Facebook Testing New App 'Moments'

Sharing To Get Easier And More Private

One of the criticisms lobbied most consistently against Facebook is the complicated nature of its privacy settings. No matter how many tweaks the site’s algorithm goes through, choosing who can see what you upload is frustratingly difficult. It’s nigh-on impossible to select only those on your friends list who’d appreciate that link to TheFappening your uni mates should see – it’s why my auntie won’t look me in the eye anymore. 

Fortunately, a new standalone app from Facebook HQ might be about to fix that. Codenamed ‘Moments’, the app has been described in some detail in an article on TechCrunch. Apparently, the app features a series of tiles aligned in a grid. Each square on the grid represents a different set of friends or family, so when you click it will only share whatever you post with that set of people. Naturally, this process will be much faster than fiddling with your privacy settings on a post-by-post basis.

Source: dailymail.co.uk

Chances are, we’ve all experienced the horrific embarrassment of friends and family colliding over Facebook. While your friends know all the sordid little details of your time at uni (I even spoke to a girl one time. Don't tell my mum), your parents remember when you cried at an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine because you found the Fat Controller scary. The two parties should never mix, and the fear of it happening is currently agenuine reason to avoid sharing content on Facebook.

Unfortunately, we’re yet to see even the blurriest of screenshots of the app which might fix all that. In fact, apart from the description of its grid-based interface, we know pretty much nothing. All we do know is that it exists, and Facebook’s people are currently squishing its bugs. We're also told its design closely resembles Cluster, a third-party app which does pretty much the same thing.

Source: techcrunch.com

While it could be argued that those interested in the app could just switch to private messaging, some may find the chaos of a multi-user IM chat more trouble than it’s worth. Furthermore, the design of public Facebook is infinitely more pleasing than the design of its instant chats, with users able to like, share and respond to individual comments. In this sense, Moments may divide Facebook itself into dozens of little subforums, each featuring different groups of the people in your life.

While Facebook has a chequered past of app creation (I will personally give you £20 for every friend you have who uses Slingshot instead of Snapchat), they’ll hope that Moments will have sticking power. Facebook's failed attempts at app creation tried to steal market share from pre-existing, well-established apps, but Moments instead places a plaster over a problem they have with their own site.

The main Facebook app deals in content. Moments will worry about audience. 

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Social Media Personality Profiling For Business

It’s the epidemic that’s defined the 21^st century. Everyone has it, it’s shared amongst us and spreads like wildfire…yes, social media has pervaded all aspects of our day to day living. Everyone knows the scare stories about how over-exposure to the internet can be damaging to our health and personality, but let’s turn it round and think about how different personalities can affect social media. Everyone’s different – just take the fascinating Myers-Briggs personality test from the clever folk at Quistic. For business owners and social media managers, it may be interesting to think about specific personality attitudes and learn how certain stressors and energisers can help guide marketers in best engaging with their target audience.

borderlinepersonalitytypes.com

According to a recent article by Penelope Trunk, founder and CEO of the personality and career experts Quistic, everyone is motivated by one of three core desires: achievement, affiliation, or competence (or in simpleton’s terms: winning, relationships/affiliation, and craft). Think about what drives you: if you can understand and identify yourself amongst these three key motivators then you can better place yourself to succeed in business. The Myers-Briggs test places one’s personality on a sliding spectrum of 16 possibilities but somewhat worryingly, if, like myself, you are an ENFJ personality type it appears that you find “thinking is often your weakness”; however, it also advises to start writing a blog to further career prospects, so perhaps it’s bang on.

