Everything Marketers Need to Know About F8 Conference 2017 to Stay Ahead on Facebook

Ninety-three percent of marketers we surveyed are actively using Facebook for their business. And almost everything that Facebook does to its family of products can have a great impact on marketers.

From releasing stories across Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Messenger, to going all-in on live video, Facebook’s product decisions affect billions of people globally.

Imagine how it may feel like to know about Facebook’s upcoming developments and begin to plan how you can utilize them — perhaps even before many other marketers.

Your secret sauce is Facebook’s F8 conference!

Here’s everything you need to know about it, from key sessions to watch to predictions for F8 2017.

We’ll be sharing and chatting about the exciting news live on social media for both days of the conferences — Live tweeting, live video sessions, Instagram Stories, and more. We’d love for you to follow along and share your thoughts, ideas, and excitement with us!

What is F8?

While F8 is known as the “Facebook Developer Conference”, there are many insightful announcements and sessions for social media marketers. During F8, Facebook talks not only about Facebook itself, but also its family of applications and services — Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Oculus, Workplace, Audience Network, and Internet.org.

Here are some of the things you can look forward to:

• Announcements of major changes to Facebook and its family of products
• Launches and interactive demos of new features
• Sessions on best practices with Facebook experts
• Opportunities to meet one-on-one with Facebook team members

Venue: McEnery Convention Center, San Jose, CA

Dates: Tuesday and Wednesday, April 18 and 19, 2017

If you were unable to get a ticket to the conference, you can attend one of its international viewing events in your area or watch it live online.

Fun fact: The name “F8” came from an important part of Facebook culture — its eight-hour hackathons.

Notable updates from Facebook since the last F8

Each year, marketers and publishers look forward to F8 to hear about the announcements and launches that would help shape their social media marketing strategy for the following year.

Last year’s F8 conference signaled the beginning of a hugely exciting 12 months for the Menlo Park-based company. At the conference itself, Facebook announced the launch of Facebook Live API, Instant Articles, and Messenger Bots. There was also a live demonstration of Social Virtual Reality, Facebook’s VR technology to help people connect and share virtually — something possibly worth keeping an eye on for social media marketers.

Since the last F8, Facebook has continued to ship a series of amazing updates to Facebook and its family of products to help marketers reach their audience and consumers discover quality content.

Here’s a list of the most exciting updates that have caught many social media marketers’ (and our) attention:

• Instagram algorithmic timeline
• Stories: Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, WhatsApp Stories, and Messenger Day
• Instagram Live
• Instagram Stories ads
• Facebook Live from desktop
• Vertical Facebook videos on mobile

Key sessions to keep an eye on

This year’s F8 will feature more than 50 sessions — keynotes, breakout sessions, and demos. To help you make the most of your time, we went through the schedule and picked the sessions that we think you might be interested in.

The 2 opening keynotes: 10 AM on both days

One of the sessions we’re most excited about — every year — is Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote, which will likely take place on April 18, 10 AM PST.

Mark Zuckerberg usually use this opening address to describe his vision for Facebook and briefly share upcoming developments. Last year, he went through Facebook’s 10-year roadmap and the ways Facebook’s technologies will connect people around the world and give everyone a voice.

There will be another opening keynote on the second day, probably by another executive on the Facebook team. Last year, it was by Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer who talked about their technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Tuesday, April 18

• Growth Marketing: Best Practices for Getting and Keeping an Audience (12:30 PM PST)
• Boost Your Business With Messenger (12:30 PM PST)
• What’s New with News Feed (1 PM PST)
• The Future of Video on Facebook (2 PM PST)
• Creating Social Presence in VR (3 PM PST)
• Innovative Storytelling and Media Experiences (3 PM PST)
• Powering Mobile Commerce on Facebook (3:30 PM PST)
• Early Lessons in Social VR from Oculus Rooms (4 PM PST)
• Discover New Facebook Advertising Tools (4:30 PM PST)
• Mobile App Ads: Thinking Beyond the Install (5 PM PST)

Wednesday, April 19

• Crafting Compelling Narratives in VR (12:30 PM PST)
• Visually Connecting People and Businesses (through Instagram) (1 PM PST)
• Marketing APIs: Advertising Automation, for All (2 PM PST)

Quick-tip: Facebook has created an official F8 mobile app which you can use to create your personalized itinerary for the conference, get notifications of events you have saved, and watch the sessions on demand.

• iOS
• Android

10 Predictions for F8 2017

We’re excited to make some predictions for this year’s F8. We thought Facebook’s 10-year roadmap might give us some hints as to what might be upcoming up this year.

Here’re some of our guesses (and we’d love to hear from you, too!):

1. More video features and tools

As seen in Facebook’s 10-year roadmap, video is a key area that Facebook wants to work on. Mark Zuckerberg firmly believes that video will become the main content format going forward. With its new video tab, live and 360 videos, Facebook is continuing to push video content on its platform. Just last month, Facebook opened up Live 360 videos to all Profiles and Pages.

Facebook is focusing on shorter-form video content for now and plans to seed a wide range of video content. I imagine Facebook would be partnering (or even paying) video creators — big or small — to build up enough premium content.

Facebook might also launch more video features and tools, such as better automatic captioning and video-editing tools, to help brands and individuals create better videos through Facebook.

(Video from Facebook Newsroom)

2. More features for Facebook Groups

Groups is another key area in Facebook’s 10-year roadmap. In his recent Facebook note, Mark Zuckerberg placed a lot of emphasis on building a global community and developing the social infrastructure (i.e. Facebook Groups) for it.

He mentioned that Facebook plans to build more tools to empower community leaders to organize and manage their groups, just like Facebook has done with Pages. With the push to improve Facebook Groups, we might see more new features for Facebook Groups such as analytics during this F8.

