Got something to say? Make sure your friends actually see it.
Images stand out on sites like Facebook and Twitter, which is why many people put their text into images when they have something big to say. But breaking out Microsoft Word and taking a screenshot is boring – it’s better to make things visual.
Which is why we’ve got some great tools for you to check out today.
Whether you want to leave a birthday message on Facebook that will stand out from the crowd, or just want to lose a few minutes making something for the fun of it, the following sites give you ways to make text look fun. Let’s get started.
Type To Design (Web): Your Text, in Instagram Photos
It’s a growing trend offline: framed photos of letters alongside each other, together spelling a name or word. If you like that look, and want to make something similar online, Type To Design is the site you’re looking for. Using the Instagram photos from #36daysoftype, this simple site will turn anything you type into a series of photos. Just start typing to see your collage, instantly.
If you don’t like any of the letters you see, just click it and it will change. If you’re wondering where any particular letter came from, hover over it; a link to the original image on Instagram will pop up on right. Once you’ve happy with everything, you can download the image for sharing on social networks or anywhere else
NekoFont (Web): Your Text, in Cat Form
Like the above idea, but wish it included more cat pictures? Or only cat pictures? Me too.
Good news: NekoFont is exactly what we’re looking for. Just type anything you want, pick a size, and get your text back in kitten form.
If you want the Internet to pay attention to something, cats never hurt, so give this a try next time you need to leave a short note somewhere. You can download the resulting image when you’re done, for uploading anywhere.
Font Face Ninja (Chrome, Safari): Find Out What Fonts Sites Are Using
Sites that make images quickly are fun, but for something truly personal you need to get to work and design something yourself. Finding the right font is an important step.
Have you ever, while browsing the web, wondered what font you’re looking at? If so, you’re my kind of people. As a reward, here’s a browser extension you might like: Font Face Ninja. This plugin makes it easy to find out the name of any font on a web site. Just click the button and voila:
You not only discover the name of the font, but the size and spacing as well. Whether you want to replicate a look on your own site, or just add another font to your collection, this one is worth keeping in your virtual toolbox.
Get The Font: Search for, and Download Any Font
Found a font you like, but don’t know how to get it? We’ve outlined sites for downloading fonts, and tools for managing your font collection, but it’s always worth knowing about another tool for the job. Get The Font is a simple search tool that scans Github for fonts.
Github might not be the first place you’d think of finding fonts, but many open source projects make use of free fonts for their user interfaces. The result: if a front is available for use on the web, it’s probably hosted on Github somewhere. Get The Font lets you search everything quickly, so if there’s a free font you’ve been looking for check it out.
Remember: just because you’ve downloaded a font from this site doesn’t mean you have the right to use it. Make sure a font is free to use before you put it in a commercial project.
Fake Handwriting (Web): Type Anything; See It Written by Hand
We’ve shown you how to turn your handwriting into a font, but maybe you want something just a little more covert — and easy. Fake Handwriting is a fascinating project that uses machine learning algorithms to actually replicate handwriting. We’re not talking about something as simple as turning handwriting into a font; we’re talking about machines actually kind of learning to write in messy ways, making the sorts of mistakes that humans make.
It’s fascinating to play with.
You can actually read the study behind the project, if you’re really interested. My take: teaching kids to learn cursive is stupid, but teaching machines that same skill is surprisingly awesome.
What Did We Miss?
Do you know of any other sites that make boring text look downright fascinating? Let’s compile some more sites like this in the comments below, then! I’m really looking forward to learning more from you.
It’s easy to feel like you can grow a loyal audience in no time using the latest growth hacks or Twitter and Facebook tricks. But the truth is, it’s not that simple.
Growing an audience is hard.
You have to have talent. You have to put in a lot of work. And there’s no 1–2–3 solution.
In this post, I’m happy to share some of our experiences from building an audience at Buffer alongside six key ingredients to successfully building an audience.
Let’s get started!
Why it’s Difficult to Build an Audience (And Why There’s No Shortcut)
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
It is no secret that we live in an age of information overload. Yet many of us are in search of a larger audience. More readers on our blog. A bigger following across social media. A group of people who read, engage with and amplify everything we share.
The problem is, we live in an attention economy. Everyone is vying for consumer attention, and there’s only so much to go around.
Attention is Limited
We all have 24 hours in a day. There’s nothing we can do to change that.
Each day on Facebook alone we are potentially exposed to 1,500 pieces of content. When you add in Tweets, Snapchats, Instagram posts and all the other content we’re exposed to daily, it’s easy to see why it can be so hard to break through as a content creator.
This graphic from Moz shows how content fatigue could start happening very soon.
It Takes a Lot of Swings
Each day we have a tiny window to grab people’s attention and make an impact with our content. And many of us are in search of that one, elusive thing that’ll get us rolling on the path to success. But that’s not how it works.
Think of yourself as a Major League Baseball player, for every home run, for every cheer from the crowd, there are thousands of practice swings and plenty of strikeouts. Content is no different. You need to step up to the plate and bring your best every day if you want to be a success.
There’s no shortcut to building an audience. It’s a long, winding road. And it takes a number of elements to succeed. Below I’d love to share some of the key ingredients to building at audience.
The 6 Essential Ingredients to Build an Audience Successfully
1. Look for What’s Next
The world is moving fast, and opportunities are arising everywhere. New platforms and new trends breed new opportunity. And for early adopters a unique chance to build an audience as Gary Vaynerchuk explains on Medium:
If you play close attention to the people who popped on Vine, or the people who popped in the early days of Snapchat, or Instagram, they all happened to be the Christopher Columbus of their platforms. They were early. So as those platforms took off, they developed disproportionate amounts of followers as new users joined and found them.
First Mover Advantage
A study from Harvard Business Review found that companies identified as believing strongly in the benefits of adopting new technologies receive a “first-mover advantage” — and are more likely to lead in both revenue growth and market position than their peers.
The same theory applies to new social platforms too. As an early adopter, you can gain first mover advantage and, as Gary Vaynerchuk said, you have the chance to become “the Christopher Columbus” of that platform.
By focusing on what’s next and experimenting with new platforms and technologies, you have an opportunity to jump ahead of the competition and build an audience before the platform is too crowded.
Hone Your Skills
Shaun McBride, better known as Shonduras online, is one of Snapchat’s first homegrown celebrities, and brands are spending upwards of $30,000 for advertising deals with him and other Snapchat stars.
Before Snapchat, Shonduras honed his skills as an artist. Snapchat merely provided a platform for him to share his skills with the world.
The biggest opportunities ahead probably aren’t on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube but on platforms we don’t even know about yet. That doesn’t mean you can’t start preparing for these opportunities, though:
If you want to be an influential writer, practice writing: on your blog, on Medium, on Twitter, or anywhere you can scribble down a few words.
If you love to create video, experiment with Vine, YouTube, Snapchat, and Beme.
Whatever your skill set, find new ways to be creative. Hone your talents. And then when the next big platform launches, jump on it and set the trends there.
2. Have a Voice
Everything has been said before, but it’s never been said by you. Your point of view is what makes you interesting. — Jory MacKay
For periods in my writing life, I’ve relied on content that is ‘good enough’, content that gets a point across. That ticks a box. But doesn’t reflect me or my personal beliefs.
On reflection, this doesn’t feel the way to break through and build an audience. Great content should make you feel vulnerable and a little discomfort upon publishing.
As Jory MacKay points out over at Crew, when you approach a new subject, ask yourself ‘how can I cover this in a way that only I can?’ Your voice is what will make you stand out from the crowd.
Saying the same things as everyone else, in the same style will only add to the noise. And you’ll get lost in the endless sea of content published every day.
This graphic from Sean McCabe illustrates how to find your unique voice perfectly.
3. Do Things Differently
At Buffer, we’re super lucky to be well-known for our content. But our rise wasn’t an overnight success — and certainly didn’t come easy.
It took some trial and error. And a few years back we found a recipe that started to pay off.
From day 1, we have invested in content marketing at Buffer. Leo kicked things off on the blog back in 2011 and since then we’ve been through quite a few evolutions and tried many different tactics to build our audience.
Here’s a quick at the development of our content over time:
Twitter tips: January 2011 – October 2011
Pivot to social media tips: November 2011 – June 2012
Pivot to lifehacks, writing, customer happiness, and business: June 2012 — March 2014
Pivot to social media marketing and content tips: March 2014 to now
And a fun gif showing how the blog design has changed:
If you check back through our first posts, they contain great content but they weren’t distinguishable from other social media blogs out there.
At this stage – when we weren’t getting hundreds of thousands or millions of views per month – we could’ve decided to focus elsewhere. Instead, we tried to do things differently and create our Buffer style of content.
We pivoted from Twitter tips to broader social media tips. And in June 2012 we pivoted again. We began focusing on in-depth, well-researched posts that broke down potentially complex subjects into clear, understandable, and highly shareable content. Things started to take off after this pivot.
Here’s an early example of one of these posts:
After some success with this style of post, the biggest jump in traffic came when Belle Beth Cooper joined the Buffer team, and we doubled down on producing unique content.
If it wasn’t for our early experiments, we may never have discovered the potential of this type of content and may never have unlocked all of the traffic (and conversions!) we see today.
You Need to Keep Evolving
Leo and Belle were so great at discovering the potential of in-depth content. Another shift for us occurred a year or so ago when we came to focus social media marketing and content tips – paying particular attention to the visuals and images within our articles.
More recently, Kevan shared that our social referral traffic has nearly halved over the past year. This post sparked a ton of discussion about our content both internally and externally.
