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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The New Pinterest Analytics Tool: How To Use It for Business

Are you struggling to measure your Pinterest efforts?

Do you want an easier way to track pins and engagement?

The new Pinterest Analytics tool gives you access to a variety of data, including how potential customers interact with your pins beyond your website.

In this article I’ll share how the new Pinterest Analytics features help you get the most out of your Pinterest marketing.

Pinterest Analytics Overview

Pinterest’s original analytics tool only shared information about how users interact with the Pin It button installed on your website. Unfortunately, those stats couldn’t give you a complete picture of whether your overall Pinterest efforts were working.

The newest Analytics features give you access to quite a bit more data, such as stats on engagement beyond your Pin It button. Now you can track actions that originate from your Pinterest profile—including boards and the pins you share (whether the pins are from your own website or not).

Check out new features found in the new Pinterest Analytics.

Why is this important? Many successful pinners spend more time curating and sharing content from websites other than their own.

The updated Pinterest Analytics tool gives you the data you need to see the bigger picture and determine where to spend your time and effort to maximize your presence on Pinterest.

The Pinterest Analytics Dashboard

To gain access to Pinterest’s new analytics, you must have a Pinterest business account. When that’s in place, head over to your analytics dashboard.

Your Pinterest Analytics dashboard shows an overview of the three main categories:Your Pinterest Profile, Your Audience and Activity From (Your Website). You can click on each category to see additional details and have a better idea of how your Pinterest efforts are paying off.

New features include three categories overflowing with data.

The bottom of the page features your five Top Pin Impressions from the past 30 days. At a glance you can see how many repins, clicks and likes these pins have and whether they are rich pins.

Below I’ll go through the main analytics categories and show you what you can find in each.

#1: Your Pinterest Profile

The Your Pinterest Profile category has four sections: Impressions, Repins, Clicks and All-Time. The Impressions section shows your top 50 pin impressions and your top 20 boards with top pin impressions.

If you click over to Repins, you can see your 50 most repinned items and which of your boards have the most repins.

The Clicks section is pretty much what you’d expect: A detail of your 50 most-clicked pins and your 20 boards with the most-clicked pins. You can also see the number of repins, impressions, clicks, likes and # of pins.

Impressions metrics are easy to find.

The All-Time section is particularly helpful. Here you’ll see your 50 most repinned pins, your pins with the highest search rank and power pins (pins with a high mix of clicks, repins and more). As you review this data, note which topics people are searching for and provide more of that content.

Don’t forget to repin your top pins to different boards or group boards. It’s a good way to get that content in front of new pinners who may not have seen it the first time around. Keep that momentum going!

#2: Your Audience

It’s not often that we get a free glimpse into how consumers self-select their interests, but that’s exactly what the new Pinterest Analytics tool is giving us in the Your Audience category. For the first time, Pinterest is sharing details about the users interacting with your pins.

The Your Audience category offers an important filter option. In the top right of the page you can choose to filter data by All Audiences or Your Followers. All Audiences highlights the entire audience of Pinterest, while Your Followers focuses on just your followers.

Viewing and comparing data from both are vital to understanding how your Pinterest performance measures up to your goals (and your audience’s needs).

Compare data from All Audiences and Your Followers to see the big picture.

You can use the All Audiences and Your Followers filters on both the Demographics and Interests tabs. The Demographics tab is easy enough—it shows you basic audience data, including location, language and gender.

You may find the Interests tab a bit, well, more interesting. If you want to find out what people are talking about or looking for, this is the place to be. Definitely look at how your All Audiences data overlaps or differs from the Your Followers data. By comparing them, you can home in on the topics your audience is searching for and create content to match.

As you compare the data, ask yourself these questions: Does your content match the interests of your typical pinners? Is your content reaching the intended target audience?

Keep an eye on how your competition is using Pinterest.

Another important new feature lets you see the other brands your followers are following. Knowing which business accounts are similar to yours is extremely important on Pinterest—it’s always good to keep an eye on the competition.

#3: Activity From (Your Website)

Encouraging people to pin articles and images from your website is a key element of Pinterest success. The Activity From (Your Website) category shows your website’s 50 top pins and 20 top boards and how their impressions, repins and clicks stack up.

You also have access to three other important stats: Original Pins, All-Time and Pin It button.

Original Pins shows you the 50 newest pins shared from your website. This is valuable because you can easily tell which topics are resonating with your audience (and create similar content for even more pins).

See how effective pins from your website are.

As with the Your Pinterest Profile category, the All-Time option gives you the top 50 pins that are most repinned, rank well in search and are power pins.

Click on the Pin It button link to see how many times your website’s Pin It button has been seen on your site’s pages, how many times it’s been clicked and most importantly, how many times someone has pinned from your website.

Options Each Analytics Category Offers

You’ll notice that the main categories have some option overlap. For example, all categories allow you to export data so you can use it in your own spreadsheet and create reports as needed.

Each of the pins listed within a category is clickable and takes you directly to that pin’s page. Listed pins also show a thumbnail of the specific image users pinned. You can use those popular pins as inspiration for your own images.

Another universal feature is the ability to see how people are accessing Pinterest(e.g., via the web or a mobile device) and filter your data based on that information.

Find out how your audience accesses Pinterest and optimize your content accordingly.

In the top right corner, click Apps to see a menu of different filter options and click the one you want. For example, if you only want to see analytics for users who access Pinterest via iPad, choose iPad to filter your data.

When you’ve determined how most of your audience accesses Pinterest, turn your attention to your images and optimize them to look great on the apps your audience prefers.

Finally, on each page you have a box called Here’s a Tip. These tips are customized based on Pinterest’s evaluation of your stats.

Pinterest gives you tips on how to improve your Pinterest stats.

I strongly encourage you to take advantage of Pinterest’s free advice so you can make the most of your Pinterest marketing efforts.

Sign up for the Pinterest Business Newsletter, Pinterest Business Blog and Success Stories for even more insider tips.

Wrapping Up

Whether you just need a quick high-level overview or want to delve into specific performance factors, you’ll find everything you need in the revamped Pinterest Analytics tool. Take advantage of every feature to discover what’s popular with your audience, how they’re repinning from your boards and what the competition is up to.

What do you think? Are you using Pinterest Analytics? Which feature has been most helpful? Please let us know in the comments below.

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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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