Just recently, Facebook has started rolling out a big update to Facebook Groups. You will soon be able to link your Facebook Pages to Facebook Groups, allowing you to build a community around your Page and interact with people in Groups as your Page.

(Image from Matt Navarra and Michael Brandvold)

3. Do more with Messenger

Facebook Messenger has undergone many changes this past year. It is no longer just a text-based messaging app. Now you can doodle and add stickers to your photos before sending them, make video and audio calls, play games with your friends, and even contact businesses (and bots).

Looking at some of the other big messaging apps such as WeChat and Line, Facebook might continue to work on features to help businesses connect with their customers and customers make transactions with businesses.

For example, just this month, Facebook launched suggestions from M, its Messenger AI assistant. If you and your friends are talking in Messenger about going somewhere, M would offer an option of getting a Lyft or Uber ride. It could be possible that Facebook would open up its API to allow businesses to build services on top of M, allowing users to do even more with Messenger.

4. Bots for Messenger group chats

According to TechCrunch’s sources, Facebook will be announcing a new class of bots for Messenger. These bots will likely be “information bots” than “chat bots”; they will help to provide timely information than to have back-and-forth conversations with users.

Here are two examples by TechCrunch Editor-At-Large, Josh Constine:

For example, a Messenger group of football fans could add a sports bot to their thread, where it could report score changes, big plays and other news from the game. An e-commerce group bot could keep a group of coworkers informed about the status of their lunch delivery, letting them know that the order is being prepared and when it arrives.

Facebook will likely be opening up the API for the group bots to allow developers to create more group bots. This might help to accelerate the adoption of Messenger bots and encourage businesses to explore it as a potential marketing or customer service channel.

5. AR, 3D masks, and special effects on Messenger

To keep users engaged on Messenger, Facebook might continue to develop fun messaging technologies, especially with augmented reality (AR).

Just like Snapchat Geofilters, branded masks, frames, and special effects on Messenger could open up a new advertising channel for businesses to reach their audiences in a fun and non-intrusive way.

(GIF from Facebook Newsroom)

Facebook has also been testing ads on Messenger home screen in Australia and Thailand. If the tests have been successful, Facebook might share more about Messenger ads during F8.

6. Secondary News Feed

Have you seen a rocket icon in your Facebook app? You might just be one of the lucky few to try out a secondary Facebook News Feed!

Facebook is reported to be testing a secondary News Feed with posts from people and Pages that you don’t follow (yet). Perhaps Facebook has seen successes with Instagram’s Explore tab and is hoping to bring it into Facebook.

A Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch,

We are testing a complementary feed of popular articles, videos, and photos, customized for each person based on content that might be interesting to them. We’ve heard from people that they want an easy way to explore new content they haven’t connected with yet.

I was lucky to be part of the test for a while. Here’s a screenshot of the secondary News Feed:

While it seems like Facebook is still in the early phases of this test, we might hear about this additional feed during this year’s F8.

7. Sponsored posts in Search

Last year, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Facebook saw 2 billion searches per day. That is a more than 30 percent increase from the 1.5 billion searches per day a year ago. (For context, Search Engine Land estimates that Google does at least 5.5 billion searches per day in 2016.)

Using Facebook Search (i.e. its search bar), you can find photos, posts, videos, links, friends, Pages, and Groups. You can also find local businesses through its professional services search engine. If Facebook wants to monetize their Search feature, they could bring in advertising through sponsored posts, similar to those on News Feed.

With search being so huge on Facebook, we might hear a thing or two about it this F8.

8. Instagram analytics on desktop

Okay, this might be more of a personal wish than a prediction!

Many great business features were introduced on Instagram over the past year. Features like business profiles and Instagram Insights have allowed businesses to better connect with their audience on Instagram and to measure their Instagram marketing performance. I’m guessing that Facebook might have been working on an improved version of Instagram analytics to help businesses better understand their Instagram efforts.

Brands are now able to manage certain aspects of Instagram (e.g. create Instagram ads and manage Instagram comments) through Facebook. With Instagram being more integrated with Facebook, it might be possible that Facebook would eventually integrate Instagram analytics into Facebook Page Insights.

9. Updates on Social VR

Just last month, Facebook launched a dedicated app virtual reality app, Facebook 360. According to the news release, there are already more than 25 million 360 photos and more than one million 360 videos posted on Facebook. This app will give its users a more immersive experience when viewing the content.

This is in line with Facebook’s vision to help people connect and share through VR technologies. I believe we will hear more updates about Facebook’s Social VR during the F8 conference and maybe examples of businesses which have been using it to engage their audience.

(Image from Facebook Newsroom)

10. Consumer hardware

Building 8, Facebook’s secretive hardware division, was reported to be developing four hardware products — which possibly include drones, brain-scanning technology, augmented reality, and next-generation cameras. Business Insider reported that Facebook might unveil some of those products during this year’s F8.

On Facebook’s career page, Building 8 is looking for a GTM Retail Program Manager “who will have the responsibility of creating disruptive ground up shopping experiences of Facebook consumer hardware”. So Facebook might be looking to launch a few hardware products and start selling them in retail stores soon. Personally, I’m excited to see the hardware products that they are building!

What are your predictions for F8 2017?

Writing this blog post has gotten me even more excited about F8 2017! With all the exciting sessions scheduled, I believe you will learn a lot to help you with your Facebook marketing.

I’d love to hear from you, too. What exciting, fun news do you think Facebook would share at the upcoming F8 conference? Do you have anything on your wish list?