The below Tweets from Rand Fishkin especially resonated with our team:
This debate gave us a chance to reflect and re-evaluate our content. It also inspired Leo to share our marketing manifesto. Since then, we’ve re-focused and started experimenting again. As Kevan explains: our blog is our greatest marketing asset. And we just keep changing it.
Only time will tell if our new experiments will pay off. However, one thing is for sure – the hard work from the past years will go to waste if we don’t continue to push ourselves and figure out how to continually keep evolving our content.
4. Hard Work
I’ve learned from experience that if you work harder at it, and apply more energy and time to it, and more consistency, you get a better result. It comes from the work. — Louis C.K.
Success comes from the work that noone sees.
If you want to build an audience you need to put in a lot of hard work.
Let’s take Seth Godin, for example.
Before he was a best-selling author and marketing thought leader he was Seth Godin, just another blogger.
Godin’s blog has posts going back to 2002. But, as Ailian Gan points out on her blog, it’s around 2006 where Seth Godin hits his stride and starts to sound like the Seth of today. That’s four years of finding his voice and honing his skills.
Another example is Nils Wagner, the man behind Hoopmixtape. Hoopmixtape’s website and YouTube channel receive millions and millions of views each month. What’s not clear is the work that goes on to ensure it stays that way.
Sam Laird explains over at The Classical:
To stay on top, Wagner travels tens of thousands of miles yearly to gather footage of elite prospects, sometimes driving thirty hours straight and living out of his car for weeks at a stretch.
Building an audience is hard work. And you’ll need to put in the hours if you want to succeed.
5. Focus on Quality
In our Buffer marketing manifesto Leo explains:
Sometimes we think that just putting out a consistent number of things will just create some outliers that’ll help us win. Heck, I even believed this for a long time and advised people to just focus on quantity. I don’t think that’s true anymore. Yes, we need to output things at high quantity, but we need to treat every single piece of output as the one that’ll be a breakout hit.
Going back to the baseball analogy from earlier on, every time a batsman faces a pitch, they’ll see it as a home run. Everything they have will go into the next swing. And to build an audience you need to feel that same way about every piece of content you share.
You need to feel that everything you put out is excellent. Every post, every video, every image has the chance to be a hit. Without this feeling, you’re not going to break through the noise.
Quality shouldn’t be confused with perfectionism. Perfect sits in your drafts for too long. Perfect causes delays. Quality is published consistently, without lingering.
On quality vs. perfection, James Clear explains an excerpt from Art & Fear on his blog:
The ceramics teacher announced that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.
Well, grading time came and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity!
It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work — and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat around theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
6. Be Consistent
It takes patience to build an audience, and it takes courage to keep putting yourself out there time and again.
Consistency is key, and it doesn’t come easy as Sean McCabe explains:
I think people believe that those who show up consistently have some sort of magic power or inherent ability. “It must come easy for him,” they say. “For others like me, it’s hard.”
Here’s the reality: it’s not easy for anyone — even the people who make it look easy. In fact, if someone is making it look easy, they’re probably working all the harder.
When Unbounce launched, consistency played a big role in the growth of their audience as Co-founder, Oli Gardner, penned 300 posts for the Unbounce blog over a six month period.
Consistently creating content was also critical to our early growth here at Buffer. Within Buffer’s first nine months, Leo wrote around 150 guest posts, which were vital in helping us acquire our first 100,000 sign ups.
Leo explained the importance of consistency over at Search Engine Watch: “Of course the early ones barely drove any traffic and only very gradually did things improve, I think that’s very important to understand. It will take a while until you can find the right frequency of posting.”
Another great example of the power of consistency is Youtuber, Casey Neistat.
When Neistat started daily vlogging he had around 520,000 subscribers on his YouTube Channel. Now he has over 1,500,000 subscribers.
You can see the impact his consistent, daily posts had on his subscriber growth from March — July 2015 below:
One of the best ways to achieve consistency is to set a schedule for yourself and stick to it. Most of us only create content when we’re hit by a moment of inspiration. But if you’re looking to build an audience, you need to be putting yourself out there regularly.
I’ve always struggled with this one myself. But now, knowing I have to create content on a regular basis, means I can’t skip writing. Instead of sitting down and wondering which days I’ll write, I now have a schedule in place.
Over to You
Building an audience is something I’m continuously working on both personally and at Buffer. The rewards make it feel worthwhile – seeing people share your content and enjoy your work is priceless.
In a way, this post serves as a public reminder to myself that I need to be dedicated and focused every day if I want to succeed and continue to build an audience.
To summarize, here are six action points to keep in mind when it comes to building an audience:
Hone your skills and keep an eye on what’s next
Find your voice and create content in a way that only you can
Discover what makes you different
Work hard
Strive for quality and avoid seeking perfection
Be consistent and put yourself out there every day
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this too. What are your feelings about growing an audience? What have you tried? What’s worked?
Drop a note below in the comments and I’ll be excited to join the conversation.
This post originally appeared on Buffer, and is re-published with permission.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Ash Read All screenshots by Ash Read. Taken December 2015.
Facebook hammers another nail in Flash’s coffin, Apple dismisses tax attacks, Hillary Clinton hasn’t got a clue, Making a Murderer debuts on YouTube, and advertising YouTube advertising on YouTube.
Facebook Adopts HTML5 Over Flash
Facebook is the latest company to ditch Adobe Flash, with the social network switching its video player to HTML5 instead. All videos you watch on Facebook from now on will load in HTML5 by default, regardless of which Web browser you use. Facebook has been working on this for some time, debugging in order to ensure even older browsers are compatible.
https://t.co/yCEQ4PZpCv We have an excellent testing infrastructure at Facebook […] like jest.
— Christoph Pojer (@cpojer) December 18, 2015
In announcing the switch from Flash to HTML5, Facebook engineer Daniel Baulig said in a blog post, “We are continuing to work together with Adobe to deliver a reliable and secure Flash experience for games on our platform, but have shipped the change for video to all browsers by default.”
This is yet another nail in the coffin for Flash, which even Adobe admits is on its last legs. Unfortunately, Flash is so embedded in the way we use the Web that it will take years to eradicate it completely. Still, you can speed up its demise by personally uninstalling Flash. So, do it. Do it now!
Apple Defends Tax Record
During a 60 Minutes special, CEO Tim Cook defended Apple’s record on tax. Apple’s tax affairs have caused controversy for many years. As reported by BBC News in 2013, Congress accused the company of setting up multiple offshore subsidiaries which generate billions of dollars in profit but which pay no (or very little) tax.
However, Cook maintains Apple is doing nothing wrong. When 60 Minutes host Charlie Rose asked Cook how he feels about being labelled a tax avoider by Congress, the boss of Apple replied, “What I told them and — what I’ll tell you and — and the folks watching tonight is we pay more taxes in this country than anyone.”
Rose then pushed Cook on the money being stored overseas, which was dismissed with an acknowledgement that “two-thirds of our business is over there.” Rose then raised the notion of bringing that money home to the U.S., to which Cook replied:
“It would cost me 40 percent to bring it home. And I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to do. This is a tax code, Charlie, that was made for the industrial age, not the digital age. It’s backwards. It’s awful for America. It should have been fixed many years ago. It’s past time to get it done.”
Finally, Rose confronted Cook with what Congress had concluded, which is that “Apple is engaged in a sophisticated scheme to pay little or no corporate taxes on $74 billion in revenues held overseas.” However, according to Cook, “That is total political crap. There is no truth behind it. Apple pays every tax dollar we owe.”
We’ll let you make your own mind up on this one. Because, well, Apple can be rather litigious.
Clinton Doesn’t Understand Back Doors
Aaaaaaaaand Hillary just terrified everyone with an internet connection. #DemDebate
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) December 20, 2015
It turns out that Donald Trump isn’t the only American politician who doesn’t understand technology. Hillary Clinton is also rather confused about how stuff works, particularly in relation to encryption and backdoors designed to circumvent encrypted communications.
While Trump wants to close parts of the Internet to stop terrorism, Clinton insists that something must be done about encryption. After referring to encryption as a “terrorist tool used in the Paris attacks,” Clinton said:
“Maybe the back door isn’t the right door, and I understand what Apple and others are saying about that. I just think there’s got to be a way, and I would hope that our tech companies would work with government to figure that out.”
“It doesn’t do anybody any good if terrorists can move toward encrypted communication that no law enforcement agency can break into before or after. There must be some way. I don’t know enough about the technology to be able to say what it is, but I have a lot of confidence in our tech experts.”
The problem is, of course, that you cannot build a backdoor into the hardware and platforms only being used by terrorists. A backdoor is a backdoor, and will affect everyone, both in terms of covert surveillance and criminal hacking. But it’s OK, as the boffins can figure it all out.
Watch Making a Murderer on YouTube
Netflix has uploaded the first episode of its new show to YouTube, allowing anyone to watch it for free, even without a Netflix subscription. The show in question, Making a Murderer, is the TV equivalent of Serial, the popular podcast which recently returned for a second series.
The first season of Making a Murderer tells the story of Steven Avery, who served 18 years in prison for rape before being released based on DNA evidence. Two years later, he was arrested on suspicion of murder.
By making the first episode available for free on YouTube, Netflix clearly hopes to get people hooked enough that they’ll then purchase a monthly Netflix subscription. Which is a crafty marketing move when Netflix needs to keep adding users in order to fund original programming.
Homer Advertises YouTube Advertising
And finally, The Simpsons meets Inception, with YouTube employing the cartoon family to advertise YouTube advertising on YouTube. Homer sets up a snow plow business called Mr. Plow, which fails miserably until Lisa creates a viral video advertising campaign.
