Social Media News

Latest news and developments from the social networking world

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Social Media News Roundup - 15 December 2015

Here’s a summary of my social media news roundup on yesterday’s #SocialToday show (view below) on Periscope plus some extra news.

You can watch my show at 8.45am every day during the week for more social media news, tips, comments and examples.

Facebook Messenger on Pages response time - you can now manually set your ‘average response time’ for replying to messages received via your Page. For example, if you’re average response rate is ‘wthing an hour’ you could set your displayed time to ‘Typically replies in a few hours’ in order to set expectations. Go to Messaging under Settings to do this.

Facebook Messenger on Pages auto-message - for first time visitors you can now add a message that is sent to them automatically when they message your Page. Go to Messaging under Settings to do this.

Use Facebook offline - following on from offline Sharing and Liking, Facebook have now enabled offline Comments. So if you have no internet service and Comment on a Post, your Comment will be posted as soon as internet access is available. This feature is available on iOS and Android apps. Facebook are also testing the display of News Feed items when you’re offline that you haven’t yet seen.

Facebook for Work - Facebook’s enterprise product has now finished its trial period and being rolled out to a number of companies including Royal Bank Of Scotland and its 100,000 employees. Facebook for Work takes all the good Facebook functionality - News Feed, Messenger and Groups and packages it up for use in the office.

No more photo cropping on Twitter - Twitter has now stopped cropping photos and has improved the layout when multiple photos are uploaded with a tweet.

Twitter Ads to be displayed to non-logged in users - Twitter are experimenting with showing Ads to users who aren’t logged in. This would give more opportunities to businesses and provide an extra revenue stream for Twitter.

Twitter launch Moments in UK - Twitter have launched what they describe as their ‘most important feature ever’ in the UK. Moments are stories (with plenty of photos and videos) curated by editors based in the UK in partnership with media partners such as Sky News and Buzzfeed. It should prove popular for those wishing to keep up to speed with live sporting events and breaking news. Twitter will generate revenue by allowing commercial partners to produce Promoted Moments.

Trending on YouTube - There is a new tab sitting the middle of Home and Subscriptions which displays popular videos.

If you have any thoughts on any of these news items, please post in the Comments below.

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Social Media News Roundup - 7 December 2015

Here’s a summary of my social media news roundup on this morning’s #SocialToday show on Periscope plus some extra news.

You can watch my show at 8.45am every day during the week for more social media news, tips, comments and examples.

Facebook launch Periscope rival - Facebook are trialling a Live Video service which could become a big rival to Twitter’s Periscope. Previously, only available to high profile people it’s now being rolled out to regular users in the US.

Add Messenger and Events to your website - You can now add Facebook Messenger functionality to your website allowing customers to message with questions or customer service queries without having to visit your Facebook Page. Similarly, guests can indicate they’re attending an Facebook Event direct from your website.

Facebook News Feed change - Facebook is trialling a system where is puts different posts/videos in front of you and asks which you want to see or don’t want to see in your News Feed. If you don’t like a particular post of video, there’ll then show up less or not at all in your News Feed.

Facebook for Work - Facebook’s enterprise product is gaining ground. As part of a trial it’s now been adopted by Royal Bank Of Scotland. Facebook for Work takes all the good Facebook functionality - News Feed, Messenger and Groups and takes it to the workplace.

LinkedIn revamp mobile apps - LinkedIn have launched new mobile apps for Android and iOS. Having used them both for a few days, they are definite improvements on the past versions - easier to use, somewhat Facebookesque and it’s fast. However, I’m disappointed by the lack of search options which can be an issue when you’re researching someone on the road before a network meeting or conference.

Buy your dinner through Foursquare - Here in the UK it can be frustrating to wait for latest Facebook and Twitter features such as the ‘buy button’ so it’s great that we can take advantage of Foursquare’s buy button and purchase food from Hungryhouse take aways across the UK.

Repost on Instagram - If you’ve wanted to repost on Instagram and couldn’t find the button, that’s because there isn’t one. But by using an app like Repost you can. There are a number of apps that do the same thing but this works the best out of those that I’ve tried.

