Here is a look at some of the most recent changes that you should know about:
1. Facebook simplifies ad buying
Last month, Facebook announced a major change to how advertisers will buy ads on the social network. Previously, if you wanted to advertise on Facebook you began the process by selecting the ad unit, whereas the new platform begins by asking advertisers their campaign objective. The system will then recommend certain ad units based on those objectives making the process much easier for the typical SMB. Other improvements include being able to upload multiple images for a single campaign so that advertisers can assess which images perform best.
2. Pinterest adds Related Pins
Related Pins are a new recommendation feature that Pinterest recently added. The new feature will begin appearing in a user’s feed based on your activity on the social network. Users will have the option to give Related Pins in their feed a thumbs up or down, which will help the folks at Pinterest learn more about what you like and what you don’t to optimize the Related Pins you will see in your feed.
3. Instagram ads
In October, Instagram announced that they would soon be adding ads to their photo stream. Most experts saw this move as a natural progression after Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion. They are planning to slowly integrate photos and videos from brands into a user’s photo stream. Similar to Facebook, there will be the ability to hide certain ads from a feed, but there is no mention of whether or not a user will be able to hide all ads from their feed.
4. Google+ Local Pages increase impact for businesses
A recent study by SIM Partners found that businesses optimizing the content on their Google+ Local pages are experiencing a positive impact to their rank in search engine results pages. The top five strategies they employed to optimize their pages included customizing business descriptions for each of their locations, adding additional information like photos or videos, finding and deleting duplicate listings, add your listings to sites that can impact Google listings and modifying each listing for search terms.
5. Why consumers use Twitter and the impact it has on consumers
More than 70% of users expect to receive a response from brands that they interact with on Twitter and more than half expect that response to be in 60 minutes or less. If the interaction with the brand is a complaint, the number of users expecting to hear back within the hour rises about 20%! This is an important finding for any business using Twitter, as not responding to these users could leave a negative impact on the brand. That negative impact could be in the form of sharing the negative experience with friends and family or escalating their concerns. So if you are a marketer using Twitter to reach consumers and encouraging them to engage with your brand on the social network, don’t forget to acknowledge your followers promptly.
Are you keeping up with all of the big things happening in Social Media? Are these changes impacting you and how you approach your business? Leave a comment with your thoughts!
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