Facebook is reportedly working on a solution for users on Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp to message each other between platforms.

A report in The New York Times revealed the details, including a quote from a Facebook spokesperson:

“[We want to] build the best messaging experiences we can; and people want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private.

We’re working on making more of our messaging products end-to-end encrypted and considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks.”

Each service would still exist is a standalone app, so users will not be forced to download another new app.

The solution is designed for people who only use one of Facebook’s properties to communicate with people who use a different app.

This move would also serve the company’s best interests of keeping users engaged on their platform of choice.

For example, if many of your friends are beginning to favor Instagram, but you prefer Facebook, you could still chat with them without having to leave Facebook.

The idea of integrating the messaging platforms is reportedly being championed by Mark Zuckerberg, who once vowed to keep them separate.

Zuckerberg intends to follow through with this plan despite the rift it is causing within the company at the moment.

Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp have more than 2.6 billion users between them.

This would mark the first time they’ve been able to communicate across the platforms.

The plan is to have a solution in place either by the end of this year or in early 2020.

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/11025356

If I say “social media engagement” metrics, what comes to your mind first?

Most likely it will be likes, comments, and shares.

While these certainly are high-level indicators of content engagement, and (presumably) the effectiveness of your social media efforts, they are far from the only metrics you should consider.

This section will help you understand the full spectrum of metrics available to you for evaluating your content and social media marketing, the meaning and importance of each, and how to use and improve them.

Few will need to keep track of all these metrics, so choose the mix that gives you the most valuable information.

1. Reach

What Is Reach?

Reach is the total number of unique accounts that were exposed to a social media post. It could also measure the number of unique users exposed to a page/profile, a campaign, a type of post (e.g., video vs. image), or any other segment.

How to Track Reach

How reach is tracked varies by platform, and not all platforms (or types of accounts in a platform), will display this metric. Here’s how to find reach for some of the most popular social networks.

Facebook

At the post level, Facebook displays a reach metric at the bottom of each post on your page’s home page. This is visible only to those logged in to an account associated with the page.

Clicking on the “people reached” number will open up “Post Insights” with many more metrics for that post.

You can also view the number of people reached for each post on the page’s Insights tab by selecting “Posts” from the left menu on desktop.

On the Facebook Pages smartphone app, Insights only shows aggregate metrics for entire page.

The desktop Insights “Posts” section lists each published post in reverse chronological order, with reach displayed for both organic and paid versions of the post (if the post has been given a paid boost).

At the Page level, you can see the total reach of all posts from the page for the selected time period on the Insights tab (in the Overview section on desktop).

On desktop, clicking on the Reach card takes you to a graph showing the page’s reach over time, segmented by organic and paid.

Twitter

Twitter does not give a reach metric for organic tweets.

LinkedIn

Click your profile avatar at upper right, and select your company’s page from the dropdown menu. (You must be listed as an administrator for the page.)

From the Analytics tab at top, select “Visitors.” The default view shows the total page views for your company page for the last 15 days. Use the dropdown menu to change the view to “Unique visitors,” which is the equivalent of reach for your page.

Instagram

On the smartphone app, go to the profile page, and tap the graph icon on the top bar to the right of your account name.

The Activity tab shows you aggregate metrics for all activity around your account. Scroll down to the “Discovery” section to see reach for the last seven days. You cannot change the time range for this report.

To see reach for an individual post, tap the Content tab, scroll to the post you want to measure, and tap “View Insights.”

Pinterest

Hover over Analytics at upper left, and select “People You Reach” from the dropdown menu. The graph shows the number of viewers of pins from your profile day-by-day for the selected time period. This is your reach. Your reach is also broken down by four different demographic categories.

Pinterest does not display a reach metric for individual pinned posts.

How to Improve Reach

The first thing to decide is whether increasing your reach is a worthwhile goal for your purposes. Reaching more people is not always the most important objective.

Increasing reach typically becomes valuable in two cases:

• Top of funnel or brand awareness campaigns.
• Campaigns where you don’t think you’ve tapped out the potential market.

For paid social campaigns, the fastest ways to increase reach are usually:

• Increase budget.
• Broaden the targeting.

Increasing reach in organic social is harder, but certainly attainable:

• Leverage your audience. Ask your current audience to share your posts with their followers.
• Develop post creative and shared content that your audience will want to share with others.
• Incentivize subscribing to your page, channel, or content.
• Create posts that encourage engagement, a key metric that causes social networks to show your posts to more people. On Facebook, creating conversations around your posts is the most important engagement.

2. Impressions

What Are Impressions?

An impression occurs any time a post appears in a user’s feed. Depending on the network, the viewer may or may not be required to actually view the post for an impression to be recorded.

How to Track Impressions

How impressions are tracked depends on the platform you are using. Here’s how to find impressions for some of the most popular social networks.

Facebook

Only impressions for paid promoted posts are provided. There is no impression metric for organic posts.

Twitter

Click on your profile avatar at upper right and select Analytics from the dropdown menu.

The default view shows your account’s total impressions for the past 28 days. To see impressions for individual tweets, click on the “Tweets” tab at the top.

Your tweets are displayed in reverse-chronological order. You can sort by top tweets, tweets and replies (includes any comment tweets you made on one of your original tweets), and promoted (tweets with a paid boost).

On the Tweets tab, you can change the date range and also export the data.

LinkedIn

Click your profile avatar at upper right and select your company’s page from the dropdown menu. (You must be listed as an administrator for the page.)

From the Analytics tab at top, select “Visitors.” The default view shows the total page views for your company page for the last 15 days. This is the equivalent of impressions for your page. You can change the date range.

To see impressions for your company page’s individual posts, from the Analytics tab at top select “Updates.” The default view displays a graph of the total impressions for your page’s posts, day-by-day for the past 15 days.

Below that are metrics, including impressions, for each of your page’s posts (called “updates” on LinkedIn).

Instagram

Go to the profile page and tap the graph icon on the top bar to the right of your account name.

The Activity tab shows you aggregate metrics for all activity around your account. Scroll down to the “Discovery” section to see impressions for the last seven days. You cannot change the time range for this report.

Impressions are not displayed for individual posts.

Snapchat

Analytics are only available to select Snapchat Creators with large followings.

Pinterest

Hover over Analytics at upper left, and select “Overview” from the dropdown menu.

The leftmost of the three graphs displays the average daily impressions and actual impressions day-by-day for your profile for the past 30 days. The rightmost graph displays both of those metrics for pins from the website associated with your profile. Below that you will find metrics, including impressions, for the top five pinned posts on your profile from the past 30 day.

To get more detail on pins from your profile or your profile’s associated website, hover over the Analytics tab at top, and select either “Profile” or “Website” from the dropdown menu.

To see impressions for any individual pin on your profile, hover over your profile avatar at upper right and select “My Profile” from the dropdown menu. On the pin you want to evaluate, click the graph icon under the thumbnail image. The number after “Your Pin has appeared…” is the number of impressions for that pin.