Certain City banks are already using personality profiling to better engender brokering partnerships and deals – if a client is particularly data-focused they will match them with a similarly data-minded broker, or match more ‘blue-sky-thinking’ companies with their own optimists. Understanding how to improve communication across different personalities is a useful and insightful business move.

simplyzesty.com

You might think that marketers should be sensitive or empathetic or have a keen eye for detail or a creative spark or an appreciation for deadlines; in fact, they need to be all of the above, and more. A split personality is perhaps encouraged in the marketing world, and even more so in the social media marketing world. You have to be able to tap into the different mindsets of your varied audiences, understand which channels will best speak to which personalities and create content that appeals to a variety of character types. Your strategy needs to speak to multiple personalities, thus you need to be able to adopt multiple personalities.

Everyone knows that social media is a great way to market your business; obviously you understand what your business is about, but do you really understand your customers? For all you social media managers, and there are a lot of you – five million‘social media experts’ at last count on LinkedIn – here are a few personality traits that you might wish to nurture when marketing a business online. The thinkers at Hubspot suggest that in order to better engage with your business’ customers, you should become: 

The informant – tell your brash reader what they need to know. And don’t beat about the bush.

The inquirer – appeal to the quieter members of your audience by asking them questions, and encouraging a climate for engagement with considerate content.

The helper – for the busy-bodies who are never satisfied you must provide top-notch customer service and answer questions and complaints directly.

The thought provoker – show the curious members of your target market that you are open to dialogue and debate, and that you are the go-to-expert for knowledge in your specialism.

The class clown – appeal to the jokers with some classic slap-stick humour.

The entertainer – this applies to everyone. Everyone likes, and needs, to be entertained. So be interesting.

The go-getter – and for those personality types that your business hasn’t yet tapped into…go and get them on board.

behrouz.jafarnezhad.com

It’s no longer enough for a business to market itself along outdated ‘buy me now’ call-to-action commands; with the advent of social media marketing, the emphasis is clearly on the social aspect. Everyone loves a good story, and this works to any good marketer’s advantage. Your blog and social media personality should be in sync, as this shapes how customer’s view your business’ character and will affect which personality types are more naturally drawn to your company. People come to expect a certain tone from your business, so keep your online personality consistent across the multiple channels. Social media is pre-disposed to helping you nurture and expand your business – people buy things from people they trust and respect, so let your honest and knowledgeable personality come to the surface.

Obviously social networking engages the interests and activities of more narcissistic individuals as opposed to those less motivated by peer approval; introverts and extroverts use online communities differently according to their need to be people-oriented and outwardly social. Nearly 60% of extroverts use Facebook,Twitter and LinkedIn for professional purposes, while 47% of introverts shared the sentiment; although there is clearly a difference in the figures, it’s good news for marketers as it shows the popularity of social media in general. Studies into how different personality types use the internet consistently show that, despite minor fluctuations, on the whole all personality types are using social media for business and professional purposes.

Although there are obviously nuances and dynamics to be considered when marketing on social media, and those marketers who can most intricately manage these will be rewarded, overall the vast majority of your target market – be they introverts or extroverts, shy or narcissistic, thinkers or feelers – are using and responding to social media for professional purposes, and  it follows that it is a useful and successful channel for marketing.

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Get Better Social Media ROI

Social media may be indispensable to your marketing campaign, but it’s a relatively new phenomenon and marketers are still learning how to track its effectiveness. It’s certainly one of the most efficient ways to increase brand awareness and improve customer service, however how do business owners know how much to invest if they can’t see consistently what they’re getting back?

monimbus.com

Being popular on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ doesn’t mean you’re going to instantly make lots and lots of money. Whilst acquiring likes, shares and followers may be a nice ego boost for the company, what the boss really wants to know is how his investment in social media is being converted into leads and revenue. 

For companies that rely on offline methods, such as the telephone, for the majority of their customer acquisition, there are a number of similar techniques marketers can use to track the reach of their social media campaigns. 

Call Tracking

Within industries that typically count on telephone conversions, call tracking can help marketers understand the role of the phone call in the customer journey. Connecting online and offline marketing efforts allows you to keep on top of social media ROI and can lead to a much more sophisticated campaign.

