Audience understanding

Who are they and what are they talking about?

When posting on Twitter, it is important to understand your audience, what they are talking about and how to best engage with them. Understanding this will help to create Twitter content that your followers will want to engage with.

Creating Lists

Twitter allows you to create lists of users. This is a useful tool that can be used to keep track of active commentators on your channel or to make a list of influential Tweeters within the industry.
By engaging with these key people in the industry it is possible to start building a relationship between them and your company.

Blocking Users

Users should only ever be blocked from commentating on your channel if they are spammers or trolls. This function should not be used to block people who are leaving negative comments or negative reviews. These should be responded to patiently and politely.

When to Post

Make a schedule

It’s advisable to create a posting schedule a month in advance to ensure that you always have content planned for your channel. When creating a schedule consider the best day, and the best time of day, for these posts to go live. There are tools available that let you see when there is the most traffic on your channel.

Posting regularity

Posting regularly lets followers know that you are active on the platform. Most Twitter activity takes place on the weekends but posts should be spread out over the week as this avoids clogging up follower’s feeds with your content. Having a posting schedule still allows you to make ad-hoc posts if something comes up that you would like to comment on, such as a recent event or release.

Hashtags

Finding the right conversations

Hashtags are used on Twitter for finding relevant posts and joining the right conversations. It can be useful to create your own brand/product related hashtag so people can find you and so you can see what people are talking about when they mention you.

Keeping it professional

Overdoing hashtags and including many irrelevant hashtags within one post is inadvisable as this does not look professional and followers find this kind of Tweet annoying. Hashtags should always fit within the context of a Tweet and be relevant to what you are writing about.

Trending hashtags

If a trending hashtag is related to your business, feel free to join the conversation. If it isn’t, don’t use it. Another relevant hashtag will come up that will allow you to contribute to the conversation.

Posting Tips

Tone of voice

When writing your Twitter posts, ensure that the tone of voice is consistent and reflects the business and its values. Twitter has a character limit of 140 characters, so keep Tweets short and sweet, and avoid using two or more Tweets to get your point across.

Pinning Tweets

Twitter as a platform is very fast paced and so a Tweet’s visibility is limited. Important Tweets that you want to keep visible for an extended period of time can be pinned to the top of your profile.

The 20/80 principle

Importantly, ensure that your Twitter content adheres to the 20/80 principle. This means that 20% of your content should be business and sales related while the remaining 80% should contain relevant community contributions. Your followers do not want to follow a sales channel, they are looking for quality content that is relevant to their life and interests.

Content: The 20%

Advertisements and promotions

The 20% of Tweets that are company and product related should include advertisements and promotions such as Q&A sessions, company updates, and behind the scene/employee content.
Giveaways, competitions and promotions are very popular amongst Twitter users, with many following a company only in order to look out for such opportunities. These posts receive a large amount of engagement from followers.

Feedback and input

By asking your followers for their opinions and suggestions about your products or services demonstrates that you value your follower’s input and that you’re listening to them. This also allows you to gather feedback about your products and services.

Help and advice

Many people use Twitter to ask for help and advice, and answering these questions or giving out helpful information and advice will create interesting content, as well as providing great customer service.

Content: The 80%

Industry related content

The rest of your content should focus on creating industry related content that your followers will find beneficial. This can include interacting with your followers, either by answering their questions, responding to their Tweets or re-tweeting relevant posts.

Linking to relevant news articles or re-tweeting them from news outlets or key players in the industry lets your followers know that you are up to date with what’s going on and that they can rely on you for important industry news and updates.

Visual content

Visual content is popular on Twitter, with “How-to” guides and infographics being valuable content that followers can share, save and refer to later. If it fits in with your company’s image then jokes and humorous posts are fine. Ensure that these kind of posts are not in bad taste and are not going to upset any of your followers.

Recent and events and news

Involving yourself in relevant conversations by talking about recent events and news, and using the right hashtags will ensure that you and your channel are up to date and look well informed. Tweets can also contain information relevant to the community in which the company works in, or is based in, such as important local news items or charity events.

