Social Media Impact Toronto

This is what happens when Facebook changes its layout - The Oatmeal

2017-09-23T06:08:00.001-07:00

This is what happens when Facebook changes its layout - The Oatmeal:

'via Blog this'

#SocialMedia

A Complete Guide to Printing Techniques (And When To Use Them)

2017-09-23T05:15:00.001-07:00

A Complete Guide to Printing Techniques (And When To Use Them): "When you think of all the flyers, business cards, and other print designs you see in a given day, it’s pretty clear that print still plays a role in marketing. But when it comes to creating these designs for yourself, it’s easy to get in over your head. There are four primary print methods: four-color process, PMS printing, foil stamping, and embossing. That sounds simple enough, until you have to choose from thousands of CMYK ink colors, hundreds of PMS colors, dozens of foil colors, and multiple styles of embossing—not to mention all the paper stocks they can be printed on. Are you confused yet? Not to worry! This great resource from Company Folders will teach you how to choose the right imprint method and paper stock for your project. You’ll be prepared to work with a print design company or talk directly to your printer to get the results you want."

'via Blog this' StarBuzzOnline

ATTN BUSINESS OWNERS: See your profits grow with SocialMedia Impact. Call now 905 819 8142

2017-03-27T13:31:00.002-07:00

ATTN Business Owners:

Grow your business with "SocialMedia Impact". for marketing your Business.
AFFORDABLE EASY PLANS
Contact: 905 819 8142 or
email: meena.socialimpact@gmail.com.
Visit: http://meenachopra.blogspot.ca

(In collaboration with StarBuzz Media Toronto (Arts & Entertainment News Generator)

#SocialMedia

Grow your business with "SocialMedia Impact"

2017-03-26T10:38:00.001-07:00

Grow your business with "SocialMedia Impact". for marketing your Business. Contact: 905 819 8142 or email: meena.socialimpact@gmail.com. Visit: http://meenachopra.blogspot.ca
(In collaboration with StarBuzz Media Toronto (Arts & Entertainment News Generator)
AFFORDABLE EASY PLANS

#SocialMedia

Grow your business with "SocialMedia Impact". for marketing your Business.

2017-03-26T06:02:00.001-07:00

#SocialMedia

14 Tips For Getting More Followers and Likes On Instagram - ShortStack

2017-03-06T04:58:00.001-08:00

14 Tips For Getting More Followers and Likes On Instagram - ShortStack:

Looking for tips about how to get more followers and Likes on Instagram? We’ve got a lot of advice for you — in fact, it’s the motherlode of Instagram tips!! — so let’s get straight into it:

1. Post at the right time. Before you post your photo to Instagram, there are two things to keep in mind: your audience’s time zone and what time they’re most often checking Instagram. Most Instagram users login in the morning, and in the evening, on their way home from work or school. According to analytics company Simply Measured, the best time to post on Instagram is on Wednesdays between 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm.

For brands, the least favorable time to post is in the middle of the night because an Instagram photo typically has a life of only around 4 hours before it gets buried in followers’ feeds.

Post at times throughout the day that you can assume your audience has down time and is checking their accounts. For example, if you’re a company whose target audience is high school students, post your photo in the afternoon during the time high schoolers are on their lunch break. Or, if you’re a business with lots of New York City- or London-based followers, think about posting during rush hour when you know folks are stuck on trains or busses and have nothing else to do but check their phones.

2. Use popular hashtags. Depending on the industry you’re in, there are popular Instagram hashtags that can be used to get more visibility on your photos. The best way to discover popular hashtags for your industry is to use Google, of course! A simple Google search will tell you all you need to know.

Some of the most trendy Instagram hashtags you’ll find include: #tbt (throwback Thursday), #instadaily, #photooftheday, #instagood.

Keep in mind: Don’t go nuts with your hashtags! A hashtag paragraph, as I like to call it, at the bottom of your photo is not savvy. It can look a little overzealous and cluttered. Instead, stick to using 1-3 relevant hashtags per photo.

3. Use your photo captions to ask questions: One of the best ways to get more likes on your Instagram photos is to use your photo’s caption to ask a question. This is a great way to drive not only photo likes, but comments, too.

4. Host a contest on Instagram: Hosting a contest is often the most effective way to boost engagement and get new followers fast on any social network. Since Instagram has grown in popularity, it makes it one of the best social platforms to run a

For best practices and tips on how to host a successful Instagram photo contest, click here.

If you’re interested in hosting an Instagram campaign, here’s an example from a ShortStack user.

5. Share teasers: For product-based businesses, upload photos to Instagram that feature teasers of a soon-to-be-released product or an exciting event that’s around the corner. Teaser photos are great for catching users’ interest and for driving photo likes! Check out a great example of an Instagram teaser photo from the California-based clothing company The Hundreds.

6. Share candid shots: Think of your brand’s Instagram account as your followers’ backstage pass, or a behind-the-scenes look, at the inner workings of your company. People don’t want to see the same highly polished images your brand uses for adverts, they want to see images that are more relatable and less edited.

Your Instagram account should strive to highlight your employees and the work they do. Even if your business employs hundreds of people, featuring even just a few faces from behind your brand allows your brand to appear much more transparent with your followers.

Remember: The content you post on Instagram doesn’t always have to be marketing driven, it can be just for fun! After all, these kind of photos often get the best engagement. Stop thinking so much about how to get you’re going to get your branding message across and focus on the essence of the platform, which is a human-centric and playful.

7. Use apps: Use photo-editing apps to enhance your photos before you post them Instagram. There are lots of photo-editing apps on the market that are super easy to use. Below are a few of the best, along with a short description of what they do:

• Instaframe: Instaframe is a free app that allows you to create really awesome photo collages. There are lots of photo collage apps available, but this one is by far my favorite. Check out below Uber SF’s cool photo college they posted for their Uber ice cream event!

• Squaready — Instagram Layouter: When you upload a photo to Instagram from your phone’s photo library, Instagram will make you crop it into the shape of a square. If you want to feature an entire photo without cropping it, Squaready allows you to do this. Bonus: it’s free!

• Picfx: If you want to really pump up the look of your photo with filters, Picfx ($1.99) is your go-to app. It has 100+ effects, textures and frames to choose from, and will automatically format your photo into a square for easy Instagram uploading.

• Camera+: Camera+ ($1.99) one of the most popular photo-editing apps available. Use Camera+ to adjust the lighting, brightness, contrast and clarity of your photos. It’s also a really handy app for shooting, as it allows you to zoom more tightly and improve your lighting on the spot!

8. Ask your users for help: If it’s a goal of your brand’s to get on Instagram’s most popular “Explore” page, and you have enough followers to do so, don’t be afraid to ask in the photo caption section of your next uploaded photo. Ask and often you shall receive!

9. Use Instagram video: Instagram videos are the latest way for businesses to engage with fans. Here’s a great example from Ballet Opera de Paris, promoting a new film.

In short, brands using Instagram video should use it to do the following: spotlight their products, tell a story, entertain and provide value.

10. Welcome a guest Instagrammer: There are lots of “Instagram celebrities” on the platform, meaning Instagram users who have massive following. These people have influence. In a matter of minutes, a photo that an “Instagram celebrity” posts can get thousands of likes and hundreds of comments.

If you’re a brand, team up with an Instagram celeb and have them take over your account for a day or during a major event. This is one way to introduce your Instagram celeb’s large following to your brand.

The clothing brand Juicy Couture recently did this when they had popular blogger Kelly Framel of The Glamourai take over their Instagram account to post behind-the-scenes photos of a photo shoot for their upcoming campaign. Fellow fashion blogger Chriselle Lim of The Chriselle Factor also took over Nordstrom’s Instagram account recently!

11. Ask for shoutouts or features: This tip is for all my PR people! Reach out to popular Instagrammers, or “Instagram celebrities,” and ask that they mention your Instagram account or feature your product in a photo of theirs.

Or better yet, if you’re notified that one of these Instagram influencers mentioned your brand without you asking, reach out to them and say “thanks!” This will help your brand develop a relationship with people who have online influence. The backing of a major Instagram influencer could potentially help drive hundreds of new followers for your brand.

12. Show love to your followers: One brand that’s a great example for how to show love to your followers is designer Rebecca Minkoff. If you check out their Instagram account, they often share fan-snapped photos that feature their products.

By posting fan photos, it encourages other followers to tag their photos with your brand’s hashtag or to mention your brand’s account name in the hopes of being the next fan photo used.

13. Take advantage of your Instagram bio: Don’t neglect your Instagram bio! Use this space to feature a call to action, branded hashtags and web links. Or better still, use ShortStack to build and Instagram campaign that you can easily update without having to change the link in your bio every day.

For Instagram users who are new to your brand and come across your account for the first time, this section is important– it often plays a hand in a user’s decision to follow your business or not.

14. Discover new people and brands to follow: If you’re a brand just starting out on the platform and you’re not sure who you should follow, just tap on the magnifying glass that appears in the bottom section of your home screen. Instagram will suggest “Videos you might like” and will show you accounts from other users you might want to check out.

'via Blog this' StarBuzzOnline

Financial Advisors: 15 Tips To Use Social Media (Compliantly)

2017-01-04T06:00:00.001-08:00

Financial Advisors: 15 Tips To Use Social Media (Compliantly):

'According to a recent survey, 85% of financial advisors use social media for business. 80% of these “social advisors” gained new clients resulting in nearly $5 million in average asset gain directly attributable to social media use. 85% also said that social media shortened the selling cycle. For these advisors, social media is no longer an option, but a proven tool used to gain new business and to build closer relationships with clients.

Are you ready to step off the sidelines and become a "social advisor" to build your business? Here are 15 tips help you use social media effectively, while complying with the rules and regulations in the financial industry:

Understand your company’s social media policy. Most firms at this point have moved beyond “no” to allowing their associated persons to use social media in some way. Read and make sure you understand your corporate policy. Contact your compliance department with questions. Speak with colleagues. Participate in any training that may be available at your firm or online.

Define your audience. Many financial advisors specialize. Do you target high tech founders? Healthcare professionals? Business owners? High net worth multi-generational families? Select the social media platform used by your clients so you can communicate in the manner your clients want to communicate.
Define your personal brand. This is often the hardest concept to grasp for newcomers to social media. This is simply a consistent reflection of who you are. Define your special talents and areas of expertise that help your clients succeed. And importantly, reveal your personal interests and show your authentic self. Whether you are a rabid Bruce Springsteen fan, competitive bicycle racer, or volunteer for a good cause, include that too. Be careful though. It’s best to avoid politics, religion or controversial opinions to avoid excluding possible clients that hold a different view.

