Lead Ads and Ignored Messages

Lead Ads and Ignored Messages

Facebook Unveils Lead Ads

Lead Ads

Credit: Shutterstock

Facebook wants to make it easier for people to fill out forms to subscribe or sign up for services or programs through the use of lead ads. Lead ads work by auto-populating information in forms for newsletters, asking for follow-up calls or a price estimate.

Essentially, it’s more of a one-stop shop option that keeps users from jumping page-to-page, which can lead to people becoming disinterested and stopping the process. These ads will also provide instant information and data for marketers. The image to the right provides a great visual representation of what a lead ad would look like. Right now, the ads are only available to a select number of advertisers.

Customer Messages go Ignored

Any social media manager can tell you that a large amount of messages they receive on their channels is spam or completely irrelevant…but are 87% of those messages such? A new Locowise report measured 900 Facebook pages and found a whopping 87% of customer messages went completely ignored. Less than stellar customer service, you might say. Additionally, of the pages that did respond to messages, only 37% of their messages went answered.

It’s not all bad news, though. More than 60% of messages that received a response were communicated with in 2-4 hours. As previously mentioned, a large number of irrelevant posts  and messages are sent to social networks. No one is denying this, but in order to provide an excellent level of customer service that is expected from social media it may be beneficial to give our pages or inboxes another look – or look a bit more frequently.

Changes Coming to Facebook Ads

Changes Coming to Facebook Ads

Some interesting new upgrades and changes are coming to Facebook ads! The social network made the announcement this week in order to prepare ad managers for what to expect. Facebook says the plan is to work harder for ad managers so they don’t have to work quite so hard (yay!) Here is a short breakdown of what to expect:

Ads Manager

A new layout will streamline the look in Ads Manager and provide more information on ads’ performance.

The new data will display performance, audience and placement results. Doing so will provide managers a view of the performance of an ad when making necessary edits instead of memorizing details or having a second window open. This information can even be filtered and selected by date. Reports can also be set to send out at intervals to provide updates as needed, meaning updates can be provided easily and frequently to show progress.

Power Editor

While the changes in Power Editor may not be as drastic, the new and improved Power Editor will boast a larger display and an edit pane. This will provide more room and a quicker way to edit ads. Ads may also be searched by name or ID and be filtered.

Overall, Facebook says these changes are designed to help ad managers speed up and enhance the ad creation, editing and reporting process. The changes will roll out to all ad accounts in the coming months with no set date announced yet

Yelp Fraud, Netflix at Marriott and Twitter DMs

Yelp Fraud, Netflix at Marriott and Twitter DMs

Yelp FraudYelp Cracks Down on Fraudulent Reviews

For some time now, business owners have raised concerns that fake reviews would occasionally pop up on their Yelp page. Now it seems Yelp is fighting back by adding evidence of review fraud if it finds reason to suspect a review is not genuine. The suspect review will be blocked with a “Consumer Alert” box which may include a “show me evidence” button. If available, the button will lead the searcher to a screenshot showing where that evidence may be.

While the new move may not eliminate false reviews, it is definitely a step in the right direction and provide business owners a small peace of mind.

Netflix at Marriott

Marriott is officially the first hotel chain to offer Netflix to guests in their rooms. The streaming service will allow subscribers to log into their account to enjoy watching programming – and also allow guests to sign up for Netflix if they are not already a subscriber.

While the rollout will be small at first, Marriott hopes to directly offer Netflix to all of its properties by the end of 2016.

Twitter DMs Remove 140 Limit

In a move that many social media managers and customer service reps will likely praise, Twitter announced that it will allow for 10,000 character limits in Direct Messages (DMs) in July.

Previously, users were limited to the same 140 character limit that tweets were restricted to. This made it difficult for social media managers to gather information and resolve issues quickly due to some instances or issues communicated being complicated and taking a lot of back-and-forth messaging to resolve.

Most Popular City, Google Maps Everywhere, Instagram Ads

Most Popular City, Google Maps Everywhere, Instagram Ads

Credit: Mastercard

Top Cities Listed

London is the most popular city in the world. That’s according to Mastercard‘s latest Global Destination Cities Index, ranking 132 destination cities around the world in terms of total international overnight visitor arrivals and cross-border spending. This is the second year in a row London has topped the list. The city is expected to receive more than 18.8 million visitors this year.

While Bangkok came in second in anticipated overnight stays, New York was number two when it came to visitor spending, while London remained at number one.