How to Improve Impressions

Want more impressions. This KPI is difficult to improve because you have little control over the things that affect it. Generally, the things you do to increase reach should also increase impressions (see the previous section).

3. Shares/Retweets

What Are Shares and Retweets?

A share on social media occurs any time a user intentionally shares one of your posts with his or her own audience. A Retweet is what a share is called on Twitter.

How to Track Shares and Retweets

How shares are tracked depends on the platform you are using. Here’s how to find shares or retweets for some of the most popular social networks.

Facebook

You can see the total number of shares at the bottom of any post.

To view all your share metrics, navigate to the Page’s profile, and click the Insights tab. Then click “Posts” in the left navigation menu.

To see the number of shares for each post by itself, you have to click on the down arrow after “Reactions, Comments & Shares” (which are lumped together in the default view), and select “Reactions / Comments / Shares” from the dropdown menu.

Now engagement metrics will be broken out into those three types for each post. The graph bar and number in lavender is the number of shares for each post.

Twitter

You can see the number of retweets on any of your tweets In your profile at the bottom of each tweet.

To view all your retweet metrics, click on your profile avatar at upper right, and select Analytics from the dropdown menu. Then click on “Tweets” from the top navigation.

In Twitter analytics, retweets are lumped in with all other engagements in the overview. To see the number of shares for an individual tweet, click on “View Tweet Activity” in that tweets listing. There all the engagement types, including retweets, are listed separately with their metrics for that tweet.

LinkedIn

Click your profile avatar at upper right, and select your company’s page from the dropdown menu. (You must be listed as an administrator for the page.)

From the Analytics tab at top, select “Updates.” Now above the graph, click on “Impressions” and select “Shares” from the dropdown menu.

The graph displays total shares for any of your page’s updates (posts), day-by-day for the time period selected (the past 15 days by default). The table below that displays metrics for each update, but shares is lumped into “engagements.”

Instagram

Instagram does not provide any share metrics.

Pinterest

Hover over Analytics at upper left, and select “Overview” from the dropdown menu. On Pinterest, shares are known as either “pins” or “saves.”

You can see the number of pins by either boards or your individual pins, using the top navigation menu on your analytics page. Under the “boards” tab, each board shows the total number of pins made from that board, while on the “pins” tab you must click the graph icon to see the number of “saves” for each pin.

How to Improve Shares/Retweets

The best way to improve your number of shares or retweets is to create posts and/or share content that is highly shareable. In other words, posts that your audience will make your audience feel highly motivated to share.

According to a study by social metrics company Buzzsumo, posts gaining high numbers of shares tend to have at least one of these characteristics:

• Long form rather than short form
• Have at least one image
• Invoke awe, laughter or amusement
• List or infographic
• Trustworthy in appearance (including trusted source)
• Shared by at least one influencer

The New York Times commissioned a study that revealed the following psychological reasons behind sharing on social media:

• Bring valuable and entertaining content to friends
• Define themselves to others
• Grow and nourish relationships
• Self-fulfillment (to feel more involved in the world)
• Promote causes they care about

To be worthwhile, your posts and content still have to be associated with your business goals. The trick is to do that in ways your audience will want to share.

4. Likes/Reactions/Favorites

What Are Likes/Reactions/Favorites?

Likes, reactions, and favorites are names given (depending on the network) to the simplest, one-click engagements users can have with a social media post. Generally, they are a simple way of indicating approval or interest in what was posted.

How to Track Likes/Reaction/Favorites

Here is how to track likes, reactions, or favorites on several of the most popular social networks:

Facebook

A few years ago Facebook changed from offering only “likes” of a post to a range of “reactions” – “like,” “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,” and “angry.”

You must be logged into an account that is connected with a business page in order to see most of the metrics for that account. However, any user can see the number of reactions for any Page post in their news feed on both desktop and the smartphone app.

To get more detailed metrics on reactions, log into an account associated with a business page, and navigate to that page. Select Insights from the top navigation menu, then “Posts” from the left navigation menu.

To see the number of reactions for each post by itself, you have to click on the down arrow after “Reactions, Comments & Shares” (which are lumped together in the default view), and select “Reactions / Comments / Shares” from the dropdown menu.

Now engagement metrics will be broken out into those three types for each post. The graph bar and number in dark purple is the number of reactions for each post.

If you click on the title of a post in that list, the “Post Details” popover will show you a breakdown of the number of reactions by each reaction type.

Twitter

You can see the number of favorites on any of your tweets in your profile at the bottom of each tweet.

To view all your favorites metrics, click on your profile avatar at upper right, and select Analytics from the dropdown menu. Then click on “Tweets” from the top navigation.

In Twitter analytics, favorites are lumped in with all other engagements in the overview. To see the number of shares for an individual tweet, click on “View Tweet Activity” in that tweet’s listing. There all the engagement types, including favorites, are listed separately with their metrics for that tweet.

NOTE: Twitter analytics still uses the older designation of “likes” for favorites.

LinkedIn

Click your profile avatar at upper right, and select your company’s page from the dropdown menu. (You must be listed as an administrator for the page.)

From the Analytics tab at top, select “Updates.” From the Analytics tab at top, select “Updates.” Above the graph, click on “Impressions” and select “Likes.” The graph now displays the number of likes on your page’s posts (updates) day-by-day for the selected time period (default view is the past 15 days).

Below the graph is a listing of all recent updates. If you click the title of a post in that list, the post opens and you can see the number of likes at the bottom of the post.

Instagram

Instagram does not provide any share metrics.

Pinterest

Pinterest has no equivalent of a like or favorite.

How to Improve Likes/Reactions/Favorites

Likes, reactions, and favorites have the lowest barrier of all social engagements. That is, it takes little effort to bestow them, and therefore they are often given without much thought.

So the primary way to increase such engagements is to pay attention to what types of content from both you and your competitors (or others in your vertical) get the most likes and try to create more posts of a similar fashion.

5. Comments/Replies

What Are Comments and Replies?

Comments and replies are responses to an original post from other users, usually appearing with and under that post.

How to Track Comments or Replies

Here is how to track comments or replies on several of the most popular social networks:

Facebook

Any user can see the number of comments for any Page post in their news feed on both desktop and the smartphone app. It appears at the bottom of any Page post.

To view all comment metrics for a page you administer, navigate to the Page’s profile, and click the Insights tab. Then click “Posts” in the left navigation menu.

To see the number of comments for each post by itself, you have to click on the down arrow after “Reactions, Comments & Shares” (which are lumped together in the default view), and select “Reactions / Comments / Shares” from the dropdown menu.

Now engagement metrics will be broken out into those three types for each post. The graph bar and number in pink is the number of shares for each post.

Twitter

You can see the number of comments on any of your tweets In your profile at the bottom of each tweet.

To view all your replies metrics, click on your profile avatar at upper right, and select Analytics from the dropdown menu. Then click on “Tweets” from the top navigation.