Bhavesh Vaghela, CMO of ResponseTap, outlines the benefits call tracking can have on a campaign: “By analysing the digital journey as a customer moves offline, brands can understand the role different channels play at different stages. For example, when buying a holiday, social typically plays a part later in the customer journey, whereas when purchasing a financial services product it is usually much earlier.” 

Understanding when your customers are engaging with you means you can time to perfection the three stages of the social media ROI cycle.

Custom Social Numbers

Linking unique custom numbers to each media platform is one unobtrusive way of tracking where calls are coming from. 

Walter Blake Knoblock is in charge of digital marketing at HostedNumbers.com, a company that provides virtual phone numbers, and he explains that, “by attaching a virtual phone number to each of your social campaigns/accounts (Twitter, Google+, Facebook ads, etc...) one can see which accounts are performing and which need to be either retooled or cut completely.”

 This technique makes something that was previously untraceable much more transparent; it therefore always pays to have a visible phone number on each of your social media channels. Understanding the effectiveness of each social media platform helps businesses to know where their fan base lies and thus the quickest way to reach their customers. 

Understand Your Channels

Knowing your audience is the key to getting them on the phone and Melissa Leiter, a social media consultant, provides a useful infographic for those wishing to know the best social media channels for their brand message.

For companies that rely on call conversions, Facebook and Google+ are perhaps the best channels. Facebook has the highest number of users and the largest opportunities for companies and by seeing your post reach using the Insights tool it becomes possible to understand the visit-to-lead conversion rate of your social media traffic.

Google+, although a smaller network, is a great way for connecting to niche groups. If you have a product or service that has multiple audiences, Google’s circles tool allows you to tailor your content to specific audiences. Companies that rely on telephone calls for conversions are often found in the insurance, travel, and hi tech sectors, whose customer bases are often looking for highly specific products and services.

Measuring success on social media has up until recently merely consisted of tracking the reach of posts and the traffic being generated. But in the past year marketers have begun to find ways of tracking leads, customers and conversions which are being generated off the back of each social campaign. Being able to connect online engagement with offline conversions is the ultimate step in understanding the ROI of social media.

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If You Publish Content and Don't Promote It, Will Anyone See It? (Infographic)

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

The same could be said about a content-marketing strategy, when it comes to optimizing the elements of a company's blog or other website copy for sharing. If you publish content without a plan for its distribution, it certainly won’t get noticed. Then all the time and effort put into the work are lost. That's unless, of course, you want your blog to remain a private journal.  

The performance of that content online can be affected by little changes in the call to action, optimizing the web copy for search, adjusting the post's timing, using images and even where social-media buttons are placed.  

The infographic below explains some basic points to consider for your blog and content-marketing plan. 

Click to Enlarge+

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Social Media Playing A Part In The Rising Complaints Against Doctors

Doctors Under Fire On Social Media?

A recent report commissioned by the General Medical Council has revealed that a rise in complaints against doctors reflects the role of social media and negative press coverage of the medical profession as a whole.

Source: blog.cureus.com

It comes after the revelation that complaints by the general public against GPs doubled between 2007 and 2012, and as a result, a research team from Plymouth was asked to investigate the dramatic increase.

The numerics are stated in the report, and it is identified that the number of complaints went from 5,168 in 2007 to 10,347 just five years later.

Despite the numeric details, the report did not point to any specific cause for the rise in complaints made by the general public. Instead, it rather ambitiously chose to identify a number of trends that it says have influenced the general public, and correlated these trends with the rise in complaints.

The report suggested that patients are now more aware of their own health, and therefore have much higher expectations of doctors. This attitude results in a shift in power relations between the two parties, andultimately removes doctors from the pedestal.

As well as this, the report said that social media had a role to play in the rise in complaints, as it encouraged people to discuss their previous experiences with the medical profession. This has been conducted in dedicated public forums and this ensured that specific information about health care could be shared easily and accessed by all.

