Yesterday, Facebook announced an update to ad targeting options that will help refine your efforts to reach people on specific devices by letting you target users based on their device.
In order to get high quality installs or engagement within an app, it is very important to reach the right people with the most relevant message. As a result, we are enhancing our mobile targeting for developers.
The update should be rolling out over the next few days. Once it has become fully available, you will be able to deliver ads to people using a specific device and set minimum operating system version. Previously, you could target iOS or Android, minimum OS, and Wi-Fi only users.
With device specific targeting you will have access to App Insights, which you can use to identify which devices are working best for your app and target those devices. This means that if you see a large amount of mobile revenue is coming from the latest iPhone, you can set ads to target only those who have purchased that device. It will also allow you to eliminate users with incompatible devices easily.
With their announcement, Facebook also gave some tips for using mobile device targeting for mobile app ads:
Don’t go too narrow with your audience: Facebook recommends having an estimated audience size of at least 500,000 users for each ad.
Customize your ad to resonate with your audience: Facebook recommends using images of the device you’re targeting in your ad.
Optimize your bid for each campaign: Create different ads with optimized bids for each device or groups of devices as competition may vary by device.
Layer on complimentary targeting features: Use Custom Audiences and lookalikes to reach a large and relevant set of people.
Brands have been complaining for quite some time that their Facebook engagement has been plummeting, especially for smaller brands who rely on organic reach to connect with their audience. Of course, plenty of analysts and SEO “gurus” have offered their fair share of strategies for increasing engagement, but most of these can be very expensive. Some would even cost more than giving in and using Facebook’s paid ad platform.
Don’t let that get you down though. Organic reach and engagement may be nosediving, but there are still free ways you can boost your page’s engagement. Just ask a few members of the Young Entrepreneur Council. Or don’t, because 10 founders from YEC already shared their suggestions on Search Engine Journal.
We may eventually reach a point where organic reach is effectively dead on Facebook, but there are always tactics available to negate some of the drop in engagement and get the most possible out of the free side of the largest social media platform available.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-07-14 13:51:002014-07-14 13:51:00How Can You Boost Your Facebook Engagement for Free?
As I discussed yesterday, reports are coming out that earlier this year mobile traffic overtook internet traffic coming from desktop computers. Today, a new study has been released which adds to the evidence that 2014 will be remembered for being the tipping point between desktop and mobile or universal internet usage.
The study from social data and sharing tool provider ShareThis found that sharing via smartphones and tablets has surged more than 30% during the second quarter of the year. Using data pulled from its network of more than 2 million U.S. publishers, ShareThis found sharing had gone up 27.8% for smartphones and 3.5% for tablets when compared to the first quarter. In the meantime, desktop sharing has dipped 5.5% in the same time.
Pinterest and Twitter are the big winners of this jump in mobile sharing, as ShareThis found 75% of pins and 71% of tweets come from smartphone and tablets. That means mobile users pin and tweet three and two times more than their respective desktop users.
Of course, Facebook still dominates overall social media sharing, with 64% of total content shared. However, that percentage is 3.9 percent less than what they showed during the year’s first quarter.
It has become a truism that “Facebook is losing organic reach,” almost like it is widely accepted that teens are leaving Facebook in droves. While the matter of teens leaving Facebook is up for some debate, the social media platform has even acknowledged that organic reach across the site is dropping and they explained why.
However there is more to the story. It is widely agreed upon that Facebook’s dropping organic reach is inherently bad, because the majority of businesses and marketers are getting the bad end of the deal. Those succeeding with the new algorithms are probably quite happy though.
A new study from Socialbakers shows that page engagement for successful Facebook Pages has risen 30% since January. That means that although many of us are losing reach, those who have mastered the are of Facebook marketing are seeing more success than ever.
The conversation that seems to be dominating the Facebook marketing community is all about how algorithmic changes to Facebook’s News Feed are hurting organic reach. Our numbers say the opposite; brands have never had a better opportunity to have their best content placed in front of so many people.
To be clear, Socialbakers’ numbers aren’t refuting the common knowledge that Facebook’s organic reach is losing ground quite fast. This study focused specifically on the 3 million largest Pages, but there are over 30 million active small business pages that weren’t included.
Still the numbers show the other side of Facebook’s marketing results and helps explain why they continue down this path. With such a huge amount of content being shared every day, Facebook wants to focus on quality rather than quantity. Those with great content and quality marketing are still seeing strong results, but it is undeniably getting harder for the small guy to find some ground to expand with.