Facebook Live Video: The Complete Guide to Live-Streaming for Business

2016-12-11T07:38:00.003-08:00

Facebook Live Video: The Complete Guide to Live-Streaming for Business:

Facebook Live Video: The Complete Guide to Live-Streaming for Business

By Kendall Walters

7 NOVEMBER 2016SOCIAL

Presidential debates. Car chases. Sketch comedy TV shows. What do they all have in common? They’re all best enjoyed live.

The first televised live broadcast took place in 1951, when then-U.S. president Harry Truman made a speech at the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco. Since then, we’ve seen countless political events, breaking news, and, of course, popular entertainment shows like Saturday Night Live, all in real-time.

A lot of trends have gained—and lost—momentum in the intervening time, but the popularity of live video has endured. Reinvigorated by new technologies, we’ve now moved beyond social video into a world of live social video.

And where better to stream your live broadcasts than the biggest social network of all? No social network is used more—or by more people—than Facebook. The social giant introduced its own live video feature, called Facebook Live, at the end of 2015 and the prominence of video streaming on the platform has only grown from there.

What is Facebook Live?

Facebook Live is the social network’s live-streaming video functionality. Users can broadcast live videos using only their smartphones. It’s available to all Pages and profiles on Facebook for iOS, Android, and the Facebook Mentions app. Additionally, live broadcasts can be streamed in Facebook groups and events.

Facebook explained the appeal of Live video thusly: “Broadcast to the largest audience in the world with the camera in your pocket.”

Image via Facebook.

When the network first introduced live video in August 2015, the feature was limited to Facebook Mentions, an app available to public figures such as celebrities, athletes, musicians, politicians, and other influencers.

Then in December 2015, Facebook began to make the feature public, releasing it to a small subset of users in the U.S. and verified Pages, then to the rest of the country at the end of January 2016. It became available outside the U.S. at the end of February 2016. Facebook has since introduced a number of Live video features.

Why is live video a big deal for marketers?

Before we dive into why live video matters, let’s back up a bit. To truly understand why live video is a big deal, you have to look at the ever-increasing prominence of social video.

While video has always been popular online, the dominance of social media and the rise of mobile usage has all but ensured social video’s position as the reigning monarch of content. Users continue to produce—and watch—more video at greater rates than ever before.

What you should know about social video:

One-third of all online activity is spent watching video
Online video streaming will grow to more than 80 percent of all consumer internet traffic by 2020, according to predictions from tech company Cisco
92 percent of mobile video consumers share videos with others, according to strategic consulting and digital business firm Insivia
59 percent of executives would rather watch video than read text, according to Forbes
In 2015, adults in the U.S. were watching an average of one hour and 16 minutes of video on digital devices every day (out of 5.5 total hours spent watching video content), according to eMarketer—up significantly from only 21 minutes watching video on digital devices in 2011
26 percent of people are interested in watching live-streams broadcast by brands or companies.

What you should know about Facebook video:

Native Facebook videos get more organic reach—that is, they’re seen by more users, even without promotion—than any other type of content (a whopping 135 percent more than photos), according to Socialbakers
Users watch 100 million hours of video on Facebook every day
Facebook boasted 8 billion video views daily as of November 2015 (the last time the platform released video numbers)—double the amount it had in April of that same year

Beyond the popularity of social video in general, Live video brings with it specific benefits.

What you should know about Facebook Live:

People comment 10 times more on Facebook Live videos than on regular videos.
The average time people spend watching Live videos is more than three times longer than video that isn’t live.
One in five Facebook users watches Facebook Live.

Image via Global Web Index.

People in more than 60 countries can share Facebook Live video.
More than 50 percent of people watching live videos are using Android devices.
Facebook has invested heavily in Live video. The platform has signed as many as 140 contracts with media companies and celebrities to produce Live videos—including the likes of the New York Times, BuzzFeed, comedian Kevin Hart, and chef Gordon Ramsay—paying a total of $50 million.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is dedicated to Live video—during a February 2016 town hall-style Q&A, he described Live video as “one of the things I’m most excited about”
It’s fast—for the final 2016 presidential debate, a study by media streaming service provider Wowza found that Facebook’s live-stream had the lowest latency, beating out satellite and cable for some viewers and delivering its stream at an average 13-second delay (as low as seven seconds for some viewers)
Texas woman Candace Payne currently holds the record for most-watched Facebook Live video. The clip, which features Payne wearing a Chewbacca mask and laughing, has been watched more than 160 million times. It was one of the fastest growing viral videos in history, hitting 100 million views in only three days.

The previous record was held by BuzzFeed’s exploding watermelon video, which garnered more than 800,000 simultaneous viewers while it was streaming live and has since racked up a grand total of more than 10 million views—#watermelon even ended up trending on Twitter

And of course, when it comes to that most critical of Facebook marketing elements—organic reach—live video can be a huge help.

Facebook considers Live video a distinct content type from other video shared on the platform. This distinction is important for brands because it means that the Facebook algorithm treats native video and Live video differently, with Live videos more likely to appear higher in News Feed while they’re live. After the broadcast, the video can still be discovered and viewed, but once it’s no longer live, Facebook will treat it like any other video.

Facebook Live video also has its own notification system. The network explained that when someone goes Live: “People who frequently engage with or have recently interacted with a person or Page going Live may receive a notification.” This feature gives greater prominence to Live videos and helps keep brands who broadcast top-of-mind.

And let’s not forget expectations for Live video. While viewers expect social video to be polished, audiences often enjoy the opposite in Live video. Production value tends to be less professional and more raw, which many viewers perceive as more authentic, a trait that an increasing number of consumers are looking for in brands.

In other words, there are plenty of good reasons to give Facebook Live video a try.

Difference between Facebook Live and other live-streaming options on social media

Facebook Live is far from the only option out there. Here’s a look at the other platforms offering live-streaming options.

YouTube

YouTube has been offering live-streaming since 2011. In 2016, the video giant added 360-degree streaming and the ability to stream directly from its mobile app.

Image via YouTube.

Users have two streaming options:

Stream Now

Stream Now is the simplest way for users to share live video on YouTube because the platform automatically detects the stream resolution and frame rate. During the broadcast, users can interact with their audience via live chat, view real-time analytics, and monitor the stream. Users can choose to archive the footage to save it for later.

Events

The Events option gives users more control over their broadcast. YouTubers can select privacy options, set a start time for their broadcast, and enable a backup stream (for redundancy). They can also create multiple live events and stream them simultaneously.

YouTube live-streaming is the best fit for people or brands whose audience is primarily on YouTube. It can also work well for brands who’d like to share their broadcast across several platforms, as the link can easily be shared on the network of their choosing.

Periscope

Periscope is a live streaming app owned by Twitter and integrated into the platform. It debuted in March 2015 and fought a brief battle with Meerkat for social streaming supremacy.

Image via Periscope.

Users can tag their location and respond to audience comments in real-time. Recent updates to the app give Periscope users the option to live-stream directly from a GoProcamera, save their broadcast, and embed it directly in Tweets. Viewers can also replay highlights. To learn more about how to use the platform, check out our Periscope guide for business.

The primary difference between Periscope and Facebook Live is the network. Periscope is the live-streaming option for Twitter users while Facebook Live, of course, lives on Facebook.

Facebook Live features

Not only does Facebook Live give brands access to an immense audience—potentially the entirety of Facebook, which currently boasts 1.13 daily active users—it also offers a range of features.

Notifications

Because Facebook Live is considered a distinct content type (and one that Facebook is actively encouraging), it has its own notification system. By default, users’ Live video notifications are set to ‘on’.

The network explained that when someone goes Live: “People who frequently engage with or have recently interacted with a person or Page going Live may receive a notification.”

If a user is particularly interested in Live video from a particular broadcaster, they can choose to subscribe, which means they’ll be notified any time that broadcaster goes Live.

Invite friends

When a user is watching a broadcast, they can choose to send an invitation to a friendto watch with them. This option is available from within the Live video. To send an invite, simply tap on the invite icon and select the friend you’d like to invite. That person will receive a push notification.

Image via Facebook.

Maps

For users interested in discovering new content, there’s the Facebook Live Map, which is available on desktop. Facebook users in more than 60 countries have the ability to begin a live broadcast, so the Facebook Live Map provides a way for people to discover those videos more easily.

Image via Facebook.

The map displays all live broadcasts currently happening around the world, each one represented by a blue dot, with larger dots indicating more popular broadcasts. Hovering over a dot pulls up a preview of the stream, including a counter showing how many people are currently watching it, and a timer showing how long the broadcast has been playing. Users can choose to zoom in to explore broadcasts in more specific areas.

Image via Facebook Live Map.

Additionally, a panel to on the left side of the screen features a list of the most popular current live broadcasts. As with the dots, hovering over one shows both where the broadcast originated and where people are streaming it from.

Image via Facebook Live Map.

Live Reactions

Facebook users can, of course, react to any post on the platform using the six emoji-like Reactions to highlight their response. But Facebook Live takes things one step further by allowing a broadcast’s audience to react to the video stream in real-time, with Reactions appearing on the video itself as they’re clicked by the audience.

Image via Facebook.

Filters

Broadcasters have the option to add a filter to their live stream. There are five options to choose from. While Facebook announced on April 6, 2016—the same day they introduced filters—that they would soon add the ability for broadcasters to draw or doodle on their video while live, this feature is not yet available.

Image via Facebook.

How to add a filter to live video

Begin recording a broadcast
Tap the magic wand icon
Scroll left to view all filter options
Tap a filter to select it

It’s important to note that you will be live while selecting a filter.

Masks

In addition to filters, broadcasters can now also experiment with Snapchat-like masksduring their live-stream. Introduced on October 27, 2016, masks are available on iOS to broadcasters in the U.S., U.K., and New Zealand.

Image via Facebook.

How to use a mask in Live video

Tap the Live video icon to begin recording a broadcast
Once live, tap the magic wand icon
Select the masks icon in the creative tools tray at the bottom of the screen
Scroll through the options and tap on masks to have them automatically appear on your face
To remove the mask, scroll to the far left and tap the no mask option

It’s important to note that you will be live while selecting a mask.

