This Week’s Social Media Top Stories
Wildfire Shows How (And Why) To Make Your Facebook Campaign Influencer -Friendly
Justin Lafferty of AllFacebook talks about how different people influence a page more than others. There are different types of users that Wildfire tracked on its campaigns. You have the joiners who like a page but rarely interact. You have the Sharers who are more likely to share or repost content from your page and lastly the advocates who get their friends to like a page or join that group.
Based on this you want to have more advocates and sharers, rather then the joiner who doesn’t do anything to help your brand. Wildfire recommends many ways to get your audience involved and hopefully become an influencer in your community. Some ways to do this are using call to actions that include pictures/videos or questions. Varying the way you ask users to engage can help increase your interaction with them. Running contests, giveaways or using quizzes/trivia’s are great ways to get fans to share your page with friends. There are many free social apps that can be used to help you with this. Find the right one that works for you.
Facebook Testing Promoted News feed Posts for Non-Fans
In this article on Mashable, Anita Li writes about a Facebook feature currently being tested which will allow brands to advertise on news feeds of users that don’t like their page already. Similar to what Twitter has done with sponsored ads, Facebook looks to do something very similar to have ads show up in everyone’s news feed.
Facebook’s spokes women Annie Ta says that the goal behind this is to make it easier for businesses to reach a larger audience. Will this work? Only time will tell, but if you are a brand or advertiser this will be something to consider. Having the opportunity to potentially gain more customers by spending a little money may work out for everyone in the end. You can gain more followers which should get you more business and people who may not have heard about you will have the chance just by reading the news feeds.
More Brands Joining Instagram –and with Good Reason
Steve Olenski via Social Media Today talks about the new craze of Instagram. Over the past 7 months Instagram has seen an increase of 400 %. Bigger brands are starting to notice the trend and are getting in on the action. While companies are slowly starting to realize the importance of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are still the top dogs on campus.
Steve writes that the leaders among brands on Instagram are more high-end luxury brands likes Tiffany, Gucci and Burberry. But brands like Audi and Nike are doing a better job engaging with their fans. I agree that brand managers need to consider the power of instagram and sign up right away. A simple photo with a hashtag is all it takes to reach a new audience on instagram. While Instagram is mostly a phone app, there are websites that have access to this making it easier to manage your campaigns on the web. It seems that more people are drawn to pictures and videos which is why Pinterest and Instagram are becoming a valuable marketing tool.
Twitter’s API Update Cuts Off Oxygen to Third Party Clients
This article which is one of many written about this topic since the news broke last night talks about what Twitter is doing to make is harder for developers to have a Twitter app. Christina Warren via Mashable talks about the new API which is geared to make Twitter more consistent between apps. She mentions that all apps will have to be certified by Twitter before they can be used by consumers.
While there are many Twitter clients available to use now, after this update goes into affect and Twitter starts regulating what is acceptable, the number of apps may decrease. From reading comments on many blogs, people are passionate about the apps they use now, and some are saying if these apps are taken away they may abandon Twitter all together. This seems like a drastic step for user but people get comfortable with Twitter apps and features available to them. Hopefully developers aren’t put out because of this update and can keep the end users happy. What will you do if your favorite Twitter app disappears?