Social media is typically thought of as where all the cool kids hang out. Fast food, clothing, and entertainment all have it easy when it comes to making friends and getting retweets, but businesses in seemingly boring industries frequently settle for mediocrity out of the belief they can’t keep up with the “cooler” industries. But, Uri Bar-Joseph showed us five companies that shrug off the assumption that “boring” businesses can’t be exciting online.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-30 13:41:202014-06-30 13:41:20Boring Companies Can Still Be Exciting On Social Media
Every week we try to keep you updated with all the SEM news from around the web, but the Google I/O event this week was packed full of so much information there was bound to be some stuff we didn’t get to cover. Today, we’re going to cover all the latest news from I/O and everywhere else. We’ll start with Google, but there is also some interesting Facebook news to discuss near further down.
Android Reaches 1 Billion Active Users Per Month
To open the annual I/O developers conference, Google rattled off an impressive list of statistics, as large tech companies tend to do. Of these statistics, there is one that was noteworthy and shows just how prominent smartphones have become throughout the world.
At last year’s conference, Sundar Pichai told the audience that Android had around 530 million active users per month. Over the past year, that number has almost doubled, surpassing one billion active users every month.
Other interesting stats include:
Android users send 20 billion texts per day.
They take 93 million selfies per day.
Android users take 1.5 trillion steps each day.
They check their phones 100 billion times per day.
Android tablets represent over 60 percent of all tablets shipped.
If you’re wondering what everyone is doing on their phones, you can be assured that it involves apps. comScore released a report this week showing that over half of all digital media time is now spent using apps, though its unclear whether more time is spent on Angry Birds or The Wall Street Journal’s news app.
Google Will Remove Author Images From Search Results
Google is continuing to push an emphasis on authorship authority, but don’t expect to continue seeing author images in your search results for much longer. In the next few days, Google will be stripping the author images and Google+ circle counts from desktop and mobile search results in an attempt to streamline search result appearances. In the announcement on Google+, John Mueller said:
“We’ve been doing lots of work to clean up the visual design of our search results, in particular creating a better mobile experience and a more consistent design across devices,” he wrote. “As a part of this, we’re simplifying the way authorship is shown in mobile and desktop search results, removing the profile photo and circle count.”
Danny Goodwin from Search Engine Watch shared an example showing what the results looked like before (shown above) and what they will look like in the very near future (below).
Google is Testing Their Domain Registry Service
Google has expanded into seemingly every facet of online activity, but up until now they have left domain registration to other service providers. That won’t stay the case for much longer as Google recently announced they will be inviting a limited number of people to test their new service called … wait for it… Google Domains.
As the shockingly creative name suggests, Google Domains will let users search, find, purchase, and transfer the domain or domains best representing their business. The service is still being built, which is part of why you shouldn’t expect for it to come out of testing in the close future. But, the service could potentially make the act of creating a website and establishing a company presence online much more easily understandable for the 55% of businesses that still don’t have websites.
Google My Business Comes To iOS and Android
Google announced Google My Business earlier this month, and on Wednesday the official apps for the service came out on both Android and Apple smartphones. The apps offer a unified interface that will make it easier to manage your brand’s online presence on the go. App features include:
Edit the business listing by changing hours, description, etc.
View managers of the page but not manage them
Post to Google+
Add photos and update cover and profile photos
View local insights and analytics
Change business pages and accounts
Watch Now Now Influences Facebook News Feed Video Rankings
Facebook is constantly working on its News Feed algorithm and the latest update is intended to improve the quality of videos being served to users. The new video ranking takes note of how long users watch a video for and uses this information to influence content ranking. This metric will be combined with other long-standing metrics such as likes, comments, and shares.
In the announcement, Facebook said, “In our early tests, this improvement resulted in more people watching more videos that are relevant to them.” The announcement also noted that twice as many people watch videos on Facebook compared to the numbers from six months ago.
Wait, So Facebook is Still Popular With Teens?
You’ve undoubtedly heard the rumors, studies, and proclamations that Facebook is losing traction with teens like a car driving off a cliff. From what everyone wants to believe, all the young kids are moving to the burgeoning messaging apps to escape the prying eyes of their parents and lame extended family. Even President Obama has commented that kids “don’t use Facebook anymore.”
The problem with all this is, the numbers don’t entirely support that conclusion and two reports from the past week confirm that Facebook is still the most popular social site for the demographic by far.