In Twitter analytics, replies are lumped in with all other engagements in the overview. To see the number of replies for an individual tweet, click on “View Tweet Activity” in that tweet’s listing. There all the engagement types, including replies, are listed separately with their metrics for that tweet.

LinkedIn

Click your profile avatar at upper right, and select your company’s page from the dropdown menu. (You must be listed as an administrator for the page.)

From the Analytics tab at top, select “Updates.” From the Analytics tab at top, select “Updates.” Above the graph, click on “Impressions” and select “Comments.” The graph now displays the number of comments on your page’s posts (updates) day-by-day for the selected time period (default view is the past 15 days).

Below the graph you’ll find a listing of your page’s posts (“updates” on LinkedIn). The “Social Actions” metric includes comments on each post, but unfortunately comments cannot be separated out from other social actions, such as commenting or sharing.

However, if you click the title of a post in that list, the post opens, and you can see the number of comments at the bottom of the post.

Instagram

Instagram does not provide any aggregated comments metrics for accounts. If you click on an individual post, you can see the number of comments for that post.

Pinterest

Pinterest provides no profile-level metrics on comments. Click on any individual pin, and then click the “comments” tab on the pin to see how many comments were left.

Tracking all of your shares, reactions/comments across different social media manually is very time-consuming. You can get a bird’s-eye view of your social media performance by using third party tools for analytics like SEMrush Social Media Tracker and Hootsuite. On top of that, these tools can give you an opportunity to compare your performance against your competitors.

How to Improve Comments/Replies

Comments and replies happen most often on posts that:

• Express a strong opinion
• Engage users’ emotions
• Get people thinking

If you’re mostly posting links to external content, it’s likely you’re getting few to no comments. Even when posting a link, try asking a good question or expressing an opinion about the shared content.

6. Link Clicks

What Are Link Clicks?

A link click occurs when someone clicks on an external link in a social media post.

How to Track Link Clicks

Link clicks is the first of our social media metrics that can be tracked from your sites own analytics. In Google Analytics, go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels and click on ‘Social’ in the Default Channel Grouping. Here ‘Sessions’ is roughly equivalent to click-through traffic from each social network.

Under Acquisition, there is also a Social section where you can get even more detail on your social media traffic.

Here is how to track link clicks on several of the most popular social networks:

Facebook

To view all click metrics for a page you administer, navigate to the Page’s profile, and click the Insights tab. Then click “Posts” in the left navigation menu.

Facebook provides no aggregate link click metrics for organic posts from a page. In the list of recent posts on the Posts Insight tab, you can see the number of link clicks for each post. Clicks show as a blue bar graph above the engagement bar, with the associated number of clicks for that post.

Twitter

To view all your click metrics, click on your profile avatar at upper right, and select Analytics from the dropdown menu. Then click on “Tweets” from the top navigation.

Twitter analytics provides no aggregated click data for an account. To see the number of link clicks for an individual tweet, click on “View Tweet Activity” in that tweet’s listing. There all the engagement types, including link clicks, are listed separately with their metrics for that tweet.

LinkedIn

Click your profile avatar at upper right, and select your company’s page from the dropdown menu. (You must be listed as an administrator for the page.)

From the Analytics tab at top, select “Updates.” Above the graph, click on “Impressions” and select “Clicks.” The graph now displays clicks on your page’s posts (updates) day-by-day for the selected time period (default view is the past 15 days).

Below the graph is a listing of all recent updates, which includes a click metric for each.

Instagram

Instagram does not provide any click metrics since external links are not allowed in Instagram posts. You can have one clickable link in your account profile. If you want to track traffic from that if it links to a page on your own site, I recommend creating a link with a custom UTM tag and then running it through a link shortening service (such as bit.ly) before posting.

Pinterest

Hover over Analytics at top left and select “Profile.” In the top navigation on the profile analytics page, click on “Clicks.”

The graph shows the total number of clicks resulting in traffic to the website associated with the profile, day-by-day for the selected date range. Below the graph you can see click metrics for the most-clicked pins and most-clicked boards in the past 30 days.

To see all pins and sort by clicks to find the clickthrough ranking of your pins, select a timeframe and then click the “Export Data” button.

How to Improve Link Clicks

First, include clickable links in your posts (where appropriate)! Even if your post is not sharing a specific piece of content, you might be able to include a link to some related content on your site that would be helpful to your followers.

Also, don’t be afraid to share your linked content repeatedly; just be careful about how you space out your shares.

On a network like Twitter, where posts have a very brief life and (unless they go viral) are probably not seen by the majority of your followers, you can repost a little more often. On Facebook, where the algorithm can bring up almost any of your recent posts any time, and where posts get recycled in news feeds if they continue to get engagement, you need to be a little more conservative.

Call attention to the link in your posts by putting it into a call to action statement, and perhaps pointing to it with emoji or special text (>>>).

Use open graph (OG) tags on your site’s content pages so that the linked image in social shares is attractive and enticing.

Use Twitter Cards so when people share a link to your comment on Twitter, your post’s featured image and title are prominently displayed.

7. Most Popular Content

What Is Popular Content?

Popular content is the content from a network profile that has the most user engagement. Typically, it is calculated using a score from several engagement metrics combined. In some cases, a network may provide a listing of “top” or “most popular” posts without disclosing how that is scored.

How to Track Popular Content

Here is how to track your most popular content on several of the most popular social networks:

Facebook

Facebook provides no “most popular posts” list in its online Insights feature, nor does it allow you sort posts by engagement metrics there. You can, however, download your post metrics into a spreadsheet and then sort by one of the engagement columns.

To view download post metrics for a page you administer, log into the associated account, navigate to the Page’s profile, and click the Insights tab. On the Overview tab, click the “Export Data” button. Select “Post Data” as the data type, and “Post Engagement” as the Layout. Click the Export Data button.

Twitter

Click on your profile avatar at upper right, and select Analytics from the dropdown menu. Then click on “Tweets” from the top navigation.

Clicking on “Top Tweets” below the graph will display your most-engaged tweets for the selected time period. Click the Export Data button to download the metrics to a spreadsheet, where you can sort by total engagement, engagement rate, or individual engagements such as likes or retweets.

LinkedIn

Click your profile avatar at upper right and select your company’s page from the dropdown menu. (You must be listed as an administrator for the page.)

From the Analytics tab at top, select “Updates.” Above the graph, click on “Impressions” and select “Social Engagement %.”

Below the graph is a listing of all recent updates with “social actions” and “engagement rate” among the metrics. To sort the updates by one of those metrics to find your most popular updates, click the “Export report” button and download to a spreadsheet.

Instagram

Instagram does not provide any most popular lists for business profiles.

Pinterest

To view the most-saved pins from your business profile, log into a Pinterest business profile. Hover over Analytics at top left and select “Profile.” In the top navigation on the profile analytics page, click on “Saves.”

Below the graph you can see the most-saved pins and boards that had the most-saved pins in the past 30 days.