Facebook Live API

The Facebook Live API allows broadcasters to “seamlessly incorporate Live into their existing broadcast setup.” This means that publishers who have more sophisticated equipment have the option to broadcast from a professional camera and audio setup rather than streaming Live video from a mobile device.

The Live API also enables features like camera switching, instant replay, on-screen graphics, and special effects. Using the API, publishers also have the ability to stream other sources, like games or screencasts.

For example, video game company Blizzard Entertainment used the Live API to enable gamers to live-stream their gameplay directly to Facebook from within the game.

Continuous Live streaming

Through the Facebook Live API, it’s possible to broadcast continuous live video. This is a tad more complex to set up than the average Live video broadcast, but offers a great option for users who may want to showcase a constant Live feed, such as a museum or zoo.

Schedule Live broadcasts

Using the Facebook Live API, publishers can schedule Live broadcasts in order to build up an audience before they begin streaming. When a publisher schedules a Live video, an announcement will be posted to News Feed letting their fans know the broadcast is coming.

Image via Facebook.

Users who see the post can choose to receive a one-time notification that will remind them shortly before the broadcast begins. Fans can then join a pre-broadcast lobby where they can connect and interact with other viewers before the Live video starts.

Image via Facebook.

Publishers can schedule Live broadcasts up to one week in advance and audiences can join a lobby three minutes prior to the start of the broadcast. Another bonus? Once publishers have scheduled a Live video, they’re able to share a link to the broadcast or embed it in other places, such as websites or blogs.

Facebook announced scheduling and lobby functionality on October 18, 2016. It was made available to Verified Pages later that week and Facebook said they planned to open it up to all Pages in the following weeks.

Ability to share in a group or event

Facebook Live video can be broadcast from a Facebook profile and Pages. It can also be shared directly in a Facebook group or event, giving users plenty of live-streaming options.

Metrics

For Pages, Facebook offers several different metrics to measure the success of their live video broadcasts.

In addition to the metrics available for video through Facebook Insights—video views, 30-second views, top videos, demographic breakdown of minutes viewed, viewer engagement, and more—Facebook provides two Live video-specific metrics:

Peak concurrent viewers

The highest number of viewers who were watching the video while it was live.

Viewers during live broadcast

A visual representation of the number of viewers during each moment of the live broadcast.

In August 2016, Facebook began testing mid-roll video ads in Facebook Live. Facebook told AdAge: “We’re running a small test where a group of publishers have the option to insert a short ad break in their Facebook Live videos.”

It’s not clear at this time whether Facebook will move ahead with implementing this more widely.

How to use Facebook Live

Live broadcasts can be identified by the red icon in the top left-hand corner of the video. The word “Live” will be written next to the icon, along with the number of current viewers.

How to start a Facebook Live broadcast:

Tap on Update Status
Select the Live Video icon
Write a description
Choose the audience you’d like to share with
Go live

During the broadcast, you’ll see the number of live viewers, the names of any friends who are tuning in, and a real-time stream of comments. Once you’ve ended your broadcast, the post will save to your Timeline like any video.

Image via Facebook.

Live broadcasts can be up to 90 minutes long.

How to schedule a Facebook Live broadcast

On your Page, go to Publishing Tools
Select Video Library and then Live
Copy stream credentials, such as stream key and server URL
Write your announcement post
Finalize your scheduled Live broadcast
Click Schedule

Image via Facebook.

For more information and detailed step-by-step instructions, check out Facebook’s guide to scheduling a Live video.

Where to find Facebook Live broadcasts to watch

There are several ways to discover Facebook Live videos. The simplest is, of course, clicking on one in your News Feed. If there’s a particular broadcaster you enjoy, you can tap the Follow button while watching one of their videos to receive a notification next time they go live.

Image via Facebook.

You can also choose to receive notifications from Pages you follow. By default, this setting is set to on.

How to turn notifications on or off

Click the drop-down arrow in the upper right-hand corner of the screen
Select Settings
Click Notifications on the left-hand side of the screen
Click On Facebook
Scroll down to Live videos, then choose your desired setting from the three options in the dropdown: On, Suggestions off, and All off

Image via Facebook.

Another way to find live broadcasts to watch is via the Facebook Live Map, which displays all Live broadcasts currently happening around the world.

Tips for using Facebook Live

Facebook offers several tips and best practices for using Facebook Live on their media site.

1. Plan your broadcast

Broadcasting live, by its very nature, means you can’t plan precisely what’s going to happen. But that doesn’t mean you should just wing it. Like any type of content online, Facebook Live broadcasts should have a purpose.

Before you begin streaming, ensure that you’ve taken some time to think about what your broadcast’s about, what you want to say (or do) in it, and why it makes sense as a Live stream as opposed to some other format of content.

2. Let people know when you’re going to broadcast

You wouldn’t hold a party and not invite anyone, would you? Your Facebook Live broadcast is like any other event: if you want anyone to show up, you’ve got to let them know it’s happening.

Hotel company Outrigger Resorts does an excellent job of this, creating 10 to 15 second long mini-trailers for their Live videos, which they share in advance of their broadcasts.

Obviously you’ll want to post about your upcoming broadcast on Facebook, where you can encourage people to subscribe to your Live videos. But you can also promote your stream on your other social channels. Just make sure you’re clear about where and when people can tune in!

The Facebook Live API makes this even easier by giving publishers the option to schedule broadcasts and share a link to their stream ahead of time.

3. Make sure you have a strong connection

It’s important to make sure you have a strong signal before you begin broadcasting. While WiFi is ideal, if it’s unavailable, a 4G connection works well.

For best results, check your internet speed prior to beginning your broadcast using the Speedtest app, available in the App Store and Google Play.

4. Write a compelling description before going live

Your description tells people what your video is about. A good one captures the audience’s attention and a bad one—or worse, none at all—makes it all the more likely they’ll keep on scrolling.

Use your description to tell a story. Give context about what your broadcast is about and be sure to make it clear why people would want to watch.

5. Tag your location

Add your location to your Live video so it shows up on the Facebook Live Map and gives you a greater chance of having it discovered by new viewers.

6. Ask viewers to follow you

Getting audience members to subscribe to your Live videos is the simplest way to ensure future viewers, because subscribers receive notifications every time you go Live. While broadcasting, take a second to let viewers know about the feature and tell them how they can subscribe to your videos.

7. Respond to comments

As with any kind of social content, engagement is key on Facebook Live video. Facebook recommends saying hello to commenters by name, then responding to their comments.

8. Broadcast for longer periods of time

The longer you continue your broadcast, the more time people have to discover your stream, watch it, and invite their friends to join in.

Facebook recommends going Live for at least 10 minutes. The maximum time limit for a broadcast is 90 minutes, so beyond that, the length is up to you.

9. Show exclusively Live content

While it’s possible using the Facebook Live API to insert previously recorded video into your live stream, Facebook recommends showing exclusively live content during Live videos.

10. Be creative

The more often you go Live, the more likely you are to stay top-of-mind. Try out different types of broadcasts to see what resonates with your audience. And don’t be afraid to get creative with your stream.

Ideas for Facebook Live content

Facebook suggests a number of different ways to use Live. These are a few of the ones that are most relevant for brands.

1. Hot topics

When something’s on everyone’s minds, it can be worthwhile for your brand to dive into the conversation. Though, as with any kind of trendjacking—whether it’s the holidays or the latest craze—it’s crucial to only hop on board if what you have to say is relevant and useful.

At the height of back-to-school season in August 2016, Target took to Facebook Live to chat about dorm room style.

The moderator read out questions from commenters, which were then displayed on the screen. The panel of college stylists dished out advice and discussed solutions. The stream has accumulated more than 38,000 views since its debut.

2. Interviews and Q&As

The interactive nature of Facebook Live means the platform was practically made for Q&As.

All brands need to try out this format is a host, a willing and interesting guest, and a mobile phone or camera to broadcast with. The audience can join in and ask questions in the comments, making the experience interactive.

Harry Potter prequel film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them took to Facebook Live in October 2016 for a Global Fan Event. The Page streamed exclusive footage from the upcoming film alongside a Q&A with members of the cast.

It received more than 1.3 million views.

3. Breaking news

If you’re a journalist, publisher, or other media organization, then you already know when and how to live-stream breaking news. But for brands, it’s a little different.

Southwest Airlines used Facebook Live during winter storm Jonas to give a look behind-the-scenes at Operations Control, showing how they were coping with the weather and explaining what they were doing to help passengers whose travel plans were disrupted.

The notable thing about this stream is how Southwest approached the management of a PR crisis on social media by focusing on transparency and customer service. The video has accrued more than 89,000 views and over 2,700 likes.

4. Performances and live events

Whether it’s a conference or concert, Facebook Live is a good home for events. It opens up the experience to a wider audience, broadening the scope of your event.

In July 2016, Target live-streamed the launch party for their new children’s clothing line Cat & Jack. The broadcast was hosted by Zanna Roberts Rassi, senior fashion editor of Marie Claire and NBC Today show fashion contributor.

The stream racked up over 1.2 million views.

5. Behind-the-scenes

Behind-the-scenes content is popular on a number of social channels, particularly when it comes to social video. Facebook Live takes things one step further by giving the audience the opportunity to interact, ask questions, and influence the direction of the broadcast in real-time.

One brand that made good use of the Live format was the Smithsonian, broadcasting a series of six videos, each hosted by a different museum. The broadcasts explored various exhibits within the National Museum of African American History and Culture before its public opening.

Another brand that does a good job of behind-the-scenes content is Callaway Golf. In June 2016, the brand broadcast an exclusive tour of golf legend Arnold Palmer’s home, led by the golfer’s longtime friend Doc.

What sets Callaway’s livestream apart was the camera operator’s efforts to engage viewers throughout the stream. Around the five minute mark, he thanks the audience for tuning in and puts out a call for questions or requests for what the audience would like to see. Later on, about 20 minutes in, he reintroduces Doc and his relationship to Palmer for viewers who had just tuned in.

6. Demo

Live can be a great way to show off your products and how to use them.

Martha Stewart was one of the earliest adopters of Facebook Live, gaining access to the feature a month before most celebrities. She’s shown that demo-style videos—whether they’re cooking shows or a stream on how to properly iron a shirt—work well on the platform.