First, Forrester Research released a report showing that more than 75% of US online youth use Facebook at least once a month. Their survey polled 4,517 internet users between the ages of 12 and 17, and that Facebook has twice as many users as Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat, and more than Instagram and WhatsApp combined.
The second study, from college and K-12 education review site, Niche, found similar results from a survey of 7,000 teenage users. Specifically, 87% still use Facebook “occasionally” and 61% use it daily (including the 47% who use it “a few times a day.)
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-27 12:23:202014-06-27 12:23:20Quick SEM News of the Week – June 27, 2014
All week we try to keep you up to date with the most important SEM news across the web, but inevitably there are smaller stories that fall through the cracks. That’s why we compile all the most important news we missed this week all in one convenient place every Friday. Despite the distractions of the world cup, there have been some pretty big announcements throughout the week. So, let’s get to it.
Google Preps Online Retailers With Best Practices
With the clock ticking before Shopping Campaigns becomes the default campaign type for running Product Listing Ads at the end of August, Google is trying to help prepare retailers and marketers by issuing best practice guidelines to help everyone make the transition smoothly.
For the most part, the guidelines listed aren’t far off from the original PLA recommendations. Yes, the paper covers product feed optimization and newer updates, but most of it is a refresher for those who have been working with retailers for a while now, including classic rules like “use relevant titles and high quality images.”
However, marketers and retailers may be interested in the new recommendations about how to structure new shopping campaigns, especially as we enter the transition period.
You can download the whitepaper of the guidelines from Google here.
Sneak a Peak at Google’s New Reconsideration Rejection Forms
Last week, Matt Cutts made headlines throughout the SEO community by announcing that Google will be revising their reconsideration requests rejection notices with more detailed information in some cases. Of course, there were plenty of skeptics, but an example of the rejection notices has been shared on Twitter by @johnwarddoyle.
Surprisingly, it seems Google made good on their promise.
Don’t get too excited. The individualized response is short and easily missed, but rejection notices at least offer some useful information for repairing a site now. Largely the note is the same as before, but down at the bottom you will see a new section titled “A note from your reviewer.” Here, you will find specific advice relevant to your site that could be potentially highly useful.
Facebook Shows Off Their Snapchat Competitor
After having a $3 billion offer refused by Snapchat – the popular self-destructing photo messenger app – Facebook is trying to fight back. This week Facebook announced Slingshot, an app obviously influenced by Snapchat’s concept, but with a new twist.
Slingshot does allow users to send photos or short video messages that will delete automatically after a short period of time, but there is more to it:
To get started on Slingshot, shoot a photo or video… add some text and color, then sling it to a bunch of friends. Here’s the deal: friends won’t be able to see your shot until they sling something back to you. They can then reply with a reaction – or simply swipe your shot away.
The concept encourages reciprocal communication more and could potentially catch on, but it could just as easily fall apart in the shadow of it’s better-established rival. With the faltering youth activity on Facebook, it is hard to know how much traction this type of app can get.
Major Brand’s Seeing Engagement Plummet on Facebook
Speaking of Facebook’s problem of bleeding activity and user engagement, recent reports show that it isn’t just the teen demographic evaporating from the site. Facebook analytics provider Simply Measured says consumer engagement with Facebook posts from almost all top Interbrand companies are down significantly from last year.
According to the firm, monthly engagement is down over 40 percent since May 2013.
Only two brands on the list (MTV and Harley Davidson) say increases in engagement, while the others saw huge decreases. Overall engagement was down at least 50 percent.
Most troublesome for Facebook, the report outright cites the decreasing organic reach available on Facebook as a primary blame for the decline in engagement.
Facebook’s Graph Search Makes Its First Appearance on Mobile
While Facebook’s Graph Search hasn’t been officially released on mobile yet, but it is most likely getting very close to being rolled out. Over the past week, many people reported encountering a test showcasing in-depth integration for the Graph Search for mobile users with all the same features you’ve come to recognize.
The most anyone has gotten out of Facebook is the response “we’re testing improvements to Facebook mobile search.” But, I would wager the release will be sooner than later. The current testing version for mobile seems to be able to handle all the complex searches capable on desktop and appears to be largely ready for release.
Twitter Finally Adds Animated GIF Support
Twitter’s announcement this week may seem super minor, but it has received nearly as much coverage this week as any other bit of information relevant to online marketing. The reason is simple: internet users love GIFs and this week Twitter announced you can now post and view animated GIFs on Twitter’s website and mobile apps.