The popularity of The Simpsons has waned in recent years, but Homer and co. remain characters that most people will instantly recognize. Which makes them perfect for a viral video ad campaign which requires people to actively choose to carry on watching past five seconds.
Your Views on Today’s Tech News
When will Flash finally die? Should Apple be forced to pay more tax? Do any politicians actually understand technology? What is your favorite TV show on Netflix right now? What is the worst advert you have ever seen on YouTube?
Let us know your thoughts on the Tech News of the day by posting to the comments section below. Because a healthy discussion is always welcome.
Tech News Digest is a daily column paring the technology news of the day down into bite-sized chunks that are easy to read and perfect for sharing.
As we ease into 2016, maybe it’s prudent that we take a step back and survey the social media landscape. For once, it feels like the big giants — like Facebook and Twitter — are actually losing their momentum, and the whole industry feels like it’s shifting.
In other words, the social media landscape of 2016 is going to look much different than what we’ve seen up until now. Here are some interesting facts and statistics that show where we are today and where we might eventually end up.
1. Over 75% of all Internet users use social media. Social media sites used to be an auxiliary territory in Internetland, but it’s become clear that these kinds of sites are now the bread and butter of modern Web activity. They make up a sizable portion of all Web traffic.
And moving forward, we’re only going to see even more social media sites popping up. If you aren’t connected already, you’ll probably be hooked in come 2016.
2. For younger users, Instagram is more important than Facebook and Twitter. While Facebook and Twitter are still the reigning leaders, their mainstream status means that the younger generation considers them “old school”.
Indeed, Instagram is one the fastest growing social networks of 2015. According to eMarketer, there are over 77 million Instagram users in the U.S. alone and that figure is estimated to break 100 million by 2018, which means that 1 out of every 3 people in the U.S. would be using Instagram by that point.
And while Instagram might be the hippest site around, there’s evidence to suggest that its days may already be over as younger users start flocking to even newer social media outlets like Snapchat and Vine.
3. LinkedIn is the most important social network for professionals. The value of LinkedIn is proportional to where you are in your career path. It’s where you need to be if you want to build new business connections and relationships, and it’s been that way since 2002.
It’s especially important for fresh workers in the workforce. Of the 400 million users on LinkedIn, 39 million are students and recent college graduates, and that number is still growing.
Not only that, but consider the fact that millionaires prefer LinkedIn over all social networks except Facebook. In a poll of 1,300 millionaires, at least 41% of them used LinkedIn regularly. Imagine what could happen if you struck up a connection with one of those millionaires.
4. Most social networks are evenly split between males and females… except Pinterest, which is used by 42% of females but only 13% of males. In comparison, Facebook is used by 77% vs. 66%, Instagram is used by 29% vs. 22%, Twitter is used by 21% vs. 24%, and LinkedIn is used by 27% vs. 28%.
For whatever reason, women love Pinterest while men despise it.
5. For the 18-49 age group, YouTube has greater reach than any cable network. This statistic actually first came to light back in 2013, but the truth is that YouTube’s popularity and reach has grown even more since then.
And this is just the beginning. Cord-cutting behavior is on the rise, and there’s already hard evidence that online streams are overtaking cable TV in terms of popularity and demand.
6. YouTube is massive, but Facebook is still bigger. Everyone knows that Google is the most-visited website in the world, but no one would blame you if you thought YouTube came in second. As popular as it is, it’s still outranked by Facebook.
The above-linked poll of Web users found that 77% use Facebook, 63% use YouTube, 25% use LinkedIn, 24% use Google Plus, and 21% use Twitter. In hard numbers, YouTube has a little over 1 billion monthly users while Facebook has over 1.5 billion monthly users. The difference is significant.
7. The largest online dating site is actually a social network: Badoo. OkCupid, Tinder, Adult FriendFinder, Ashley Madison — all of these sites have a higher public profile than the humble Badoo, but the truth is, Badoo has the largest membership base by a long shot.
The numbers are rough estimates — sources for Adult FriendFinder, OkCupid, Ashley Madison, Tinder, and Badoo — but the disparity is large enough to make the point clear.
There are many reasons that play into this, of course, but maybe it suggests that online dating is more successful when there’s a healthy amount of socialization involved. Anyway, if this came as a shock to you, check out these other surprising statistics about online dating.
8. Reddit is the best social network for large-scale communities. On its 10th anniversary, Reddit had just over 36 million user accounts spread across 850,000+ subreddits (i.e., individual communities) and approximately 10,000 of those subreddits had some activity yesterday.
9. Social media encourages the development of more extreme viewpoints. The beauty of social media is that it hands over a lot of control to the end user — but this control is a double-edged sword: it’s great for finding like-minded communities, but it demolishes the diversity of ideas.
It’s called the echo chamber effect (also the filter bubble effect) and it arises when social media users are allowed to “follow” things that they already believe and “block” anything that might dissent from those beliefs. The result is that ideas become amplified towards extremes.
10. Teens need to be made more aware of privacy and security issues. In general, people just aren’t very good about personal privacy and security, but teens are especially bad with it. Only 9% of teenaged social media users even have concerns about the privacy of their data.
The best thing to do is to follow these online safety tips used by the experts.
11. One wrong social media post can ruin your life for good. Whether it’s an edgy tweet that gets taken out of context (and riles up an online mob against you) or a badly-timed joke in poor taste (which lands you prison), one mistake could send your life spiraling in an unexpected direction.
It’s important to remember that social networks are public, and there are consequences for what you post — even if your intentions aren’t malicious!
12. Revenge porn and accidental leaks are growing threats. If you’re going to use social media in a sexual way, just remember this: the Internet never forgets. There’s a good chance that that racy photo of you will come back and bite you in the rear.
Even if you think something is private, you never know. After all, revenge porn is definitely a reality and many lives have been ruined by it. Don’t be naive enough to think that it could never happen to you.
Which Social Media Sites Do You Use?
There are so many social media sites out there today, some more niche than others. Which ones have peaked and then dived into obsolescence? Which ones are still relevant? How many social networks do you participate in? Do any of these statistics surprise you?
Share with us in the comments below! We’d love to hear what you think about social media, whether you love it or hate it.
Image Credits: Instagram Mobile by 10 FACE via Shutterstock, Social Media Apps by Quka via Shutterstock, YouTube Mobile by GongTo via Shutterstock, Social Circles by Mert Toker via Shutterstock
Facebook’s infamous real-name policy — which requires everyone to use either a real name, or a name they’re known by — is now going to be more efficiently enforced.
A new set of tools have been released that are designed to accomplish two primary goals: reduce the amount of people asked to verify their name, and make it easier for people to verify their name if required.
Easing Up on the Real-Name Policy
If someone is asked to verify their name, they will now be able to provide more detailed information about why they wish to go by that name.
For example, some may wish to go by an alias because they’re victims of stalking or cyberbullying. Others may have come to be recognized by a name other than their own.
Regardless of what a person’s circumstance might be, they will be able to explain themselves to the Facebook team, who will then review the information.
There has been much criticism over Facebook’s real name policy, particularly from the transgender community and victims of domestic violence. It’s possible that these tools have been developed in response to the criticism.
Changes Made to Reporting “Fake Names”
In addition, there have been enhancements made when it comes to reporting “fake names” to Facebook. The new process will require the reporting user to type out an explanation as to why they are reporting that particular name. Previously, the process allowed people to report another person’s name without giving a reason.
If a person’s “real name” is not accepted by Facebook, the company will now give a seven day grace period for the individual to provide the necessary documents to verify their ID. With the old policy, Facebook would immediately suspend the individual.
Early next year, the company says it will be looking into ways to reduce the volume of people being asked to verify their real name.
A limited test of these features is being rolled out in the US across mobile and desktop. After gathering feedback and making revisions, the tools will be rolled out worldwide.
Your social networks want your attention. Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, even online collaboration tool Slack – they want you to know when you have a message, and thanks to a new Chrome update, these apps can tell you even if you don’t have the right app installed.
All they need is for you to be signed into Chrome, and for you to have agreed to receive notifications.
But what if agreeing to these updates isn’t what you intended? What if their incessant beeps and whirrs is what made you sign out of the social network’s apps in the first place? Could you be ready to flush your smartphone away, almost hammered into submission by the news that Eric from accounts has uploaded a new Simpsons/Discworld mashup?
Hold on – there is a way around this. These notifications can be disabled.
Enabling Social Network Notifications in Chrome
Receiving notifications usually occurs when a website offers you the feature upon visiting it. This happens because you have notifications enabled, but you may not be aware of this prior to feature being offered.
You can check for it in Settings > Site Settings > Notifications – you’ll find that the default option is Ask first, and this allows you to specify whether you want notifications on a site-to-site basis.
For instance, upon visiting Facebook, you’ll see a popup giving you the option to Block or Allow notifications, sent from the browser to your Android’s notification area.
Note that notifications are not available in Incognito mode.
Which Social Networks and Websites Offer Browser Notifications?
Various websites and services offer browser notifications, a practice that saves you installing an app that would do largely the same thing. Along with Facebook, eBay, Vice News, Product Hunt, Pinterest and Slack – among others – are offering support for browser notifications, which will enable you to stay up-to-date with the latest notifications.
This might mean information about an item you’re bidding on at eBay, or a message from a colleague on Slack. And it might mean someone replied to your comment on Facebook.
As useful as these updates are, of course, things can start getting out of hand. One of two updates might be useful, but having them buzzing your phone every five minutes – which can happen, particularly with Facebook – can be particularly irritating.
So, how do we disable these notifications in Chrome?
