The Social Media Channel |
- On eve of Vine’s first birthday, Twitter shares the most memorable videos of the year
- Facebook releases App Insights 2.0 beta with cleaner interface, actionable data, and improved reliability
- Likes or lies? How perfectly honest businesses can be overrun by Facebook spammers
- Tweeting pro tips: 5 types of tweets to keep your followers engaged
- Are you ready for this Jelly? How brands should be using Biz Stone’s new Q&A app
- Facebook tests ads in third-party mobile apps, works directly with advertisers as a mobile ad network
| On eve of Vine’s first birthday, Twitter shares the most memorable videos of the year Posted: 23 Jan 2014 02:28 PM PST Tomorrow is Vine's first birthday. To celebrate, Twitter today launched a new page called Year on Vine that lists some of the most memorable videos posted on the service. The chosen Vines all received a lot of activity (through likes, comments, and revines). Yet what Twitter is really celebrating is the community formed around all this new popular content: "The creative community that has embraced Vine's short, looping videos has shown that you can tell a whole story, make people laugh and even leave people speechless –– in six seconds or less."  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 23 Jan 2014 11:46 AM PST  Facebook today introduced the first major update to its App Insights product, aiming to help developers better understand how users interact with their apps. Currently in beta, App Insights 2.0 features a new design, actionable data, improved reliability, among other improvements. You can try it now by going to your App Insights overview page and clicking "try the new App Insights." First up, App Insights has been redesigned around how your apps integrate with Facebook as opposed to how users interact with Facebook. The new Overview dashboard, for example, shows the most important metrics for common functionality like Login and Sharing, and details are just a click away: Next, Facebook says it has reorganized all the data you need to make a decision into a single location. For example, there is now a single dashboard which tells you how much traffic you receive from Facebook, whether it's coming from Open Graph stories or Requests: Furthermore, you can now compare key metrics for your app to those for other apps (Facebook promises metrics are aggregated and anonymized). This lets you figure out if changes you see are isolated to your app or if there is a trend that is happening across all apps. Last but certainly not least, Facebook says it performed a comprehensive audit of its data sources and logging to "significantly improve the quality and reliability of the data." The company further says metrics that come from mobile on Android and iOS have received a big bump in particular. App Insights will also now display warnings on dashboards when there is an outage or a known issue with the data. It's not safe to assume that the data is accurate if you don't see a warning, especially while version 2.0 is still in beta, but at least when you see a warning you'll know something is up. Facebook will continue to support the App Insights 1.0 product as the default option until Insights 2.0 gets all the features from the previous version, several new features (the company didn't offer details), and becomes more stable overall. The company wouldn't give a final release date, saying only that process will take "several months." Top Image Credit: Kevin Krejci/Flickr  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Likes or lies? How perfectly honest businesses can be overrun by Facebook spammers Posted: 23 Jan 2014 08:08 AM PST  Many of us are trusting. We like to believe the best in people – in their honesty, integrity, and good intentions. For society to function, this is an inherently necessity of the majority. But after writing an article describing the loss of organic Facebook reach, I was tuned in to an even more shocking situation that completely explains the massive growth in likes some readers reported on their Pages. One of the reasons I love writing, and often still love reading comments, is that through my articles, I learn more about the world from others with experiences that run parallel to mine. After my plunging Facebook organic reach piece ran, a reader who wishes to remain anonymous (for reasons that will hopefully become clear as I continue) pointed me to a baffling Facebook situation that, over the past couple of years, has spiraled out of control. Let's start at the beginning. Monitoring your likes and interestsIn September of 2013, my anonymous source (who we will call "Bob" for the sake of simplicity), seemed to have his popular Facebook Page, along with friends whose pages share the same general interest, added to the international Page Suggestions list. What are Page Suggestions? In 2013, Facebook started to push its "Suggested Posts" or "Suggested Pages" ads and links to news feeds with the attempt to allow users to follow other brands that followed their similar interests. Let's say you, a Facebook user, is a noted fan of cakes and baking. Page Suggestions look at those interests, and you and anyone who has "cakes" or "baking" in their likes or is following a group along those topics is going to see pages that match the topic. For Bob, his Page was almost guaranteed to show up in his particular interest set. On the surface, this is a cool concept, but like a lot of cool Internet ideas, it was exploited. An unprecedented growthAlmost immediately following their addition to these "International Page Suggestions" lists, Bob and his friends noticed their pages taking off at a ridiculous rate. "[At first it was] 500 or 1,000 likes per day, then eventually up to 15,000 likes per day," Bob said. "The growth was awesome at first and it seemed like we were connecting with a whole new audience." On the surface, Page Suggestions was working exactly as they were intended. Thousands of people who could and should like a brand if they knew it existed were finally being exposed to it! This granted access to a massive new audience, and a chance to really grow a business beyond expectations.