To see all pins and sort by “saves” to find the most popular, select a timeframe, then click the Export Data button.

How to Improve Most Popular Content

Since most popular content is really more of a ranking than a metric, you cannot “improve” it. But you should monitor your most popular posts to learn what kind of posts and content best engage your audience.

8. Social Referral Traffic

What Is Social Referral Traffic?

Social referral traffic is any traffic to your site that originates from a social media site.

How to Track Social Referral Traffic

Social referral traffic differs from all the metrics we’ve discussed so far in that you can only track it from analytics on your own site. Why? Because traffic isn’t a “referral” until it reaches your site.

In this section I will give instructions for viewing social referral traffic using Google Analytics. If you use some other analytics platform, you may be able to find equivalent metrics to what I discuss.

To see which networks refer the most traffic: In Google Analytics, go to Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals. This report will show you the number of sessions (unique visits) that came from each of Google Analytics’ recognized social network sources. For each, you can see the number of page views, average session duration, and pages per session.

To break out the top pages that receiving traffic from each network, click the network you want to view.

To see which pages on your site drew the most social traffic: In Google Analytics, go to Acquisition > Social > Landing Pages. This report is sorted by the pages on your site that received the most traffic from social networks recognized by Google Analytics.

To break out the top networks that referred traffic to each landing page, click the landing page URL.

Viewing social referrals by the social channel: You can also view social media referral metrics in the Channels report under Acquisition > All Traffic. The Social channel will display in the Default Channel Grouping. Click on Social to see the metrics broken out by social network.

How to Improve Social Referral Traffic

Social referral traffic should improve as you improve all of the metrics discussed above, as it is a function of all of those.

The better your overall social performance is, the more traffic you should get from social sites.

You must be linking to content on your site in many of your social posts if you expect to see traffic from social.

Other ways to increase social referral traffic:

• Place social share buttons on your content to encourage others to share it to social media.
• Use “click-to-tweet” links in your site content with tweetable quotes that people can share to Twitter with one click.
• Build relationships with relevant influencers who will share your posts and content with their social audiences.

9. Conversions/Leads/Purchases

What Are Social Conversions, Leads, and Purchases?

A social conversion is any action from a user of a social network that results in a desired action related to a defined goal. A social lead is contact information from a qualified prospect for your business that was gained via a social post. A purchase is completion of a transaction to buy a product of service that originated from a social network.

For simplicity’s sake, I will refer to “conversions” throughout the rest of this section, as leads and purchases are both types of conversions. Of course, a conversion could be other things as well, such as a download of an asset, completing a contact form, registering for a course or event, etc.

How to Track Social Media Conversions

A full guide to tracking and improving conversions would be a book in itself, so I will provide just the basics here.

Conversions are generally tracked via your site’s analytics, although with paid campaigns on some social networks, it is possible to track certain conversions via the social network’s analytics, if the network enables you to plant a tracking pixel on your site.

The Conversions section of Google Analytics is quite complex and non-intuitive, so for this guide I’ll stick to more basic tracking using other parts of GA.

The most basic step for tracking conversions via Google Analytics is setting up Goals. A Goal is a specified action you want a site visitor to accomplish. A Goal Conversion occurs whenever a visitor completes a Goal.

Goals are created in the Admin section of Google Analytics, under the Views column. Click on Goals, then the New Goal button. The Goal Setup wizard will guide you through setting up your goal. It is very important to give the Goal a name that clearly identifies it, as you will implement and track it by that name throughout Google Analytics.

Once your goal is created, you can see it in many different reports throughout Google Analytics. For example, here is the Conversions section of the Channels report in the Acquisition section.

Notice the dropdown box at the top. Use that to select the particular goal you want to view.

By properly setting up goals, you can track the source of conversions on your site for not only social media referrals, but any other kind of traffic as well.

How to Improve Conversions

As with conversion tracking, conversion optimization is a whole science to itself and beyond the scope of this guide. There are many excellent books, blog posts, and courses that can teach you how to increase the rate of conversions on your site.

10. Optimal Days/Times for Engagement

What Is Optimal Engagement Time?

When it comes to engagement on social media, not all days or times are equal. In most cases, you will get the most reach and engagement for your social posts on days of the week and times of day when more of your audience is online and on social networks.

Warning: I am highly suspect of the value of studies that purport to show the best days or times to post on social networks. While such studies can be useful for getting a general feel for the most active times on various networks, ultimately you need to gather your own stats for your own unique audience.

Automated post timing. Some posting services attempt to automatically determine the best times to post to your social accounts. Some examples are SEMrush’s Social Media Poster and Hootsuite’s auto scheduling.

Finding your best posting times. Use the analytics of each of your social networks to analyze when your audience is most active. Here is how to do that on the networks that provide this insight:

Facebook

On the Insights tab of your business page, go to Posts in the left navigation menu. The chart and graph at the top show the days and times when most of your page’s fans are on the network.

Twitter

Twitter Analytics does not provide handy day of the week and time of day charts as Facebook does, but from the Tweets tab you can see over time when there were peaks and lulls in your tweet engagement. Look for patterns of days that seem to get higher engagement.

For a better analysis, try Followerwonk. On the Analysis tab, enter your Twitter handle and select “analyze their followers.” Once the report generates, you can find a graph of the hours your followers are most active.

Instagram

Tap the chart icon at upper right to go to analytics. Tap Audience and scroll down to the Followers section. Here you’ll see simple charts of when your followers are active, by day of the week and hour of day.

Using Google Analytics

Go to Acquisitions > Social > Network Referrals. Set the time span to a long enough time to get sufficient results. (I recommend three months.) Set the graph to “Day.” Mouse over the graph to see on what days the peaks and valleys typically occur. You can click on any of the social networks listed that have sufficient sessions and do the same to get a day-of-the-week analysis for those networks.

11. Followers

What Are Followers?

Followers on social media are social accounts that subscribe in some fashion to your page/profile and its posts. They are generally the users most likely to receive your content organically.

How to Track Followers

Here is how to track followers on some of the most popular social networks:

Facebook

On Facebook, the primary followers of a page are traditionally known as “fans.” These are users who have at some point clicked a Like button for your page. Users can also “follow” a page, which is a way of subscribing to a page without registering as a fan. However, in Facebook Insights, fans and followers are lumped together as just “followers.”

Navigate to the page and click the Insights tab, then “Followers” from the left navigation. There you will see a series of charts displaying your follower activity over time:

1. Total page followers
2. Net followers (displays number of followers gained and lost over time)
3. Where your page followers happened (shows what users were doing when they became followers)

Twitter

To see the growth of your Twitter following over time, click on the account avatar at upper right, and select “Analytics” from the dropdown menu. Now click on the Audiences tab.

The default view on the Audiences tab is “your followers.” At the top, you’ll see a graph of your follower count day-by-day over the past 30 days. For a more detailed and lengthier view of your following, try a third-party tool such as twittercounter.com.

LinkedIn

Navigate to the page from your profile avatar. Click on Analytics and select “Followers” from the dropdown menu.