How to Disable Mobile Social Network Notifications in Chrome
Say Facebook notifications in Chrome are becoming spammy, but you still want to know when eBay is sending you a message. The way to deal with this is to open the Chrome browser on your Android device, and visit the website you want to disable.
In the address bar, tap the lock, and in the drop-down menu, select Site Settings > Notifications >Block. You’ll need to repeat this for any other websites you want to prevent from sending notifications.
Meanwhile, if you want to block your phone from ever receiving notifications through Chrome, you can open the Chrome menu and go to Settings > Site Settings > Notifications and select Blocked.
And don’t forget, these services almost all have apps (Facebook in particular), whose notifications you may be able to configure in more detail.
Social Network Notifications on Your Desktop
This isn’t all about the mobile Chrome browser, however. It’s just as likely that your desktop version of Chrome will give you the chance at some stage to receive notifications that you might soon find are irritating you.
To allow or block notifications, Windows and Mac users should open the Chrome browser menu (Chrome OS — which you can try on most PCs — users can access this by clicking the account picture in the status area), then Settings > Show advanced settings > Privacy > Content settings…. Find Notifications, and choose from Allow all sites to show notifications, Ask when a site wants to show notifications or Do not allow any site to show notifications, depending upon which option suits you best.
Disabling notifications for particular sites is again a little different.
In Windows, click the bell-shaped notification icon in the system tray at the bottom-right corner of the desktop, then the gear icon, and untick any website that you want to disable notifications for. This can also be used to disable notifications for apps and extensions.
Mac OS X users should follow the same steps, but they’ll find their notification icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Chromebook users, meanwhile, should wait until a notification appears, and click the number in the lower-right corner that indicates this. Next, click the settings icon, and untick the website, app or extension that you wish to disable.
That’s it — no more irritating notifications. Well, not until you get your next spam email or SMS text message…
Chrome notifications can be useful; they can also be frustrating. Have you used them? Perhaps you disabled them due to over-active alerts? Tell us about it in the comments.
America loves the Internet, what we discussed on Facebook over the past year, Walmart takes mobile payments, Popcorn Time for Music is no more, and YouTube looks back over 2015.
Internet Use in the United States
The United States of America is becoming increasingly addicted to the Internet. According to the latest statistics from the Pew Research Center, 73 percent of Americans go online at least once a day, with 21 percent admitting to being online “Almost constantly”. Just 13 percent of those polled do not use the Internet at all.
The ubiquity of smartphones has a lot to do with this, as 87 percent of Americans who own smartphones go online daily as opposed to 65 percent who don’t own smartphones. The figures are even more telling in terms of constant use, with 27 percent of smartphone users admitting to being online all the time as opposed to just 8 percent for non-smartphone owners.
This increased use of the Internet is fairly even across gender and race. However, age, education, and income all make big differences: Teenagers, graduates, and high-earners are all likely to spend more time online than retirees, school dropouts, and low-earners.
So, it might be time to ask yourself, are you addicted to the Internet? If so, perhaps it’s time to take a break.
The Biggest Stories on Facebook
We have already looked at the stories which dominated Twitter in 2015, and now it’s Facebook’s turn to take a look back over the past 12 months with its Year in Review for 2015. Facebook has pinpointed 10 news stories which were widely discussed on the social network in 2015, with the video embedded above providing some background to them all.
1. The U.S. Presidential Election
2. The November 13 Attacks in Paris
3. The Syrian Civil War and Refugee Crisis
4. The Nepal Earthquakes
5. The Greek Debt Crisis
6. Marriage Equality
7. The Fight Against ISIS
8. The Charlie Hebdo Attack
9. The Baltimore Protests
10. The Charleston Shooting and Flag Debate
As you can see from the list, the majority of the most-discussed stories involved bad news. This is not only reminder of what a terrible year it has been in terms of things happening in the world, but also a reminder that people are increasingly turning to social media to talk about these issues. Both for good and for bad.
We would love to know which of these stories resonated most with you, and which you found yourself having heated discussions about on Facebook. After all, this year, possibly more than any previous year, has shown that being friends with someone on Facebook doesn’t guarantee you’ll agree with them about everything. Especially Donald Trump.
Walmart Launches Walmart Pay
Someone at Wal*Mart corporate clearly got confused. When people demanded that Wal*Mart Pay, they meant pay their employees!
— Doug Hill (@DHStom) December 10, 2015
U.S. retailer Walmart has launched Walmart Pay, its own mobile payments platform designed to go head-to-head with Apple Pay, Android Pay and others. Walmart Pay will be introduced in selected stores today (Dec. 10), with additional stores coming online over the holidays. It should be available across the United States by the middle of next year.
Walmart Pay is free to use and integrated into the Walmart app. According to Reuters, it’s available both on Android and iOS, and is compatible with “any major credit, debit, pre-paid or Walmart gift cards.” Using Walmart Pay requires you to scan a code at the checkout counter using your smartphone camera, with an e-receipt being sent to the app.
The RIAA Has Killed Aurous
Consider this our farewell, thanks for all the support https://t.co/SXvXvlD9s7
— Aurous (@aurousapp) December 10, 2015
Aurous, also known as the Popcorn Time for Music, has shut down for good, with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) bullying the service out of existence. The RIAA sued Aurous days after it launched in October 2015, and two months later, it’s dead as a dodo.
Aurous allowed users to play pretty much any song in existence by pulling music from 120 sources, including YouTube and SoundCloud. Unfortunately, not all of the sources were entirely legal, which led to the RIAA launching a lawsuit on behalf of the record labels it represents.
The lawsuit has now been settled for $3 million, with Aurous signing over its domain name and intellectual property to the record labels. According to TorrentFreak, Aurous co-founders Andrew Sampson and Danielle Astvatsaturova are banned from committing infringing actions in the future.
Watch YouTube Rewind 2015
And finally, YouTube Rewind takes a look back over 2015 with the YouTubers, videos, and memes that dominated over the past year. I think it’s fair to say that no one will recognize everybody and everything in this video. And if you do then you really need to get out more.
The video features a heady mix of mainstream celebrities and people only famous on YouTube. Which, as Wired points out, demonstrates how the lines are blurring as YouTube grows up and evolves. YouTube Red isn’t for everyone, but it’s a sure sign of a maturing platform.
Your Views on Today’s Tech News
Do you think you’re addicted to the Internet? What stories did you discuss on Facebook in 2015? Are you likely to ever use Walmart Pay? How do you feel about the RIAA killing Aurous? What YouTube channels have you watched most over the past 12 months?
Let us know your thoughts on the Tech News of the day by posting to the comments section below. Because a healthy discussion is always welcome.
You might think of Facebook as just a way to keep in touch with your friends and family, but it’s become much more than that.
So much more, in fact, that it can actually be a fairly useful financial tool.
We’ve already told you about how the things you do on Facebook can cost you money, but today we’ll look at how Facebook can save you money.
Here are seven things you can do to use the big blue site to your advantage.
Follow Your Favorite Brands
Following a lot of brands on social networks can expose you to a lot more advertising, actually make you spend more, and is one of the eight online bad habits to kick.
However, if you follow your very favorite brands and the ones that you buy from on a regular basis, you can get notified of exclusive sales, new products, upcoming deals, and coupon codes to help you save.
Most of the time, brands will post these offers in their main feed, but every once in a while, you’ll see a special section on their page that’s worth checking out, like Seattle’s Best Coffee’s “$1 Coupon” section:
Living Well Spending Less also reports that Silk, Rite Aid, Angel Soft, Uncle Ben’s, and Dial all offer coupons “just because” and not as part of a promotion.
Follow Money-Saving Pages
There are a lot of pages on Facebook that exist solely to help you save money (and probably to earn a lot on commission while doing it; keep that in mind). Most of them post a combination of good deals (which can be dangerous if you’re not good at resisting temptation) and personal finance advice.
Remember that these pages often have an incentive to get you to buy things, so don’t always jump on any deal you see. Again, resisting temptation is key here — you won’t save money if you end up buying a lot more than you would have without these pages!
Here are a few pages to get you started:
Money Saving Mom
Living Well Spending Less
Living on a Dime
Passionate Penny Pincher
Retired by 40
Create or Follow an Interest List
Interest lists are a bit like Twitter lists; they let you view a subset of the pages that you follow without having to sort through everything else on your timeline.
By creating an interest list with relevant brands and money-saving pages, you can have a single place to look online for ways to save money. Add your favorite personal finance bloggers, money-saving pages, brands, and any other site that will help you save money.
To create one, go to your Interests page, click “Add Interests,” and then “Create List.” Start adding your favorite pages!
If you don’t want to create your own custom list, you can follow a public one by going to your Interests page and using the search bar to find public lists that you can follow. Try ‘saving’, ‘deals’, ‘offers’, ‘coupons’, or any category of item that you’d like to save on, like ‘groceries’.
Browse through the lists until you find one that looks like it will help you save on the things you spend money on. You can also find local pages and lists that feature coupons and deals specific to your area.
Get DIY Project Ideas
It’s easier to just buy a product that solves a problem, but in many cases, you can use some basic DIY skills to create a solution without spending more money.
Facebook is a great place to find DIY project ideas, from home organization and improvement to crafts and toys. Follow DIY pages like DIYideas.com, DIY Home Decorating, DIY Ready, and DoItYourself.com.
There are also lots of interest lists that curate DIY ideas — just add one to your interests, and you’ll have all the DIY ideas you could need at the click of a mouse. (If you’re looking for specific project ideas, try Pinterest.)
Buy and Borrow Locally
While Craigslist is the king of online garage sales, Facebook can also be an effective tool for finding people near you who are selling, renting, or lending the things that you need. Your friends are a good place to start — just post a quick request to see if anyone is trying to get rid of a tool, piece of furniture, item of clothing, or whatever else you’re looking for. Sometimes you’ll even find people who are giving away exactly what you need, and all you have to do is go pick it up!