We’re grateful that our F8 2016 recap last year was very well-received. This year, we’re also looking forward to summarizing the top highlights of F8 2017 and sharing some of our ideas with you all after the conference. If you’re interested in reading about how marketers can tap onto Facebook’s latest developments, do keep an eye out for our recap here or on Twitter. Thank you!

source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bufferapp/~3/N5aRxqmhSUI/facebook-f8-conference-2017-preview

7 Secrets of Super-Successful Video Marketing

By now, it’s clear that video is an essential channel for marketers.

But what makes a great video? And what keeps viewers engaged? Is it a good story? Or maybe it’s all about reaching the right audience at the right time.

We teamed up with Wistia and sought to find out. We looked at some of our favorite examples of video marketing and uncovered some traits they have in common.

Here are 7 secrets to creating successful video content. We hope these tips will help you as you plan and create your own video content.

Let’s jump in.

1. Focus on stories, not sales

Before the rise of social media, if you wanted someone to see an advert, you had to rent space within a popular media channel like TV or print. On social platforms, brands can reach the exact same audience directly. This means that branded content (advertising) competes with entertainment, rather than interrupting it.

If you want your video to be watched, it needs to create some kind of value for the viewer. Videos that are purely focused on a brand, or driving sales, will likely be ignored.

The best video content tells stories that connect with the viewer. The better you tell stories about yourself, the more likely your viewers are going to understand what your company is offering and what it can do for them.

A great example of storytelling is Budweiser’s video imagining how the legendary broadcaster, Harry Caray, might have called the Chicago Cubs World Series victory:

Caray was the voice of the Cubs from 1982 until he passed away in 1998. Budweiser’s agency, VaynerMedia, created the video by laying recordings of Caray’s voice over footage of the Cubs’ win and the following celebrations in Chicago.

By telling a story that brought together history, brand equity and nostalgia, Budweiser were able to connect with sports fans worldwide in the moment of the Cubs’ victory. The video was hugely successful on social media and generated large amounts of press coverage for Budweiser. Including:

• Hear late broadcaster Harry Caray call the final out of the Cubs’ World Series Game 7 win (LA Times)
• Budweiser Turned Around This Incredible Cubs World Series Ad Overnight (Esquire)
• Harry Caray calls Cubs Game 7 World Series win in new Budweiser ad (Chicago Tribune)

The most important part of any video is telling a cohesive and concise story. As Facebook recommends: “Your video ad shouldn’t be longer or shorter than it takes to tell your story well, so create a storytelling arc from the first frame to the last that keeps your audience interested along the way.”

2. Use the first few seconds wisely

Attention spans online are short. In fact, the average attention span is now just 8.5 seconds.

When it comes to creating successful video, you must bring your story to life quickly, so as to instantly gather interest as people scroll through their feeds.

In the opening seconds, you must give clarity to what your video is about and give the viewer confidence that what they’re about to watch is work their time.

Create a hook

One of the best ways to grab attention is with a hook at the start of your video. A hook is a really quick preview of what’s coming up in the video. Gary Vaynerchuk does a great job of this in his #AskGaryV videos:

Upload an interesting thumbnail 

Both Facebook and YouTube enable you to upload a thumbnail to sit alongside your video. These thumbnails are a great way to grab viewers attention and get them excited about your video before it starts playing.

Think of thumbnails as an important first impression.

Wistia found that putting a little effort into choosing your thumbnail carefully, whether on social media or in your email marketing efforts, can actually improve your play rates. When it comes to choosing your thumbnail, avoid a blurry, motion-filed shot. Your thumbnail should suggest that the video is high quality. Pick a different frame where you subject or environment looks crisp and clear.

Great thumbnails can begin to tell a story and show viewers what’s coming up in the video. For example, the below thumbnail from Tasty shows the finished pulled pork nachos dish that the video shows you how to make.

3. Target relevant audiences on Facebook

As a content distribution platform, Facebook is incredible.

One of the features that makes Facebook stand out from other marketing channels is the super-in-depth targeting you can use to select audiences for your content.

You may have used targeting with Facebook Ads before, but did you know you can also target every post on your Page to a selected audience? 

Sharing highly-targeted posts is a great way to make your content appealing to every member of your audience. And with Facebook organic reach in decline, this feature could be a great help to ensure you’re always reaching the most relevant people with every post.

Facebook post targeting allows you to segment audiences by:

• Age
• Gender
• Locations
• Languages

Only people in the audiences that you choose can see the post anywhere on Facebook. So if you selected an age group of 18-24, no-one outside of that age range would be able to see the post (on their News Feed or your Page).

You’re also able to target individuals by interests. When you select an interest (you’re allowed to choose up to 16 per post), people who like your Page and also share one (or more) of the interests you’ve chosen are more likely to see your post.

Unlike limiting your post’s audience, targeting by interest doesn’t affect who can see the post on your Page or anywhere else on Facebook. So users outside of your interest group can still see your post in their News Feed or on your Page.

(I’ve broken down how to set target audiences for each of your posts below)

Gary Vaynerchuk explains more about the power of targeting video content in the below video:

How to customize targeting for your Facebook posts

1. Create a new post

To select a custom audience for your post, head over to your Page and create a begin to create a new post:

2. Click the target button

On the Facebook composer, you’ll notice a little target icon ⌖, click this to open up all the available targeting options for your post:

3. Choose interests you’d like to target

Next, you can target specific audiences based on their interests and the Pages they’ve liked on Facebook. To add an interest, simply begin typing in the search bar. You can choose up to 16 interests for every post.

4. Choose audience restrictions 

The final step in targeting your post is to select your audience restrictions. Here you can choose which people to target with you content based on age, gender, location and language. Remember: Only people matching the critera you select here will be able to see you post.

Once you’ve selected the audience restrictions, click ‘Save’ and post you content as normal.