But it wasn't all roses and sunshine. "After a couple of months I started to see a noticeable downturn in audience quality," Bob said. "Despite good engagement numbers." If you read my article on Facebook Engagement, I briefly touch on our promoted posts getting likes and comments that appeared to be out of left field. This is much the same situation that Bob noticed on his pages, but on a much larger and slightly different scale. Too good to be trueBob decided to do some digging. It didn't make sense that his engagement levels had not changed despite thousands of additional fans.
What Bob was experiencing here has been reported before, but it has been normally linked to purchasing post promotion. In an article on Search Engine Journal from 2012 (back when promoted posts were young), Jake Filan noticed "profiles hadn't had updates in more than a month, and a handful actually had no profile info at all, but these same accounts were extremely active, on a daily basis in some cases, at Liking Facebook pages. "A pervasive red flag was that these profiles did not seem to have any discernible connection or affinity for the Facebook pages being advertised." When you do a little research on something called "like farming," you'll see what's going on. "What I discovered is that an increasing number of underpaid, downtrodden denizens in these developing tech nations get micropayments to do it, usually a dollar per thousand likes," Bob said. But you're now probably wondering… why? What is there to gain? Bob did not pay anything, so why are these thousands of random profiles liking his page? Slipping under the spam radarOn the surface, it makes more sense to see this behavior when money is involved, but that isn't the case here. To explain what is happening, let's bounce back to the aforementioned Page Suggestions. In an attempt to avoid Facebook's bot/spam detection, these "like farmers" diversify likes into Pages they have not been paid to target, or who aren't paying to reach more eyes. It's a much more clever way to slip under the Facebook spam radar, as the behavior appears natural and organic. The simplest way to do this diversification of Page likes is to use Facebook's own "Page Suggestions" feature. "While this is probably more frustrating for me than for people whose Pages aren't in the good graces of Facebook's page suggestions, the worst part is that people who actually pay for ads and promotions are still victimized by this same practice," Bob lamented. "It means anyone who clicks 'Boost Post' and pays for reach, unless they block those countries listed above or intentionally target them out, are getting 80 pecent ripped off." What was thought to really only be linked to Facebook ads is actually a much larger problem, filling legitimate and popular Pages with an increasing percentage of spam and bots. Selling likes or lies?The business of selling likes and selling contest entries is a seedy, dark one indeed. As reported by the Daily Dot, author Cody Permenter goes into detail on how these sweat-shop like businesses set up and run. "For a fee, [businesses] would deliver votes for any online competition you can imagine, from Facebook contests (where you're asked to like a page to enter) or generic sweepstakes that only require you to fill out a form," Permenter wrote. There are a range of businesses set up to do this, and their fees range in price per 1,000 likes or contest entries. One of those businesses clearly states the nature of what they do on their on Facebook page, but Facebook doesn't seem like they have noticed nor care. This particular company, 99 Enterprises, is still up and running. "It's a pretty frustrating situation which I'm powerless to stop," Bob continued. "I could turn off page suggestions to my page, but then I risk losing the legit fans I've gained through the page suggestions process – probably totaling about 150,000 people. Certainly nothing to smirk at." Bob believes that one day, Facebook will recognize the problem and purge the fake profiles. But by that time, Bob worries that the sudden spam fan decrease will actually end up damaging his page. "The outward appearance to my real fans will be that I bought a s**tload of fake likes, which isn't the case and will be severely damaging to the social media aspect of my business," he said. "And those people who actually paid for the reach, without knowing, actually did buy fake likes! "In the meantime all I can do is target out those countries in my posts, and try to increase authentic engagement via the comments section." Unfortunately, due to Facebook's limitation on organic reach, this strategy is much hampered compared to just a few months ago. It's an almost no-win situation. How does one get added to an international suggested pages list?It's not entirely clear. What is for certain is that if you have "Page Suggestions" enabled on your Page's profile, you are eligible for this treatment. Facebook will likely look at pages that have good original content and high engagement for the treatment, but there does not appear to be a surefire way to be selected. Of the group of four friends, including Bob, their pages grew from anywhere between 30,000 likes and, in one extreme