Borrowing is good too, and there are local borrowers’ groups around the country that you can join to find other people interested in free lending of items. If your area doesn’t have one, just start up a group; there are almost certainly a lot of people that would be interested in borrowing and lending things with their neighbors!
Ask for Deals
Most brands are responsive when you send them messages on Facebook, and it’s always worth asking if there’s a discount or coupon code that you can use on a transaction.
Just hit “Message” at the top of a brand or store page, tell them you’re about to make a purchase, and ask if there’s a coupon code that you can use. Many times, they’ll give you a code that you can use — even if it’s only 10% off, that’s still saving more than you would have. Asking for free shipping never hurts, either, as many companies will happily give it to you.
You might feel a little weird about asking for deals like this, but trust me — with the number of crazy complaints these companies get on a daily basis, they’ll be relieved to be able to quickly answer your question and move onto the next person!
Get Free Stuff
When you’re trying to save money, getting something for free is ace.
There are several Facebook pages that compile opportunities for getting free stuff, from giveaways to free samples to competitions. Most of these sites also post sales and coupons, so you might have to dig a little bit, but if you keep an eye out, you should be able to score free things every once in a while.
Freebies Frenzy and FreebieShark are good places to start. Julie’s Freebies is also good if you want to enter to win things, though you’ll probably have to give away your name and email address a lot.
With the huge variety of things being given away, though, you’ll probably find some things that you’re happy signing up for a newsletter in exchange for a chance to win!
Your Best Money-Saving Tips
If you spend some time using these seven tips, you could save hundreds of dollars over the course of a year. Of course, if you combine them with things like online coupon-finding sites, good budgeting practices, and money-saving IFTTT recipes, you could save a lot more than that.
What are your best tips for using Facebook to save money? Which of the strategies above have you had success with in the past? Which brands do you save on with Facebook? Share your best tips below!
Facebook has released a new set of tools designed to facilitate better communication between Page owners and their audiences.
The company claims it is now the go-to destination for communicating with businesses on the go — with the number of messages being sent to Pages doubling compared to this time last year.
Now there are new features to help Page owners become more responsive to their audience from any device. This includes both private and public communication between Pages and Facebook users.
Response Time
Building off of a feature launched this past summer, Facebook is now giving control to Page owners to indicate the average length of time it takes for them to respond to messages. Options include “within minutes,” “within an hour,” “within hours” or “within a day.”
This feature was available on Pages previously, but the response time was calculated and displayed automatically. Now, even if you tend to respond within a few hours, you can set your average response time to show as “within a day.”
“Away” Setting
In addition, there’s now a new “Away” setting that can be used when an admin will definitely not be available to respond to messages — such as evenings, holidays, and so on. Messages sent to a Page while the Away setting is activated will not count towards the automatically calculated response time.
Away Messages & Instant Replies
Even further, when the Away setting is activated Page owners can choose to set away messages and/or instant replies, similar to e-mail and autoresponders. Instant replies can be used at any time, such as an instant reply to a person’s first correspondence with the business.
More Context About Individuals
The Page admin’s inbox has been redesigned to give more context about an individual they are communicating with. In addition to publicly available profile information, admins can add their own private notes about people and sort of keep their own files on individual. In addition, tags can be added to conversations as a way to keep similar topics organized.
Keep Track of & Respond to Comments
There’s a better way for Page owners to keep track of and respond to all comments received. This can be accessed within the Activity tab on both mobile and desktop. Here admins can either respond to the comment directly, reply privately, flag it for follow-up later, or just mark it as read.
All of these newly announced Page communication features are now being rolled out globally and will be available to everyone in the coming months.
Featured Image: Denys Prykhodov / Shutterstock.com
Back in September, Facebook made a deal with Summit Public Schools. Don’t worry if you didn’t hear about it when it happened – it was a quiet event, without a lot of fanfare. With that being said, the implications of this partnership might change everything we know about public education.
What are Summit Public Schools?
Summit Public schools are public high schools founded in 2003 by parents and community members who wanted to re-imagine high school education in the United States.
Over the last decade enrollment has grown close to 2000 students at eleven different high schools, and Summit schools have spread from their California home to Washington state.
What Does Education Look Like at Summit?
Summit Public Schools believe strongly in students participating in self-directed learning. This has resulted in an education system that looks entirely different from the typical American high school experience.
The driving focus at Summit schools is to prepare every single student for college and university, no matter their background, and to ensure that their graduates will be “thoughtful and considerate members of society”.
This seems like a crazy goal, but Summit is trying some equally crazy strategies to make it happen.
There is no streaming students into separate tracks dependent on their academic achievement levels. Every student at Summit receives a personalized education plan, focusing on their past experiences, current interests, and future plans.
Learning is accomplished at an individual pace through online course content (presented in a variety of mediums including video, text, and audio), discussions with peers, and one-on-one tutoring from teachers and community mentors.
Instead of teachers acting as aloof educators, they are seen as mentors and collaborators – breaking down social barriers to facilitate learning through supportive relationships.
The other great thing that Summit is doing is placing a focus on technology and innovation. This focus may seem as natural as breathing in tech-focused Silicon Valley where the schools are based, but it’s a school model that is going to become increasingly important as our world’s use of technology continues to grow.
An interactive tool on Summit’s website may give you a better idea of what a day in the life of a Summit student is like – it’s so cool that it may leave you wanting to go back to high school! (Trust me, I never thought I’d say that either!)
Why Does Facebook Care?
It’s nice that there’s this crazy school happening in California, but why on earth would Facebook be interested in it?
It all started when Priscilla Chan, wife of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, toured the school and told her husband that he had to see it for himself.
Zuckerberg is known for philanthropy, and Summit is definitely a worthy cause. American public schools are generally only seen as average (or below-average) on a global scale, and education issues only become more pronounced in under-funded schools. Education in the United States is something that has needed reform for a long time, and Summit is demonstrating success with an approach that just might be the solution educators and policy makers have been looking for.
True to form, Zuckerberg offered Diane Tavenner (Summit’s founder) a donation for the schools. However, she replied that what Summit really needed was code to run and develop the software used for students’ personalized learning plans.
Facebook got on board.
The partnership between Summit and Facebook is small, but exciting. Zuckerberg shared the partnership on his personal Facebook with some elaboration:
The platform we’re building with Summit — called the Personalized Learning Platform, or PLP — is completely separate from the Facebook service . . . Building software that will enable personalized learning for all children is a new and exciting challenge for Facebook and we can’t do it alone. We’re committed to listening to and learning from the education community — teachers, parents and organizations that are supporting personalized learning — and we’re looking forward to opening up to more students soon.
While the partnership is still in its very early stages, Facebook hopes that in the future it will be able to offer PLP software to students across the country, for free.
What Does This Mean for the Future of Public Education?
Facebook has already changed the way that our world works with regards to communication and social media use, so its potential impact on education should not be underestimated.
Summit boasts incredible success statistics; 96% of its students are accepted to a 4-year college or university program upon graduation – much higher than Silicon Valley’s average college preparedness rate (currently less than 50%). Even students who choose not to attend post-secondary education benefit from the skills they learn about self-directed learning and technology, and are better prepared as global citizens and members of the workforce.
It’s easy to see Summit’s success stories as a phenomenon unique to Silicon Valley, and as an unsustainable model for widespread use.
However, that really isn’t the case.
To be quite frank, the education system currently in place is broken, and it needs to be fixed. Many of the resources being used in Summit’s education plans are free online resources available to anyone at any time, such as Khan Academy math videos and the Crash Course videos produced by Hank and John Green.
There is no reason that resources such as these couldn’t be implemented more widely, especially if Facebook is providing free, quality software that can make personalized learning plans for individual students a reality rather than a dream and free up time for teachers to be mentors and facilitators.
Everyone is already aware that education needs to become more tech-based as the use of technology has expanded into every sphere of our lives. Google has already introduced Google Classroom, and there are also an incredible number of apps for students, educational video games, and integration of technology into the classroom.
That being said, do you think Facebook and Summit are taking this kind of learning too far? Or, like me, are you ready to sign up and re-do high school in this innovative, creative, and personalized way?
Image Credit: technologies at school by Goodluz via Shutterstock
If you are one of the 968 million people who log into Facebook each day, you may have noticed the platform offers three different ad placements, namely desktop newsfeed, mobile newsfeed, and desktop right column. Facebook also offers ads outside of Facebook through network sites (called audience network) as well as ads on Instagram.
Naturally, advertisers would want to take advantage of all of the different ad placements but that does not mean they should all be in the same ad set. Generally speaking, campaigns can be run on all placements simultaneously except for the audience network which only runs if the mobile newsfeed is active.
The behavior on site is different from one device to another. So, how people behave on the website may be different on desktop than what they would do if they were on a mobile device. Consequently, ad copies, landing pages, and of course the call to action as well as the overall advertising strategy should be adapted to the behavior per device.
This means each of the available Facebook placements (desktop and mobile feed plus desktop right column) should always be in separate ad sets.
Let’s look at the five most important advantages of breaking down placements in different ad sets and implementing a custom Facebook placement strategy.
1. More Precise Control of Budgets
One of the biggest issues many businesses are having with Facebook ads is that they can be difficult to scale up quickly. By having each placement in a dedicated ad set, you can customize the budget for each placement based on performance. This is key to profitably scaling up accounts.