The biggest influence on the general public is the negative press in the media, and this is also highlighted in the report.

Whilst the media coverage of high-profile medical cases may have had an influence on the rise in complaints, the report also suggested that this also gave rise to more complaints that were not relevant to the GMC, which regulates GPs in the United Kingdom.

Source: pando.com

The lead author of the report, Dr Julian Archer, said that the report had produced “some fascinating findings.” He said: “they show that the forces behind a rise in complaints against doctors are hugely complex and reflect a combination of increased public awareness, media influence, the role of social media technology and wider changes in society.”

He added that “the report also indicated that there is much to do to improve the wider complaint handling system, so that complaints made by the general public about their doctors are directed to the appropriate authorities.”

The research certainly brings up some interesting points, without outlaying hard evidence. Social media gets a hard time in the report, as these conversations about healthcare were happening long before the birth of social media, but they were conducted in private.

The more sinister reason for the rise in complaints is the negative media influence, and a possible government agenda to privatise the NHS.

The mass media will always have great control over the general public, so it comes to no surprise that with all the negative press that surrounds the medical profession, people have chosen to complain. It is a subtle form of indoctrination, and maybe by citing social media as a heavy influence on people’s negative connotations towards doctors, the researchers have been indoctrinated also.

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Content is Only as Good as Its Shareability

Most of us can remember a day when the pinnacle of communication revolved around our beeper and a pay phone. This best effort at mass communication was unfortunately tied down to a newspaper, magazine, TV, radio, billboard, and word-of-mouth. Content shareability and “viral” content was strictly reserved for the global enterprises that could afford TV ads and national billboard campaigns. And even if a brand had a great national campaign, it might take weeks or months to attract the majority of their target segment, and by that time, they’ve most likely progressed to something else. In the 1970s, if a very good friend that lived in a different city had a baby, it may take days or weeks for you to even see a picture of this new bundle of joy. Fast forward to today, we see pictures instantaneously of people on different continents just seconds after a photo is taken, thanks to advances in social media. Let’s venture even further into the past, shall we? “Gold was discovered in California in January 1848, but the gold rush did not really start until an article appeared in the New York Herald on August 19, 1848.” (History House) You catch the drift. Good content begs to be shared, and its success is only as good as its shareability.

It’s no secret that inbound marketing has become exceedingly popular over the past several years. “78% of chief marketing officers think custom content is the future of marketing.” (Hanley-Wood Business Media) What makes this so interesting is that the increase in demand for superior content relies on one factor exclusively; social media. Without social media, content marketing would still be in the dark ages, wondering where it should go after it gets published. Twitter? No. Facebook? No. A blog? No. It would just sit in one spot, hoping someone might talk about it. Although, even if they did talk about it, that brand would never have any way of ever knowing. Physical conversation is immeasurable (and should stay that way). Content marketing relies directly on social media. Why? Shareability.

Shareability is the driving force for all content creators and inbound marketing strategies. “B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who do not blog.” (Social Media B2B) Most, if not all, of the readers visiting these blogs didn’t just happen to stumble upon them (unless they were using StumbleUpon). More than likely, readers found the content posted by a trusted friend or follower on a social site, with a link to the blog, which they then converted to. And this behavior is ubiquitous across B2B and B2C platforms. “82% of consumers like reading content from brands when it’s relevant.” (The CMA) People like good content and more importantly, people like to share good content.

So you probably already knew that people like to share good content, but it’s important to understand why they share it. According to psychologists, Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius, every individual has two psychological selves. The first self is the “now” self and the second self is the “possible” self. Assuming these two ideas are clear by definition, we’ll move on. “The illusion of our ‘possible self’ is the main motivation when it comes to sharing online, and it is this narcissism that marketers should attempt to appeal to in order to gain traction with creative campaigns.” (Business2Community) The beauty in people sharing your content is once they share it, they feel an emotional ownership and loyalty to that content, because it has helped enhance others’ illusion of their “possible” self. Their loyalty to a brand’s content generally mirrors their loyalty to that brand. This is the foundational idea that inspires CMO’s to be forward thinking in their content strategy.

