A new study shows that Facebook hashtags aren’t useful for viral posts – and in fact, post without hashtags have greater reach than those with hashtags. Facebook recently copied this feature from Twitter in June to add context and shared interests; EdgeRank Checker’s study, though, examined over 500 pages in the past few months, and discovered that hashtags only bring views to brands’ pages incidentally, rather than intentionally. There was a decrease in the amount of engagement per fan in posts with hashtags, and there is no correlation between the amount of fans and the greater positive impact on a brand’s engagement. Moral of the story: Facebook branding doesn’t work well with hashtags.
Tag: Online Communities
Facebook Debuts Shared Photo Albums
Facebook announced shared photo albums, a new feature that lets multiple users upload images to the same album. The original owner of the album can add up to 50 contributors, who can each share up to 200 photos to an album. Album creators can choose a setting that allows contributors to invite others – or retain total control over an album. It’s easy to see how companies can invite large numbers of consumers to collaborate on crowd-sourced albums showcasing a particular product, or wrapping offers up into album-sharing functionality. It could prove to be a powerful marketing tool to galvanize visible support.
Twitter Tests Trending TV
A few Twitter users awoke this morning to find their activity streams filled with a new ‘Trending’ TV box. The social network is testing out new ways of monetizing its service, and to drive higher usage. The trending box displays current popular TV shows as cards in a user’s Twitter timeline, and links to more information about the show, people in it, as well as promotions and other offers. So far, the elusive feature seems to only appear through the iOS app, rather than through the desktop, implying that Twitter is testing it as an augmented second screen activity. Expect to see more on this soon as it’s a developing story.
Soldsie Exceeds $10M In Transactions
Soldsie, a company that processes payments on top of Facebook comments, announced that it has processed more than $10 Million in transactions, and will be expanding into several foreign markets. The service allows you to buy things in the Facebook comments section, and allow companies to grab buyer’s attention in the moment. With several companies mounting challanges to the traditional buyers model, Soldsie seems to have figured out an effective method of transitioning social media engagement into dollars.
Twitter Launches Retargeting
Twitter has entered the digital ad sphere full-force in 2013, launching its Amplify TV platform, and now they’ve launched cookies-based retargeting for brands, allowing them to use their e-mail lists and cookie IDs to serve users applicable ads. This is standard practice for other online services, but has come with some concerns over privacy. Twitter’s senior director of product, Kevin Weil, assures the public that all information is non-identifiable and there will be the option to opt-out of the promotions within Twitter’s interface, or via Do Not Track.
Report: Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter Drive As Much In-Store Purchase As Digital
According to a new report by Vision Critical, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter drive as much in-store purchasing as online purchasing, but affect purchasing behavior in different ways. The research gathered 5,900 responses to online surveys to determine how social media influences a consumer’s path to purchase. Facebook was best for motivating customers to make purchases offline and online, while those who purchased after viewing on Pinterest hadn’t thought of making that purchase until viewing the item on the network. Ultimately, technology items – after being recommended to users – are most frequently purchased directly as a result of a recommendation from a friend or social network.
Instagram Video: Is It Better For Brands?
The answer, at least at first, seems to be yes. Although Vine is currently more popular than Instagram for media sharing on Twitter, Instagram is quickly making up for lost time. Over 5 million videos were uploaded onto the social network within 24 hours of its release, in addition to the one billion Likes logged per day, and its total user base of over 130 million. What’s more, 67% of brands are already familiar with the platform for marketing purposes, and the extra 9 seconds of video is crucial for advertisers looking to make a pitch. The fact that Instagram is already used widely by social media marketers means that it’s easier for their brands to jump into the video game very quickly. And according to Mashable, videos shared on Instagram have twice as much engagement as photos – and significantly higher engagement than videos on Vine. Ultimately, this means that it’s easier for brands to transition to video production on an app they’re already familiar with, and by breaking down the time limit and adding professional editing features, Instagram video provides a much friendlier, broader marketing platform – with all of Facebook’s users to boot.
Twitter Lists Where Tweets Have Been Embedded
In conjunction with its broader initiative to experiment with different ways of making Tweets interactive, Twitter today announced another new development: Twitter will display a list of sites linking to where a Tweet has been embedded. Listing where a Tweet has been used is another sign of how Twitter hopes to continue to make its platform more interactive and cross-platform across the Internet. This means that Twitter can sell itself better as a broadcasting platform that makes advertisers hungry for promoted spots – rather than taking a best guess about where the Tweet goes after it’s sent.
1/4 Of The World On Social Networks
By 2014, the ranking of regions by social network users will reflect regional shares of the global population. According to a new eMarketer report, one in four people worldwide use social networks currently. The numer of social network users around the world will rise from 1.47 billion in 2012 to 1.73 billion this year – at that rate, the global social network audience will total 2.55 billion by 2017. This reflects the expansion of emerging markets in the Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern regions of the world, who will necessarily be drivers of innovation. eMarketer expects the fastest national increases to be clocked in countries like India, Indonesia, Mexico, China, and Brazil.
Vine Surpasses Instagram For Media Sharing On Twitter
Just five days after launching for Android, Vine is now more popular in its total daily shares on Twitter than Instagram. Likely a result of opening Vine up to the Android market, links to vine.co were shared over 2.5 million times, with instagram.com links at just below 2.2 million. This also likely has to do with Instagram’s web profile launch, which cut off the easy expansion of shared photos within Twitter streams. Instagram remains ahead of Vine on Google’s list of top free Android apps, however, and it is difficult to know just how many active users and daily creations there are within the app network.