For instance, let´s imagine that you have a CPA goal of $10 and you have ad sets with multiple target placements (such as Desktop newsfeed and Mobile newsfeed). If your current CPA is $11, running a placement report might reveal some placements perform above $10 and some below $10.
You can run a report by breaking down your data into the main Facebook interface:
Setting up separate budgets for each of the placements helps you get more for the placements below $10 and optimize the ones costing more than $10 with the goal to reduce the CPA.
2. More Effectively Allocated Budget with Customized Bids
Whatever the goal of your Facebook campaign may be—clicks, conversions, leads, engagement, you name it – the most important thing is visibility. Visibility is related to bids and there is no point in bidding the same thing for all placements because they are not equally expensive. Additionally, you might end up bidding too low for some of the highly competitive placements.
In other words, always have separate bid strategies for the placements to get the most bang for your buck.
3. Better Results per Placement with Customized Ads
Recently, when I was speaking at the SEJ Summit in Atlanta, someone asked why I recommend to customize ads per placement considering it takes a lot of time and there is a high chance people recognize the brand if the ad is identical. While I understand that brand recognition is important, I disagree with the fact that the identical ad will achieve brand recognition in the first place. Desktop and mobile newsfeed ads have completely different dimensions and desktop right column ads differ from both of those formats also.
The point it, ads look different based on where they are shown. A perfectly readable ad on desktop may be too small to decipher on mobile. There is nothing wrong with using the same ad for all placements, but they should be adapted.
For instance, mobile ads require less characters and need run on smaller screens than desktop newsfeed ads meaning the font size and small icons should usually be larger. By making anything larger one usually runs into Facebook’s text/image ratio regulations. No more than 20% text still needs to be respected, even when things are made bigger for mobile devices.
Make sure to double-check if everything is readable or some characters are cut off on mobile.
4. Higher Conversion Rates
Landing pages tend to perform differently depending on what device the visitor is using. Having the same landing page for every placement simply means that you are ignoring the fact that people behave differently on different devices.
Mobile users prefer short sales funnels, visual displays (such as a calendar for the expiration date of the credit card), and text that is informative but to the point. While many responsive websites are somewhat optimized for mobile, the checkout page is the one that typically causes the highest drop-off rates. The checkout page should be as short and easy to navigate as possible on mobile. On the other hand side, desktop users consider the length of the landing page and in-depth content when making a purchase.
When optimizing for different devices, keep in mind where in the sales funnel the user is. For instance, people who found you via Facebook on a smartphone are typically further away from making a purchasing decision than people on a desktop device who opened a promotion via email.
5. Long-Term Success and Better Strategies
Breaking down placements in different ad sets allows you to focus your ongoing management strategies on the elements of the account that work best.
For instance, different placements are likely to generate different results based on an initial set of ads. This is due to several factors, such as the cost per click, the visibility and size of an ad, and the online behavior of online buyers. Segmenting the placements in separate ad sets allows you to create a new advertising test each time you identify a top performing ad and to customize the ad copy to the technical requirement of each placement
Also, you are going to be able to create reports and eventually break the placement ad sets even further based on the device performance of age, gender, and geographical areas. All of that makes your ad strategy much more flexible and effective.
Over to You
Custom Facebook placement strategies are a great way to maximize results. Thoughts or additional tips to add? Let me know in the comments!
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Rocco Baldassarre All screenshots by Rocco Baldassarre. Taken November 2015.
Each second, five new Facebook accounts are created.
Each day, more than 100 million people log into Twitter.
That is a massive audience that your brand could be reaching. However, many brands struggle to create real, human connections on social media. They confuse social media with a commercial platform where they can push their products 24-7. They take bad reviews personally, or they are so busy being ‘professional’ that they forget to be human.
The internet is a big place, and your content can easily get lost in the noise. Which is why more brands are using social media as a place to create real connections with their customer base. Here are a few brands who are succeeding at keeping it real on social media and creating solid, human connections in the process.
1. Humans of New York
What started as a photo project by a recently fired photographer named Brandon Stanton has become a brand to be reckoned with. Originally, Brandon planned to photography 10,000 New Yorkers and plot their photos on a map. Somewhere along the way he started telling their stories, and the project has since evolved into three books, a meeting with President Obama, and several prestigious awards.
HONY seeks to tell the extraordinary stories of regular people in a way that is easily accessible. By seeking to create a connection first and foremost, Brandon has been able to keep his first book on the top of the New York Times Best Seller’s List for 26 weeks.
Each post receives thousands of likes, shares, and comments.
(2/3) “He’d been married before and had three children. I think he doubted that he’d ever meet someone who’d look past…
Posted by Humans of New York on Monday, November 30, 2015
Lesson to Learn: Focus on connecting with your audience first. Remember: Social media is, above all, social.
2. Red Bull
Think Red Bull just sells energy drinks? Think again.
The brand has leveraged social media to become a media and publishing giant. For all the high energy content they post, you will almost never see a can of Red Bull. Why? Because they don’t have to.
What you will see is lots of content about sports and adrenaline pumping activities like skiing, racing, and surfing.
Lesson to Learn: Don’t treat Facebook like one big ad. Instead, share interesting content your audience wants to see.
3. Dewars
Most of the pictures this whiskey company posts on Facebook are obviously staged photos of models mid-laugh or clinking glasses. Which seems pretty mainstream.
Where the brand excels is interacting with users and keeping their page light and fun.
Lesson to Learn: You don’t have to be a straight-laced professional all the time. Inject humor if it works for your brand.
4. Oreo
Ever since their iconic “You can still dunk in the dark.” Super Bowl tweet, the cookie brand has been killing it on social media. Unlike Red Bull, they mention their product in nearly every post.
But, because they have an avid fan base who loves their products, it works. By harnesses the power of brand love, Oreo is able to create social media campaigns that blatantly promote their products – without being annoying or overly promotional.
Lesson To Learn: Use social media to turn loyal customers into your brand advocates.
5. Taco Bell
Another brand that has managed to keep it real is this fast food giant. Unlike other fast food brands, Taco Bell has made being trendy part of their brand, which has likely helped them avoid the declining sales many other fast-food places like McDonald’s are facing.
Their Twitter feed is filled with trendy images of young people and their products. They even went on a crusade to have a taco emoticon created. And they succeeded.
Like Oreo, this brand is keeping it real by tapping into the love affair people have with their tacos and other food.
Lesson to Learn: You can use social media as a brand building, or even rebranding, tool.
6. Aerie
Probably best know for using unretouched photographs in their ads, Aerie also does a great job of using Facebook as a customer service platform. They don’t try to be tongue in cheek or funny, but they do promote their own sales and have a team monitoring to respond to customer complaints.
Lesson to Learn: Use social media the way your customers do. If they are reaching out on social for customer service, answer them!
7. Barbie
In the last decade, the iconic doll has gotten a lot of flak for promoting unrealistic body standards, traditional gender roles, and body issues in young girls.
Instead of trying to defend the doll, they use social media as a platform to share gender equality messages and tell girls they can be anything they want.
Lesson To Learn: When used well, social media can help you tell your brand’s story or repair your reputation.
Want to Learn More About How Your Brand Can Succeed on Facebook & Twitter?
If you want to join the ranks of successful brands on Facebook and Twitter, get yourself registered for our next sponsored SEJ ThinkTank webinar on December 9th, 2015 at 1 pm Eastern.
Hosted by SEJ Founder Loren Baker and presented by WordStream Founder Larry Kim, this free hour-long webinar titled “The Ridiculously Smart Guide to Facebook & Twitter Advertising” will show you how to get much, much more out of your paid campaigns – using budgets of $50 or less.
The live video feature Facebook began testing with celebrities this summer is now available to a small portion of US-based iPhone users. According to the Facebook Newsroom, this new feature will allow users to share streaming videos they are seeing in real-time.
To share a live video, click “Update Status” and then look for the “Live Video” icon, next to the photo, tag, and emoticon options on your iPhone. The icon appears as a person with two rings around their head.
Facebook described the features abilities in a blog post by Vadim Lavrusik and Thai Tran.
“During your broadcast, you’ll see the number of live viewers, the names of friends who are tuning in, and a real-time stream of comments. When you end your broadcast, it will be saved on your Timeline like any other video, which you can then delete or keep for your friends to watch later.”
The expansion of this feature may be in an effort to challenge sites like Periscope and Meercat.
Currently, I do not have this new feature on my iPhone. Do you? I’d love to hear your thoughts after trying it.
Facebook launched Instagram Ads a while ago and while the launch was highly anticipated, many businesses didn’t jump on the opportunity to advertise on Instagram. The Instagram audience might not be for everyone and ads required a linked Instagram account that of course needs upkeep.
Starting form the first week of December 2015, businesses can now run Instagram Ads without having an Instagram account. This means that advertisers can now increase engagement and scale up low cost conversions with Instagram Ads without ever having to create and use an Instagram account.
What’s New With Instagram Ads
Before the latest change, advertisers needed to link an Instagram account their Facebook Business Manager.
Disadvantages:
Businesses needed to create, optimize and manage an Instagram page
Businesses needed to create an audience on Instagram to create some organic reach with their posts
Businesses often didn’t want to allocate resources to an Instagram profile without knowing if it’s worth their while
Starting from the first Week of December 2015, Instagram ads can be created by using the Facebook Ad Manager without having an Instagram account and without having to link an Instagram account to the Facebook Business Manager. Instagram Ads are now available as Placement and can be selected as target of an ad set.