Because people have an innate desire to engage, share, and take ownership of a brand’s content, it is imperative to understand the influence that content is having on the user to, not only, engage in the content and recycle it on social media, but to ultimately convert to your brand, and influence others to convert to your brand. Across the board, in all industries of all shapes and sizes, the goal for C-level executives is to define how marketing efforts drive conversions and a return on investment back to the brand. When it comes to defining the value of content marketing and shareability as it relates to conversions for the brand, sign up for SocialRest, a tool that is able to monitor how users engage with your content on social media, how they influence others to engage in the content on social, then track a user’s behavior as they move from your social sites to your website or blog, and ultimately define how a user converted to your brand because of the shared content. This ties the entire package together, from content creation to exact measurement of success.

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#OurABC: Channel in Social Media Rebranding

ABC latest channel to tap into the social media buzz and paves the way for TV future.

The Aussie branch of ABC is under-going a fresh rebranding operation in the hope to promote channel/audience inclusion and interactivity.

ABC's main channels, ABC1 is the channel facing the new changes, starting with the new name of ABC. While the new name isn't anything to write home about in terms of creativity, the rest of the rebranding operationpromises to make waves.

The use of the hashtag #ourABC is the main talking point and the vocal point for the rebranding campaign; a campaign that the broadcaster has labelled "bold, simple, raw and real."

guardian.com

The hope is that the new hashtag tagline will emphasise "inclusion, togetherness and connection"according to ABC's head of marketing and communications.

The channel's new image is also set to include new idents featuring everyday ABC personalities along with anew 'channel anthem' of 'Throw Your Arms Around Me' by Hunters and Collectors.

The rebranding coincides with their new look website which is set to launch on July 20th.

Speaking about the channel's new image, ABC's director of television, Richard Finlayson said that "Now more than ever, ABC Television needs to be relevant." 

With almost everyone sharing their thoughts and opinions online, it isn't hard to see the reasoning behindABC's new way of thinking. They are beginning to tap into where it's audience are coming from, and where they will go to express their opinions on the channels programming. It is a clever and innovative way of keeping up to date and relevant to their audience and it can't be too long before other channels across the world follow in ABC's footsteps.

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Social media a rendezvous for terrorists according to intelligence official

The Western world are now looking at social media in order to frighten its citizens, and keep them on guard. According to a top European intelligence official, terrorists have changed their management stye, and it is making them a more threatening prospect. In the past, decisions were left to be made by a top-down hierarchy, but now the decisions are being made by a collective “swarm,” and this has been aided by the power of social media.

Source: mashable.com

These are the words of Rob Bertholee, who is the head of Dutch Intelligence, and he further stated that up until recent years, jihadi groups operated through “vertical communication.”

“The leader spoke to his followers and then they would all do what he said,” Bertholee stated. He added thatthe rise of the Internet and social media have seen a rise in “horizontal communication” in these groups.

“So what we see now is what you could call a group dynamics, swarming, or the idea of swarming, where many individuals, without a visible leader, actually lead themselves and decide on themselves which way they go.”

“You know they all fly in a swarm, there’s no leader there. There’s nobody who says yeah we have a map and we have to go this way. But amazingly they all go the same way. That is what we see.”

Despite Mr Bertholee appearing to see “terrorists” as inferior to himself and his allies, by using language by degrading his fellow human beings, such as assuming that they only use a map when navigating, and expressing shock at the fact that there is no visible leader, he must take them seriously. Opposition to Western culture have become very competent in areas such as social media strategy, and technological advances.

The use of social media by opposition groups has bolstered fundraising and recruitment, and at the same time, has made life more difficult for figures such as Bertholee as they try and combat such groups both at home and abroad.