4. Tell your story with and without sounds

In a recent change, videos now autoplay on Facebook with sound on (unless your phone is on silent mode).

It’s not yet clear exactly how this change will affect viewing habits on Facebook. Before the update, multiple publishers reported as much as 85% percent of video views on Facebook happen with the sound off. 

With this in mind, it’s important to think about how you can ensure your video is engaging and interesting for viewers when it’s playing both silently and with the sound on.

When thinking about video, marketers should think about how they can create a compelling story without the need for audio. If users can pick up a story without the need for sound then you can certainly boost the effectiveness of your content.

Check out this short and simple Facebook video from Wistia. The goal of this video was to engage viewers with some enticing visuals, and then drive traffic back to their blog post. Wistia uses colorful caption overlays so you can follow along without any sound at all. If you do turn the sound on, you’re treated to a nice little jingle.

There are a few ways you can optimize videos for silent playback:

• Beautiful visuals
• Text-heavy descriptions 
• Subtitles 

For example, Tech Insider uses a mix of striking visuals and heavy text-based descriptions to make the below video interesting for silent watchers:

The below clip from Gary Vaynerchuk also uses subtitles to make it easy-to-follow for viewers who have the sound turned off:

Just as you should optimize for silent viewers, when enabled, sound should offer additional value to viewers and further bring your story to life.

5. Include CTA’s

When creating videos, be sure to optimize your content with calls to action (CTA).

A CTA doesn’t always have to directly lead to a sale or sign up, video CTA’s could include:

• Subscribe to your channel
• Follow / Like your Page
• Share with your friends
• Comment on the video
• Check out other content

For example, Gary Vaynerchuck sometimes includes a ‘Share’ CTA mid-roll or at the end of his Facebook videos:

Where should you place a CTA in your videos?

There are three common positions to add calls to action within videos as Wistia explains on their blog:

• Pre-roll Calls to Action at the very start of the video ensure that every viewer sees them and has an opportunity to click.
• Mid-roll Calls to Action can be anywhere between the very start and the very end. They are designed to target viewers when they are most engaged.
• Post-roll Calls to Action appear at the very end of the video to ensure the viewer is highly interested before being presented with a CTA.

After analyzing 481,514 Calls to Action from 324,015 videos, Wistia found that 95.9%  are placing their CTA at the end of the video. Only4% choose the mid-roll option, and a tiny 0.1% go for the Call to Action up front, pre-roll.

Interestingly, Wistia’s research also found that mid-roll CTAs appear to convert at the highest rate:

Mid-roll CTAs had an average conversion rate of 16.95%, compared with a post-roll conversion rate of 10.98%.

Though this data is based on Wistia hosted videos, the learnings could help to fuel your video strategy across all social platforms, too. Try experimenting with placing CTAs at various places witin your video content and measure what works best.

3 ways to add CTAs to your video content

1. Add a card to the end of your video

One of the most popular ways to add a CTA to video content is to use a post-roll card indicating what the viewer should do next. This could be something like Gary Vaynerchuck’s share bear (mentioned above), or on YouTube many creators use an end card to drive views to other content on their channel.

Here’s an example from Amy Schmittauer, who uses the end card on her YouTube video to encourage viewers to subscribe or check out one of her other uploads:

2. Upload your videos to Wistia

When you upload your videos to Wistia, you have the option to create a number of different custom CTAs – text, image, and HTML.

CTAs are super effective at nudging your viewers in the right direction. For example, when you embed a video on your website or landing page, you can use a call to action to send viewers to another relevant video or page. Take for instance a piece of content Wistia created about how to write scripts for videos. At the very end of the video, they included a custom CTA that encourages viewers to click through to another piece of content about shooting video. Chances are, if the viewer liked the content they just watched, they might want to the next step!

3. Add mid-roll cues

As Wistia found, mid-roll CTAs tend to have the best conversion rates. Try to experiment with adding your CTAs as overlays during your video. Here’s an example of Gary Vaynerchuk’s ‘share bear’ CTA making an appearance mid-roll:

6. Optimize for search

More than 3.5 billion searches per day are performed on Google and Google-owned, YouTube, also boasts more than 3 billion searches per month. Search is also a growing trend on Facebook, with more 2 billion searches per day conducted on the platform.

If you’re not optimizing your video content for search, you could be missing out on huge numbers of views.

Here are a couple of tips to ensure your videos are showing up in searches:

1. Use keywords in your title

You may already be familiar with SEO for blog content or website copy, this is no different. Your video needs to include keywords you want to rank highly for.

Just like the title or h1 tag of a web page, the title of your video is one of the most important factors for ranking well on Google and YouTube. You should try to include your main keyword in your title and keep it under 66 characters so that the text isn’t truncated in search results.

Facebook search is a little different. Results on Facebook are based on around 200 factors including what you Like and engage with, what you’ve searched for, and info about your identity.

2. Add a description to your video

Both YouTube and Facebook offer the ability to add a description to each video you upload. This is also valuable search real estate.

Just as with the title, try to include keywords in the description. Avoid overdoing it, though, and ensure your description tells a story about what’s in the video, rather than just being a list of keywords.

Further reading: 

• YouTube SEO: The Ultimate Guide (Backlinko)

7. Collaborate with other brands and influencers

Ninety percent of people today trust peer recommendations over company ads.

When a trusted influencer recommends a product it can feel more genuine and trustworthy than a brand telling you how great its own product or service is. CEO of Intuit, Scott Cook, said it best, “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is–it is what consumers tell each other it is.”