Would it be better to have and link an Instagram account? Facebook says yes:
“We recommend (but don’t require) connecting an Instagram account to run ads on Instagram. Representing your business with an Instagram account may help you get better results for your ad.” – Facebook
How to Set up Instagram Ads Without an Instagram Account
1. Go to your Facebook Ad Manager and create a new campaign (or use an existing campaign.) Go into an ad set of that campaign and add Instagram as a target method of your ad set:
2. Go into the ads of that ad set and create a new ad.
3. When creating the ad, select your Facebook page as a destination
You will now be able to advertise on Instagram. Advantages of Instagram ads include but are not limited to:
Use all of the targeting methods available on Facebook
Use all of the bidding options available on Facebook
Pay only when somebody clicks on your Ads
Manage your Ads directly from the Facebook ad manager
Track conversions though the same pixel you already use for Facebook ads
This post originally appeared on international-ppc.com, and is re-published with permission.
Image Credits
Featured Image: tulpahn/Shutterstock.com All screenshots by Rocco Baldassarre. Taken November 2015.
Facebook’s “On This Day” feature can at the very least, be annoying, and at the most, it can trigger painful memories that you may not necessarily want to revisit. Here is a way to turn off this feature for at least a year.
We won’t lie, we don’t like the “On This Day” feature, and Facebook has been remarkably tone deaf about it. Despite floods of complaints from users stating that they don’t want or need it, Facebook has seemingly refused to allow people to simply turn it off.
There doesn’t seem to be any reason for Facebook to have such a vested interest in our nostalgia, but regardless, every day there we are, confronted with whatever happened one, two, three years ago on that particular day.
As we said, there’s no way to simply turn off this feature wholesale, but you can fine tune it so that you won’t see these posts for at least a year from now.
It’s All in the Preferences
Facebook will show you a memory every day provided you have posted something on that date from any number of years ago. To effectively turn off these posts, you need to click the arrow in the top-right corner and select “Hide post”.
We do this every day, and we’re tired of it.
Facebook will tell you it’s sorry, and then you’ll see a link to click for “On This Day Preferences”.
In the preferences, you can filter out people you don’t want to be reminded of, or you can select a date or range of dates. In this case, we click the “edit” link next to dates.
Just because you unfriended certain painful memory causing people doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t see painful memories, which is why you will need to choose a date range instead.
On the proceeding screen, click “Select Dates”.
First select the starting date. In this case, we just go ahead and select the earliest year (2003) from the dropdown selection.
Our Facebook history doesn’t go back to 2003 but it doesn’t matter in this case, as long as we have a date range that covers our needs.
For our end date, we select a date a year from now (2016), which means that we won’t see any memories for any period from 2003 to 2016, and presumably for at least a year beyond that (2017). Click “Done” to confirm the dates.
Make sure you click “Done” before you click “Save”.
Now you see we won’t seem any memories from 11/1/2003 to 11/30/2016. If this isn’t correct, click the “Edit” link to fix it. If you want to cancel or delete this range, click the small “X”. Otherwise, click “Save” to commit your changes.
That’s it, you’re done and you shouldn’t see any more memories for quite some time. Click “Done” to exit the On This Day preferences and return to your newsfeed.
This isn’t the first time we’ve dealt with some kind of Facebook annoyance. In the past we’ve detailed how to stop birthday and other notifications, and how to block Facebook game and app requests. This is, however, the first time we’ve encountered an annoyance such as this without a clear way of simply turning it off and being rid of it.
We hope then that if this feature is bothersome and unwanted, then you will have found this article useful. If you have any questions or comments you would like to contribute, please leave your feedback in our discussion forum.
With a staggering 84% of internet users having at least one Facebook-owned account (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp), it’s safe to say in many ways Facebook has taken over the world.
And while most of Facebook’s current growth is coming from “fast-growth markets” where Internet populations are expanding rapidly, recent findings indicate that roughly 72% of US adults who are online are Facebook users and 31% are Instagram users. Plus, nearly 3/4 of Facebook users and 2/3 of Instagram users active on these platforms DAILY!
What this adds up to for businesses is simple: regardless of your demographic, those customers are using Facebook and Facebook-owned properties regularly. This makes paid advertising on these platforms among the very best ways to reach potential customers with the right marketing message at the right time.
Facebook has made targeting relevant customers simple with a world-class ads platform that leverages the ability to target users according to a wealth of demographic, psychographic, and behavioral information that Facebook has collected (and bought) expressly for that purpose.
While all of this is no secret to most marketers, what is challenging for many is keeping up with blistering pace of innovation and change on the Facebook ads platform, as Facebook has been adding new features (and improving old ones) on almost a weekly basis for the last year.
So, in the spirit of sharing the “latest and greatest” features Facebook Ads has to offer, here are three recent and relevant updates to the Facebook Ads platform that many advertisers may not have noticed or may not be using yet:
1. You can Now Create Instagram Ads Through the Facebook Ads Platform
Recently released from public Beta on September 30th, Instagram Ads are now available worldwide to all advertisers through both Facebook Ads Manager and Facebook Power Editor.
Since targeting options for Instagram Ads are exactly the same as those for Facebook Ads, extending any targeting you’re already using for Facebook Ads onto Instagram should be simple. Or you can create new audiences for targeting using Custom Audiences or Facebook’s new “Detailed Targeting” (see below).
There are, however, a few differences worth noting:
Instagram Ads are only currently only an option for four of Facebook’s 14 Campaign-level objective types: Website Clicks, Website Conversion, App Installs, and Video Views. As such, advertisers may have to add separate Instagram Campaigns to their accounts instead of simply adding Instagram as a Placement in current Ad Sets (segmenting into separate Campaigns, or at least separate Ad Sets, is probably advisable for tracking and reporting purposes anyway).
Recommended Ad sizes differ from those on Facebook. Instagram recommends using square ad images that are 1080 by 1080 pixels for both image and carousel ad formats.
If Instagram targeting is not viewable as an option in Power Editor, a “manual reset” of Power Editor may be required for it to show up (this can be done using “Help” -> “Reset Power Editor,” found at the top right in the interface.)
2. You can Now Create Lead Ads that Allow Users to Fill out a Contact Form Without Leaving Facebook
On October 7th, Facebook announced that the Lead Gen Ads format they’ve been testing since July is now open to all advertisers.
This format integrates a lead signup form directly INTO Facebook Newsfeed Ads (mobile only). Once ads are clicked on, a customizable lead gen form opens with the user’s Facebook contact information (pre-populated, but can be edited by the user), allowing users to sign up for an email list/free consultation/etc. with a single click, and WITHOUT ever having to visit an advertiser’s landing page.
Having this lead capture functionality integrated directly into the ad units themselves provides a seamless user experience for the subscriber, and some lead gen advertisers are reporting 4X reduction in CPLs versus their previous social advertising efforts.
The biggest drawback of this ad format at present is the difficulty of lead retrieval, as Facebook does NOT currently deliver these ads by email or have the ability to push them to most CRMs via API (only a few are supported). For the time being, advertisers will have to manually download these leads in spreadsheet format from the “Publishing Tools” section of their Facebook Page.
As with the new Instagram targeting feature, if the option to launch a Lead Gen Ad Campaign is not available as an option in Power Editor, a “manual reset” of Power Editor may be required.
3. You can Now Use Detailed Targeting to Expand or Narrow Audience Targeting
In late October, Facebook Ads very quietly rolled out a long-awaited change to their Ads Targeting system that dramatically improves the ability advertisers have to narrow ad targeting down to very specific audiences.
The update, called “Detailed Targeting,” adds more filtering fields to the Facebook ads interface, giving advertisers the ability to use as many filters as they’d like to either ADD or EXCLUDE additional Interest/Demographic/Behavior characteristics for each audience being targeted.
Now, with each additional filtering field added, advertisers can select either the “Expand Audience” option (the “OR” logic function, which until now has been the only option for Interest targeting) or the “Narrow Audience” option (the “AND” logic function) in order to make audiences more specific and improve targeting:
The most important improvement is how the new logic engine allows advertisers to target users based on MULTIPLE overlapping “Interests” for the first time. This improved targeting allows relevant ads to be served to the most specific audience possible, and should thus improve ad performance for all advertisers using it.
As mentioned previously, if “Detailed Targeting” options don’t appear to be available through Power Editor, a “manual reset” is likely needed to get them to show up.
Conclusion
These features are just the latest (and some of the most exciting) in a string of Facebook Ads updates that show how dedicated Facebook is to improving the Ads experience for both users and advertisers. Testing these updated features, and others like them that are likely to be released over the coming weeks and months, promises to make 2016 a very exciting year for Facebook advertisers who are willing to invest in testing new functionality.
How will these features change the way you use Facebook Advertising in the new year?
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Scott Cohen All screenshots by Scott Cohen. Taken November 2015.
You’re doing everything you can to drive traffic to your blog. You’re emailing your subscribers. You’re using Facebook to disseminate content.
The problem is, with so much happening on Facebook, how do you capture your audience’s attention among all the noise?
Beyond posting when a new article goes live, what are the other ways to utilize Facebook for greater traction?
Here are eight creative ways to drive traffic to your blog with Facebook.
1. Vary Your Types of Posts
When you’re sharing content from your blog on a regular basis, it can be easy to slip into a habit of crafting all posts in the exact same manner.
Play around with wording posts in different ways and see which resonates most with your audience.
You can experiment with utilizing simple, direct statements that leave the reader wanting to learn more about what you’ve introduced, or you can provide a bit more detail in your posts to highlight the main takeaways of your content.
Monitor your analytics and see what types of posts garner the most engagement and clicks, then stick with that when posting the majority of your posts in the future.
One blog that provides a nice snapshot of diversifying post types is MarketingProfs. I’ll dive in greater detail into many of the tactics they employ later in this article, too.