Above the graph you’ll find the total follower count for your page, the number of organic followers gained over the past 30 days, and the number of acquired followers (gained through paid promotions). The graph shows a day-by-day number of followers gained over the specified time period. You can export the report to a spreadsheet for deeper analysis.

Instagram

On the profile for your business account, tap the chart icon at upper right to go to analytics. Select Audience. This tab displays your total follower count to date, and how many followers you gained this 7-day period vs. the previous 7 days.

Pinterest

Log into your Pinterest business profile. Hover over Analytics at top left and select “People you reach.” Change the “All audiences” button to “Your followers.” The graph shows how many of your followers viewed and engaged with your pins day-by-day over the selected time span. Pinterest does not display metrics for follower growth.

Utilizing third-party analytics tools like Hootsuite or SEMrush Social Media Tracker is a convenient way of tracking your social fans’ growth across different social media networks at once.

How to Improve Followers

The best way to grow your follower count is to be awesome! Create content that people want to share with others. Engage regularly with your current followers, seeking to turn them into evangelists for your brand and page.

12. Audience Demographics

What Are Audience Demographics?

Audience demographics are a set of metrics describing various characteristics of your audience – things like location, age, gender, income, lifestyle, and more. These insights can help you to create better targeted content and social posts.

How to Track Audience Demographics

Here is how to track followers on some of the most popular social networks:

Facebook

Navigate to your page and click the Insights tab, then “People” from the left navigation.

At the top of the People tab are four tabs describing different segments of your audience:

1. Your fans (people who Liked your page)
2. Your followers (people who follow your page’s content)
3. People reached (people who saw any of your content, whether or not they are followers or fans)
4. People engaged (anyone who engaged in any way with your content)

For each segment, the tab displays the following metrics:

• The percent of people in that segment in each age group, by male and female
• The top countries in which those people live
• The top cities in which those people live
• The top languages spoken by those people

For much more in-depth demographics, create a Facebook Ad account (if you don’t already have one) and add a Facebook pixel to your site. The pixel will begin accumulating data from Facebook users who visit your site. The audience reports in the Facebook Ad Manager provide an astounding amount of information about your site visitors. You do not have to purchase any Facebook ads to use this feature.

Twitter

Click on the account avatar at upper right and select “Analytics” from the dropdown menu. Now click on the Audiences tab.

You can view data for three different audiences:

• Your followers (the default view)
• All Twitter users
• Your organic audience (people who have engaged with your tweets, whether or not they follow you)

For each audience, you can see their most popular interests, the gender mix, household income, consumer buying styles, marital status, home ownership vs renters, and their most popular wireless carriers. The Your Followers segment offers even more demographic categories.

LinkedIn

Navigate to the page from your profile avatar. Click on Analytics and select “Followers” from the dropdown menu.

Below the graph, you’ll see some rudimentary demographics for your page’s followers. Click on “Geography” to change to five other categories: Job Function, Seniority, Industry, Company Size, and Employment Status.

Instagram

On the profile for your business account, tap the chart icon at upper right to go to analytics. Select Audience. This tab displays a few basic demographics about your followers, including gender mix, age range, top locations, and time of day and days of week most active.

Pinterest

Hover over Analytics at top left and select “People you reach.” Below the graph, you can see the top countries, metro locations, languages and gender for your audience.

How to Use Audience Demographics

Audience demographics based on data can be the most effective way to build personas to inform your content and social media marketing strategies. They can also help you know if you’re actually reaching your target audience.

If your demographics isn’t matching up with what you perceive of the most likely prospects for your business, then it’s time to work on new creative and content strategies that will appeal more to the audience you’re missing. The data may also awaken you to new opportunities.

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Image Credits

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita
Screenshots: Taken by author

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/11016905

Facebook may now remove pages that are affiliated with bad actors, even if the page has done nothing wrong.

The company says this change is being made to prevent people from continuing to engage in the malicious activity through other existing pages.

“… we are updating our recidivism policy to better prevent those who have had Pages removed for violating our Community Standards from using duplicate Pages to continue the same activity.”

Previously, people who had pages removed for violating Facebook’s policies were prohibited from creating new pages.

There were no measures in place to stop a person from continuing their behavior through existing pages.

Now, when a person has a Facebook page removed due to policy violations, existing pages they manage may also be removed.

Facebook explains how it plans to enforce this policy:

“To enforce this updated policy, we’ll look at a broad set of information, including whether the Page has the same people administering it, or has a similar name, to one we’re removing.”

Facebook will begin enforcing this change in the coming weeks.

In addition to this policy update, Facebook is also improving its communication with pages that have had content removed.

New “Page Quality” Tab

When Facebook removes content from a page or reduces the distribution of certain content, admins can learn why in the new Page Quality tab.

The tab includes two sections:

• Content we recently removed for violating Community Standards.
• Content recently rated “False,” “Mixture” or “False Headline” by third-party fact-checkers.

Page managers will be able to let Facebook know if an incorrect decision was made.

Facebook notes that while this tab provides greater insight, it is not all-encompassing.

For example, it will not show information about content removals for things like spam, clickbait, or IP violations.

This tab has started rolling out to pages as of today.

More Resources

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/11014770

LinkedIn ads can now be targeted to other users based on their professional interests.

In an announcement, the company states:

“… we’re excited to announce interest targeting in Campaign Manager. Interest targeting lets you reach members with relevant ads that match their professional interests — based on the content they share and engage with on LinkedIn. With these added options, you can more easily achieve your campaign objectives and grow your business.”

Advertisers can target their campaigns using over 200 professional interests, like artificial intelligence, global economy, customer experience, and more.

LinkedIn emphasizes the following benefits of Interest Targeting:

• More relevant ads: Shape brand perception by associating your brand with the topics your audience cares about.
• Target specific accounts + interests: Use account targeting along with interest targeting to reach potential buyers who have an interest in the content that’s relevant to your business.
• Target people by degrees + interests: You can also use a combination of degrees and interests to reach an even more targeted audience.

LinkedIn has been testing Interest Targeting over the past few months, with customers seeing a 25% increase in click-through rate.

Interest Targeting will be available to all LinkedIn advertisers over the next week.

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/11011825

Available ad impressions on social media are hitting a wall as user growth slows, driving up CPC and CPM prices. As demand increases, it becomes even more important for advertisers to properly optimize campaigns to maximize their return on investment for paid social.

According to Merkle’s Q2 2018 Digital Marketing Report, advertiser spend increased 40% year-over-year in Q2, while impressions fell 17%.

The influx of advertising dollars to social media platforms with a steady number of available impressions means that the average cost-per-click (CPC) is rising.

Many paid social media campaigns do not maximize their return on investment because of poor or incomplete optimization, limited distribution, incomplete tracking, and undefined goals.

Here’s what you need to do to squeeze more out of your paid social media campaigns.