Facebook has seen a surge in videos being published, shared and viewed by advertisers, publishers and users. As a response to this growing interest in viewing videos on the site, Facebook has announced plans to improve and expand current video functions as well as introducing new ones. One upgrade in particular is an updated video function which will allow users of the Facebook mobile app to multitask; it will be possible to carry out other Facebook functions such as checking the News Feed and commenting while a minimized version of the video is still playing.

Additionally, they are making improvements to the way publishers can use Facebook videos as adverts by aiming to create a complete video management system. Updates have already been made to Page Insights, an improved video uploading system and the introduction of a new Video Library. With these updates it is now possible to create secret videos viewable only to those whom you choose, make videos viewable only to certain demographics and to restrict the embedding of your videos on third party sites.

360 Video

These changes to video functionality come in addition to the announcement of Facebook’s 360 Video which uses special cameras to record all 360 degree of a scene, thus allowing users to choose which angle they view a video from. Although the feature is still being developed, publishers such as Star Wars and Disney are already planning immersive video content which allows fans to venture even further into their desired universe. 360 Videos should be hitting News Feeds on the web version of Facebook and Android soon, with iOS to follow after.

Suggested and Saved Videos

The new function will recommend other videos for users to watch which are on a similar topic to videos they have recently viewed on their News Feed, in addition to allowing users to search for more videos. Tests have showed that people who view a video on their News Feed go on to watch other videos which Facebook suggests to them. Facebook has also been working on new video matching technology, which allows publishers to search for video matches across the site.

If users are checking their News Feed on the go, they will have the option to save the videos to view later in a new area similar to where all current ‘saved’ posts are already stored on the site. It will also be possible to view multiple videos in a row, giving users more choice and control over their video viewing habits. Facebook also plans to introduce a dedicated video area, where they can find videos relevant to them. These might be videos they have saved for later, uploads from friends or pages they follow, or videos from other content publishers.

Unauthorised Content

Publishers and advertisers can rest assured that their content will not be used without their permission. Facebook videos are put through Audible Magic, an automatic content recognition system, meaning that unauthorized videos cannot be uploaded to the site. Should a video find its way onto the site, Facebook has reporting tools in place allowing the owner of the video to request its removal.

These new features are due to be rolled out in the following months.

Facebook’s latest news feed update has caused quite a stir – it’s 1.4billion users have been granted greater ‘control’ over what they’re seeing – but what exactly are the changes and what are the repercussions for businesses?

Why has the news feed update been introduced?

Facebook have introduced a number of updates with the aim of improving the social media platform, to make the user experience more meaningful. Recently, they have introduced changes which focus specifically on improving the news feed:

‘We’re always working to improve and personalize your News Feed experience. We know that ultimately you’re the only one who truly knows what is most meaningful to you and that is why we want to give you more ways to control what you see. Last year we announced some new ways to control what you see in News Feed. Today we are announcing even better tools for you to actively shape and improve the experience. We’ve redesigned and expanded Facebook’s News Feed Preferences to give you more control.’

Prior to this update, stories were ranked for the news feed according to the interests of a user – based on interactions and engagements. However, this update enables these calculated assumptions to be overwritten for a more tailored experience.

How can users gain greater control over their news feed?

Last year’s update focussed largely on editing the news feed – allowing users to quickly follow and unfollow pages/people, as well as giving feedback about the posts on their news feed more easily. In order to allow for greater personalisation and to improve the selection of relevant content, Facebook will now allow users to select preferences that determine what’s visible in their news feed.

This new update will allow users to prioritise the people and pages they wish to see at the top of their news feed. The process for this is very simple:

‘Within News Feed Preferences, tap on a friend’s profile picture to see their posts first. You will then see any new stories they’ve shared since your last visit to Facebook at the top of News Feed, with a star in the top right of their post so you know why they’re at the top. You can scroll down to see the rest of your News Feed normally.’

Users can also more easily discover new pages based on their existing likes, as well as selecting which friends and pages to follow or unfollow.

What are the repercussions for businesses?

This update follows the trend for declining organic visibility in Facebook since it is expected that more users will prioritise friends than business pages. This is therefore likely to impact organic results, pushing brands towards advertising through the social media platform:

“Chances are that people aren’t going to put brand pages at the top of their list and that is going to further reduce the likelihood that brand posts will be seen by people unless they pay for advertising. Human nature seems to indicate that you would pick your friends over companies.” – Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst for eMarketer*

However, the opportunity for further data collection could benefit businesses. In introducing this update, Facebook is able to gauge even more information about user preferences and behaviour; thus gaining the potential to improve targeting.

