Units for Automobile Dealers by @MattGSouthern

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Facebook is upgrading the targeting capabilities of its automotive inventory ads with the ability to reach more people.

Dealerships can now use automotive inventory ads to reach people who have visited other auto and dealer-related Pages, websites and apps.

Previously, targeting of automotive inventory ads was limited to people who visited a dealer’s own website or app.

According to a recent Facebook IQ survey, 63% of car buyers discover new vehicles online. With this update, dealers can now reach more prospective buyers.

“Here’s how the ads work: let’s say someone is researching and comparing vehicles across several car and dealership sites.

We then automatically generate tailored ads that show the most relevant vehicles to the right audiences, such as people who have visited a car-related Facebook Page, but have not yet visited the dealership’s website.”

Automotive inventory ads allow dealers to upload their car inventory with details such as make, model, year and location.

Brands testing the new targeting capabilities of these ads are seeing strong results, Facebook says.

Lexus Santa Monica used the ads to drive 3.2X more vehicle detail page (VDP) views and 3X lower cost per VDP view compared to previous prospecting campaigns with the same budget.

Castle Chevrolet saw a 27% increase in reach using the new targeting, compared to a prospecting conversion campaign using lookalike audiences.

Facebook notes that auto advertisers can use these ads to reach buyers, but they will not learn any personal information about them.

Also, people can opt out of seeing these ads at any time.

The upgraded automotive inventory ads are now available for all advertisers on Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network.

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