Advertising for the funnel

Each advertisement you run must have a clear goal in mind, and that goal must fit into a larger piece of your paid social media strategy. Moving prospects from the top of the funnel to the bottom—as efficiently as possible—is necessary for a successful ad campaign.

Keep in mind that it may take multiple interactions with your advertisements and content before someone works their way through the funnel. Your ad campaigns should never take on a one-and-done approach.

An ad targeting a past purchaser will be very different than an ad targeting someone who is completely unfamiliar with your brand and products.

This makes it important to segment your customers into the correct phase of the buying process. Run different ads with different messages and calls to action for each segment.

Advertise smarter, not harder.

Simple process improvements

A number of small improvements can greatly impact the success of a paid social media campaign. Not implementing these is basically leaving money on the table. Remember, we are trying to squeeze every last drop of ROI out of these campaigns, even if getting the maximum return takes time.

While the examples I cite relate to Facebook and Instagram, we can see equivalents on Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat to some degree.

Whichever social media platform you are advertising through, follow platform best practices and make sure everything is set up properly—through tracking pixels and UTM codes. Everything should be properly attributed across platforms.

Facebook Pixel

First, make sure that Facebook’s tracking pixel is properly implemented on your website.

Facebook Pixel Helper, a free Chrome browser extension from Facebook, can help you troubleshoot any issues. You can find information on how to set up Facebook Pixel from scratch on Facebook’s website.

You also need to set up Facebook Pixel with standard events like newsletter sign-ups and successful e-commerce actions (add to cart, purchase, etc.) to help with creating higher quality custom and lookalike audiences.

Facebook and Instagram have powerful tracking and conversion optimization abilities in their ad technology, so use them.

Custom audiences

Using Facebook’s custom audiences feature is a must if you want your paid social media campaigns to really perform.

It is foolish to not capture and harness information about your website’s visitors, especially when it is free and requires only minutes to set up. Facebook offers a number of ways to create a custom audience in the Facebook Ads Manager.

Website traffic

If your Facebook Pixel is properly set up, it can record every action taken by visitors on your website in the past 180 days. The actions include page views, button clicks, abandoned carts, and purchases.

You can create audiences to build lookalike audiences or use them for remarketing.

Advertising to someone who has already been to your website and possibly even completed on-site actions has a much higher chance of converting than advertising to a first-time visitor.

Offline conversions

With proper implementation, you can track offline events, like sales at physical retail locations, after someone has interacted with your Facebook advertisements.

There are two ways to set up offline activity: either upload the offline data CSV file manually to Facebook or sync your CRM directly with Facebook. The customer information will then be matched to the correct user IDs on Facebook.

This approach will show you if someone took a specific action, like purchasing after viewing.

Lookalike audiences

You can create lookalike audiences in the Facebook Ads Manager to find audiences that have similar traits and characteristics to your ideal user.

The lookalike audience is created based on a custom audience, which acts as a seed audience. This allows you to greatly expand the number of potential customers you can target based on a higher-quality custom audience.

Conversion tracking

Conversions are of paramount importance for e-commerce stores. Website traffic is useless unless it results in sales. Luckily, Facebook and Instagram can help optimize your campaign’s delivery for successful conversions.

Conversion tracking depends on the proper implementation of the tracking pixel and properly set up ad campaigns. You also need to set up standard events or custom conversions on Facebook to accurately measure and optimize for conversions. Google Analytics offers conversion tracking as well, but it’s based on a last-click-attribution model.  

There is no reason not to track and optimize for conversions. Even media companies that generate revenue by on-site ad units can benefit from optimizing toward conversions by focusing on pages-per-session to find a higher quality user, opposed to general website visitors.  

Remarketing

Remarketing with social media ad managers requires proper implementation of each platforms’ tracking pixels.

For example, Facebook’s audience and lookalike audience features are powerful tools that can track users and specific website actions up to 180 days in the past.

Remarketing with these audiences in mind is a strategic approach, and entire campaigns can be built around them. In fact, these types of campaigns often yield the highest returns.  

Image: http://marketingjumpleads.com/facebook-remarketing

Sequential Advertising

Sequential advertising is when you show different ads to the same person over a period of time. Large television campaigns sometimes use this tactic, but there is no reason why it cannot be successfully applied to paid social media campaigns.

For example, you may show an audience an ad focusing on one benefit of your product. The next ad, after the majority of people in the audience has seen the first one, would highlight another benefit of the product. The third ad would highlight a customer testimonial. You are showing your audience the same product but with different messaging.

If you are running video ads, you could also share a related story via that format. Think the Budweiser Frogs television campaign or some of BMW’s mini-movies. A sequential advertising campaign does not have to go to such lengths to be successful, but fresh, on-brand, eye-catching creative in any form is generally a good thing.

Maximizing distribution

Besides improvements to the advertising process, further optimization to paid social campaigns can be achieved through maximizing the campaigns’ distribution. That will ensure your campaign is successful based on your set goals. Not maximizing the distribution of your ads will leave money on the table.

Regularly refresh your creative

Using the same creative—images, video, and text—over and over can quickly cause fatigue. This means your audience will start to ignore your ads—or worse, start leaving mean comments on them. You’ll also start experiencing an increase in CPM and CPC as you lose more in Facebook’s ad auction.

Regularly refresh your creative to avoid this. It makes a difference, even if you’re just refreshing your images or copy every month.

Standing out in the newsfeed is a big part of successful paid campaigns. If you are using photographs or videos, they need to be high quality and relatable to make the user stop scrolling through their newsfeed.

Pay special attention to resolution, aspect ratio, and how the ad units look on a mobile device. The majority of users will see your ad on their phone, so make sure it’s thumb-stopping.   

Use all available placements

Facebook is always optimizing for the lowest event cost possible. The vast majority of your results will come from ads run on the Facebook or Instagram newsfeed. But don’t forget about other placements, like the sidebar, messenger, and marketplace.

Automatic placements are the best option to maximize results beyond the newsfeeds.

All placements selected.

Image: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/965529646866485

Limited placements selected.

Image: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/965529646866485

Optimize for mobile

Unless you specifically target only desktop device users, the majority of the impressions or clicks you receive will be from mobile devices. This means you better make sure your creative is mobile-friendly.

Make sure all of your images and videos are formatted to maximize the viewable space on mobile for the type of advertisement you are running. Your headlines and accompanying text also need to be optimized to fit.

If you’re using videos, make sure they’re formatted to a 1:1 aspect ratio (square videos) to take up the most room on the Facebook mobile newsfeed and outperform horizontal aspect videos.

Image: https://blog.bufferapp.com/square-video-vs-landscape-video

Minimize restrictions for the Facebook algorithm

Don’t try to control Facebook too much. Instead, give Facebook room to show your ads to the correct users at the correct time with the least necessary targeting restrictions. The more freedom the algorithm has to use your pixel data, the better able it is to encourage conversions.  

Josh Thompson is Senior Social Media Strategist at Portent—a Clearlink Digital Agency. Josh is Facebook Blueprint Certified and has worked in social media advertising for seven years.

https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/01/22/maximize-roi-paid-social-media/

Social media has certainly proven beneficial over the last two decades.

