With 2015 on the roll, online marketeers are trying to discover new ways to extract better results from social media marketing. Luckily for them, Facebook has been quite busy for a while, trying to find out new features and existing tools, that would help to make both ends meet.
Over the years, surveys have shown users to prefer getting more organic updates in their News Feed rather than posts that sounded way ‘promotional’. Going by how Facebook terms it, the word ‘promotional’ means posts that…
- Are Created with the objective to push people into buying an app or a product.
- Come with no real context and are designed to indirectly persuade people to enter sweepstakes and promotions.
- Use the same content, taken up from the online ads.
With the objective to make the platform more organic and competitive, Facebook has introduced some new changes and updates to its features and tools, which will make it a better social marketing hub to engage this New Year.
5 Facebook Changes, Internet Marketing Experts Need To Look Forward To:
#1 – Search Optimization
Facebook now enables users to give a quick search for any previous posts or photographs that were shared earlier. The Graph Search tool of Facebook, which was introduced way back in 2013, for users to search for places, people and things. This turned out to be a useful marketing analysis tool, since marketers used this to keep a track of information like the number of people, who like a particular brand or how many live within a specified target area. Now, members can make use of Facebook’s archive option to draw posts that were shared before. The new upgrade is available only to desktops and iPhone devices for now. Users can watch old videos, read articles or catch old photographs that they had once meant to see. This is beneficial from the business point of view, since now they can make use of the advantage of more available contents. However, market experts now need to think more about the relevant keywords or the subject matter, which the audience is likely to search for, online.
#2 – Relevant Conversation Via Trending
Trending is another tool introduced by Facebook that helps you to discover relevant updates on all the latest happenings. This new feature will help organizations, local business firms, journalists and other public figures, who can utilize these regular updates to make engaging posts based on proper research.
Though this feature was available previously only on desktops, it will now be available to over 399 million users, accessing Facebook using mobile devices. Moreover, the Trending conversations will now be segmented into five divisions, namely-
- Articles: That display the manner in which news organizations cover stories.
- Story: Published posts from people, seen as part of the story.
- Friends and Groups: Updates of what people within your network circle have to say.
- Near the scene: Posts shared by people, found close to where the story unfolds.
- Live Feed: Get instant feedbacks from people worldwide.
For now it is only available on Android and the web, to users who reside in the U.S. However, it will soon be available to the rest of the countries as well.
#3 – Buttons For Call-To-Action
Page admin can now make use of seven call-to-action buttons for their business pages. The seven of them are namely- ‘Contact Us’, ‘Book Now’, ‘Play Game’, ‘Use App’, ‘Sign Up’, ‘Watch Video’ and ‘Shop Now’. With the ‘Like Gate’ option no longer of use, business markers can engage viewers to their pages and generate assistance to promote their business by making a good use of these ‘call-to-action’ buttons.
The buttons help to drive ‘business objectives’ in the forefront and business experts can link these buttons to any location within or outside Facebook. Said to roll out in the month of January 2015, page admins should better get ready to make use of their business pages even more efficiently.
#4 – The New Post End Date
To avoid people reading outdated posts, Facebook introduced this new feature that enables page admins of a business page to specify a particular time and date, when your outdated posts would stop showing.
Though it would cease to display on the News Feed, the posts would continue to appear on the page. You would have to choose which posts to keep and which to remove from the News Feed though. It would be useful for removing posts like teasers or weather reports that will no longer prove to be beneficial source of information. Nevertheless, before you finally decide to remove any post, follow insights to make sure the post is not drawing any attention as such.
#5 – Reach Targets Through Smart Publishing
The best way to reach your target audience is by sharing organic contents. However, a smarter way to content marketing occurs when you successfully share views on topics that are popular within your social network. With the smart publishing tool now available on Facebook, you can now search for ideas that are currently popular among your target audience and share accordingly. These posts will be accessible to people, who like your business page. Though they won’t be available on your page, you can access the dashboard through the Insights, and catch new updates on all the moderate comments, analytics, and decide which posts should appear on your page.
Currently, only a limited number of media organizations have access to this new feature. However, in the coming months , it will be available more widely. You can opt for it using the Publishers Tool section, located within the Page Settings.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: 5 Changes Facebook Brings To Internet Marketing This Year
More Digital & Social articles from Business 2 Community:
- What Works Best for Digital Marketing in 2015? [Infographic]
- SEO Best Practices and Trends for 2015
- The Evolution of Social Media Marketing “Success”
- 3 Reasons Why Social Media Engagement is a Crucial Metric
- Is Twitter Killing YouTube? 5 Top Reasons You Should Prioritize Twitter