Google Maps and Nav – Even when Offline!

A major announcement from Google this week: the search giant will begin offering maps and navigation even when a user is offline. This should prove especially helpful for people when they need it most, like traveling internationally where data rates are higher  – or when signal is especially weak and you’re lost (you know, when you need it most!).

This will, undoubtedly, make the decision to use Google much easier for people in developing parts of the world where signal and coverage are unreliable. The function is expected to roll out later this year.

Instagram Buttons up the Ante

A new feature from Instagram will allow a direct response button to be placed on ads. These four different calls to action will allow advertisers and marketers to better reach the audiences they may have previously had difficulty reaching.

The button will appear under and image and be clickable. The function will begin rolling out in limited number in the coming days, but should quickly find promise among those longing for a clickable option for advertisements on the Facebook-owned platform. You can check out what the buttons will look like below.

Instagram Direct Response Buttons

Credit: Instagram

"Nearby" Traffic, Facebook Restaurant Reviews and a Social Infographic

Nearby searches double

Credit: The Next Web

“Near Me” Traffic Doubles Year-Over-Year

Users are increasingly using Google to discover local businesses and locations. Google reports that searches with the words “nearby” or “near me” have doubled year-over-year. Understandably, 80% of those searches came from mobile.

This new data only reinforces the importance of businesses and locations registering and ensuring they show up in Google searches.

Facebook Testing out Critic Reviews of Restaurants

An interesting new move by Facebook will bring critic reviews of select restaurants to the platform. Previously, user reviews were already available, but this recent change is the first time anything “official” will appear for reviews of restaurants.

While Facebook says the change is due the the social nature of the platform and providing users with a better experience, it could also be inferred that the move could be designed to take traffic away from other review sites, like Yelp.

Ideal Photo Sizes for Social

While it isn’t necessarily breaking news, a new infographic indicating the ideal photo sizes for the major social networks was published this week. Many businesses and people struggle getting a photo that is the right size published in their posts and on the profile pages. Utilizing the information in this graphic and a photo resizing tool, like Pixlr, can guarantee you’re publishing content that is sized correctly!

Post Frequency, a Facebook/IBM Partnership and Mobile Relevance

Facebook Post FrequencyHow Many Facebook Posts Per Week?

The question constantly being asked: how often should we post on our Facebook page? There is no right answer, nor a silver bullet to magically reach every one of your page fans. However, Locowise did some digging and came across some interesting data after looking at more than 600 Facebook pages.

The full Locowise article may be read here but, suffice it to say, less may be more on Facebook:

  • Pages that posted once per week or less frequently reached an average of 15 percent of users who liked their pages with each post.
  • Pages that posted one to four times per week saw engagement from 12 percent of users that they reached.
  • Those that posted once daily reached 8.42 percent of their audience.
  • Those that posted once per day registered 10.84 percent engagement.

Big Blue and Facebook Team Up for Targeting

A new partnership between Facebook and IBM wants to make it easier for big brands to target their desired audience with ads. The deal would work by IBM allowing Facebook to target more Fortune 500 companies with ads while selling IBM’s marketing cloud services.

The companies note that marketers, particularly retailers, may benefit the most from the partnership, but the ability to more effectively target ads is beneficial to anyone creating and managing an ad campaign.

Mobile Gains on Desktop

It’s certainly one of those things we’ve heard for a long time: mobile will one day surpass desktop in searches. While that may not universally be the case (yet), a recent Google AdWords blog indicates that’s the case in at least 10 countries – including the U.S. and Japan. This coincides with some recent reports on the importance of mobile, including one from eMarketer indicating more ad dollars will be spent on mobile than desktop in 2015.

Follow Along with National Travel and Tourism Week

National TFollow Along with National Travel and Tourism Week

TwoSix Digital will be out and about for National Travel and Tourism Week starting on Tuesday. Senior Director of Strategy and Education Brian V. Matson will be in Gaylord, Michigan while Founder and Strategist Dave Serino will be in Waterloo Iowa CVB and The Outer Banks of North Carolina working with their destination marketing organizations and stakeholders on National Travel and Tourism Week educational programs.

National Travel and Tourism Week was established in 1983 by a congressional resolution and meant to spur discussion and education of the industry. This year’s theme: Travel is ___. The travel community is encouraged to be creative and use their own understanding to fill in the blank and elaborate with what travel truly means to them, their profession and their experiences.