When will this change be introduced?

This update is already available on iOS and will be rolling out across Andriod and desktop over the coming weeks –we’ll be keeping a close eye on organic Facebook results by device over the coming weeks to monitor impact.

 

*http://www.toptechnews.com/article/index.php?story_id=030000XSBCNI

According to Facebook, ‘the goal of News Feed is to show you the content that matters to you’ – which is why they have recently implemented an algorithm change that aims to balance the visibility of content from friends and brands.

What are the consequences of the Facebook algorithm update for brands?

A statement describing the impact for brands was released by Facebook in a blog post last week:

‘The impact of these changes on your page’s distribution will vary considerably depending on the composition of your audience and your posting activity. In some cases, post reach and referral traffic could potentially decline. Overall, pages should continue to post things that people find meaningful and consider these best practices for driving referral traffic.’

Despite the somewhat uncertain effect of the update – there are some consequences that every marketer should be aware of:

1. The way in which content appears will change. Previous limitations which prevented multiple posts from your account appearing in the news feed will be lifted. If users are enjoying your content, more of it will be visible to them.

2. Organic reach will continue to drop as Facebook act upon learnings that ‘people are worried about missing important updates from the friends they care about’. Pushing this content to the top of the news feed will magnify the struggle that brands face in gaining organic visibility.

3. As previously mentioned, there may be a decline in referral traffic as a result of this algorithm change. User feedback revealed that they ‘don’t enjoy seeing stories about their friends liking or commenting on a post’, which helps to explain why this update has been implemented. This is particularly significant for marketers because it marks a complete shift away from what many rely on to obtain new organic visitors and fans, who often find out about content through referral.

Where does this leave us?

Of course, this all means that the focus on continuing to produce engaging and unique content is stronger than ever.

It also throws in to question the value of different types of engagement. By the sounds of it, the algorithm will only remove referral posts from content that other users have ‘liked’ or ‘commented’ on. Will this, therefore, make ‘sharing’ important and likes and comments redundant?

The increasing difficulty in gaining organic reach also marks a notable push towards paid activity, which will inevitably become a more intrinsic element of social strategy. Moreover, the social networking service is mirroring the direction of tech giant Google in getting brands to pay more to reach users.

It’s safe to say we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled in Google Analytics to track any disruption to results as a result of the algorithm change, but it will certainly be interesting to see how this one develops…

Experienced a sudden drop in Facebook business page likes? The social network provider has recently updated the way in which it counts page likes. By removing deactivated and memorialised accounts, they aim to bring “even more value for businesses”.
Most of the impact of this update will have been observed around 12th/13th March. However, the new system of filtration has been in testing since late February, so earlier results may also be affected.

Who will be affected?

The update only affects the number of likes (not friends) for business pages on Facebook. Those who have bought fake likes could expect to see the most significant drop in their “lifetime likes” figure.

Although deactivated accounts will be withdrawn from the total, it is worth noting that if an individual decides to re-active an account, they will be added back in to the businesses number of likes.

Why have Facebook introduced the update?

Facebook’s latest move will provide page owners with real results and more accurate data. By removing these null accounts, a business is more easily able to reach their actual fans.

Facebook stated that “Everyone benefits from meaningful information on Facebook” – and their update certainly seems to emphasise this; awarding those businesses who have worked hard to build up a genuine fan base with more measurable and accurate insights.

What are the repercussions for businesses?

Whilst a notable drop in likes can, at first, be disconcerting – it’s important to understand the spectrum of repercussions of the update before jumping to any conclusions.

A high number of page likes is not the best indicator of overall progress, so a dip in this figure need not cause too much concern.
One positive consequence is that removing these accounts will often result in a sudden uplift in engagement and reach rates. This is because all that carefully considered content will be more visible to active followers and genuine fans, who are more likely to engage with posts.

In order to deliver more consistent metrics, post likes, comments and shares from removed accounts have also been taken out of results data to give better insight and a true indication of percentage engagement performance.