case, over a million. But just looking at their page stats tells the story: countries known for this type of "like farming" business are right at the top. In addition to all this, Bob noted he saw an enormous increase in what is known as "share for share" or "s4s" requests hitting his site. These bots/spammers can make themselves more difficult to find by continuing to diversify their likes and friends. That appears to be the strategy here. Whatever the case, it's a headache for page moderators, who will have to spend more time gleaning the spam off their pages. The marketplace is full of lies, deception and spam, and Facebook could easily find them. Just look at this Facebook Group dedicated to buying, selling and exchanging likes for pages. It's not even hidden or discreet. Facebook will need to do something about this by increasing the strictness behind their process for finding bots and spammers. It appears at this point that if a bot/spam page likes a good enough variety of pages and comments occasionally (even if the comments are complete gibberish), it's enough to slip by unnoticed. Facebook early on admitted to over 83 million profiles on their site to being likely fake, and those are only the profiles they know about. Top image credit: Shutterstock/iurii  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Tweeting pro tips: 5 types of tweets to keep your followers engaged Posted: 22 Jan 2014 12:36 PM PST  This post originally appeared on the Buffer blog. Buffer's CEO Joel recently changed the way he thinks about sharing on Twitter, and I really like his new approach. And if you just take a brief glance at his Twitter account, you'll see what an engaged following Joel was able to build. Fortunately, I could just go ahead and ask him about the changes he made and the system he uses, which I thought of sharing with all of you today here. And just a glance at the stats below, that we pulled in through the Buffer for Business analytics tool, show that it's working out alright for him, as he garners regularly more than 1,000 clicks/day and dozens of retweets for his account, so there must be something to learn here:  (Photocredit: Buffer for Business analytics) His Tweets regularly even outperform the ones posted on the @buffer Twitter account, which, at around 162,000 have roughly 6-7 times the following of Joel's at 25,000 followers. When I took a quick glance over his analytics, it's incredibly interesting to see which system Joel applies to keep his Buffer full and post a steady stream of content: Ok, enough of the introductions, let's dig in and see how Joel's approaching his Twitter account and what we could learn from it The 5 types of Tweets Joel postsOne of the biggest changes Joel made is simply in the way he thinks about the individual Tweets he posts. He identified five main types of Tweets that we all post:
Here's an example of each one. Now, let's pay special attention to the formatting Joel uses here, as he's very specific about each of them: Link Tweets – Format for consistencyJoel always puts his links at the end of each Tweet, to add consistency. He sometimes uses the headline of the article, but often chooses a particular quote from inside the article instead, like this one below: Image Tweets – Show value without having to click throughGlancing at Joel's image Tweets, the first lesson we can learn is that he tries to use images that offer value to his followers without needing to click-through. With Twitter's new inline image previews, that can drive up to 150% more retweets, this seems to be a great way to encouragement engagement since your followers don't need to leave their timeline to see your pictures. Joel also tries to add a caption related to the image every time, rather than just adding a standard article headline, especially when sharing a blog post. Quote Tweets – Quotation marks matterWhen sharing quotes, Joel always uses quotation marks to make it clear he's quoting someone else. He also adds attribution after each quote, and when possible, uses the author's Twitter handle, like this: Retweets – Pick people that match your styleJoel's Retweets normally come from his carefully curated Twitter lists of people who focus on similar topics to himself, such as startup founders, Buffer team members and Buffer investors or advisors. Scheduling your retweets is also a particularly good technique as it allows you to engage with more people, without flooding your followers. Joel's found this to be a good way to build or strengthen relationships with others and to show appreciation for their content. Question Tweets – Lowest frequency, with great resultsKeeping questions or conversation-starters simple is important for Twitter. Your followers need to be able to answer within 140 characters. For Facebook, asking questions has often proven to increase engagement dramatically. Joel tries to be quite specific with his questions to make them easier to answer, such as this one below: Now when Joel adds new Tweets to his Buffer queue, he thinks about the type of each one, and how we wants to use those types to add variety to his Twitter account. Joel's found a good balance between these by working with a sharing ratio. The