Facebook
Find Home Service Professionals with Marketplace
More and more people are turning to Facebook to seek recommendations when it comes to home services. So much so, over the coming weeks, Facebook Marketplace will be an “all-in-one hub for people to complete their next home project.”
Within Marketplace, users will be able to see professionals’ ratings, reviews, credentials, and location. Users describe the project they need help with and send their request to multiple professionals at once.
Bottomline
For service professionals, this is a great new feature on Facebook that you should take advantage of. It provides a way for prospective customers to find you through Facebook, review your ratings, credentials, and location, and then contact you on Facebook to request your service. This is another way Facebook is expanding the use of the platform to be a service like Angie’s List or another online directory of specific business services.
Watch for opportunities for your business to get listed if this fits your service category!
Removing Trending News from Facebook
Facebook is removing Trending news box that was on the desktop interface. People have found it to be less and less useful since it came out in 2014, and it was not being accessed often. Facebook will be adding a new “Breaking News” label to news in the News Feed. As well, a new feature called, “Today In”, which will share local news from specific local news sources, and News videos in Watch will be added to make news more mobile, local, and video-friendly for users.
Bottomline
I don’t think this will impact businesses too much. It’s meant to compete with Twitter and keep people on Facebook. Will it? Time will tell. One thing to watch is whether your business can give perspective or commentary on news that has rolled out. It might be a way for your business to add value and showcase expertise by sharing and giving your spin on news items that roll out.
New Tools for Nonprofit Fundraisers
Facebook is adding “new features to help make fundraisers even more impactful and accessible.” Nonprofits, brands, and public figures can start fundraisers to support nonprofit causes on their Page. You can also “add up to three others to be organizers of your fundraiser to help you manage it and rally more supporters to reach your fundraising goal.”
Bottomline
Businesses, nonprofits, and personal pages can use fundraisers as a way to raise a lot of money for causes that are important to them because of their wide base of followers and fans.
It also gives businesses and brands a way to give back right on and through Facebook. Also, by adding organizers to your fundraiser you are expanding your fundraisers reach. Therefore, rally even more support for your cause, as well as add more admin support. This new feature is a great way to make more people aware of a non-profit and a cause, and then a byproduct is that it also adds some user engagement to your page.
Instagram
Existing Instagram Organic Posts can now be Turned into Ads
Facebook is rolling out a new feature that allows advertisers to turn organic Instagram posts into ads within the Facebook Ads Manager tool. While the option to “promote or boost organic posts has been available on Instagram, the ability to turn organic posts into Ads within Ads Manager has not. The feature is currently being rolled out to “all global advertisers” within the next few weeks.
Bottomline
At first, it will be available for Brand Awareness, Post Engagement, Reach, and Video Views objectives. However, you will only be able to create an ad from single video and single photo feed posts for now. Not supported (yet) will be Carousel, Stories, Branded Content, and Instagram Shopping posts. This is just the first step at turning existing organic posts into ads, and it will continually impact businesses positively on Instagram in the future.
Instagram Algorithm Details Shared
Instagram has come clean and outlined how their algorithm works that determine what content a user sees in their feed! Recently Instagram allowed a set group of journalists access to their team for a discussion and review of how their algorithm works. The basics:
Three main factors determine what you see in your Instagram feed:
Interest: How much Instagram predicts you’ll care about a post, with a higher ranking for what matters to you, determined by past behavior on similar content and potentially machine vision analyzing the actual content of the post.
Recency: How recently the post was shared, with prioritization for timely posts over weeks-old ones.
Relationship: How close you are to the person who shared it, with a higher ranking for people you’ve interacted with a lot in the past on Instagram, such as by commenting on their posts or being tagged together in photos.
Bottomline
Instagram (as contrasted to Facebook) does not favor video over photos universally. It’s based on engagement by followers. The Feed does not favor users who use Stories or Live more. Nor do you get hit for posting too frequently. So the key is quality, rich, engaging content that followers want to engage with (comment on or like). Business Profiles give you the best metrics to understand this so be sure for business use to switch your profile to a Business Profile.
That’s a wrap on some recent updates in the social realm! Any thoughts or questions? Be sure to sign-up for my email list. You’ll to get these updates via email 2x a month. Keep up with the latest changes and updates!
The post Recent Social Media and Facebook Updates Through June 14th appeared first on Mike Gingerich.
Read more: mikegingerich.com
