This Week’s Social Media Top Stories
Everything You Need To Know About the New Twitter
Mashable’s own tech reporter Samantha Murphy writes about the new changes Twitter started to roll out this week. Twitter has decided to change the way your “ME” page looks. They have gone in a direction that allows more personality of members to be seen. Instead of having the profile photo on the top left you now have it front and center with an option to put a “cover” photo behind. Twitter seems to be moving in a direction that Facebook and Google+ have done regarding photos becoming the focus of pages.
This change isn’t drastic one for the users, but it allows you to have fun with your page. Brands will be able to show off more photos in a larger fashion on Twitter thanks to this. As CEO of Twitter Dick Costolo said, “These changes are all about bringing personality forward”, so brands should have fun with their new header photo to show followers who they are and what the brand persona is about.
9 Marketing Tips To Improve Engagement
Andrea Vahl via Social Media Examiner gives us some great ideas to improve social engagement with Facebook fans. Your community likes your page for a reason so get personal with them so they have better way to relate to you. Another idea that is brought up is the power of pictures. It is a lot easier for people to engage with you when you post pictures; people are always on the move and may not have time to read an article. A simple picture can create engagement with comment or likes. Contests are another tip that is great to use to interact with your fans as well as grab new ones.
Whether you use the 3 I mentioned or any of the others 6 that were mentioned in Andrea’s article, the main idea is to reach your followers. Each brand manager should decide what action to take to see what works best for them. Consumers/fans need to feel special, so have fun with ways you engage with them. The happier and more engaged a fan is the more likely they are to be a brand ambassador for you.
Yelp Officially Joins Apple Maps
Today the new iPhone comes out with many added features. One new addition that has everyone talking is Maps. Apple has ditched Google and created its own mapping program. Devon Glenn from Social Times writes about the partnership between Apple and Yelp that will be the answer to Google and Zagat. What does this mean for companies? Well if you have a brick and mortar store, having a local listing on Yelp can increase the likelihood of being found when iOS users search for restaurants or shopping nearby.
Apple already has sold millions of iOS devices that will have this service on it. And with the new addition to the family with the iPhone 5, you can bet drones of people will be using Apples mapping service to search for nearby companies. It is worth the time to get your company listed on Yelp.
Why IFTTT being forced to remove its Twitter triggers is a red alert for developers
Matthew Panzarino from TNW brings up a developing story about Twitter stopping IFTTT from using Twitters API to post to other sources. With IFTTT (If this then that) you can set up different recipes to allow automation of many tools on the internet. This is a very valuable tool for many as it keeps you organized or up to date with news. IFTTT has endless amounts of variations that can be utilized by social media managers to help with managing networks. (See article for Triggers that will be removed) Twitter has been very strict as of late regarding the use of their API over the last few months in hopes to draw users directly to their own site.
The goal of Twitter it seems is to keep users on Twitters site rather than using other 3rd parties to interact with Twitter or Twitter users. If Twitter keeps going after 3rd party tools like IFTTT, developers will have a hard time or not see the need to create tools to use with Twitter. I know that this decision to disallow IFTTT to use Twitter will affect many. Will the lack of Twitter recipes on IFTTT have an effect on you? Please share your thoughts below.