system behind Joel's Tweets: How to find your own sharing ratioCurrently, Joel works with a 4:1 sharing ratio. His "staple" type of Tweet is a link, like this one: For every four of these (roughly), Joel adds something different: an image, a Retweet, a quote. Now, Joel posts 8 times in total per day, with the following schedule that has worked the best for him (these times are in PST): Here's how to find your own sharing ratio: 1. Choose your "staple" Tweet Depending on how you use your Twitter account and your personal preferences, your staple Tweet could be any of the five types. You might like to share pictures most of the time, or your own questions and comments to encourage discussion. Choose whatever works for you to be your staple Tweet type. 2. Set up your Buffer account for consistency You can post your Tweets manually, of course, but Buffer's pre-set queue makes it really easy. Joel's queue is set to post once every three hours, so he tweets eight times per day. This means he's consistently active on Twitter, without overwhelming his followers. 3. Add variety Again, your ratio may vary from Joel's, but 4:1 is a good place to start. So for every four staple Tweets you send, add a different type. You can use Buffer's shuffle updates feature or hit "send to top" to reorganise your queue. Joel's 3 best tips for finding great content to shareHere are some tips from to finding and sharing great content consistently. 1. Find great people to follow Joel finds most of the blogs and Twitter accounts he follows from reading Hacker News and catching up on Twitter. Something he's been doing more of lately is going to the source of each great post he reads and reading through the latest 3-4 posts on that blog. This helps him to discover new blogs and people to follow. 2. Keep RSS to a minimum Joel manages his RSS feeds really carefully. He splits his feeds into just two categories: startups and life. Each blog that he subscribes to has to meet two criteria: consistently high-quality content, and a low frequency of publishing. This means that Joel can share almost everything he reads in Feedly, because it's all high quality and interesting. 3. Use Twitter lists Joel's using Tweetbot which has a neat feature that lets you use a Twitter list as your timeline. This means he can have a carefully curated list of less than 100 people who all post interesting, high-quality content on Twitter as his timeline. He also has specific Twitter lists based on his interests, like a Buffer team list and a list of startup founders. It's incredibly interesting to see how Joel's system of Tweeting works and I'll be sure to try an adaption for my own account. What about you? Do you have a certain way of posting Tweets regularly? Would love to hear about your approach to Tweeting in the comments below!  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Are you ready for this Jelly? How brands should be using Biz Stone’s new Q&A app Posted: 22 Jan 2014 10:26 AM PST  Kate Cooper is a social business thought leader and managing director of BLOOM Worldwide, a social media agency powered by insight. As with the arrival of Twitter, many brands and businesses will be left scratching their heads as they try and figure out if or how they should be using Jelly, the latest new social media application everyone's buzzing about. With 28,275 active users on the first day and 100,000 questions asked in the first week, it's no surprise that brands looking to gain that early-mover advantage are already experimenting with the service, but are you ready for this Jelly? What is Jelly?Jelly is a photo-driven social media application for iOS and Android devices, which enables users to find answers to their questions and get advice in real-time by crowd-sourcing opinions from people within your social media networks. Jelly is basically a cherry-picked combination of features which already exist within social media tools and networks like Quora, Pinterest and Instagram, but Jelly has been has been created by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone which explains the hype around its launch. How it works The app can be summed up in three words; point, shoot, ask. When you ask a question it must be accompanied by either a newly taken image or one plucked from the phone's photo library. The user then enters a question within the 240-character limit and sends it out into the ether to await a response. The ether in question consists of fans and followers already connected to your Twitter and Facebook brand profiles, so once you have connected them as prompted by the app, you're ready to go. For a detailed rundown of Jelly, check out our review. 5 brand benefits of using JellyUnlike some social networks Jelly has pretty clear and simple proposition, making it easy for brands to quickly get up and running and start engaging with their customers. If you're not already on Jelly then here's how your brand should be using the app: 1. Helping your customers by answering their questions By connecting Jelly to your brand profiles on Twitter and Facebook, you can see any questions being asked by members of your existing online community. Actively seeking to answer any questions that you are an expert in can really showcase your brand expertise whilst also being helpful. If customers are looking for a specific product or service which you can supply then even better. 