Source: spinsucks.com

“If you can single out a leader then you know where to attack, where to move, where to focus you attention to,” Bertholee said. “If you don’t have a leader, if you have a swarm that is self-guiding and self-deciding, it’s much harder to focus your attention, your efforts.”

These are fascinating words from Mr Bertholee, as he is merely acknowledging that people are using social media. This is the way the world works now; communication is made easy on a global level now, due to theimpact of social media on millions of people. Yes, there are people who want to cause distress and harm to others, but Mr Bertholee is another example of how people are being influenced by the media.

He uses animalistic comparatives and war rhetoric in order to make the reader believe that there is an army of insurgents coming to cause havoc on the lives of many. Whilst doing this, he paints a bad picture of social media, by asserting that networking is the biggest weapon for opposition groups, and if people take that in and choose to believe it, then social media as a whole will be viewed as a bad thing.

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Hashtag Hijacks - New York Police Department Faces Hashtag Embarrassment

The NYPD recently tweeted requests for local New Yorkers to post photos of themselves with members of the police force, using the hashtag #myNYPD. Predictably though, the news feed promptly filled with images and videos of questionable police practice and brutality in what has become a true failure of a marketing campaign, leaving a lot to be answered for by the men in blue. 

Source: thehigherlearning.com

The unfortunate hashtag hijacking has inspired people around the US to tweet photos of other police departments abusing citizens. Twitter users have shown images of brutality from the LAPD and Chicago forces, whilst European countries join the growing enthusiasm in highlighting malpractice. 

Occupy Wall Street tweeted ‘Free Massages from the #NYPD. What does YOUR Police Department offer?’ accompanied with an image showing officers holding a man, shouting, with his arms pinned behind his back against a car. 

According to the New York Daily News over 70,000 people had taken to Twitter criticising the NYPD, with #myNYPD overtaking #HappyEarthDay as the top trending hashtag. 

Source: nbc.com

Hashtags, when used positively, can be a really useful way of tracking the current and popular interest of people and to see what is being talked about. Twitter has long supported clickable hashtags, with Facebook users also deploying the technique for debates, discussion and fun. Clicking on a hashtag takes users to see what other people have said about the same topic, encouraging interaction and activity. Advertisers saw a great opportunity to build brand awareness and receive feedback from their consumers. The key to a successful hashtag however, is understanding your audience and how they are going to use said hashtag.

Twitter has become a place where activists and protestors are influencing politics and power structures all over the world. The NYPD Twitter campaign was well-intentioned, but crucially not well-researched.

Using social media listening tools like Viralheat and Social Mention, which provide a sentiment analysis of mentions across various sites, would have been a good place to start. Your typical Twitter user (young urban males) may not have been the best place to find positive attitudes and responses to New York’s police department. 

Source: niceone.ie

Stubbornly (or in the interests of free speech), the NYPD Commissioner said the campaign will continue despite the negative feedback. So far, the NYPD have retweeted only a handful of photos of people with members of the police department. It’s safe to say the campaign was a social media and public relations failure.

The lesson here is that social media can be a powerful tool - but just because you create a hashtag doesn’t mean you own it. 

The NYPD’s social media fail was reminiscent of another recent Twitter debacle.  Here's some other memorable mishaps:  

#WhyImVotingUKIP – Twitter users went to town on the controversial political party recently, quipping, with reference to Farage’s claims that he was 'tired out' when he said he wouldn’t want to live next door to Romanians, that they were voting ‘because, like the leader @Nigel_Farage, I get a bit racist when I’m tired too’. 

In 2012, McDonald's created the #McDstories hashtag, asking customers to share their favorite McDonald's memories. The campaign was pulled after just two hours as it descended into food-horror stories about fingernails, insects and food poisoning. 

Then there was of course the infamous #susanalbumparty disaster. No more needs to be said on that.

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