The broadcasts regularly rack up more than 150,000 views. As Business Insider noted, that’s more eyeballs than some episodes of “The Martha Stewart Show” after its move to the Hallmark Channel.

A recent stream, featuring actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, in which Stewart demonstrates how to make a rhubarb-strawberry lattice pie, accumulated nearly 20,000 interactions, setting a new record for Stewart’s Facebook Page.

Her success on the platform recently prompted Adweek to proclaim that she’s “conquered Facebook Live.”

7. Announcements and campaign launches

Going Live for a big announcement or the launch of a campaign can be a good way to build anticipation for whatever it is you plan to tell your audience. Be sure to tease the live-stream in advance and let fans know to tune in for some big news.

Dunkin’ Donuts became one of the earliest brands to try out Facebook Live when they broadcast a behind-the-scenes look into their kitchen for a Valentine’s Day promotion in February 2016. The stream featured the team preparing a cake made from heart-shaped donuts and introduced a contest.

Dunkin’ Donuts’ social media manager, Melanie Cohn, told Marketing Land that the session racked up 21,000 viewers in only 13 minutes. She said the company saw one of their highest average view times ever on their Live video as compared to pre-recorded video.

8. Series

If you have an engaged audience and it fits your marketing goals, one option to consider is creating a T.V. show-style broadcast that you run on a regular basis.

Benefit Cosmetics has done this with their series Tipsy Tricks with Benefit. Tipsy Tricks is a weekly live show featuring a host and a guest chatting about beauty topics (often chosen by the audience), sharing advice, demonstrating products and techniques, and answering viewer questions. And, of course, drinking wine. (This is still the internet, after all.)

The show debuted in March 2016 and the first two streams accrued 42,000 and 59,000live viewers respectively, with an average of 2,000 people tuning in at any given time, according to Digiday. A September 2016 episode featuring special guest and brow expert Jared Bailey racked up more than 189,000 views.

Claudia Allwood, Benefit’s senior director of U.S. digital marketing, explained the appeal to Internet Retailer: “Our Live videos are a great way to showcase our brand and to educate our consumers.”

“It is utility-meets-fun-meets-GF banter. We have a talk-show vibe, but we’re talking to you, not at you,” she told Digiday

Another brand that’s gone the show-route is Outrigger Resorts. The tourism brand streams an #AlohaFridayLive broadcast every Friday, taking viewers to a different resort in the chain, showing off the locales, introducing them to employees, and answering audience questions.

Frequently asked questions about Facebook Live

How do you broadcast live video on Facebook?

To start a live broadcast on Facebook:

Tap on Update Status
Select the Live Video icon
Write a description
Choose the audience you’d like to share with
Go live

How do I get Facebook Live?

Facebook Live video is available to all Pages and profiles on Facebook for iOS, Android, and the Facebook Mentions app. Additionally, Facebook Live broadcasts can be streamed in Facebook groups and events.

How long does a Facebook Live video last?

Facebook Live broadcasts can last up to 90 minutes.

What is going live on Facebook?

Going live on Facebook means beginning a live broadcast that can be viewed by Facebook users around the world.

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Facebook Live Video: The Complete Guide to Live-Streaming for Business

2016-12-11T07:38:00.001-08:00

Facebook Live Video: The Complete Guide to Live-Streaming for Business:

Facebook Live Video: The Complete Guide to Live-Streaming for Business

By Kendall Walters

7 NOVEMBER 2016SOCIAL

Presidential debates. Car chases. Sketch comedy TV shows. What do they all have in common? They’re all best enjoyed live.

What is Facebook Live?

Facebook explained the appeal of Live video thusly: “Broadcast to the largest audience in the world with the camera in your pocket.”

Image via Facebook.

Why is live video a big deal for marketers?

Before we dive into why live video matters, let’s back up a bit. To truly understand why live video is a big deal, you have to look at the ever-increasing prominence of social video.

What you should know about social video:

One-third of all online activity is spent watching video
Online video streaming will grow to more than 80 percent of all consumer internet traffic by 2020, according to predictions from tech company Cisco
92 percent of mobile video consumers share videos with others, according to strategic consulting and digital business firm Insivia
59 percent of executives would rather watch video than read text, according to Forbes
In 2015, adults in the U.S. were watching an average of one hour and 16 minutes of video on digital devices every day (out of 5.5 total hours spent watching video content), according to eMarketer—up significantly from only 21 minutes watching video on digital devices in 2011
26 percent of people are interested in watching live-streams broadcast by brands or companies.

What you should know about Facebook video:

Native Facebook videos get more organic reach—that is, they’re seen by more users, even without promotion—than any other type of content (a whopping 135 percent more than photos), according to Socialbakers
Users watch 100 million hours of video on Facebook every day
Facebook boasted 8 billion video views daily as of November 2015 (the last time the platform released video numbers)—double the amount it had in April of that same year

Beyond the popularity of social video in general, Live video brings with it specific benefits.

What you should know about Facebook Live:

People comment 10 times more on Facebook Live videos than on regular videos.
The average time people spend watching Live videos is more than three times longer than video that isn’t live.
One in five Facebook users watches Facebook Live.

Image via Global Web Index.

People in more than 60 countries can share Facebook Live video.
More than 50 percent of people watching live videos are using Android devices.
Facebook has invested heavily in Live video. The platform has signed as many as 140 contracts with media companies and celebrities to produce Live videos—including the likes of the New York Times, BuzzFeed, comedian Kevin Hart, and chef Gordon Ramsay—paying a total of $50 million.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is dedicated to Live video—during a February 2016 town hall-style Q&A, he described Live video as “one of the things I’m most excited about”
It’s fast—for the final 2016 presidential debate, a study by media streaming service provider Wowza found that Facebook’s live-stream had the lowest latency, beating out satellite and cable for some viewers and delivering its stream at an average 13-second delay (as low as seven seconds for some viewers)
Texas woman Candace Payne currently holds the record for most-watched Facebook Live video. The clip, which features Payne wearing a Chewbacca mask and laughing, has been watched more than 160 million times. It was one of the fastest growing viral videos in history, hitting 100 million views in only three days.

The previous record was held by BuzzFeed’s exploding watermelon video, which garnered more than 800,000 simultaneous viewers while it was streaming live and has since racked up a grand total of more than 10 million views—#watermelon even ended up trending on Twitter

And of course, when it comes to that most critical of Facebook marketing elements—organic reach—live video can be a huge help.

In other words, there are plenty of good reasons to give Facebook Live video a try.

Difference between Facebook Live and other live-streaming options on social media

Facebook Live is far from the only option out there. Here’s a look at the other platforms offering live-streaming options.

YouTube

YouTube has been offering live-streaming since 2011. In 2016, the video giant added 360-degree streaming and the ability to stream directly from its mobile app.

Image via YouTube.

Users have two streaming options:

Stream Now

Events

Periscope

Periscope is a live streaming app owned by Twitter and integrated into the platform. It debuted in March 2015 and fought a brief battle with Meerkat for social streaming supremacy.

Image via Periscope.

The primary difference between Periscope and Facebook Live is the network. Periscope is the live-streaming option for Twitter users while Facebook Live, of course, lives on Facebook.

Facebook Live features

Not only does Facebook Live give brands access to an immense audience—potentially the entirety of Facebook, which currently boasts 1.13 daily active users—it also offers a range of features.

Notifications

The network explained that when someone goes Live: “People who frequently engage with or have recently interacted with a person or Page going Live may receive a notification.”

If a user is particularly interested in Live video from a particular broadcaster, they can choose to subscribe, which means they’ll be notified any time that broadcaster goes Live.

Invite friends

Image via Facebook.

Maps

Image via Facebook.

Image via Facebook Live Map.

Live Reactions

Image via Facebook.

Filters

Image via Facebook.

How to add a filter to live video

Begin recording a broadcast
Tap the magic wand icon
Scroll left to view all filter options
Tap a filter to select it

It’s important to note that you will be live while selecting a filter.

Masks

Image via Facebook.

How to use a mask in Live video

Tap the Live video icon to begin recording a broadcast
Once live, tap the magic wand icon
Select the masks icon in the creative tools tray at the bottom of the screen
Scroll through the options and tap on masks to have them automatically appear on your face
To remove the mask, scroll to the far left and tap the no mask option

It’s important to note that you will be live while selecting a mask.

Facebook Live API

For example, video game company Blizzard Entertainment used the Live API to enable gamers to live-stream their gameplay directly to Facebook from within the game.

Continuous Live streaming

Schedule Live broadcasts

Image via Facebook.

Ability to share in a group or event

Facebook Live video can be broadcast from a Facebook profile and Pages. It can also be shared directly in a Facebook group or event, giving users plenty of live-streaming options.

Metrics

For Pages, Facebook offers several different metrics to measure the success of their live video broadcasts.

Peak concurrent viewers

The highest number of viewers who were watching the video while it was live.

Viewers during live broadcast

A visual representation of the number of viewers during each moment of the live broadcast.

It’s not clear at this time whether Facebook will move ahead with implementing this more widely.

How to use Facebook Live

Live broadcasts can be identified by the red icon in the top left-hand corner of the video. The word “Live” will be written next to the icon, along with the number of current viewers.

How to start a Facebook Live broadcast:

Tap on Update Status
Select the Live Video icon
Write a description
Choose the audience you’d like to share with
Go live

Image via Facebook.

Live broadcasts can be up to 90 minutes long.

How to schedule a Facebook Live broadcast

On your Page, go to Publishing Tools
Select Video Library and then Live
Copy stream credentials, such as stream key and server URL
Write your announcement post
Finalize your scheduled Live broadcast
Click Schedule

Image via Facebook.

For more information and detailed step-by-step instructions, check out Facebook’s guide to scheduling a Live video.

Where to find Facebook Live broadcasts to watch

Image via Facebook.

You can also choose to receive notifications from Pages you follow. By default, this setting is set to on.

How to turn notifications on or off

Click the drop-down arrow in the upper right-hand corner of the screen
Select Settings
Click Notifications on the left-hand side of the screen
Click On Facebook
Scroll down to Live videos, then choose your desired setting from the three options in the dropdown: On, Suggestions off, and All off

Image via Facebook.

Another way to find live broadcasts to watch is via the Facebook Live Map, which displays all Live broadcasts currently happening around the world.

Tips for using Facebook Live

Facebook offers several tips and best practices for using Facebook Live on their media site.