If you’d like to follow along and participate in conversations online with others, look for and use the hashtag #NTTW2015.

Social Ad Spending, Amazon Destinations and Facebook Algorithm Changes

Facebook Advertising

Credit: Chalk & Ward

Global Facebook Ad Spend

You’ve heard it before: social media is becoming pay-to-play, and a new report seems to indicate that statement really is on the money. A new report from eMarketer estimates global spending on social media advertising will total $23.68 billion. That’s “billion” with a “b”.

Most of the money will be spent on Facebook, roughly 65.5% of it. However, Twitter is gaining share and is expected to bring in about 7.1% more revenue this year, bringing it to about $2.09 billion. While still nothing to brush off, LinkedIn is expected to earn $900 million in ad revenue in 2015 – a dip from 2014.

Amazon Destinations Debuts

Amazon seems to be getting in on the travel and tourism game with the launch of its new hotel product and brand, Amazon Destinations. Destinations works directly with hoteliers and mainly operates to help with weekend getaways or road trips near major metropolitan areas, meaning you won’t see flight options or deals.

Skift reports the focus is to help people looking for that weekend away and to boost local travel. Destinations differs from Amazon Local by favoring published rates and working with hotels for an ongoing basis and not just when rooms need to be filled. The service is still in its infancy and reviews are minimal compared to the 200 million currently on TripAdvisor, though some do appear.

Facebook Plays with its Algorithm…Again

A change to Facebook’s algorithm will increase the updates from friends seen and decrease what’s seen about their activity on Facebook. What does this mean? You’re less likely to see content your friends like or comment on in your Facebook newsfeed, meaning brand pages that rely on audience activity for virality may go down. While Facebook says the move was done to give more relevant content to users one can’t help but wonder about inevitable step closer toward the play-to-pay model for brands to get content seen.

Cuba and Airline Fuel Prices

Cuba, Cuba and more Cuba

In case you haven’t noticed, Cuba has been in the news a lot lately thank to the beginning of normalization of relations between the island nation and the United States. This has led to an increase in interest in travel to Cuba. Because of this renewed intrigue, Airbnb recently announced more than one thousand homes would be part of its rental program. Airbnb says the average nightly rental rate will run you about $42. While most of the rooms available are in and around Havana, some others are also available.

However, some analysts note that the 1950’s “stuck in time” appeal many people associate with Cuba could be lost with the normalization of ties and commercialization with the U.S. While it appears that the change is inevitable, the window of opportunity to explore Cuba as it has (largely) been for several decades is open right now, especially because several real estate agents and cruise lines have already been scoping out the island looking for opportunity.

Cheaper travel thanks to fuel prices?

For the past several years, airlines have cited higher fuel prices for higher airfares. However, things may be changing thanks to cheaper oil. Delta Airlines President Ed Bastian says the relaxed prices his airline and a number of other are beginning to enjoy will inevitably trickle down to consumers.

However, Bastian notes that before prices start to fall in step with oil those $50-$60 per barrel oil prices would need to be the norm for some time.

Hootsuite Picture Posting and Snapchat Geofilters

As usual, things keep moving at a rapid pace on social media. Here are two items for you to note this week.

Post Pictures with Hootsuite

Hootsuite Picture Posting

Hootsuite subscribers recently received an email explaining a brand new and updated feature that would allow pictures to automatically generate in Twitter newsfeeds through pic.twitter.com instead of appearing as an owl.ly link. This is a great addition! Research has shown the effectiveness of imagery in generating clicks and engagements on social media and this was Hootsuite giving its subscribers the ability to capture an audience’s attention much better than before.

Unfortunately, not everyone was able to automatically access the new feature. However, there is a quick and easy way to manually enable the feature:

  1. Click here to visit your dashboard
  2. Click your profile icon in the top left corner
  3. Click on View Social Networks
  4. Click the Profile Settings tab
  5. Under Image Uploads, select pic.twitter.com

That should do it! You can now automatically generate pictures when you attach them to tweets!

Snapchat Geofilters

A recent addition to Snapchat is the ability to include geofilters on your snaps. Geofilters are overlays that can be added to pictures when you’re in specific locations (like the example in Indianapolis below). Adding a geofilters isn’t difficult at all. Just follow the tips on the Snapchat website and add your design to allow people to start branding their photos. This is a great opportunity for any DMO, festival, event or attraction to begin harnessing the power of Snapchat.

Snapchat Geofilter