Once a communication experiment that later evolved into platforms figuring out just how much personal data people would make available to their “digital networks,” social media remains a huge part of Americans’ everyday lives.

For businesses, social media has created a way to send a brand’s messaging to the right people at the right time and hope your brand sticks out to them enough to be interested, let alone loyal throughout their lives.

There are a lot of benefits to be had from using social media.

Here are the the top nine reasons why it’s imperative for businesses to be on social media, and how it can help ensure your brand’s success.

1. Faster, Easier Communication

Customers can contact a customer service representative faster and easier now than ever before thanks to social media.

Businesses can also receive, review, and respond to customers’ grievances faster and easier than ever before.

Depending on the industry and the grievance, challenges may still remain, but the line of communication that once was somewhat challenging to establish is no longer nearly as difficult to do so.

It’s faster now than ever before to contact the right people — and oftentimes without having to even pick up a phone — and it’s only becoming easier as more people and brands use social media platforms to keep in contact with the people that matter most to their business.

Customers can now communicate real feedback in real time like never before, something businesses have strived to achieve for a long time.

2. Networking & Partnerships

In addition to the simplified lines of communication, there’s the aspect of general availability.

Let’s face it: there is a small part of the world’s population that it would be nearly impossible for most average humans to ever directly communicate with without the right kind of help (publicist, agent, etc.).

Also consider actors and actresses, athletes, and other high-profile people most of us Average Joes would never be able to interact with.

Social media helps connect us easier than ever before.

Heck, even politicians and policymakers have been incredibly available — and often faced with backlash — thanks to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

And while this makes for a fun experience when you get a “follow back” from former President Barack Obama or a retweet from your favorite rock band, it also holds endless potential for networking and partnerships that will help your brand in a multitude of ways.

Backlinks, shoutouts, increased referral visits, and increased branding are just some of those ways.

Building quality relationships becomes a lot easier with the streamlined communication we get from social media, and building relationships with key influencers earns a lot of value for your brand.

Some examples of the added value these connections facilitate are:

• Trust from others’ networks and audience members.
• The acquisition of quality backlinks (that offer SEO boost as well as, hopefully, an increase in referral visitors).
• Potential business opportunities.

3. Boost Organic Visibility

There’s so much potential value to be unlocked through social media, aside from the networking and partnership-produced backlinks.

In addition to the SEO value gained from adding quality backlinks to your brand’s website (by way of social media relationships, as well as the ways social media help accumulate a variety of link types to comprise a healthy backlink profile), social media also sends relevancy signals and other signals to search engines like Google to ensure popular content is easily visible and shareable.

It’s important to understand how social media affects SEO as well.

Google has repeatedly said that social media likes, favorites, shares, backlinks, etc. are not direct ranking signals — but there is a correlation between social media activity/popularity and how/why it is ranked by search engines.

So, even though social media shares don’t serve as actual, full-value backlinks, the people, brands, and webmasters/marketers that may see your brand’s content via social media then may very well link to your brand’s content (since it’s quality content offering real value), and those backlinks would certainly hold real value.

4. Increase Website Traffic

Social media channels are supplemental to the brand’s website and, if there is one, its brick-and-mortar location.

Social media is intended to reach different audiences in a personable, useful, and entertaining way and refer those potential customers you may not have ever had the chance to engage with previously to get to know and try your business.

This works well in all cases when done correctly.

Both website traffic and foot traffic should increase accordingly with the free or cheap utility that is social media. Let your messaging reflect that.

5. Customer Feedback

In the world of business, sales, and profits, regardless of what your industry is and who you are marketing and selling to, the focus has to truly be on the customer.

And success, both digitally and traditionally, is achieved by understanding — and delivering — the best quality customer service possible, and doing everything in your power to ensure your customer and potential customers have the best possible experience with your company.

Of course, the product or service you are selling should also be good, but there are always going to be unhappy customers. How we respond to the customers — regardless of how “good” or “bad” their feedback may be — is imperative to your business’s online success and its longstanding reputation.

Social media helps us maintain that reputation by giving us platforms to directly interact with our customers like we never have before. That also means we are receiving real customer feedback directly from the source, faster than ever before (and usually much more raw, too).

Businesses should be using this amazing opportunity to build their brand as a true, consumer-first operation, eventually building the brand’s reputation into one that can never be mistaken and is relied on for many years by an ever-growing customer base.

6. Impress Potential Customers

Keeping in line with maintaining your brand’s respected reputation is the opportunity to impress potential customers with how you’ve handled other, typically unrelated customer interactions.

People often turn to — even rely — on social media and online-review sites to get a good idea of just who a company truly is. Just like marketers, consumers are using social media as a tool to help them make better purchases and decisions in general.

On average, people take into account 10 reviews of a local business before making a purchasing decision. This gives potential customers the chance to see that businesses truly care about their customers even after they’ve made the sale that is so important to them and their business’s success.

7. Branding

While branding essentially involves each numbered entry listed in this column, it’s important to stress it as one of (if not the) most valuable capabilities of social media.

You may not see as high of a conversion rate via social media (depending on the business and sales structure) as you do other marketing mediums (paid search, organic search, etc.), but the impression a brand gives off and the reputation it built can be greatly enhanced and showcased through social media.

Messaging across social platforms allows us to talk about what’s most important to our customers, and lets us train them to keep our brands at the top of their mind when those important buying decisions need to happen.

Each platform is different in terms of what it does well, the demographics of the audience using it, and the kind of content (and timing of its publishing) you see posted regularly. Each brand’s messaging should be tailored as such.

And while your business’s conversion rate is likely going to be lower on social media than it is via email marketing or paid search, your business goal is always going to be conversions, so maximizing them on all available channels is really the name of the game.

Here are are some tips for increasing social media conversions.

During a business’s branding journey across social media, you’re able to talk about what’s important to the brand and its customers. Tell your brand’s story; build the legend as what it’s worth to the people who have devoted their lives to building it.

Share your passion and let others understand and support your brand. That is the real power of social media, and the biggest impact social media has on most brands.

You can show off your brand culture and personality, stand out among the rest for the traits that make your brand different, and attract new, quality employees and further improve your business even more.

8. Track Your Competition

Social media channels also allow us to keep our finger on the pulse of not just other marketing tactics and practices, but also with the tactics used by direct competitors.

And we can learn a lot from our competition.

No one is perfect, and we can all learn something. The ultimate goal is having the customer understand us and depend on us for our authoritative approach within our niche over our competition.

Our competitors are aiming to do the same things as us (establish and protect brand reputation and ultimately sell its products/services), so it’s worth us monitoring and finding out ways our business can do better to educate and entertain users, as well as the things our brand does well, and ways we can get better across the board.

9. User-Generated Content & Crowdsourcing of Ideas

User-generated and crowdsourced content isn’t just free and unique; it can also be awesome.