1. Plan your broadcast

2. Let people know when you’re going to broadcast

You wouldn’t hold a party and not invite anyone, would you? Your Facebook Live broadcast is like any other event: if you want anyone to show up, you’ve got to let them know it’s happening.

Hotel company Outrigger Resorts does an excellent job of this, creating 10 to 15 second long mini-trailers for their Live videos, which they share in advance of their broadcasts.

The Facebook Live API makes this even easier by giving publishers the option to schedule broadcasts and share a link to their stream ahead of time.

3. Make sure you have a strong connection

It’s important to make sure you have a strong signal before you begin broadcasting. While WiFi is ideal, if it’s unavailable, a 4G connection works well.

For best results, check your internet speed prior to beginning your broadcast using the Speedtest app, available in the App Store and Google Play.

4. Write a compelling description before going live

Use your description to tell a story. Give context about what your broadcast is about and be sure to make it clear why people would want to watch.

5. Tag your location

Add your location to your Live video so it shows up on the Facebook Live Map and gives you a greater chance of having it discovered by new viewers.

6. Ask viewers to follow you

7. Respond to comments

As with any kind of social content, engagement is key on Facebook Live video. Facebook recommends saying hello to commenters by name, then responding to their comments.

8. Broadcast for longer periods of time

The longer you continue your broadcast, the more time people have to discover your stream, watch it, and invite their friends to join in.

Facebook recommends going Live for at least 10 minutes. The maximum time limit for a broadcast is 90 minutes, so beyond that, the length is up to you.

9. Show exclusively Live content

While it’s possible using the Facebook Live API to insert previously recorded video into your live stream, Facebook recommends showing exclusively live content during Live videos.

10. Be creative

Ideas for Facebook Live content

Facebook suggests a number of different ways to use Live. These are a few of the ones that are most relevant for brands.

1. Hot topics

At the height of back-to-school season in August 2016, Target took to Facebook Live to chat about dorm room style.

2. Interviews and Q&As

The interactive nature of Facebook Live means the platform was practically made for Q&As.

It received more than 1.3 million views.

3. Breaking news

If you’re a journalist, publisher, or other media organization, then you already know when and how to live-stream breaking news. But for brands, it’s a little different.

4. Performances and live events

Whether it’s a conference or concert, Facebook Live is a good home for events. It opens up the experience to a wider audience, broadening the scope of your event.

The stream racked up over 1.2 million views.

5. Behind-the-scenes

6. Demo

Live can be a great way to show off your products and how to use them.

The broadcasts regularly rack up more than 150,000 views. As Business Insider noted, that’s more eyeballs than some episodes of “The Martha Stewart Show” after its move to the Hallmark Channel.

Her success on the platform recently prompted Adweek to proclaim that she’s “conquered Facebook Live.”

7. Announcements and campaign launches

8. Series

If you have an engaged audience and it fits your marketing goals, one option to consider is creating a T.V. show-style broadcast that you run on a regular basis.

“It is utility-meets-fun-meets-GF banter. We have a talk-show vibe, but we’re talking to you, not at you,” she told Digiday

Frequently asked questions about Facebook Live

How do you broadcast live video on Facebook?

To start a live broadcast on Facebook:

Tap on Update Status
Select the Live Video icon
Write a description
Choose the audience you’d like to share with
Go live

How do I get Facebook Live?

How long does a Facebook Live video last?

Facebook Live broadcasts can last up to 90 minutes.

What is going live on Facebook?

Going live on Facebook means beginning a live broadcast that can be viewed by Facebook users around the world.

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5 Ways Millennial Social Media Habits Will Change In 2017

2016-12-02T04:56:00.001-08:00

5 Ways Millennial Social Media Habits Will Change In 2017: "Millennials’ sMillennials’ social media habits matter. Why? Some of the reasons are obvious; millennials represent tremendous potential buying power, and are some of the most important consumers to reach through social media marketing. They’re also young and have grown up using the Internet, and are therefore more likely to embrace new technologies, which is important for emerging brands.

Accordingly, watching and predicting their social media usage patterns is of critical importance to any business or individual invested in the social media game. So how are millennials going to be using social media differently in 2017? Here are five predictions.

1. Ratings will be everywhere. Millennials love rating and reviewing, and they trust reviews and user-generated content more than any other demographic. Currently, we’re used to rating our dining, purchasing, and customer service experiences, but the world of ratings and reviews could skyrocket in 2017. We’ll start to see more qualitative ratings for content within apps and social media, and newsfeed algorithms that sort and display content based on those ratings. We may also see more requests for recommendations, and millennials trading reviews with one another.

2. Workplace communication will start to shift. The use of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is starting to become more tolerated in the workplace. As millennials start claiming higher positions of leadership, we’ll see a massive shift in how social media is used from a professional standpoint. Employees may be required to be on social media, to bolster the visibility of the company’s brand through a network of personal brands, be more available for conversation and updates, or social media may be used as an entire replacement for instant messaging (or eventually, email). We may even see professionally-angled social media platforms emerge to fill this need, similar to LinkedIn, but with more functional features for communicating with colleagues.

3. Millennials will face a choice: Bail on social media platforms, or fall deeper in the echo chambers. Currently, 88% of millennials get news from Facebook, and because of the way Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm works, users tend to receive more news stories like the ones they’ve engaged with in the past. This has produced an “echo chamber” effect, where users end up surrounding themselves in news and ideas they already agree with. As there are currently no plans for Facebook or any other major platform to take action in reducing the power of those echo chambers, users will venture deeper into those polarized, abstract social bubbles. This will, in turn, polarize millennial participation in social media; some will become more vocal in posting online, while others may bail on social media entirely to escape these echo chambers.

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How To Promote Your Freelance Business With Facebook Ads

2016-11-29T05:26:00.001-08:00

How To Promote Your Freelance Business With Facebook Ads:

Abdullahi Muhammed ,

CONTRIBUTOR

Pexels.com

More than one billion people use Facebook every day. These people come from different walks of life. Some are just connecting with friends, while others own companies of various sizes and probably need freelancers.

If you’re struggling to get freelance jobs, you should give Facebook ads a try. I know many freelancers who have found success with the platform. With the right targeting methods and strategies, you can reach your core audience and get more customers. The following tips should help.

1. Know your audience

First, create a client avatar. The avatar represents your ideal client. Think of the client’s age, interests, and other identifying factors. If one-on-one meetings are part of your business model, you need to consider location as well. You will use this avatar when targeting your ads. Keep the avatar nearby so each ad you create reaches your core market.

2. Build awareness

You know who your target client is. Now, it’s time for that client to get to know you. You can do that by following self-published author Mark Dawson’s lead. Dawson had an incredibly successful Facebook advertising campaign, in part because he learned how to use the platform to build awareness. With awareness as the campaign’s foundation, Dawson’s ads resulted in one million book downloads.

Demographics of Social Media Users | Pew Research Center

2016-11-20T05:50:00.001-08:00

Demographics of Social Media Users | Pew Research Center:

Facebook usage and engagement is on the rise, while adoption of other platforms holds steady

BY SHANNON GREENWOOD, ANDREW PERRIN AND MAEVE DUGGAN

Over the past decade, Pew Research Center has documented the wide variety of ways in which Americans use social media to seek out information and interact with others. A majority of Americans now say they get news via social media, and half of the public has turned to these sites to learn about the 2016 presidential election. Americans are using social media in the context of work (whether to take a mental break on the job or to seek out employment), while also engaging in an ongoing effort to navigate the complex privacy issues that these sites bring to the forefront.

In addition to measuring the broad impact and meaning of social media, since 2012 the Center has also tracked the specific sites and platforms that users turn to in the course of living their social lives online.

In that context, a national survey of 1,520 adults conducted March 7-April 4, 2016, finds that Facebook continues to be America’s most popular social networking platform by a substantial margin: Nearly eight-in-ten online Americans 1 (79%) now use Facebook, more than double the share that uses Twitter (24%), Pinterest (31%), Instagram (32%) or LinkedIn (29%). On a total population basis (accounting for Americans who do not use the internet at all), that means that 68% of all U.S. adults are Facebook users, while 28% use Instagram, 26% use Pinterest, 25% use LinkedIn and 21% use Twitter.

Thanks in part to the growing number of older adults who are joining the site, Facebook use appears to be on the rise: The share of online adults who report using Facebook has increased by 7 percentage points compared with a Pew Research Center survey conducted at a similar point in 2015. In addition, the share of Facebook users who check in daily has increased slightly in the past year: 76% of Americans who use Facebook now report that they visit the site on a daily basis, up from 70% in 2015.

What follows is a deeper examination of the current state of the social media landscape in America.

Usage and demographics of social media platforms

79% of internet users (68% of all U.S. adults) use Facebook

Roughly eight-in-ten online Americans (79%) now use Facebook, a 7-percentage-point increase from a survey conducted at a similar point in 2015.

Young adults continue to report using Facebook at high rates, but older adults are joining in increasing numbers. Some 62% of online adults ages 65 and older now use Facebook, a 14-point increase from the 48% who reported doing so in 2015. In addition, women continue to use Facebook at somewhat higher rates than men: 83% of female internet users and 75% of male internet users are Facebook adopters.

32% of internet users (28% of all U.S. adults) use Instagram

Around one-third of online adults (32%) report using Instagram – roughly the same share as in 2015, when 27% of online adults did so.

To a greater extent than the other social platforms measured in this survey, Instagram use is especially high among younger adults. Roughly six-in-ten online adults ages 18-29 (59%) use Instagram, nearly double the share among 30- to 49-year-olds (33%) and more than seven times the share among those 65 and older (8%). And as was the case in previous Pew Research Center surveys of social media use, female internet users are more likely to use Instagram than men (38% vs. 26%).

24% of internet users (21% of all U.S. adults) use Twitter

Roughly one-quarter of online adults (24%) use Twitter, a proportion that is statistically unchanged from a survey conducted in 2015 (23%).

Younger Americans are more likely than older Americans to be on Twitter. Some 36% of online adults ages 18-29 are on the social network, more than triple the share among online adults ages 65 and older (just 10% of whom are Twitter users).

Twitter is also somewhat more popular among the highly educated: 29% of internet users with college degrees use Twitter, compared with 20% of those with high school degrees or less.

29% of internet users (25% of all U.S. adults) use LinkedIn

The share of online adults who use LinkedIn has remained steady over the past year: 29% report using the site, similar to the 25% who said this in 2015.