Of course, the announcement came in the form of a Tweet featuring an animated GIF from Twitter Support.
Previously, users could share links to GIFs via third-party services like Imgur, but starting this week you can now share and view the moving images directly on Twitter.
Importantly, GIF’s won’t start playing automatically in your feed like they do on Tumblr. Instead, when a GIF is shown, a white play button will be overlayed, allowing you to choose when a GIF starts playing.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-20 13:27:452014-06-20 13:27:45Quick SEM News of the Week – June 20, 2014
Social media is one of the best tools modern marketers and business owners have to connect with their demographic and build their brand. But, social media can also be a bit fickle or harsh. You can spend months or even years creating your brand’s online presence and building up an audience, only to create a massive PR problem with a single post.
As the saying goes, the bigger they are the harder they fall. Whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Google+, having a big audience only means you have more eyes scrutinizing your every Tweet and Pin for a potential scandal or brand breakdown.
You don’t have to get too worried though. Nearly every big social media mistake can be avoided by following some simple rules. Search Engine Journal shared a list of 30 ways you can make a mistake on social media. While the list may seem long, it provides a complete guide to social media – from building an audience to avoiding any meltdowns or missteps in the future.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-16 14:03:392014-06-16 14:03:3930 Big Social Media Mistakes to Avoid
We are just a day away from the start of World Cup 2014, and this year’s competition will be the most socially connected yet. Social media use is at an all-time high, and Twitter and Facebook are locked in a battle for the place as the dominant platform users turn to for keeping up to date with scores, game times, and fan response.
Though soccer is often treated like a novelty in the US, the sport actually has a strong and passionate audience across the country – not to mention the unbelievably large fan base around the world. FIFA claims that around 3.2 million people watched at least one game of the last World Cup in 2010, and this year seems likely to get even more viewers.
As Twitter and Facebook made clear with announcements yesterday, both platforms are hoping to get a piece of the action by rolling out campaigns aimed at promoting soccer and encouraging fans to turn to their specific platforms.
Facebook’s Trending World Cup Page
Facebook’s News Feed algorithm isn’t exactly well-suited for keeping up with real-time conversation like Twitter is, but it is offering a Trending World Cup page designed to help fans follow the latest scores, match highlights, and conversation. The page will even allow users to click through a global map which displays the Facebook popularity of top World Cup players.
Several people, including Marketing Land, have already used the global map to discover some fairly interesting statistics, such as England’s Wayne Rooney being strangely popular in Namibia.
As with all of Facebook’s trending pages, the World Cup page will also show the latest posts from friends, players, teams, and the media making sure you never miss a spectacular goal or scandalous foul.
Facebook users will be able to filter conversations based on the specific match they are watching as well, once the games have started.
Twitter’s World Cup Landing Page and Hashflags
Twitter users can already access a dedicated World Cup landing page via the hashtags #WorldCup and #WorldCup2014, which offers a scoreboard and updates with conversation about the event and games. Similar to Facebook, Twitter will also allow users to organize what content they are seeing by selecting “match timelines” that only show tweets about specific games.
This is fairly standard for users, but Twitter users from the last World Cup may be excited to see that “hashflags” are returning for the latest competition. Introduced for the 2010 World Cup, the feature displays flag icons of people who include appropriate three-letter hashtags in their tweets. Before the games kick off on Thursday, Twitter will also unveil “The World Cup of Tweets” bracket.
The social platform is also acting to retain new users who choose Twitter for their World Cup 2014 social needs by adding soccer suggestions to the sign-up process throughout the games.
“After you sign up and choose your username, you can select the team you’re supporting,” Twitter’s Xiaolei Li wrote in a blog post. “Then you can choose from a number of profile and header photos that represent your country. (Of course, you can upload your own photos too.)”
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-11 13:02:472014-06-11 13:02:47Twitter and Facebook Want To Keep You Up To Date With World Cup 2014
All week we try to keep you up to date with the most important SEM news across the web, but inevitably there are smaller stories that fall through the cracks. That’s why we compile all the most important news we missed this week all in one convenient place every Friday. After a quiet week before, nearly all of the major platforms have made announcements this week. Let’s start with Google and work our way down.