2. Build engagement By posting questions, answering questions and starring interesting questions Jelly is a great tool for building engagement with your existing community. However, it's important to consider your position and tone of voice – will you go for credibility by answering accurately or put your tongue firmly in your cheek by adding a humorous angle to your responses? Take your cue from the tone of the audience already engaging as to which is appropriate. If you'd prefer not to post, watch the interactions for a while before posting, star the questions that are of interest to your brand so you can track how conversation evolves over time. Once you've assessed the lay of the land and answered a few questions, identify three questions of your own you'd like the community to answer. Carefully take or select an appropriate image and post your question on Jelly via your mobile. When people answer, if it's an answer you like, thank them with a thank you card. 3. Connect with influencers Once you've built up your influencer engagement on Twitter and Facebook you can connect with your online influencers via Jelly by starring and answering their questions. First of all, star the questions of interest to you so you can track the overall tone of the Q&A. Next, identify three to five questions you'd like your community to answer, choose and appropriate image and post your questions online. Make sure you thank those that answer and follow up by answering some of their questions. 4. Create early hype for a new product of service If you've got a new product of service, ask for community feedback by posting an image, using the draw functionality to specify the exact component you are asking for feedback or focus on and post a relevant question to your community. If you're launching a new ad campaign, you can vet reactions to images using Jelly. 5. Conduct research Customer feedback can provide brands and businesses with invaluable data that can be used to focus the development of new products and services. Your social media followers represent a ready-made respondent base, and one that's more likely to take part because they've already demonstrated an affinity with your brand. Brands can use Jelly to plant questions which ask for specific feedback on a product or service. You can crowdsource feedback on a product or service by uploading an image and wording your question carefully to extract specific feedback from your community. Brands on JellyWe've already seen a flurry of brands on Jelly including CNBC, Carphone Warehouse, Nando's, ADSA, and yes, The Next Web as well (referenced in the above image).
But with 171 answers and opportunities to engage its customers, it's clear this little question was no joke. Brands need to keep up with what their fans and customers are doing in their everyday lives. Jelly was launched early 2014 and has been a busy little app ever since. As Jelly evolves quickly there are opportunities to connect and network with like minded people or find people who may already know and love your brand directly via Jelly or Twitter. Our suggestion is brands should not be afraid and just dive in. You ARE ready for this Jelly!
 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 22 Jan 2014 09:57 AM PST  Facebook today announced it has begun testing ads in third-party mobile apps. While the company says it has experimented similarly before, this test is different because it is working directly with advertisers and publishers to act like a mobile ad network. In other words, Facebook is working directly with its partners rather than outsourcing the work to an outside ad-serving platform. The test is limited to "a few advertisers and partners," but Facebook hints it could be expanded in the near future. Facebook explains why it has to move into this space to keep generating advertising revenue:
This is part of a bigger strategy of focusing on mobile. Facebook not only needs to make sure its mobile apps are solid, but that it can keep up with the global shift to devices that fit into our hands. Facebook already has Facebook Exchange, which uses cookie tracking to let advertisers bid on ads that visitors are targeted with after visiting third-party websites. These visitors are then shown ads related to their web browsing when they return to Facebook. Yet with Twitter buying mobile advertising exchange company MoPub, Facebook needs to step up its game and make sure it can stay on top of the mobile advertising space. The company has already managed to make boatloads of money in mobile where others have failed, and third-party mobile apps only take that story further. See also – Google partners with Facebook to help its clients buy retargeted ads via the social network's FBX platform and Not just ads: Adblock Plus now lets you block 21 other 'annoyances' in Facebook's News Feed and sidebar Top Image Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/GettyImages  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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