A great example of a brand x influencer partnership is the video Nike commissioned filmmaker and YouTuber, Casey Neistat to create when they launched the FuelBand:

The video has now been viewed over 24 million times and generated a ton of high-profile press coverage for Nike. Here are just a few examples:

• How Director Casey Neistat Went Rogue With Nike’s New Ad (Fast Company)
• Casey Neistat’s Rogue Nike Ad: Inspirational or Opportunistic? (AdWeek)
• Nike’s #MakeItCount Video: The Best Branded Story Ever Told? (Mashable)

Nike’s partnership with Neistat was so effective because the video focused on the share values and beliefs between the brand and its consumers. The video isn’t directly selling the FuelBand. Instead, it focuses on how to live life to the fullest and #makeitcount.

Think about how you can collaborate with other brands and influencers in your space to increase the reach of your content. 

Over to you

Thanks for checking out this post. I hope you find our video marketing tips useful.

Is video a part of your marketing strategy? Do you have any tips for creating video content?

Let me know in the comments and I’d be thrilled to join the conversation.

source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bufferapp/~3/ASuUBjIG7Do/video-marketing-tips

Guest Host Logan Young: Facebook Ads and How to Target Them

Logan Young, director of operations for Blitzmetrics

You can create a highly effective strategy of one minute Facebook ads for just $1 a day according to Logan Young, director of operations for Blitzmetrics.com.

Logan Young presented to our group at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com to explain a simple, inexpensive strategy of creating Facebook ads that reach a wide audience.

Dennis Yu, chief technology officer at Blitzmetrics.com says, “You need real video. The consumer style video wins every time.”

One of  Blitzmetrics.com customers, Kenny Lauer, vice president of marketing for the Golden State Warriors, reports, “Facebook ads increase the yield of other marketing programs. That means getting $40 back for every $1 spent.”

You can get $30 off the Blitzmetrics.com $97 course on how to create effective Facebook ads by using the code GROWTH when you sign up at this link.

Here’s the strategy in a nutshell:

1. Create a series of one-minute videos. You don’t need expensive equipment. Just use your smart phone and a directional microphone such as this one that you can buy for $59 on Amazon.
2. Do not sell anything – create useful content instead. Use natural lighting. Get in front of the camera and have a friend or relative film you.
3. A good place to start is with your “WHY” video. Visit this link to learn how to create a video explaining why you got into business. People love stories and they will connect with your “WHY” video.
4. Ad value with useful tips or entertaining videos.
5. You want to create video ads because Facebook gives preference to video. The average time spent looking at a Facebook post is 6 seconds. People scroll through the Facebook feed but spend an average of 53 seconds when they come to a video post. “Facebook will reward you for doing video,” Logan Young reports.”The video will get lower cost per thousand than blog posts. You will get more reach for the same amount of money using videos.”
6. Get to the action right away. The average watch time for any Facebook video is 6 seconds. If you can get people to watch 10 to 15 seconds, you’re doing great and 15 seconds is the mark of a winner.
7. Once you create your video on your smart phone, email it to yourself.
8. Open your email on your computer and then drag it to your desktop.
9. Upload your video into your Facebook business page.
10. Be sure to add captions because many people end up watching Facebook videos with their sound turned off. You can add the captions to your videos for FREE during the upload process.
11. Choose your audience. You could have a custom audience, a look a like audience or a saved audience. Facebook lets you target who will see your ad so you can be very specific in reaching your potential customers.
12. Boost the post for as little as $1 a day. 
13. As you start out, test a series of videos but ultimately put 80 percent of your budget behind proven winner videos and 20 percent into new videos.

To learn more about the Blitzmetrics.com approach, look through this presentation by Dennis Yu at this link.

Join our program at What Is Social Media Today 

Putting all this together takes time and is part of creating a successful social media strategy.

We’ve got four ways for you to learn:

• Weekly webinars that you can join LIVE or listen to at your convenience
• One on one coaching
• Peer competition
• A forum with resources where all your questions can get answered

Join Catherine Carrigan and Ramajon Cogan at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com and we will show you how! Call Catherine Carrigan today at 678-612-8816 or email catherine@catherinecarrigan.com or contact Ramajon Cogan at (928) 821-4553 or email wheresramajon@gmail.com.

The post Guest Host Logan Young: Facebook Ads and How to Target Them appeared first on What is Social Media Today.

Source: http://whatissocialmediatoday.com/guest-host-logan-young-facebook-ads-target/

source https://whatissocialmediatoday.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/guest-host-logan-young-facebook-ads-and-how-to-target-them/

The News Feed is Outdated: How Stories Changed the Way I Think About Social Media

Right now, the standards we expect on the web are being re-written for mobile. The rise of stories across Snapchat, Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger and Facebook is the perfect example of this.

The News Feed is outdated and stories are becoming the default for content consumption.

Very few formats, features, apps, or services are truly unique.

Facebook, for example, didn’t invent the vertical scrolling feed.

For decades, way before Mark Zuckerburg even enrolled in Harvard, online content has been viewed in vertical, scrolling feeds.

From reading content on blogs and news sites to seeing which of your friends had recently made changes on Bebo, we’ve been accustomed to seeing data aggregated vertically for as long as I can remember.

What Facebook actually popularized was the algorithmically-sorted feed, which they pioneered in 2006 with the release of their News Feed.

Since the New Feed’s launch, we’ve seen Facebook’s influence on across the web, with many platforms also adopting algorithms to show users more specific, personalized content that some data wizardry has deemed they’ll have an interest in:

• In 2016 Instagram shifted to algorithmically-sorted feed
• Twitter launched “While you were away” to show tweets you may have missed since you last opened the app
• Medium orders your homepage based on content you’ve read/recommended in the past

And now, since Snapchat brought the stories format to prominence, we’ve seen its influence reflected across mobile, with many of the largest social/media products in the world implementing their own version. From Facebook Stories to Medium Series and Twitter Moments.