LinkedIn has long been especially popular with college graduates and high income earners, and this trend continues to hold true. Half (50%) of online adults with college degrees are on LinkedIn, compared with 27% of those who have attended but not graduated from college and just 12% of those with high school degrees or less.

Similarly, 45% of online adults with an annual household income of $75,000 or more use LinkedIn, compared with just 21% of those living in households with an annual income of less than $30,000. And 35% of online adults who are employed use LinkedIn, compared with 17% of those who are not employed for pay.

31% of internet users (26% of all U.S. adults) use Pinterest

Roughly three-in-ten online Americans (31%) use Pinterest, identical to the 31% who used the platform in 2015.

Continuing a long-standing trend, women use Pinterest at much higher rates than men. Nearly half of online women use the virtual pinboard (45%), more than double the share of online men (17%) who do so.

Frequency of use on social media sites

Facebook remains the most popular social media platform, with its users visiting the site more regularly than users of other social media sites. Roughly three-quarters (76%) of Facebook users report that they visit the site daily (55% visit several times a day, and 22% visit about once per day). This represents a modest but statistically significant increase from the 70% of Facebook users who indicated that they visited the site daily in 2015.

Other than this slight uptick among Facebook users, daily engagement for each of the other major social media platforms is generally similar to Pew Research Center findings from 2015.

Instagram and Twitter occupy the middle tier of social media sites in terms of the share of users who log in daily. Roughly half (51%) of Instagram users access the platform on a daily basis, with 35% saying they do so several times a day. And 42% of Twitter users indicate that they are daily visitors, with 23% saying they visit more than once a day.

A slightly larger share of Americans use Pinterest and LinkedIn than use Twitter, but users of these sites are less likely than Twitter users to check in every day: 25% of Pinterest users and 18% of LinkedIn users are daily visitors.

Using multiple sites: The social media matrix

Social media users continue to use a relatively diverse array of platforms. More than half of online adults (56%) use more than one of the five social media platforms measured in this survey, a share that is statistically unchanged from the 52% who did so in 2014.

As the most-used social media site, Facebook continues to be the starting platform for most social media users. Among those who only use one social media platform, 88% indicate that Facebook is the one site that they use. Moreover, the vast majority of those who use other social media sites also use Facebook. For instance, 93% of Twitter users also use Facebook – as do 95% of Instagram users and 92% of Pinterest users.

Outside of Facebook, other sites’ users show high levels of reciprocity. For instance, 65% of those with a Twitter account also use Instagram, while 49% of Instagram users also have Twitter. Similarly, 54% of those who use Instagram also use Pinterest and 57% of Pinterest users are also on Instagram.

Messaging apps

Social media sites are not the only venue where people can connect with others online. Today smartphone owners (at the time of this survey, 72% of American adults) can choose from a variety of messaging apps that fill many of the same functions. Some of these apps look and function like a traditional chat or messaging service, while others offer unique features – such as the ability to post anonymously, or to have one’s posts expire or delete themselves after they are viewed.

This survey asked about three different types of messaging apps that people might have on their smartphones and found that:

29% of smartphone owners use general-purpose messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Kik. Due to a change in how this question was asked, this figure is not directly comparable to a previous measure collected in 2015.2
24% use messaging apps that automatically delete sent messages, such as Snapchat or Wickr. This represents a 7-point increase from a survey conducted in 2015 (at that point 17% of smartphone owners used these apps).
5% use apps that allow people to anonymously chat or post comments, such as YikYak or Whisper. This is the first time Pew Research Center has asked about these types of apps.

In general, messaging apps are especially popular among younger smartphone owners. Some 56% of smartphone owners ages 18 to 29 use auto-delete apps, more than four times the share among those 30-49 (13%) and six times the share among those 50 or older (9%). Similarly, 42% of smartphone owners ages 18 to 29 use more general messaging apps like WhatsApp or Kik, compared with 19% of smartphone owners ages 50 or older.

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Facebook and Twitter join coalition to improve social media newsgathering | Media | The Guardian

2016-09-15T04:06:00.003-07:00

Facebook and Twitter join coalition to improve social media newsgathering | Media | The Guardian:

Facebook and Twitter have signed up to a coalition of news organisations aimed at improving reporting from social media and tackling fake news.

Channel 4 News, the Telegraph, the New York Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, ABC News in Australia and Agence France-Presse are among more than 20 news organisations to have signed up to the partner network, which is being organised through Google-backed First Draft.

The involvement of Facebook in particular is seen as significant given its huge role in the distribution and gathering of news, as well as growing concerns about its role in spreading fake stories and its approach to what can and can’t be posted on its platform.

The partner network is designed to help news organisations work with the tech companies to improve newsgathering, and make verification of information from social media more effective and easier to access.

It also hopes to improve the experience of eyewitnesses contacted by news organisations, and help social media users assess news they find on networks.

Áine Kerr, Facebook’s journalism partnerships manager, said the network would help it support reporters in using Facebook to find and distribute news more effectively.

“The network will help Facebook showcase the products, tools and services we have built for journalists but also ensure we are constantly learning about how to improve them based on feedback from newsrooms,” she said. “We want to ensure we are building opportunities to learn from the industry and to ensure we continually hear their questions and feedback.”

The members of the partner network will develop guidelines for best practice, but the recommendations will not be binding.

First Draft operates as a coalition of organisations specialising in social media newsgathering and verification, including News Corp-owned Storyful, Elliot Higgins’ Bellingcat and Reportedly.

First Draft managing director Jenni Sargent said: “First Draft already works so closely with both news organisations and social platforms that we feel uniquely positioned to coordinate efforts and facilitate real progress in tackling some of the key challenges facing journalists and their audiences.”

Other organisations joining the network include Al Jazeera’s AJ+, Breaking News, International Business Times UK, Reveal project, Euronews, Amnesty International, European Journalism Centre and American Press Institute.

Other news providers are understood to be considering joining following the launch.

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#SocialMedia

Facebook and Twitter join coalition to improve social media newsgathering | Media | The Guardian

2016-09-15T04:06:00.001-07:00

Facebook and Twitter join coalition to improve social media newsgathering | Media | The Guardian:

Facebook and Twitter have signed up to a coalition of news organisations aimed at improving reporting from social media and tackling fake news.

It also hopes to improve the experience of eyewitnesses contacted by news organisations, and help social media users assess news they find on networks.

Áine Kerr, Facebook’s journalism partnerships manager, said the network would help it support reporters in using Facebook to find and distribute news more effectively.

The members of the partner network will develop guidelines for best practice, but the recommendations will not be binding.

First Draft operates as a coalition of organisations specialising in social media newsgathering and verification, including News Corp-owned Storyful, Elliot Higgins’ Bellingcat and Reportedly.

Other news providers are understood to be considering joining following the launch.

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#SocialMedia

Infographic: How 'Microbloggers' Leverage Their Influence Through Social Media Savvy | Adweek

2016-09-11T11:45:00.001-07:00

Infographic: How 'Microbloggers' Leverage Their Influence Through Social Media Savvy | Adweek: "
The most effective social platform for bloggers depends on the industry they blog about.
Ever since the line between celebrity and social media celebrity was erased, bloggers have become legitimate influencers across almost all industries, affecting consumer decisions beyond purchasing by acting as both tastemaker and trusted friend. And a large fan base is no longer a requirement for influencers. More recently, brands have been turning to micro-influencers, bloggers with less than

100,000 followers, to better target consumers. "

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If you're not doing these 5 things to engage your audience on Instagram, you should be

2016-03-24T16:24:00.000-07:00

If you're not doing these 5 things to engage your audience on Instagram, you should be
Posted by Hootsuite on Thursday, March 24, 2016

#SocialMedia

6 Curation Templates for Better Content Marketing

2016-03-24T14:38:00.001-07:00

Content Marketing Forum Newsletter

6 Content Curation Templates for Content Annotation

Don't fall into the trap of simply aggregating content for your audience. Offer insight and expertise by annotating curated content. Read More>>

Don't Miss These Essential Copywriting Ingredients
The best content in the world will fall flat on its face if you can't get your point across succinctly, your delivery is off target, you've made spelling mistakes, and/or the formatting is painful to the eye. Enter copywriting. Top marketers share the following essential copywriting ingredients. Read More>>
Ultimate Guide for User-centered Content
For content creators it has become clear that Google is focusing on user-centered content. While keywords are still very important, they're no longer the ultimate focus. Read More>>
Building Love Through Content Marketing
Great content offers marketers an incredible opportunity to build trust with their audience. The best marketers help their audience solve a problem, improve job performance and/or advance their careers. Read More>>

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4 common misconceptions about social media listening

2016-03-08T07:23:00.001-08:00

Sourece: 4 common misconceptions about social media listening:

Teo Huishan

8:58 PM on Mar 7, 2016
- 16
- 2

In the age of a social media explosion, more and more marketers are beginning to learn and embrace the usage of social analytics to better effectively track, assess and optimise their marketing efforts.

However, the learning curve is a relatively steep one, and knowledge gaps and misconceptions still exist among brand marketers regarding the application of social analytics and social media research.

Photo credit: quiklit.com

Here are some common misconceptions encountered.

“The older folks, being my target audience, are usually not on social media. Hence, I don’t see the need to invest much on social media spend.”

According to the IDA Survey 2014, findings indicated that more and more of the older generation is going online via smartphones. In fact, the 50 to 59 age group, who said they used a smartphone to access the Internet in the last three months, increased by 30 percentage points to 76 percent last year. Hence, just because the older audience are not actively commenting online, it does not mean they are not consuming your brand’s social content.

“Social media monitoring just means that we monitor social networks.”

Aside from just the major social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube etc), most social media monitoring tools can crawl all sorts of online websites, including forums, blogs, news sites, review sites, and others.

What sets a tool apart from the competition depends on the coverage offered not just locally, but at a regional level as well. Take note that certain sites will have technical restrictions in how it can be crawled by a social listening tool.

“I can rely on social social listening tools to get an accurate sentiment sensing of the topics monitored online.”

Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Bayesian Classification are some of the most common methods of automated sentiment analysis utilised by most social listening tools. However, the human language is a complex one. It is an uphill and difficult process of training machines to analyse and recognise local slangs or sarcasm, various grammatical nuances and culture variations.

