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When
Facebook was created in 2004 to enable university students to keep in touch
with friends and family, the main features included writing a status, writing
on a friend’s wall and uploading pictures.
However, over the past 10 years, we’ve seen Facebook develop and morph
from a digital contacts book to one of the most powerful social media networks
available. Over the social media decade, we have seen the birth of other social media platforms who contribute to the
marketing process of around 92% of businesses. The competition between the
platforms mirror the nature of social media itself, by having to constantly
update its tools and reacting instantly to a competitor’s new feature. Here is
a roundup of new features from some of the biggest platforms and how it could
benefit your business.
Facebook’s Quality Control
Facebook
has spent the last few years limiting users straying onto external websites
through links posted on newsfeeds. This
has been achieved through the use of Facebook’s algorithm, which is a way of
deciding what shows up on everyone’s newsfeed. Businesses should avoid including too many links in their posts, as the
algorithm will identify that you are leading the users away from Facebook. This
will ultimately impact on how many users will be able to view your post within
their newsfeed.
Recently,
Facebook has started to combat ‘spammy links’ via subtle changes in their
algorithm, to avoid any ‘like-baiting’ posts.
Like-baiting means when the company asks people to like/share or
comment, in order for the post to be pushed to the top of newsfeeds. Facebook
carried out a survey and found ‘like-baiting stories are, on average, 15% less
relevant than other stories with a comparable number of likes, comments and
shares’. Businesses should take note of
this, as this means posts will have to ensure the content is relevant and
engaging without relying on task demands.
Brands
wishing to highlight their own website through links should look to Facebook
Advertising where specific advertisements have been designed to highlight a
brands website.
Twitter’s Ecommerce Debut
There
are over 241 million monthly active Twitter users and 184 million of these
followers are using Twitter on their mobiles. Therefore, businesses have to
grab the follower’s eye instantly as they are scrolling through their newsfeed on
the go.
Twitter
have just started to experiment with their new ‘buy it now’ button, where users
can buy a product at just a click of a button.
The button is only available to a small percentage of people in the US,
but Twitter’s Tarun Jain blogged, ‘This is an early step in our building
functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient and
easy, and hopefully even fun’.
This
new feature has potential to grow sales for businesses however companies should
analyse if this function is beneficial for them. There’s around 50 million users in the UK, so
companies should ask themselves if they could cope with a sudden demand for a
product due to stock or delivery issues, as any problems that occur like this
could potentially back fire and create more negative posts made against the
company.
Social
media platforms are ever-changing, so as a business it’s important to keep an
eye on the key feature upgrades, and update your social media strategy to
ensure your digital presence remains at the top of newsfeeds.
By Elizabeth Doherty, Senior Account Executive, Clarion Communications
By Elizabeth Doherty, Senior Account Executive, Clarion Communications