You see it all the time. When one app or product breaks out and challenges the norm, others will follow. You just need to look at how many Uber-for-X or Tinder-esque apps have been released over the past couple of years.

But why do we see this copy-catting with successful new technologies?

As Wired writer, David Pierce explains, when a system works, it’s just easier if everyone implements it:

Having one broadly adopted system just makes life easier, since people don’t have to learn a new language and dance routine every time they want to try something. It happened a while ago on desktop PCs, for instance: it was eventually decided that keyboards should be QWERTY, interfaces should be graphical, and things should scroll up and down.

Why Stories are the new News Feed

The News Feed is not a native experience on mobile

The News Feed was designed for desktop and was a wonderful place to share text-based statuses and links to your favorite blog posts, the funniest YouTube videos and full albums of your holiday photos. But social media has now moved on.

Facebook now reaches 1.86 billion monthly active users and the biggest driver in revenue and user growth is on mobile. Facebook now counts 1.23 billion daily active users, where 1.15 billion of them are on mobile. For ad revenue, mobile represents 84 percent of the total, too.

In contrast, as mobile has increased its dominance across the web, Facebook has seen a drop in original user-generated content shared to its platform with a 21% decline reported between mid-2015 and mid-2016.

“The way people have been prompted to share for 10 years, it’s very text-centric,” Facebook Camera product manager Connor Hayes explained to TechCrunch. “Even when you look at the way we’ve done this on mobile, you can see half of the screen is still taken up by a place for you to type text.”

Whilst Facebook is seeing a downward trend in user-generated content, Snapchat is reportedly generating more than 10 billion video views daily and over 150m Instagram users are creating stories each day, too.

It seems that sharing to a feed isn’t quite as appealing anymore. Neither is consuming content via a vertical feed.

The camera is becoming the focal point of communication

With the News Feed, users have to put in a lot of work to get any value: Content is surrounded by empty space, you have to scroll to find something that interests you and, often, content doesn’t take up your whole screen, so you have to tap to enjoy the full viewing experience.

“We like to think of the camera as the new keyboard,” a Facebook Product Manager told TechCrunch. And in Snap’s IPO letter to investors, Evan Spiegel wrote: “In the way that the flashing cursor became the starting point for most products on desktop computers, we believe that the camera screen will be the starting point for most products on smartphones.”

Sometimes it’s hard to encapsulate moments or feelings in words and this is where the camera comes into its own as a communication tool. Through photos and videos we can share the fun, fleeting moments of our lives with those closest to us, without needing to sum them up in a sentance or two.

Of course, the camera won’t fully replace our need for a keyboard just yet, if ever. And Facebook see Stories as an “additive,” sitting alongside the News Feed and their other products rather than replacing them. “We’ve tested in markets with Instagram Stories and Messenger Day, and we’ve seen this as accretive. They end up posting more and they like using the Stories format across apps,” Hayes said.

A shift in sharing habits

With the rise of Snapchat, we’ve become accustomed to sharing multiple and frequent updates throughout the day – a way of communicating that just doesn’t fit with a traditional, web-based vertical feed.

With a vertical feed, it’s hard to lace together groups of posts into a cohesive story someone can easily follow along. A case in point here is live sports on Facebook, I often see scores and in-game updates showing in my feed hours after a game is completed.

But with stories, everything is there, in one place from start to finish. Viewers always see the first post in story ahead of the newest or most popular post.

The beauty of stories is really in how easy they are to create and consume. In just a couple of taps and swipes, you can create and share snippets of your day. Stories enable us to share the exciting, vivid moments of our lives in-the-moment. And rather than posting a singular highlight of our day to the News Feed, we can share immersive narratives that tell a story over a 24hr period of time.

Just as the News Feed has been the default way to discover and consume content for the last decade-or-so, I feel all social channels with now shift to stories like, mobile native ways to create and consume content. The ephemeral nature of Stories – they disappear after 24hrs on each channel – also make them must-view content.

“Stories are a format, not an app,” Mills Baker, former Product Designer at Facebook, explained on Quora. “When Periscope and Meerkat, and later Twitter and Facebook (and others) launched “live” video, or when multiple companies offer solutions for “360-degree” videos, we view it as something much nearer to a commodity feature than a unique innovation.”

The launch of Facebook Stories enables Facebook to begin a gradual shift towards a mobile product that’s truly built for the mobile/video world. With stories, the core Facebook product and News Feed continues to work for everyone, but they can now simultaneously support newer users and those with a thirst for sharing, too.

Since rolling out Instagram Stories in August 2016, Facebook has launched variations of Stories across its various platforms with Messenger Day, WhatsApp Status and Facebook Stories.

Additionally, Twitter has launched Moments as a way to stitch together groups of tweets into a narrative and Medium has recently launched Series as a way to encourage users to create stories that unfold over time.

How Stories changed the way I think about social media

When Stories were first introduced by Instagram, it felt like a bit of a gimmick: “Hey, the cool kids at Snapchat are doing stories. Let’s do them, too.” But stories are much more than a gimmick. They’re a potentially seismic shift in how we create and consume content.

And with the recent launch of Facebook Stories, the format has now been exposed to Facebook’s 1.16 billion mobile users – way more people than have already used stories on Instagram and Snapchat, who both have ~150m people using the feature:

• Snap announced in their S-1 filing that Snapchat had 158m daily active users in Q4 2016
• Instagram announced that Stories had 150m daily active users in January 2017

Stories, by nature, are more immersive than other types of digital and social content. The experience exists within a single place and doesn’t try to drive you away to new websites and platforms (though Instagram has experimented with links in stories).

The uptake of Facebook Stories in many markets hasn’t been as immediate as the adoption of stories on Instagram, however, I firmly believe that the feature’s launch signals a huge shift in the way we’ll consume content on mobile and the type of content we’ll share.