If you have any thoughts on any of these news items, please post in the Comments below.

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Latest Social Media News Snippets

Welcome to the latest social media news snippets where I help you keep up to date with the latest changes in social media and improvements to social network functionality. Here are some developments that have caught my attention with some social media tips on how you can take advantage and use to promote your business.

Facebook adds new video features - You can now choose a video to make it display more prominently on your Page. Once ‘featured’ it is displayed under the About section on the left of your Page and more prominently in the video section. You can also create playlists which is a handy feature if you have a number of videos and you wish to categorise them in the same way that you can do on YouTube and Vimeo. Thirdly, you can add a call to action button at the end of your video to direct people to your website. For an example, see the Marks and Spencer Facebook Page which makes great use of video and these 3 new features.

Siri, Cortana and now M -  Facebook has announced its own digital personal assistant called M which you’ll be able to find soon in Messenger. The service is aimed at making peoples’ lives easier, with M being able to buy items, deliver gifts and pick up your dry cleaning. The difference between M and other similar services is that as well as using artificial intelligence, people known as M Trainers, are employed to take calls and book reservations, organise dry cleaning collections and pick and so on. But you won’t know whether you’re dealing with a human or artificial intelligence. Businesses will certainly want to get in on the act and be recommended and used by the service. One to watch.

Twitter improves DMs further - Direct Messaging has been improved once again. Following the option that allows you to message people even they are not following you and the addition of group messaging, Twitter has now removed the 140 character limit on DMs. This opens up all sorts of possibilities and will allow Twitter to be an even more effective customer services channel.

LinkedIn cuts down on emails - Have you noticed less emails from LinkedIn? The professionals’ network has cut down the number of emails by 40%. For those getting many invitations to connect, they now receive a single weekly digest in place of individual emails.  Plus, if you subscribe to several LinkedIn Groups, they are aggregating the updates from those groups into a single email. A sensible move. If you want to fine tune the emails you receive go to Privacy and Settings/Communications/Set the frequency of emails.

Instagram adds search to website - Instagram is very much about mobile but the lack of a search function at instagram.com was a strange omission. This has now been rectified and the new search allows web users to seek out users’ accounts, and to find photos via hashtags and general terms. Handy for when you’re on desktop rather than your smartphone or tablet.the desktop rather than fiddling with your phone.

Periscope - As predicted in my previous Social Media News Snippets, it looks like live streaming app Periscope is going to be huge. Having launched in March, it already has 10 million registered users with nearly 2m daily active users watching 40 years of video per day on their tablets and smartphones. The mobile app enables anyone to broadcast live video via their smartphone or tablet to fellow Periscope and Twitter users.

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Exclusive Facebook news - ‘Facebook Zero’ is coming soon

Here’s some exclusive Facebook news that you won’t have read elsewhere that I’ve learned from conversations with senior Facebook employees. It’s particularly significant for small UK businesses, who aren’t currently advertising with Facebook and who are relying on ‘organic reach’. Read on to find out more.

‘Facebook zero’ is happening - FACT
For some time Facebook’s organic reach (the number of people who see posts from Pages) has been declining. In March last year Social@Ogilvy published a in-depth study of 100 brand Pages with 48+ million fans, showing that for some brands organic reach was as low as 2%. Marketers and social media experts have been speculating that at some point no one will see posts directly from a Page post on their Home page. Facebook zero is indeed fact and is likely to happen in the UK before the end of this year. In fact, it has already been reached in some countries.

So with no direct posts appearing in news feeds, how can you make your posts and indeed your business and its products more visible on Facebook? Here are 5 ideas:

1) Advertise - The fact is Facebook Ads work and are good value. Sponsor (boost) posts to extend their reach but don’t waste your money on ‘Facebook Like Ads’. There is no point in paying to grow your audience if they’re not going to see posts in their feeds.

2) Use Facebook Groups - join and contribute to Facebook Groups. You can share your Posts into Groups and extend their visibility. Read more about using Facebook Groups.

