What Social Network Is Right For Your Business? [Infographic]

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Social media has undeniably become one of the strongest channels businesses can use to reach out and engage with their audience. But making social media work for you means knowing which platform works best for your business.

You might think that all social media sites are essentially the same, but making that mistake can mean squandering marketing and ad budgets trying to connect with an audience that just plain isn’t interested.

The truth is every social media platform has a unique audience who interact with each other in ways specifically molded by the site they frequent. Trying to talk to Twitter users the same way you talk to Facebook users will make your message fall flat, while Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat users all have their own cultures built from the platform.

So which is right for you? It all depends on your business, your values, and who your audience is. The infographic below from Visage will walk you through the basic pros and cons of each of the most popular social media sites, along with some key stats about each social network.

Identifying the best social network for you will help you get the most out of your marketing efforts and find the most responsive audience for your brand.

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Snapchat Launches Shoppable Ads

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A new type of ad has arrived at Snapchat. The social imaging platform has recently been diving into monetizing content on its platform. Their latest venture allows retailers to share ‘shoppable ads’ on the app, which allow users to shop for products without ever leaving Snapchat.

The ads appeared for the first time recently within Cosmopolitan’s Discover channel. Both Target and Lancome launched shoppable Snapchat ads that run 10 seconds and are shown between Cosmo’s normal article and video content.

If users are interested in the products or services shown in these ads, they can swipe up at any time to be taken to an in-app mobile site to purchase the featured products.

Just as with normal Snapchat content, shoppable ads are limited to 10 seconds long. Longer ‘snaps’ and ads are likely on the horizon as Snapchat has recently been experimenting with longer video formats.

To help drive excitement for the social ad platform, Snapchat also announced that users watch over 10 billion videos every day, with 60 percent of daily active users creating and sharing their own content every day.

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Video Advertisers Say Online Video Budgets Will Soon Rival TV Ads

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Advertisers are seeing more value in online video ads than traditional TV advertising, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureaus’ third annual Video Ad Spend study.

The annual survey asks 360 marketing and media buying professionals about their past ad spend habits and how they plan to spend their ad budgets in the next year. The takeaway from this year’s findings is that advertisers are moving away from traditional advertising channels in order to reach the more diverse audience online.

“Marketers and agencies are telling us they clearly see great value in original digital video programming,” said Anna Bager, svp and general manager of mobile and video at IAB.

The majority of advertisers surveyed by IAB (72%) said they plan to move advertising spending away from TV ads in favor of focusing on improving and sharing digital ads in the next year.

Out of those advertisers who said they intend to increase their digital video spending, 41% said they plan to pull from cable TV advertising. Similarly, 47% of these advertisers plan to pull from broadcast TB spending.

Some advertisers said they would also pull from non-video ads online (30%), advanced-interactive TV (30%), and mobile video ads (28%).

Most tellingly, more than two-thirds of advertisers and marketers (68%) said they believe original digital video will be as, if not more, important than, original TV programming within three to five years.

The study also found that advertisers and media buyers have increased their overall investments in digital video by more than 114 percent over the past two years, averaging more than $10 million annually spent on digital video.

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How To Guarantee Your Brand Is A Hit On Facebook [Infographic]

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Facebook has made itself an absolute necessity for businesses looking to build a following, increase their visibility, engage with their fans, and even find new qualified leads. To get the most out of the most popular social network, however, you need to take advantage of all the newest tools and features Facebook is always rolling out – such as call-to-action buttons on business pages and letting you share company milestones on your profile.

Taking advantage of all these great little tricks and tools not only shows your audience that you are active on Facebook, it shows you care about making sure your fans can always contact you for questions, problems, or to share how much they like your products or services.

So how can you be sure you’re getting the most out of the largest social platform in the world? The tips in this infographic from Cafe Quill will help you get started by showing all the different ways you can be using Facebook to improve your branding and exposure while keeping your fans engaged and invested in your brand.

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Instant Articles Now Available For All Facebook Publishers

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Facebook is bringing its Instant Articles to all developers and content producers. The social media platform has been slowly testing its feature, which allows publishers to share content on Facebook mobile that is fast-loading and easy to read.

During Facebook’s F8 conference, the company announced that publishers of any size or kind can now publish via Instant Articles while also sharing some statistics showing how Instant Articles have been performing so far.

According to Facebook’s data, Instant Articles leads to

  • 20% more clicks on links to content
  • 70% reduced likelihood of abandoning content once clicking on it.
  • 30% more shares compared to the average mobile web articles.

Instant Articles are Facebook’s response to Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages and other fast-loading content platforms that streamline pages to ensure they load almost instantaneously on mobile devices. Facebook’s Instant Articles are unique though, because they also allow publishers to control ad placements within their content.

Publishers can even publish native ads as Instant Articles, which are distinguished from traditional content through unique styling options and the ability to add your company’s logo.

“Facebook’s goal is to connect people to the stories, posts, videos or photos that matter most to them,” the company says. “Opening up Instant Articles will allow any publisher to tell great stories, that load quickly, to people all over the world. With Instant Articles, they can do this while retaining control over the experience, their ads and their data.”

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Facebook Updates Its Policy On Branded Content

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Facebook is changing its mind on branded content, though it isn’t ready to completely dive in. The social media giant is revising its policy on branded content, which is anything that specifically “mentions or features a third party product, brand, or sponsor.”

With the latest change, Facebook is allowing any verified page to share branded content, however, the content must be labeled as such. This is a significant turn from the company’s previous stance against branded content and ads.

To help brands with verified pages label their branded content, Facebook is also offering a new tool to assist in tagging brands mentioned in the content. The company says the tool must be used every time branded content is published.

By changing their policy, Facebook is allowing companies with existing partnerships or sponsorships to bring their relationship into the world’s largest social network.

