If you feel like you can’t keep up with all the snaps,
stages, tweets, boosts, videos, stickers and streams in social media, you’re
not alone. The modifications, features
and types of social media literally changes on a daily basis.
So what changed this week? Here is just a snippet:
• Twitter no longer counting certain features against
140-character limit. This is not expected to take effect until September 19,
but it has been talked about since May.
Twitter reports that photos, gifs, videos, polls and @names will no
longer count toward the character limit. This benefits marketers and businesses
by providing enough space to post photos of a product but also say enough about
it to make sense. Read more about this change here.
• Instagram gets more business
friendly. Instagram already allows promoted content, but now businesses with an
Instagram profile can add a “contact” button. The new insights feature will
enable businesses to see who is interacting with their content. If a certain
post is performing much better than others Instagram will now allow you to turn
that post into an ad that you can schedule. Read more about Instagram’s changes
here.
• Facebook let’s you create your
own canvas. I’m still reading up on this one, but I recently discovered
Facebook’s new “Canvas” feature while I was scheduling promotions for the Idaho
State Journal’s upcoming Business and Achievement Awards event. The description I found of this new feature
was pretty vague, so I decided to go in and make one.
Facebook
says that the canvas feature is “a better way to tell your brand story and
promote your products on mobile.”
Basically,
you start with a theme color, which can be white, black or custom, then you
pick components to add such as video, photo, photo carousel, button, text block
or header. Each component is highly customizable. The font, color, size and
background can all be changed in the text component, and the photos can be set
to “fit to width,” “tap to expand” or “fit to height,” for example.
Each
component adds a sort of “slide” to create a slideshow-type design. When a
users views a Facebook canvas on his or her mobile device, they open it just as
they would a Facebook photo and then swipe up and down to view the canvas. Here is a photo of one I built just with some
random photos I had on my desktop.
But
the canvases are only viewable on mobile! So you can build it on your desktop
but in order to preview and view your canvas you must send it to your mobile
device. Go here
to learn more about Facebook Canvas.
• Winner, winner, Pinterest bidder! Pinterest now boasts
that advertisers will get more bang for their buck now that it offers CPM-based
advertising. CPM stands for “Cost Per Thousand.” The “M” is the Roman numeral
for 1,000. Why it is not CPT I’ll never know.
With CPM
you only pay for each set of eyeballs that actually see your ad. You set your
budget and you’re guaranteed not to go over it. Every time a webpage is opened,
ads compete, or bid for the ad space on that page. If your ad has the highest
bid it gets the real estate. If your ad is outbid you don’t get charged. Pretty
cool, huh? For more on this new feature
click here.
Do you have any social media success stories or features you
can’t live without? Let me know at jhopkins@journalnet.com
And find out how ISJ Media can help your business at http://isjmedia.net/
No comments:
Post a Comment