3) Encourage Sharing - if your post is engaging enough people will share it to their profiles. This is a powerful action as it places the post permanently on their Timeline plus their Friends receive a notification. You can’t make sharing a condition for entering a competition but there’s nothing in Facebook’s T and Cs stopping you from asking people to share.

4) Run campaign and competitions - use Facebook Apps to set up discount coupons, quizzes and competitions that will attract people to your Page. Try ShortStack to set these up.

5) Optimise your Page - make your Facebook Page a destination that people want to visit by adding video, photos and completing milestones to tell your story. Optimise for Facebook Search and Search Engines like Google so that it will show up higher in results.

To learn how to use Facebook for your business following these changes, come along to my workshop in the Gloucester Growth Hub on 9 September - INFO AND BOOKING.

In the light of this news, if you are not currently advertising with Facebook, will you now do so? Let me know in the Comments below.

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Latest Social Media News snippets

Welcome to my latest social media news snippets. To help you keep up to date with the latest changes in social media and improvements to social network functionality, here are some developments and news items that caught my attention.

Facebook introduce Call To Action button - You can now encourage visitors to your Page to take an action, such as ‘Sign up’ to a newsletter or ‘Buy now’. If you’ve not yet set this up, I’d strongly advise you to do so. Tip: If the button is not visible on your Page, then make sure you are acting as yourself ie using your profile, and not as the Page.

Feature a Facebook video and create a playlist - You can now feature an uploaded video under the About section on the left of your Page - (see below) and create video playlists. The latter is a handy feature if you have a number of videos and you wish to categorise them.

Twitter improves DMs - Direct Messaging, Twitter’s method of privately messaging other users, has been improved in a couple of ways. Firstly, you can now message people, even if they are not following you. Everyone on Twitter now has the option of being able to accept messages from any user, this making communications easier. Secondly, you can now message more than one person using Group Messaging; handy for collaboration.

LinkedIn has a revamp - The professional’s network’s homepage has had a long overdue makeover and there are no three clear buttons for Sharing an update, Uploading a photo or Publishing a post. Above the buttons you’ll find stats about your profile.

Periscope - Twitter have launched a new app called Periscope - view on iTunes - which enables you to broadcast live via your iPhone or iPad. It’s a shame it’s not on Android yet but it’s coming soon. It has huge potential for broadcasting events, tips, talks, conferences, behind the scenes activities, instructions and all manner of business activities. As well as your live video being broadcast over Periscope, a link to your video is automatically posted to Twitter to attract additional viewers. Expect to hear a lot more about Periscope in the coming months.

BufferApp - Pinterest now joins Facebook. LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ as social networks that can be connected to Buffer. This has been Buffer’s most requested new feature and it’s addition makes the social media dashboard even more useful. You can read more about Buffer in two of my posts over on LinkedIn - here and here.

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Latest Social Media News snippets

Welcome to our latest social media news snippets. To help you keep up to date with the latest changes in social media and improvements to social network functionality, here are some developments and news items that caught our attention.

You can now search Facebook posts - Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ have had the ability to search tweets and posts since they were launched, so it’s always struck me as odd that Facebook didn’t have this functionality. But at long last you can now search posts that have been shared with you. This is an enhancement to Facebook’s Graph Search that was launched in January 2013 - learn more. My guess is that it won’t be long before Facebook take the opportunity to monetise this search feature in the same way that Google do with Adwords. If you’ve not yet got this feature it should be with your shortly.

Facebook remove Bing search results - With the focus now on searching Facebook content (see You can now search Facebook posts above), Bing web search results have now been removed from Facebook.

Facebook add Call to Action buttons to Pages - Organic reach of your Page posts might be declining but here’s some great news for small and large businesses alike. Pages can now feature a ‘call to action’ button such as ‘Sign Up, Book Now, Contact Us, Shop Now to the left of the Like button. This feature which should help businesses convert visitors to customers is being rolled out in the US and is available on a few UK Pages.

New Publishing Tools from Facebook - There’s more good news for Facebook Page owners with the introduction of two new publishing tools - Interest targeting and Post end date.

Select Targeting and Privacy for Posts (see above) to enable these options which you can select beneath your post (see below).