The larger the audience, the more potential the content has to really impact a brand and its messaging. Brands will receive and be able to (usually) use this sometimes-quality content — videos, images, infographics, memes, etc. — with proper permission, of course.

Social media allows us to ask for this user-generated content, then receive it directly, but there is quite a bit going in between all of that, too.

Most brand will have people post their content with specific hashtags. So, the brand isn’t just receiving the content; the content is actually being posted throughout social networks (being seen by each person’s network individually, as well as the brand and it’s network), and equipped with the required hashtags and other “requirements” (which usually includes following the brand, sharing directly with a certain number of connections, and plenty of others.

Getting the Most Out of Social Media

Each business has different goals and ways it measures success.

Social media can help achieve those goals, but it’s important to stick to the basics and use them in ways that help your brand succeed.

Every brand is different. Let yours shine on social media.

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Image Credits

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/11008196

Results of the annual State of Social report from Buffer have been published, revealing what marketers are focusing on in 2019.

I took a dive into the data to pick out some of the greatest opportunities for marketers, based on what’s working and what’s being underutilized.

An example of something you won’t find in this article is the recommendation to publish video on Facebook.

Why?

Video on Facebook is proven to be an effective tactic which many brands are already utilizing.

According to the State of Social study, only 14.5% of brands don’t publish any video content.

So, what are some other successful tactics that marketers are not doing enough of?

Let’s take a look at what the study tells us.

Facebook & Instagram Story Ads

Data suggests that more than one billion accounts now use stories globally on Facebook-owned properties.

Of those using stories, 57% of brands believe that stories have been “Somewhat effective” or “Very effective.”

However, 62% of respondents say they have yet to invest in stories ads.

This could be one of the greatest areas of opportunity for marketers, as 61% say they plan to invest in stories ads in 2019.

Marketing via Messaging Apps

The State of Social study reveals that messaging apps are still overlooked by almost three-quarters of brands

72% of respondents say they do not use messaging apps for their marketing.

Further, 50% of marketers are not even planning on using messaging apps in 2019.

That means this is an untapped opportunity that will continue to go overlooked this year.

Those who are utilizing messenger apps report seeing open rates of over 98%, and click-through rates of 25%.

For more information on how to get started with messenger app marketing, see the following resource:

Video on LinkedIn

Video is the most effective type of content to share on social media, but where it’s least being shared is on LinkedIn.

Facebook is the most popular channel for businesses to share video content (81%), followed by:

• YouTube (62%)
• Instagram (57%)
• LinkedIn (32%)

According to the State of Social study, LinkedIn is a channel to watch in 2019.

LinkedIn itself is investing more into video content recently, and offering more ways for business pages to share it.

LinkedIn company pages can now upload video content directly and share it as a post.

Early data shows that videos on LinkedIn are getting shared 20+ times more than any other content.

For more information, view the full study here.

More Resources

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/11004128

According to a recent study, 27% of US adult Facebook users say the platform’s classification of their interests is inaccurate.

Further, 74% of users didn’t know that Facebook maintained a list of their interests.

Only slightly more than half of users (51%) say they’re comfortable with Facebook compiling this information.

These statistics are based on a study from Pew Research Center, who asked a representative sample of users to reflect on the data that had been collected about them.

The survey of Facebook users was conducted between September and October of 2018.

Although Facebook makes it easy for people to find out how its algorithm has categorized their interests in the “Your ad preferences” page, it’s not well communicated.

That’s why nearly three-quarters of users surveyed didn’t know about the list of interest and traits.

When directed to the “ad preferences” page, 88% of users found that the site had generated some material for them.

Only 59% of users said Facebook’s categorizations reflect their real-life interests.

What Does This Mean for Marketers?

The findings of this study are particularly relevant to Facebook marketers who target ads to users based on their interests.

Based on these statistics, it’s reasonable to expect that at least some percentage of ads will be shown to the “wrong” users.

By that, I mean ads may be shown to users who aren’t actually interested in the product being advertised, even though Facebook believes they are.

However, with 59% of people saying Facebook’s categorizations are accurate, it’s reasonable to expect that a majority of ads will be shown to the “right” users.

As Pew Research Center concludes, there is a lot of guesswork involved when determining users’ interests:

“Typically, the precise workings of the proprietary algorithms that perform these analyses are unknowable outside the companies who use them. At the same time, it is clear the process of algorithmically assessing users and their interests involves a lot of informed guesswork about the meaning of a user’s activities and how those activities add up to elements of a user’s identity.”

For more information, read the full study here.

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/11003862

A Twitter bug has prevented the “Protect Your Tweets” setting from working as intended for some Android users.

What is particularly notable about this bug is that it has been impacting users over a period of several years.

The company disclosed that the bug began affecting users on November 3, 2014. It wasn’t fixed until January 14, 2019.

We’ve become aware of and fixed an issue where the “Protect your Tweets” setting was disabled on Twitter for Android. Those affected have been alerted and we’ve turned the setting back on for them. More here: https://t.co/0qM5B1S393

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) January 17, 2019

According to Twitter’s announcement, the “Protect your Tweets” setting was disabled for some Android users if certain account changes were made, such as changing the email address associated with the account.

The bug did not people who use Twitter on iOS or on the web.

Twitter has informed people that are known to be affected by the bug. The “Protect your Tweets” setting was automatically turned back on for them if it was disabled.

However, Twitter notes, it cannot confirm every account that may have been impacted. Which is why it’s publicly disclosing the issue.

If you are an Android user who may have been impacted by this bug, Twitter suggests reviewing your privacy settings to check whether or not your tweets are protected.

The company assures users that measures are being put in place to prevent a similar incident from occurring.

“We recognize and appreciate the trust you place in us, and are committed to earning that trust every day. We’re very sorry this happened and we’re conducting a full review to help prevent this from happening again.”

If you have further questions or concerns, Twitter has opened up a data protection inquiry form here.

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/11003353

Twitter has released a new, free resource to help guide marketers’ social media strategies in 2019.

The 2019 Twitter marketing calendar identifies highly anticipated events that will unfold throughout the year.

In addition, Twitter estimates the number of Tweet impressions each of the events are expected to reach, based on internal data.

Events in the calendar range from obvious to niche. Everything from Valentine’s Day to Talk Like a Pirate Day is contained in the calendar.

Here’s an example of what it looks like:

Marketers can use this information to capitalize on unique, once-a-year, opportunities to boost their reach.

For example, pizza places may want to take advantage of the upcoming National Pizza Day on February 9. It’s estimated to generate 34M tweet impressions.

Bars and restaurants may be able to sell more cocktails on February 22, National Margarita Day, which is estimated to generate 14M tweet impressions.

Brands may find it worthwhile to tweet during the MTV VMAs on August 18, which is estimated to generate a whopping 2.5 billion tweet impressions.

Those are just a few of the many events included in Twitter’s marketing calendar.

To view the full calendar, download it here.

More resources:

http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/10994027