Creating opportunity for shared experiences

The future of social media will no longer be about sharing only the perfect moments. It’ll no longer be about retweets and how many people like your content. It’s about going deep, not wide: how many people are tuning into your stories each day; how many people share your content directly with their friends and close-knit groups and how we use storytelling to create empathy through shared experiences.

User-generated content has always been valuable for brands, but stories have taken the possibilities to the next level and created a space in which everyone can create and share authentic content in important moments.

For example, Snapchat regularly curates crowd-sourced stories around large and important events, enabling anyone, not ‘influencers’, in a location to share their experiences at scale.

Snapchat has also opened up its search functionality to allow users to search for accounts to follow or stories to watch, based on topics.

This opens up new opportunities for users to discover content that’s relevant to them—whether it’s a local event in their home town or at a huge national sporting event.

Series on Medium, another stories-based feature, also enable shared experiences between the creator and consumer. For example, one series tells the story of someone training to be able to dunk a basketball, documenting his struggle along the way.

Series differ from stories in a couple of ways: Series are permanent and writers can create multiple series at the same time. With Series, you don’t have to publish a long-form piece on content and can instead tell a story periodically in a way that’s mobile friendly to create and consume.

Brands (and dollars) follow attention

Why should brands care about stories?

The stories format has gained velocity as a user behavior and is much-loved by the individual people who contribute on social media: you, me, our friends and family. Shifts like the News Feed and shifts like stories first occur because of demand by individuals. And as more and more people start using a platform or behavior, businesses follow.

In the early days of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, many businesses didn’t quite know how to use these new platforms. But those who did won big.

Social media early adopters knew attention was shifting away from more traditional channels like radio, TV and email and into social. They joined the conversation in an authentic, compelling way and began to build huge audiences, often from nothing, and shifted their budgets over from traditional advertising channels to social.

It feels like we’re about to see a similar shift again, with attention moving away from a vertical scroll and into stories.

Ad dollars will always follow attention. And with the addition of Stories to Facebook’s main app and Instagram, Facebook has created additional revenue streams and opportunities to monetise content separately from the News Feed.

Alongside paid marketing opportunities, there will also be additional opportunities for reach and engagement through stories as it’s the medium that many consumers are going to be using. This has been evidenced by the fast adoption of Instagram Stories by businesses.

“Immersive storytelling through Instagram Stories engages and invites our community to be part of an adventure. Instagram provides us the perfect tools to build awareness around our recently launched product Airbnb Experiences,” says Eric Toda, Global Head of Social Marketing and Content at Airbnb. “By creating and publishing experience-driven stories, we can truly captivate and reach travelers wishing to book aspirational trips on Airbnb.”

Stories and Camera: Two new advertising opportunities

Facebook makes billions of dollars in profit every quarter, largely from its incredible advertising product. And yep, you guessed it, stories bring new advertising opportunities to Facebook as well.

Snapchat and Instagram already include ads between two stories from your friends or other accounts you follow and I don’t think it’ll be long before we see ads between stories on Facebook, either.

The big opportunity here is to create additional ad space in products that have previously been hard to drive ad revenue from, like Messenger and Whatsapp.

Conversations are hard to monetize and if Facebook were to inject adverts in-between instant messages it would probably be met with much anger from users. Adverts between videos, however, is much more accepted. If Messenger Day and Whatsapp Status begin to see traction, Facebook could have ways to increase revenue from both those products.

On a similar note, Series could also provide a route to revenue for Medium with full-screen interstitial ads that showing up between slides. 

Driving revenue from the camera

The new Facebook camera also launched with six Snapchat-like lenses from six major Hollywood studios to promote current or upcoming releases:

This is another way for Facebook to create additional revenue from its largest advertisers (who can afford the likely six-or-seven-figure costs associated with these types of sponsorships – Snapchat reportedly sells these sponsorships for between $450,000 and $750,000 per day).

Sponsored Lenses on Snapchat has already proven to be a great business advertising model, with Gatorade’s sponsored Super Bowl Lens which generated over 100 million views over SuperBowl weekend – that’s almost as many views as the game received live on TV (111.9 million).

By using an augmented filter on a selfie, and making themselves a part of the content, brands can create fun, shareable experiences for consumers, instead of adverts.

By integrating stories and launching a new camera, Facebook has opened up new advertising opportunities in places that ads would have previously felt invasive.

Over to you

Have stories changed the way you use social media? Do you find it challenging to come up with content for stories across platforms?

What do you think the future of social media looks like?

Leave a comment below, I’m excited to hear your thoughts and join the discussion

source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bufferapp/~3/7UoMtq0A3nw/the-news-feed-is-outdated

How Merriam-Webster Made Dictionaries Fun By Building a Powerful Brand Voice – Lauren Naturale [SSM039]

What do you do when the product you’re supposed to market is a dictionary?

You make it fun, interesting, and bold!

That’s exactly what the team at Merriam-Webster did when they started experimenting on Twitter with, well, being themselves. Since then, their account has grown by more than 200,000 followers in just one year – gaining the attention of major publications like Mashable, BuzzFeed, NPR (and more) and winning awards along the way.

The brains and voice behind the operation? Lauren Naturale. Lauren shares insights into the success Merriam-Webster has experienced since they began experimenting with developing a unique and memorable brand voice and how your brand can find and develop your own.

A huge thank you to Lauren for loading this episode up with actionable wisdom and takeaways for social media managers and marketers looking to stand out by creating a powerful brand voice on social media.