Hence, the accuracy level at which social listening tools are able to accurately pinpoint or determine the prevailing sentiment of a discussed topic is probably likely to be only at 30 percent to 50 percent. This is why it is crucial to have an added layer of a human intervention of sentiment checking. While it may be a more manual process, the accuracy of sentiment checks will be elevated, especially when it is done by a local analyst with the relevant contextual background.

“Social media research seems faster and more unbiased. We can rely on it alone for research and tracking purposes.”

Social media research cannot completely replace traditional marketing research as there still exists certain limitations of social data.

For instance, social media analytics may not include specific demographic information, such as geographic regions or professions or education levels — and some people may make up or hide their profile information.

Opinions of individuals who don’t use social media may differ significantly from those that do, if only because the two groups represent different demographics.

Essentially, while it is crucial to have the digital perspective, insights gathered via social media research alone will not be the silver bullet to all your marketing questions. Instead, it should serve as an essential complement to your traditional market research findings and integrated into a brand’s overall market research framework in order to get a 360 degree perspective of your consumers and drive more accurate targeting.

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Google ups social media stakes with 4chan hire

2016-03-08T05:53:00.001-08:00

Google ups social media stakes with 4chan hire: by David Reid | @cnbcdavy for www.cnbc.com

Google has hired the founder of controversial website, 4chan to help rejuvenate its social media strategy.

Christopher Poole took to Tumblr to reveal his new job, saying he was excited to join a company staffed with passionate and enthusiastic staff.

"I can't wait to contribute my own experience from a dozen years of building online communities, and to begin the next chapter of my career at such an incredible company," the 27-year-old's post said.

Google+ architect and vice-president of streams, photos, and sharing, Bradley Horowitz confirmed the appointment on a single short post on Google+.

That appointment has sparked speculation that Google is to revamp its social media ambitions.

In 2010 it attempted to launch Google Buzz, based around Gmailconnections, but privacy concerns forced the closure in December 2011.

Google+ replaced Buzz in December 2011 and has clocked up 418 million active users in December, according to market analysis company DMR. Facebook's company figures, meanwhile, say that it had 934 million active users in December.

Controversy

Christopher Poole was described in a Rolling Stone article as the 'Mark Zuckerberg of the online underground.'

According to his own website, he founded 4chan when he was just 15 years old.

The community website, 4chan, is famous for spawning memes such as Rick-rolling where online users are redirected to a video of Rick Astley's hit song 'Never Gonna Give you Up' .

The 4chan website claims to have 22 million users a day.

However the site has also been criticized for hosting pornographic imagery and in 2014 was used by hackers leaking naked pictures of high profile women, including actress Jennifer Lawrence.

In January 2015, Poole retired from running 4chan and subsequently sold the site to Japanese social media expert, Hiroyuki Nishimura, for an undisclosed fee.

Call 905 819 8142 for your Social Media Marketing needs

Why You Need A Social Media Content Calendar For Your Business

2016-03-02T08:35:00.001-08:00

Now that you know that your social media marketing plan requires a stellar content strategy to support it, you may find yourself overwhelmed. Creating and publishing great content can be a lot of work, so you need to get organized and figure out a schedule that works for your business. When you’ve got a content calendar you can commit to, social media marketing becomes a lot less daunting.

Creating a plan, a template, or a calendar simply means that you make all the necessary information available to all the relevant stakeholders in one place. It takes in all your channels and resources and organizes them in a way that makes it easy to access information you need when you need it.

What is a social media content calendar?

A social media content calendar should organize the way you curate and create content, and help develop your editorial strategy. A social media calendar cuts extra time out of your content marketing strategy and helps you allocate your resources wisely, to help ensure your brand consistently publishes high-quality, well-written, high-performing content pieces.

Your social media content calendar should be easy to read without a legend, and contain all the necessary information for your content marketing strategy. The easiest way to organize a content calendar is by using a separate sheet for each month, with activities further broken down by month or day, depending on the volume of content you plan to publish. If you have more than one copywriter, your calendar should reflect which of your writers is responsible for writing, publishing and promoting each piece of content. If you have several social media channels for content promotion, it helps to include icons representing each network next to the title of the post—this way, you can streamline your content marketing and social media strategies.

An example of what a social media content calendar can look like

Download Example

Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence.

So why does your business need a social media content calendar? I will go over several consequences a content manager risks if they decide against keeping a social media content calendar for their team, and how keeping a calendar can help avoid these issues.

5 Challenges Solved by Keeping A Social Media Content Calendar

1. Posting content that performs poorly

You have a team of talented writers, a great social media promotion strategy, and a lot of interesting topics to cover. Despite all of these resources, your content marketing efforts are not meeting your own expectations, and the executive team at your organization is starting to question whether an investment into a content marketing strategy is worth it.

Many publishers new to the field of content marketing make the mistake of funnelling all the resources in the direction they think is best, without listening to the needs and interests of their audience. If you don’t have a target audience in mind, then you risk inconsistent performance for your content, and a questionable ROI for the entire strategy.

How a social media content calendar can fix this:
The best way to see what kind of content to plan for the future is to perform routine checks on what kind of content is well-liked by your audience, and make regular adjustments based on these insights. Set up regular check-up times to record the important metrics on your content. Platforms such as Google Analytics help you track the vital numbers for your content’s performance. Some important numbers to take note of are unique pageviews, number of clicks, and referral source. This data will help you figure out which ones of your posts get the most readers, which ones are good for generating leads, and what social channel is referring the majority of your readers. Use this information to adjust your publishing schedule, as well as the type of content you post and the social media platform you use to promote this content.

2. Missing important dates

You’ve probably experienced this: you go about your day, only to realize halfway through the afternoon that you forgot a good friend’s birthday, only because you saw the reminder on Facebook. It feels bad to have forgotten it on your own, but it would feel a lot worse to miss the birthday altogether. Organizing all your content in one place is a safeguard, like Facebook reminders—it exists to ensure you don’t miss crafting content relevant for holidays important to your industry, product releases, or campaign launch dates.

How a social media content calendar can fix this:
Populate your content calendar with all the dates important to your business. Set up reminders at a reasonable interval to put the date on your radar in advance, in order to adjust your writing and research time to the deadline. Add holidays that may affect your business, whether they mean low or high reader traffic—depending on the nature of your business, holidays can mean either ramping up efforts, or doing some housekeeping, such as repurposing old content.

An example editorial calendar

3. Overwhelming your content writers

If you run a small business, you want to make sure your resources are allocated in the most beneficial way for your brand. Hiring people dedicated to your social media channels may have been a smart cost-saving move, but their schedule doesn’t seem to have a consistent amount of work—it’s impossible to predict whether the day will be a slow or a hectic one. As a result, the quality of work they product is also inconsistent.

How a social media content calendar can fix this:
Use the content calendar as an assignment calendar for your copywriters. As soon as you know the topics you want to cover in your next few posts, start assigning them to writers based on their schedule, strengths and level of expertise. This will give them time to do in-depth research and think of an engaging way to frame the issue at hand, as well as ensure you have the most capable writer working on that piece of content. If you have more than one copywriter working on your content, plan your content calendar in a way that keeps everyone busy: if one writer isn’t working on a piece with an imminent deadline, focus their efforts on social media promotion or brainstorming ideas for the future.

On days when you anticipate no published content or a lower volume of content, keep a writer on the lookout for any previously published posts that can be updated, or any extra social media efforts (as determined by your weekly analysis from #1).

4. Spamming one social media network and neglecting another

Once you figured out your publishing schedule, you settled into a comfortable routine: plan, write, publish, and promote. But even after all the research into the topics and audience insights, your content is still not reaching the desired audience. Your promotion schedule for your social media content has made it too easy for your audience to dismiss your content on one channel, and it doesn’t have the visibility it needs to attract readers on another channel.

How a social media content calendar can fix this:
For each piece of content planned in your calendar, assign the social media channels you want to use to promote it. Add social media network icons underneath the content title and author name. If you see that one icon comes up too much, and another has not shown up in a while, it may be a sign that you need to rethink your social media promotion strategy.

Ensure that your social referral source metric during your weekly analytics check dictates the social channels you use. You want to promote content on the network frequented by your target audience, but you also don’t want to give up a network that refers the most readers.

5. Not doing your research

You have a brilliant post planned, but when you or your copywriter sits down to create it, you realize that it requires a lot more knowledge on the subject than what you have at your disposal. The deadline is looming, the bosses are angry, and you struggle to produce what you know is a mediocre piece of content. All of this can be prevented by doing background research before setting the due date, but you can’t do that unless you have all your content planned out ahead.

How a social media content calendar can fix this:
If you have the publish date set and the writer assigned in advance, this allows the copywriter to evaluate their expertise on the subject matter. If there is more research to be done, or another writer is better suited to support on the task, a content calendar allows your brand to do this without disrupting the deadlines.

Streamline your publishing process with Hootsuite Pro!

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Social Media Now

2016-02-24T09:22:00.003-08:00

#SocialMedia

#Socialmedia News

2016-02-24T06:36:00.000-08:00

socialmedia Tweets

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Facebook is opening up Instant Articles to newsrooms everywhere. Will a flood of distributed content follow? – Poynter

2016-02-18T06:04:00.001-08:00

Facebook is opening up Instant Articles to newsrooms everywhere. Will a flood of distributed content follow? – Poynter:Publish Post

In a long-awaited move, Facebook announced this afternoon that it plans to open up access to its Instant Articles program to publishers around the world, giving every news organization the capability to publish their content on the social network.

The program, which was previously available to a select group of publishers numbering in the hundreds, will be available to any Facebook user who owns a page. This opens the program to individual bloggers as well as larger newsrooms. Instant Articles is slated to launch for wider use at Facebook's F8 conference on April 12.

"From the beginning, our vision has been to create a product that works for people all over the world and for publishers all over the world," said Josh Roberts, the product manager for Instant Articles, "no matter how big they are or what their focus is."

Today's announcement is a watershed development in the ongoing trend toward "distributed content" — the idea that news organizations will increasingly publish their stories and videos on a variety of platforms without expecting readers to refer back to their websites. The distributed model allows publishers to maximize their readership on social media and elsewhere, but it also means that publishers are no longer the sole arbiter of the channels people use to find their news.

When Instant Articles launched in May, the program was the subject of much concernamong media types who were wary of giving social networks like Facebook too much power by using it as a means of distribution. But some publishers have embraced Instant Articles: The Washington Post, for example, is posting all of its stories on the social network in a bid to reach the widest possible audience.