Notably, branded content can also be pushed via sponsored posts or leveraged in paid ads. The company says the new tool will hopefully lead to greater transparency while continuing to help users find valuable information.

When a brand is tagged in a piece of branded content, they will also receive access to post insights and can share the boosted post themselves.

While this is a notable change, Facebook still has some restrictions. Here is what Facebook will still not allow:

“…our branded content guidelines prohibit overly promotional features, such as persistent watermarks and pre-roll advertisements. Additionally, cover photos and profile pictures must not feature third party products, brands, or sponsors. Branded content integrations that are allowed to be posted on Facebook include content like product placement, endcards, and marketer’s logos.”

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Hit The Sweet Spot With Your Social Media Content Length [Infographic]

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When it comes to social media, less is often more. That is especially the case for word counts of your social media posts and blog articles, according to an infographic recently shared by Express Writers.

Twitter has a cap of 140 characters per tweet, but that doesn’t mean you need to use every character available. The infographic explains that “tweets that are 100 characters or shorter enjoy 17% more engagement than longer tweets.”

“So-called ‘medium-length’ tweets (between 71-100 characters) are re-tweeted more often than large (101 characters or longer) or small (41-71 character) tweets.”

Meanwhile, you may think of Facebook as the place to go for long-form posts and blog-style content, but you would be wrong. In fact, brevity is the soul of Facebook, with the ideal length for a post being just 40 characters or fewer.

“Facebook posts with 40 characters earn 86% more engagement than longer posts,” according to the infographic, and “the second-best length of a Facebook post is 80 characters or fewer. These posts receive 66% more engagement than longer posts.”

Want to make sure your content is hitting the right notes and not exhausting the short-attention spans so prevalent on social media? Find out exactly how long your content should be in the infographic below:

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Instagram Unveils New 60 Second Videos

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Instagram is breaking away from the model it helped pioneer by extending videos from the standard 15-second length to a full 60 seconds. The company made its name by taking advantage of the trend for micro-length videos similar to Vine’s 7-second length, but it is now stretching its legs with longer videos.

Instagram says it is making the change in order to “bring you fun, flexible and creative ways to create and watch video on Instagram.”

Of course, the new video length limits won’t be turning Instagram into YouTube all of a sudden. The extended limit simply allows people to latch onto longer and more diverse stories.

The longer clips will hopefully spur increased engagement for the company who is currently seeing record low levels of user engagement. Despite this drop in engagement, Instagram says the amount of time spent watching videos on the platform has increased over 40% over the past 6 months.

Along with the change to video lengths, Instagram also announced that iOS users are once again able to create videos out of multiple clips from the camera roll. Both new features have already begun rolling out for users and will be available for everyone in the coming months.

Of course, along with longer videos comes longer ads on Instagram, which should make marketers and businesses who use the platform happy. Longer ads translate into more opportunities to tell engaging stories and catch the attention of your audience.

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Twitter Makes Its Algorithmic Timeline The Default For All

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Source: Shawn Campbell

Source: Shawn Campbell

When Twitter’s algorithmic timelines started appearing as a test on the social media site, you would have thought they had announced users had to commit a sacrifice before posting. Angry memes were shared, many users threatened to leave the site, and the “end of Twitter” seemed to be on the horizon.

It turns out first impressions don’t always mean anything.

Despite the initial uproar, Twitter’s algorithmic timeline is actually going over well and will soon become the default for all users.

Slate reports Twitter has been gradually rolling out a default algorithmic timeline for users for weeks now, and the reception has been largely positive. According to a Twitter spokesperson quoted in the report, the percentage of users to opt-out of the new timeline has been in the “low single digits.”

This isn’t a case of users being slow to opt-out either. Data shows users are engaging with it more frequently in almost every way compared to the traditional chronologic timeline.  Users with the new timeline are tweeting, replying, retweeting, and favoriting more than ever.

Part of the warm reception may be related to how Twitter is handling the rollout. Instead of pushing out the change to everyone all at once, Twitter is gradually rolling it out and notifying every user individually as their timeline changes.

Users who dislike the new timeline can always opt-out and return to the traditional time-based timeline. All you have to do is go to the settings area and uncheck “Show me the best tweets first.”

While Twitter is changing some things up, another controversial move by the site appears to be on the backburner for now. During an appearance on the Today Show, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stressed the site would be retaining its 140 character limit for Tweets.

During press appearances for the 10th anniversary of the platform, Dorsey clarified they would not be doing away with the character limit. He said, “It’s staying… It’s a good constraint for us, and it allows for of-the-moment brevity.”

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Pinterest Extends Self-Service Ad Tool To All U.S. Businesses

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Pinterest’s promoted pins and ads have made a huge splash in the 18 months of beta testing its small platform with select brands, and now it is set to become even bigger. The site is rolling out its ad tool, Promoted Pins Ad Manager, to all small and midsize brands in the United States.

The company also announced it would be increasing the number of interest-level targeting options from 30 to 420. In the past, advertisers could only choose from 30 broad interest groups such as food, beauty, and fashion. The new options are more specific, so marketers can target their audience much more accurately with categories like “healthy food,” “sustainable architecture,” and “street-style fashion.”

“Pinterest knows more about the interest of its users than any other platforms,” said Nipoon Malhotra, Pinterest’s ad products lead. “This is very different from a graph that represents something you browsed a month ago.”

Pinterest also noted that marketers who spend at least $1 per day advertising on Pinterest see a 20 percent increase in clicks on their posts.

Pinterest Pins function just like normal Pins on the site, however, they are shown to more people than a typical Pin. By using the Pinterest Ads Manager, you can target exactly who you want to see your Pins based on interest targeting, keywords, or customer database targeting using your customer list.

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