How to listen: iTunes | Google Play | SoundCloud | Stitcher | RSS

This episode is available on:

• iTunes
• Google Play
• Stitcher
• Sound Cloud

In this episode, here’s what you’ll learn:

Lauren Naturale shares her expert insights into how Merriam-Webster has developed one of the most powerful and unique brand voices in the industry, which has led to major social media growth. You’ll also learn other great insights like:

• How brands and businesses can build a voice of their own
• Utilizing company personalities to build a social media following
• Why it’s important to let your brand voice develop naturally
• Some of the most successful Merriam-Webster Tweets and why they worked
• How your brand voice will evolve and grow over time

3 Key Takeaways for Brands Looking to Develop a Unique Voice on Social Media

In Lauren’s words…

1. Be authentic

2. Listen to your audience

3. Communicate with your coworkers

A Great Moment

“It wasn’t until several months in where people started to say things like, ‘I never knew the dictionary could be interesting.’ That was the first time I was introduced to the idea that we weren’t supposed to be that way.”

– Lauren Naturale

Awesome People and Stuff Mentioned in the Show

• Merriam-Webster on Twitter
• Lauren Naturale on Twitter
• Merriam-Webster on Facebook
• Merriam-Webster on YouTube 
• Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
• Merriam-Webster said the hotdog is a sandwich, and people are furious – Mashable

Have a great #MemorialDayWeekend. The hot dog is a sandwich. https://t.co/KeNiTAxPAm

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) May 27, 2016

Highlights
Lowlights
Foils
Gloss
Balayage
Hair color has its own vocabulary.https://t.co/tMHu88LQnY

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) February 10, 2017

Favorite Quotes

• The way that we’ve always described Merriam is that we want to be authoritative without being authoritarian… The smartest people are the ones that are interested in the world and other people.
• It wasn’t until several months in that people started saying things like, “I never knew the dictionary could be interesting.” It happened very organically.
• The brand voice is how we talk to each other in the office. It’s not like some sort of marketing construct where we had a meeting and wrote down a bunch of adjectives.
• To succeed, you really need to have a deep understanding of the brand and who you’re working with.
• Having a specific brand voice has been tremendously powerful in us growing our Twitter account over the last year. People are now coming to us on social media looking for that voice.
• Know your brand in-and-out. Know why people like it and what people are looking for… and you should love it yourself!
• If you’re faking it and you don’t actually like what you’re talking about on social media, people can smell inauthenticity and insincerity from a mile away.
• The spontaneous stuff doesn’t always happen right away, but if you develop a relationship with your readers good stuff starts to happen for your brand.

How to Say Hello to Lauren (and us)

If you’re looking for one of the funniest, smartest, and wittiest accounts on Twitter, then Merriam-Webster is the one to follow! The brains behind it all? Lauren Naturale! You can connect with Lauren on Twitter here or on LinkedIn here – she would love to say hello.

Thanks for listening! We’d love to connect with you at @buffer on Twitter or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About the Show

The Science of Social Media is a podcast for marketers and social media managers looking for inspiration, ideas, and results for their social media strategies. Each week, we interview one of the very best in social media marketing from brands in every industry. You will learn the latest tactics on social media, the best tools to use, the smartest workflows, and the best goal-setting advice. It is our hope that each episode you’ll find one or two gems to use with your social media marketing!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bufferapp/~3/yGjcI0UuqgU/merriam-webster-show-notes

HarperCollins Social Media Guru Presents Free Webinar

HarperCollins Social Media Guru Presents Free Webinar

www.whatissocialmediatoday.com is pleased to announce we’re hosting a FREE webinar this Saturday, April 8, with Jerri Helms, senior director of digital marketing initiatives HarperCollins Publishers.

What: FREE webinar to learn how to market your books in social media like a pro

When: Saturday, April 8, at 12 noon EST

Where: Zoom.us Room 231-522-248

Cost: FREE

Who’s Invited: Anyone interested in social media marketing for books and publishing

Who: Jerri Helms, senior director of digital marketing initiatives HarperCollins Publishers, with hosts Catherine Carrigan and Ramajon Cogan of www.whatissocialmediatoday.com

“Rama and I are totally committed to bringing the best information to our folks so we can teach you how to win what we call the Game of Social Media,” says Catherine Carrigan.

“We started www.whatissocialmediatoday.com because we saw there was a huge gap in the market.

“There are wonderful writing coaches who can help people write their books, and great self publishing programs that can teach independent authors how to publish their books, but nobody has been teaching authors how to build their tribe through the social media so they can sell more books and build their businesses.

“We are very excited to host Jerri Helms this Saturday and hope to learn how the major publishers like HarperCollins empower their authors to succeed through digital marketing.

“Last weekend, we had a great presentation about how to create Facebook ads that draw customers. On Feb. 15, we’ll learn from an expert about how to create online courses. On Feb. 22, we’ll learn more about internet marketing. And our upcoming programs will teach you more about how to set up an online presence to support your books and business.”

You can comment about the webinar in our Facebook event page at this link.

Join our program at What Is Social Media Today 

Putting all this together takes time and is part of creating a successful social media strategy.

We’ve got four ways for you to learn:

• Weekly webinars that you can join LIVE or listen to at your convenience
• One on one coaching
• Peer competition
• A forum with resources where all your questions can get answered

Join Catherine Carrigan and Ramajon Cogan at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com and we will show you how! Call Catherine Carrigan today at 678-612-8816 or email catherine@catherinecarrigan.com or contact Ramajon Cogan at (928) 821-4553 or email wheresramajon@gmail.com.

 

 

The post HarperCollins Social Media Guru Presents Free Webinar appeared first on What is Social Media Today.

Source: http://whatissocialmediatoday.com/harpercollins-social-media-guru-presents-free-webinar/

source https://whatissocialmediatoday.wordpress.com/2017/04/06/harpercollins-social-media-guru-presents-free-webinar/