In addition to regularly sharing their latest articles, they also do a lot of posts containing photos rather than links. Not only do they share photos, but they custom-make one aligned to their brand.
For example, for a recent podcast episode, rather than simply saying, “Don’t miss our podcast,” they instead opened the post as a question (we’ll get to this more in a minute!) and used the headphone emoji to relay further details. This helped break the post up and not fall into the abyss of clunky text.
Furthermore, they used a custom graphic (we’ll get to this later, too!) featuring their own branding at the top, a photo of the presenter, and the date and time of the podcast. This will resonate more with an audience than a basic stock photo of a microphone would.
MarketingProfs has also featured videos in their feed (we’ll cover this as well!). As video is one of the post types with the highest organic reach on Facebook, uploading videos to your feed is highly beneficial.
This provides an opportunity to have some fun, too. MarketingProfs did a video with speakers reading mean marketing tweets.
2. Use Different Types of Questions
A common tactic employed by bloggers and brands alike is to ask questions. But, what kind of questions should you ask? There are a variety of ways to position questions to grab your readers’ attention.
Here are a few examples:
For a blog post surrounding the impact of social sites on tourism, Social Hospitality teased the question, “Did you know if you’re not in the top five listings on TripAdvisor, you’re losing out to your competitors?”
This entices the hospitality-focused reader to think about their own situation and consider how their property ranks on TripAdvisor. This is an example of a direct post (as noted above) which leaves the reader wanting to know more.
Convince & Convert recently presented a different kind of question to promote one of their posts. A metaphorical, hypothetical question. This applies a new connotation to the content of the blog post, allowing the reader to think about it in a new way, and want to learn more about this solution being proposed by the post’s question.
Another option is to essentially poll your audience – ask their feedback on something to get their wheels turning, then provide solutions in the blog post you’re sharing. Search Engine Journal utilized this tactic in the above example to encourage people to click through and learn about ways to humanize their brand.
3. Interact with Other Pages on Facebook
Similarly to how you can interact with business pages when using Facebook as yourself, you can also use Facebook as your page. If you go to the small arrow at the top-right of the blue Facebook header bar, the first option when you click is to “Use Facebook as:” then a list of the pages you manage. Once you select a page, you’ll be using Facebook as that particular page.
Initially, you’ll land on your fan page itself, but once you click the Facebook icon in the top left corner, you’ll return to a timeline view of the pages you follow. If you haven’t followed any yet, now is a great time to start!
Simply search for pages as you would normally, and “Like” them. Once you’ve liked a number of pages, they’ll appear in your page’s News Feed, allowing you to follow their posts, then “Like” and comment on them accordingly.
Wondering what pages to like? I recommend following anything related to your blog/brand/product/service or anything relevant to your target audience. There are numerous benefits to doing this. First, it puts you in front of their audience. And if you have the same audience, that’s a win, because you’re reaching potentially new readers.
It also shows support for other blogs and businesses, which can assist in nurturing new relationships and creating possible partnership opportunities. This stimulates additional growth potentially beyond Facebook itself.
By expanding the audience of your Facebook page, you can thereby use the other tactics mentioned when posting to drive those new fans back to your site and convert them to blog fans as well.
Monitor your Facebook insights and consider running “new fan” promotions on days you see your number of likes spike. Perhaps create a page on your blog dedicated to new fans and offer some sort of incentive for them to subscribe to your articles.
If your blog offers any additional elements (such as an e-book, podcast, etc.), provide a free sample to new audience members so they can learn more about you. Share this on Facebook for additional leverage.
4. Use Excerpts as Quotes
This is a great way to re-share the same article on Facebook multiple times without it being too transparent.
If you have a large enough following, using quotes to create engagement, and thus, ultimately, reach and clicks is crucial. Be sure to build up a strong following first before progressing with playing with post types for traffic.
It’s difficult to pinpoint a one-size-fits-all answer to the ideal number of followers, but if you can get a reasonable amount engaged with your Facebook, that’ll help get your posts in front of their connections, which should eventually grow both your organic reach and subsequent traffic back to your blog.
By pulling various excerpts from your article and quoting them, you can diversify the messaging of your blog posts which may assist in reaching people with various interests, too.
A great way to select quotes to use for your post is to locate the ones that speak to you readers’ needs. For example, the Jeff Bezos quote above, excerpted from HubSpot’s guide to developing a strong corporate brand identity, speaks to a specific struggle readers may endure, and thus, it provides a fitting introduction to the following question as well as the article.
Another option is to take this to the next level and create a visual depiction of a specific quote.
AgoraPulse does a nice job of creating custom visuals to accommodate their posts, featuring an element from the article, the post title itself, or some other line that speaks to the heart of the article:
Canva is an excellent tool for creating custom images for Facebook posts in a short amount of time.
5. Do Regular Recaps of Blog Posts
An additional tactic to obtain some additional leverage from your blog posts is to do recaps on your blog then re-share those recaps as Facebook posts.
Recaps can come in a variety of forms: they can be done by date range (i.e. weekly or monthly) or they can also be bundled by genre (i.e. the latest posts on social media, SEO, content marketing, etc).
These are many benefits to doing this. First, it creates a basecamp for people to gain a comprehensive view of the latest news surrounding a specific topic.
Next, it provides an excuse for you to link back to your previous posts, thereby leveraging content that may have otherwise dried up.
Darren Rowse’s popular blog, ProBlogger, does a weekly roundup of blogging posts from various sources and shares on their Facebook page: The same can be done with posts on your own blog as well.
Another example is a monthly social media recap I do for Search Engine Journal. At the beginning of each month, I aggregate social media news from the previous month and consolidate it into a single post on SEJ, broken up by channel:
Now, not only does SEJ get traffic from the original posts featured in the recap, but it also brings additional eyes to the site by sharing this post to Facebook each month as well.
6. Create Video Recaps of Posts
This is somewhat similar to podcasting, but with the rise of Facebook video, it’s worth taking advantage of this new opportunity. Create a video recap of your blogpost and link to it from the Facebook video when you post it.
This is perfect for your audience members that may be swamped during the day and don’t necessarily have time to read through various blogposts, but they may be able to listen to something in the background while they’re working.
ProBlogger posts a lot of Facebook videos about blogging and other related topics to their blog content.
Conversely, you can also do a video series about something and then create blog post recaps of your videos, and embed them, creating a nice array of cross-pollination.
For example, HubSpot has a hefty variety of “How To” videos on Facebook that revolve around concepts they also cover in their blog.
By posting videos on your Facebook page, this helps increase your Facebook reach as studies show videos posted to Facebook have the highest organic reach.
The best ways to draw people back to your site from your videos include:
Including a call-to-action at the end of the video that entices people to visit your blog for more information.
Teasing elements of your articles in the video then encouraging viewers to read blog posts for additional input.
Transcribe your videos into blog posts themselves – increase the longevity of your expertise by showcasing it in different manners.
7. Optimize Posts for SEO
Did you know Facebook posts can show up in Google Search results? Another useful strategy for garnering additional traffic from your Facebook posts is to optimize your post content for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
What this means is think about phrases people might search for in a search engine that would bring people to your blog, and inject those keywords into your posts introductions on Facebook.
Have your Facebook post phrasing contain the primary terms for which you’d want your post to be found. That way, your post itself can potentially come up in results for the various keywords it contains, and your Facebook posts can potentially come up as well, thereby driving traffic to both your Facebook and the blog post.
The key to injecting keywords into your Facebook post introductions is to do it naturally. There’s nothing worse than keyword-stuffed posts that are a clear SEO ploy. Find that middle ground of having your text be optimized both for readers as well as search engines.
Here is a great example from Search Engine Land:
Not only have they utilized a question to entice their fans to click on the link, but the phrase “what keywords drive organic traffic” is a highly searched phrase. In fact, in August, there were 275,000 searches for related topics.
Many articles themselves contain noteworthy phrases that are also SEO-efficient.
In this post, the keyword phrase is “social media guidelines,” a topic about which many are looking for guidance. By utilizing this particular phrase in the post content itself, HyperDisk Marketing’s post may potentially rank in search results, thereby bringing additional eyes to both the Facebook page as well as the article when people click-through to it.
8. Take Advantage of Boosted Posts
Boosting posts is one form of Facebook advertising that allows you to boost one post’s specific content (rather than having to create a distinct right-rail ad) to a select audience.
The beauty of Facebook’s ad targeting is that you can boost posts to a direct, custom audience. Boosting posts is relatively simple, too. Any admin of a Facebook page can boost a post by clicking on “Boost Post” in the lower-right corner:
Then, you have the option to choose targeting, budget, and duration. This is where you have the opportunity be strategic and creative with whom you target. You can target friends specifically, friends of those who already like your page, or a new audience of your selection.
You can create audiences of your precise audience/customer and target content to them as well. For example, in the above post that relates to customer relationships, I could target it toward those who like pages of other brands that also focus on customer relationships.
Employing Facebook’s “lookalike audiences” can be useful as well. This would allow you to upload your current blog subscriber list into Facebook. It would match the email addresses of the individuals uploaded with their Facebook profiles.
From there, it would analyze those peoples’ Facebook presence (their behaviors, pages they like, etc.) and create for you a custom audience that aligns closely with the folks that already like your blog.
Are You Ready to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog from Facebook?
It may seem scary or intimidating to put so much thought into the different ways to formulate and re-purpose blog posts for Facebook.
Whether you’re considering utilizing quotes or questions, videos or recaps, these are all stepping-stones to enhance your Facebook footprint and drive traffic back to your website.
By following the steps above, you’ll be well on your way to upping your traffic from Facebook in no time!
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Debbie Miller All screenshots by Debbie Miller. Taken November 2015.