Interest targeting allows Page Admins to select a subset of people who have liked their Page to publish too. End date removes ‘old’ posts from the Page at a date eg a post on a competition that closed last week.

Facebook introduce Trending App - In yet more Facebook news, the world’s largest social network has turned the trending feature it introduced in January 2014 as an app. Facebook say, “…we’re bringing Trending to mobile and making it easy for people to explore stories from different sources.” It’s available in the US on Android now and in other countries and on iOS in due course.

Google+ introduces pinning - Taking a leaf out of Facebook’s book, Google+ have introduced pinned posts. For greater visibility, you can pin your post to the front and centre of your Page or Profile. It will stay there until your unpin in.

Twitter improves abuse reporting - Twitter has made it easier to report abusive tweets and to block abusive users. A big improvement is the ability for a observer of abuse to report a tweet as well as the abused tweeter.

For regular social media news, tips and examples please join my mailing list.

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This week’s Social Media News snippets

Facebook bans ‘Like-gating’ - From today, 5 November, a Page can no longer incentive a user to Like a Page. In Facebook’s words, “You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.” Services like ShortStack have removed this functionality from their Facebook Apps. If you are running a competition on your Timeline as a status update, you can still ask people to Like your status update in order to enter your competition. You can also require people to Like a photo, but you cannot require them to Like or Share your Page.

Order your photos in Facebook posts - When you upload multiple photos from a mobile app to Facebook, you can now choose the order they appear in. This gives you the option of ‘telling a story’. Press down on a photo and drag it to the position you want it to appear in. Once you’ve shared your photos, friends will see the story in a new collage layout. Tapping into a photo lets you scroll through the story from beginning to end.

Twitter putting non-followers content in Timeline - You have noticed tweets from people you haven’t followed appearing in your Timeline. Twitter has confirmed that following testing they have now moved to a Facebook type algorithmic approach and are presenting recommended tweets, accounts and topics. Twitter’s Trevor O’Brien stated, “We recently ran experiments that showed different types of content in your timeline: recommended tweets, accounts, and topics. Testing indicated that most people enjoy seeing tweets from accounts they may not follow, based on signals such as activity from accounts you do follow, the popularity of the tweets, and how people in your network interact with them. These experiments now inform the timeline you see today.” This is a controversial move by Twitter who are desperate to attract new users. For many people, the chronological Timeline was Twitter’s main benefit, when compared with Facebook.

5 in 6 Social Messages Sent to Brands Are Ignored - Over the past year the number of messages sent to brands via social media has increased by 77% (Source: Sprout Social) . Regular readers and recipients of my training will know how passionate I am about the importance if listening, so I was disappointed (and staggered!) to learn from Sprout Social that only 1 in 6 of these messages are replied to. It seems that brands are largely ignoring potential and existing customers. However, this does give small businesses the opportunity to compete with brands by paying attention and showing they care about their customers.

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Social Media News snippets: 24 Sept-7 Oct

Facebook converting and removing Profiles - There have been numerous reports of Facebook converting Profiles representing businesses into Pages and even removing them without notice. Facebook state: “It’s against the Facebook Terms to use your personal account to represent something other than yourself (eg: your business). If you’re using your account to represent something other than yourself, you could permanently lose access to your account if you don’t convert it to a Page”.

Ello gains traction - According to one of its founders, Ello is receiving 31,000 email requests to join the new social networking every hour. Originally a private social network, Ello doesn’t require users to register with their real name and doesn’t have adverts. In its manifesto, it promises that it won’t sell its members’ data. Existing members can invite friends or you can ask permission to join.

Slideshare launch first app on iOSSlideShare has launched its first iOS app, specifically designed for iOS 8 and optimized for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. A LinkedIn (owner of SlidesShare) stated, “It’s about delivering the personalized professional content you want when you need it through a beautiful viewing experience you’ll enjoy.”

LinkedIn make’s it easier to connect - No other social media blog has picked up on it yet, but LinkedIn appears to have made a change to the way you invite people to connect with you on a desktop or laptop…at least on my profile they have. They’ve removed the need to have a reason to connect. You simply select the Connect button and your invitation is sent. This was always the case on LinkedIn mobile apps and in Search results but this approach now applies across the board. If you wish to personalise the message you can select the down arrow to the right of the Send InMail button and select ‘Personalise invitation’.

