Posted 26 weeks ago (November 15, 2011 at 10:00 AM) in Social Media
One of the most exciting parts about the web design industry is that it is constantly evolving and there have been some big changes in social media lately! To keep you up to date, we want to share with you the changes across platforms and how they can affect your business.
Here are the new features for Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn that are making headlines and how they’re useful for your social strategy:
Top Stories
Facebook has re-arranged your newsfeed so that Top Stories not only have a physical location above Recent Stories, but are enlarged and have a blue tag in the upper left hand corner. The tag lets you tell Facebook if the post is, indeed, something they consider a top story. This is valuable as it teaches Facebook what you consider to be relevant news so that it will deliver more appropriate content to your Top Stories so you can focus on content worthy of engagement. It also means that as a business, it’s harder for your posts to gain visibility. So what’s the key to getting your post to be a Top Story in your fan’s newsfeed? Creating valuable content that users will want to read and engage with.
Hiding Stories
When you mouse over a post, an arrow tag appears in the top right hand corner of the wall post. Clicking it reveals a menu of options that help you further customize your newsfeed. You can remove the story like using the blue tag, report the story as spam, control how much content you see from the Facebook user who posted the update, and subscribe or unsubscribe to the user. This provides a more precise level of control over what shows in your newsfeed and helps you filter incoming content which will save you time when identifying posts that would be valuable to respond to. This is something any user can do to any story in there newsfeed...including your business’ posts! With this kind of control, again, it is increasingly more important for your posts to offer value to your customer.
Subscribing to feeds
This is a new option that allows users who are interested in following your content to see your posts without actually being friended or a fan. You have ultimate control over who you allow to subscribe. So, say there is a user whom you do not wish to friend but don’t mind if they look at certain posts. You can choose to let them subscribe to see posts that you mark are for subscribers but they will not have full access to your profile and information the way a friend would.
Facebook Lists
This is an expanded grouping feature that creates group lists based on commonalities between you and your Facebook friends or allows you to create groups of your own. The benefit of this feature is that you can hand-pick groups to receive specific content and before you post or share your status, you can choose from the drop-down menu which friend list to share the post with.
Timeline
The most unique and exciting new feature from Facebook is the Timeline. It’s essentially a way to create an online scrapbook that highlights events throughout the life of the user. You can choose to highlight certain events and add photos along the timeline to showcase the most interesting sections, thereby sharing more readily the information about yourself that you find most relevant. This is a feature that hasn’t been released to the public yet, but you can activate early by following the instructions in this article.
Twitter’s been putting some effort into offering a one-stop shop for its users including a built in application to shorten links to 19 characters. You can still use third party applications that offer other benefits, such as Hootsuite’s link analytics feature, but for the sake of simplicity this new feature can be as helpful as it is convenient.
It used to be that you’d have to choose a third party application to upload images to Twitter, but they offer their own interface now, called TwitPic. You can easily upload your TwitPics through the website, your phone, and through email!
Users love pictures and to share their opinions so be sure to engage your followers with relevant and interesting photography, especially now that it’s easier than ever to share them on Twitter! It’s also important to note that the images that you’ve uploaded to Twitter are being shown on your profile page on the right.
Companies can now post statuses on LinkedIn! This is an exciting new development because while this feature used to be available only to standard users, now businesses can get a new piece of the social action.
When your company posts a status on LinkedIn, all of your followers have the ability to enter into a conversation with your company in a new and engaging way. Additionally, when users like or comment on your status, this shows on their own pages which your followers’ unique connections will see, increasing the amount of exposure your business has to connected professionals.
Google+
The same week that Facebook announced its newest updates, Google+ opened its doors to the general public! During the last week when private invitations circulated, the new social platform garnered 1.1 million views. The next week, after being released to the general population, that amount increased 13-fold with approximately 15 million views.
This spike in popularity landed Google+ just below MySpace as the 8th most visited social networking site on web. It’s working its way up but still has a long way to go to compete with Facebook’s 800 million users!
It is an exciting time to be in marketing and we’re happy to help you navigate the ever changing terrain of the social media landscape. Keep your eyes on the digital horizon with us!
If you have additional questions about these or other features, we’d be glad to meet with you to discover how our ever-expanding digital toolbox can help your business rise to the occasion of changing technology and succeed in the digital marketplace. Drop us a line today!