Google Starts Warning Searchers About Mobile URL Redirects
Google has been warning webmasters about faulty mobile redirects for months, including suggesting they may one day start receiving penalties for sending mobile searchers to the front page of a site rather than the content relevant to their search. It appears Google has opted for another solution, which allows mobile searchers to decide if they want to proceed.
Google alerted webmasters this week that smartphone searchers will begin seeing warnings for sites with redirects that don’t take them where they want to go. An example of how these warnings will appear is above. On a Webmaster Central blog post, Google stated:
We’d like to spare users the frustration of landing on irrelevant pages and help webmasters fix the faulty redirects. Starting today in our English search results in the US, whenever we detect that smartphone users are redirected to a homepage instead of the page they asked for, we may note it below the result. If you wish to proceed to the page, you can click ‘Try Anyway.’
Google Adds World Cup Street View Tours and a Loch Ness Easter Egg
Just a week before the World Cup kicks off, Google has added street view images that will allow users to tour all 12 stadiums that will be used for the tournament. Whether you want to stand in the middle of the field and do a little spin, or preview the view from the stands, you’ll be able to give a look from anywhere within the stadiums.
Google has also added significantly more images from Brazil’s painted streets and other sites across the country, but perhaps one of the most popular finds on Google Maps this week is an Easter Egg found far away from Brazil.
If you’d rather hunt legendary monsters than watch soccer, Google Maps is able to give you directions to Loch Ness. If that isn’t enough for you however, Google says you can always catch a ride on Nessy.
If you get directions from Fort Augustus to Urquhart Castle in Google Maps, you will get the option to travel via Loch Ness Monster. You just have to click on ‘Route Options’ and then choose ‘Fewer Transfers’ or ‘Less Walking.’ Though you have to wonder how no one has managed to get a picture of Nessy while hopping a ride down the Loch.
Bing Celebrates Its 5th Birthday With Some Memories
Bing turned five earlier this week, and to celebrate it has posted a retrospective of the last five years. Bing is also offering Bing Reward credit perks to any user who searches on the site before June 9th.
The retrospective covers all of the ways Bing’s appearance has changed over the past five years, but it also covers how it has worked to achieving its initial goals of leveraging semantic search, introducing new verticals, and generally expanding how search could function in our lives.
Bing Shows Off New Dynamic Carousel For Music Video Searches
Bing has prided itself on being ahead of the curve in respect to music and music video searching and discovery, and its latest feature continues to expand on the functionality it previously offered for music video searches.
Bing has recognized that people search for music videos very differently than they do other video content. By exploring these changes in user behavior, Bing was able to determine that music video watchers wer significantly more likely to hang around and check out other content instead of moving on once they found the video they were looking for.
To give users easier access to all the music videos they may be interested, Bing has implemented instant access to an artist’s top hits as soon as you search only the artists name. Bing describe this as a dynamic carousel, because it allows you to open up songs and videos from teh carousel and play it within the same window. You will never have to keep going back and forth between choosing the video you want to watch and actually watching it.
The carousel also allows you to view all of an artist’s albums and watch the videos for those songs as well.
Pinterest Continues To Work Towards An Actual Ad Platform
Pinterest has made its intention to establish an ad platform for their social network very clear ever since it unveiled Promoted Pins. However, Pinterest is working slowly to guarantee that the ads shown on their platform won’t stick out or detract from the experience, and as such it has been very hands on and selective about who it allows to run ads.
Now, businesses of all types have been given access to a do-it-yourself Promoted Pins tool that allows them to promote their own pins to more people and increase visibility. Similar to most other social ad platforms, these will work on a cost-per-click basis through ads.pinterest.com.
Pinterest also announced they would be expanding the analytics tools offered to users, giving them more insight into who is clicking and re-Pinning your content. You can get more information from their announcement.
LinkedIn Joins The “Large Cover and Profile Photo” Club
LinkedIn announced earlier this week it would be making a major design update to user profiles, which will feel very familiar to anyone who uses Facebook, Google+, or Twitter. Currently, the layout is only available to premium users, but LinkedIn says it will be available for all users after a short period. It isn’t entirely clear why LinkedIn would stagger the rollout of this layout change, but you can add it to the list of social media sites that are beginning to look very, very similar.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-06 12:20:272014-06-06 12:20:27Quick SEM News of the Week – June 6, 2014
Social media is one of the best tools modern marketers and business owners have to connect with their demographic and build their brand. But, social media can also be a bit fickle or harsh. You can spend months or even years creating your brand’s online presence and building up an audience, only to create a massive PR problem with a single post.