Since Instant Articles launched, Facebook's gotten "thousands" of request from news organizations interested in publishing their content on the social network, Roberts said. The company is prepared for a flood of stories to be published on Instant Articles but doesn't want to speculate about how many news organizations will sign up, Roberts said.

Since it launched with a handful of publishers, including The New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic, Facebook has been steadily adding to its roster of publishing partners and making tweaks to its advertising offerings. Early complaintswith the number of advertisements Facebook allowed on Instant Articles resulted in tweaks that have reportedly been amenable to publishers.

Publishers are offered two monetization methods with the Instant Articles program: They can either sell the ads themselves, or use Facebook's network for advertising. Publishers keep 100 percent of the revenue on advertisements they sell themselves and split the revenue with Facebook for use of its ad network. Facebook doesn't break out the specifics of the revenue split publicly, but an article from The Wall Street Journal published in March put the proportions at 70 percent for the publisher and 30 percent for the social network.

When New York Times media columnist David Carr first outlined the contours of Facebook's (then-unnamed) Instant Articles program in 2014, he compared the social media giant to a big dog running toward you at top speed: "It’s hard to tell whether he wants to play with you or eat you."

Now, it's clear Facebook wants to play — and it's inviting a ton of people to the party.

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The Social Media Spend-Impact Disconnect - Forbes

2016-02-16T07:33:00.001-08:00

The Social Media Spend-Impact Disconnect - Forbes: "40.6 percent report having a good qualitative sense, but not a quantitative assessment. 47.9 percent report have not been able to show any impact yet.
The Contribution of Social Media to Company Performance"

Social media spending is expected to climb to a 20.9 percent share of marketing budgets in the next five years. This share was only 5.6 percent in 2009. What is striking, however, is that only 3.4 percent of marketing leaders report that social media contributes very highly to firm performance; 40 percent report a below average contribution (see insert).

These are among the latest findings from The CMO Survey. Conducted biannually since August 2008, the latest edition received responses from 289 top marketing executives.

What explains this social media spend-impact disconnect?

Social media is often going solo: When asked to rate how effectively social media is linked to their firms’ marketing strategies on a 1-7 scale where 1=not at all integrated and 7=very integrated, marketing leaders report an average score of 4.2. Although higher than 3.8 from 4 years ago, this number is still too low to get the best returns on social media investments.
Customer social media information is not integrated with other customer information: Companies are not integrating customer information from purchasing, social media, and other communication channels. On a 1-7 scale where 1=not at all effectively and 7=very effectively, the average customer integration rating across these three sources is 3.4, which is a poor showing and lower than last year. This means companies do not yet have the critical 360 that could help them increase customer acquisition and retention.

Proving social media’s impact is elusive: This has remained a challenge for marketers, and new results indicate that they have yet to get a handle on it. Only 11.5 percent of marketing leaders report they have proven the impact of social media quantitatively. Another 40.6 percent report having a good qualitative sense, but not a quantitative assessment. 47.9 percent report have not been able to show any impact yet.
The Contribution of Social Media to Company Performance

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Partners may not be fully utilized: As companies build a presence in social media, they often seek outside agencies to help. In fact, marketing leaders report that 20 percent of their social media activities are performed by outside agencies. One challenge is that the “not invented here” syndrome—where companies fail to accept new ideas developed outside their borders—could be keeping this external expertise from making its best contributions.
Cross-functional marketing leadership is needed: Marketers lead social media activities in 83.9 percent of companies—a percent that has climbed from 71 percent in 2011. Marketing leaders managing social media need effective cross-functional skills in information technology and traditional marketing to make social media effective.
Lack of social media goals: Many companies do not have clear objectives for their social media activities. Without objectives, what should be measured? The best social media activities have a clear objective and measure performance against it. For example, in the recent survey, 15.6 percent of companies reported they will invest in social media to develop new products. Given this, what process and outcomes metrics make the most sense to assess impact in this area?
Social media expertise embedded in marketing teams: Social media experts should be closely linked to the brand and customer teams they support. This involvement pays off because social media experts are tuned into the latest platforms and know which approaches generate interest from current and potential customers, fans, and enthusiasts. As a result, these experts can guide brand and customer teams to think differently.
Failure to drive toward the financial performance connection: Results from prior surveys indicate that companies are using more intermediate performance indicators such as buzz. This is a good choice to show social media’s initial contribution. However, lifts must ultimately be understood in terms of customer outcomes, such as acquisition or retention rates. Doing so may require companies to perform more thorough experiments with their use of social media.

Sponsored by the American Marketing Association, Deloitte LLP, and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, The CMO Survey collects and disseminates the opinions of top marketers in order to predict the future of markets, track marketing excellence, and improve the value of marketing in firms and in society. To participate or for report downloads, visit cmosurvey.org.

Christine Moorman is the T. Austin Finch Sr. Professor of Business Administration, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University and Founder and Director, The CMO Survey

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The State of Social Media - EContent Magazine

2016-02-15T04:50:00.001-08:00

The State of Social Media - EContent Magazine:

"Social media has evolved into a personal online identity. Before, it was used to connect with friends and update your status," says Jesse Till, social media coordinator for Chatter Buzz Media. "Now, it defines a persona. It's a chance for a person to express and broadcast themselves to the world."

The age-old axiom remains true: The more things change, the more they stay the same. While technology has rapidly progressed since social media was first introduced, the big picture hasn't changed. "People still yearn for human connections and experiences, and they want to share those connections across various platforms and devices," says Abani Heller, CEO of Classmates.

Sure, posting trip photos, tweeting links, and networking with old co-workers is fun. But online citizens want to tap into the pulse of the world around them, belong to a community, and be recognized. "Social media has evolved into a personal online identity. Before, it was used to connect with friends and update your status," says Jesse Till, social media coordinator for Chatter Buzz Media. "Now, it defines a persona. It's a chance for a person to express and broadcast themselves to the world."

Lauren Washington, co-founder and CEO of KeepUp, agrees. "Every person is now a brand; every post now has the potential to make news, and access to your idols is now just a click away," she says. "And the key social sites have evolved to accommodate users' varied needs. Facebook is for personal updates, Instagram for artistic expression, Twitter for rapid news, and Snapchat for surprise and delight."

Consider that 65% of American adults use social networking sites-up dramatically from the 7% tallied in 2005-based on Pew Research Center's "Social Media Usage: 2005-2015" findings. Among adults online, Pew Research Center's "Mobile Messaging and Social Media 2015" report (published last August) reveals that 72% use Facebook; 31% use Pinterest; 28% use Instagram; 25% use LinkedIn; and 23% use Twitter.

Despite these impressive numbers, new and expanded challenges exist for those who use social as a well-positioned media channel and brand communication tool. One challenge is how to present useful content to users suffering from information overload. According to a LikeHack infographic, the average social media user is bombarded with around 54,000 words (285 content pieces) and 443 minutes of video daily. Other hurdles include social fraud, deception, and negative practices: creating phony online profiles, purchasing views or Likes, and trolling have soured the social media experience for many.

The Year in Review

The stories and developments that shaped social media in 2015 were plentiful. Among the biggest players, Facebook hit a new milestone: 1 billion users in a single day, per an August 27 blog post on the site; extended its carousel format to mobile app ads; allowed self-serve advertising on its Instagram platform; began offering a Call Now button within ads; implemented several key algorithm changes; redesigned and expanded its newsfeed preferences; and overhauled its Power Editor and Ads Manager. Twitter introduced an ads editor of its own, purchased Periscope, severed access to Meerkat's social graph, and named co-founder Jack Dorsey as its CEO. And ?LinkedIn changed its InMail policy and increased the visibility of its users' extended network in search.

Other major headlines in 2015 included the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) vowing to crack down on sneaky sponsored social content by issuing new truth-in-advertising endorsement guidelines and mobile ad blocking emerging as a significant threat to digital publishers.

As far as developing trends observed over the past year, "snackable content" (bite-size content designed for quick and easy consumption) grew in popularity, and more social platforms launched trending-topics-type sections, "where users can go and see what's popular and interact with other users," Till adds.

Lauren Friedman (head of global social business enablement at Adobe) notes that, prior to 2015, social media marketers took a channel approach that mirrored a public relations (PR)/earned media strategy. "Brands posted content daily to social channels and, in many ways, hoped their target audiences saw and engaged with the content," says Friedman. "But 2015 marked a new era of enhanced paid strategy and direct targeting where marketers could tap into consumer data to select the right demographics, search history, and past engagement to reach their intended audience."

In the past 12 months, social media became more of a staple implementation in business plans for marketers, PR professionals, and human-resources directors. "Businesses are using socials to target and learn about specific and new employees. This is forcing professionals to consider what they are posting," says Hayley Smith, founder and head of PR for Boxed Out PR.

A Look Ahead

When asked what will be trending in 2016 and beyond, experts offer an array of forecasts. "The concept of ‘mobile' will continue to evaporate as a meaningful distinction from a device perspective, as mobile will increasingly be either the primary or at least part of a simultaneous mode of engagement." says Lior Tamir, CEO and founder of Accomplice. "Also, chat is going to be one of the emergent social channels for marketers, as community managers and engineers work together to not only respond on-brand in minutes, but begin to automate these one-to-one interactions in the form of branded chatbots."

Washington believes content needs to and will evolve. "The next step in social media is creating more relevant, curated and aggregated content," she says. "Social media is now where email was a few years ago-it's permeated all aspects of our lives to the point where it's overwhelming, and we now need a better way to manage it. This is already happening on the business side with companies like Hootsuite and RebelMouse, but users need better options to manage their digital lives."

Going forward, Till predicts greater social interconnectivity with ecommerce, especially thanks to more platforms such as Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp Messenger, WeChat, and Facebook allowing for online money transfers. "I also foresee a more integrated use of social media with wearables like the Apple Watch, and social platforms that will be exclusively on wearable technology," says Till.

Lastly, Gary J. Nix, chief strategy officer for bdot., expects brands to do a better job in 2016 of realizing who has the power when it comes to the bottom line-the consumer. "Brands and companies can no longer simply push out social media messages with little to no response," Nix says. "They must show their personality, ask for permission to engage with consumers, and fulfill all other promises in order for people to begin and continue to buy their products or services."

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