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Social Media News snippets: 9 Sept-23 Sept

Facebook now worth over £2 billion - Facebook went public at $38 per share in May 2012. Although reaching a low of $17.73 in September 2012 the Facebook shares are now valued at $76.8 (as at close on 22 Sept 2014) giving the company a market capitalisation of over $2 billion.

YouTube and Instagram make the cool Top 20 - According to a poll of 2,000 British consumers and a panel of 37 influencers, YouTube and Instagram are cooler than than other social networks. The annual CoolBrands list has YouTube at number 7 and Instagram at 14 with no other social network making the top 20. Apple were number 1 for the third year in a row - full list below.

2014/15 cool brands the top 20

1 Apple (last year: 1)
2 Aston Martin (2)
3 Nike (4)
4 Chanel (13)
5 Glastonbury (5)
6 Google (7)
7 YouTube (6)
8 Dom Perignon (N/A)
9 Rolex (3)
10 Netflix (N/A)
11 Bang & Olufsen (12)
12 Ray-Ban (10)
13 Alexander McQueen (19)
14 Instagram (N/A)
15 Bose (N/A)
16 Liberty (N/A)
17 Selfridges (N/A)
18 Sony (17)
19 Virgin Atlantic (9)
20 Stella McCartney (N/A)

Twitter roll out updated app for iOS 8 - Twitter have updated their app for iPhones and iPads to take advantage of one of Apple’s new operating system’s features; interactive notifications. For example, users can reply to a Tweet from the notifications area without opening the Twitter app.  The updated app also features a new design for profiles and you can now access a saved draft while posting a Tweet.

Ads are coming to Instagram  - If you’re a UK Instagram user you might have noticed the Sponsored Post below appearing in your feed. Instagram, now owned by Facebook, needs to generate money so Ads will be introduced in the UK with selected partners in the coming weeks. “Our aim is to make any advertisements people feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos they enjoy from brands who are already using Instagram,” said spokesman Will Guyatt. The post has received 119,000 Likes but most of the comments from users have been negative.

Instagram screenshot of Sponsored Post

Pinterest launch ‘News notifications’ - Pinterest have rolled out a new section of Pinterest notifications called News. This new tab gives you a snapshot of what’s new with all the different Pinners, brands and boards you follow, as well as updates from your Facebook friends, even if you don’t follow them. This is good news for businesses as  when your business adds a Pin, creates a new board, likes or follows a user or a board, people who follow you will see these updates. They’ll then be able to click through to see or engage with that content further. If they repin, follow or like something of yours, their actions will be flagged in the News notifications section for their followers and Facebook friends on Pinterest.

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Social Media News snippets: 26 Aug-8 Sept

Twitter rolls out ‘Buy Now’ button - Twitter announced today, 8 September 2014, that it has officially started testing its ‘Buy Now’ a select group of sellers including @Burberry as well as artists like @Megadeth. This will enable users to buy products and pay for music downloads with ‘just a few taps’. Twitter is partnering with online payments service Stripe to process transactions.

Twitter to introduce Facebook style newsfeed? - At a financial conference last week Twitter CFO Anthony Noto hinted that Twitter could be about to introduce a Facebook style newsfeed, which would be a radical change from the current unfiltered reverse chronological format. If the current poll on Gigacom is any guide, it’s not a move that will go down well with users. Of the 10,000+ that have voted so far, less than 1% would like ‘relevance based filtering’ to be the default option.

Facebook introduce Privacy Checkup - Facebook has started to roll out a function that aims to help users understand and set their privacy controls. The first step ensures that you are sharing with the right people and the second step reviews the apps that you use to login to Facebook with.

Facebook makes is easier to switch between Page/Profile - Facebook have introduced a new icon to make it easier to switch between posting, Liking or Commenting as your Page or as your Profile. The new icon appears on the top right of the posting box (see below) on a Page or to the right of the Like, Comment and Share links on a published post.

 

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