Last week served as a reminder of how contentment has no place in the world of social media with the two internet giants, Facebook & Google, both serving up new revenue platforms and major re-designs of their properties. In case you missed it, here’s a recap of the changes and how your business can take advantage of them.
Promoted Ads
Countering the controversy surrounding the lack of effectiveness of sponsored ads, Facebook has rolled out Promoted Posts for brand pages in hopes of helping your business reach and engage with more fans. Unlike previous smaller sponsored ads displayed on the right hand side, promoted posts appear in a user’s actual news feed. Other than the “Sponsored” label, it looks just like a post from a friend, helping your ad gain increased exposure.
“Promoted Posts help increase the people you reach for any eligible post. It’s an easy and fast way to reach more of the people that “like” your page and your friends,” says a Facebook spokesperson in this demo video.
Scheduled Posts
Well it’s about time! This has been a long time coming, with third party apps such as SocialMotus left to pick up the slack all these years. I’m sure as a business you can appreciate the benefit of scheduling posts, particularly if you want to promote special sales or events that re-occur at specific intervals. Now you can schedule a post up to 6 months in advance in 15-minute intervals right from your Facebook page. You don’t need to worry about the time difference as Facebook automatically schedules the post according to the time zone you are in.
Admin roles
If you have a Facebook page for your business, chances are there are multiple people managing it. Now the page manager can assign each user a specific role to determine how many admin modules the user can access. This is helpful for a number of reasons, from restricting a social media intern from creating Promoted Ads without your consent or preventing your non social savvy CEO from posting status updates. Facebook released an image explaining the 5 different roles a page admin can have, and the permissions they are granted.
To set up these permissions
Google + Local Pages
“With these updates, we’re connecting the millions of people on Google+ to local businesses around the world. With one listing, your business can now be found across Google search, maps, mobile and Google+, and your customers can easily recommend your business to their friends, or tell the world about it with a review”.
Google+ Local Pages will now replace Google Places. What does this mean? Well local listings will now be hosted on Google +. Never one to overhaul a platform for simply improved user experience, the move is clearly another push from Google to promote activity on their own social network. Users now access local listings through the new ‘Local’ tab on the lefthand side of their Google + account, as well as through their mobile, search and maps properties. From a business perspective, there is an opportunity for new customer interactions, but it does require more effort. Previously you simply claim, optimize, and manage your Google Places page. This integration enables you to enhance your listing by adding additional content to your Google + page. It also makes it easier for you to interact with those who review your business via your Google + Page. The best part is it will be indexed by Googlebot, showing up as a search result listing on Google search. Another brand controlled listing on Google search is definitely a plus for any business. What I particularly like from a user’s perspective, is the integration of a more advanced review system via Zagat’s reviews. Google explains,
“Multiple aspects
These scores will show you several scores for different aspects of the business. For example, restaurants are scored across three areas-food, decor, and service-with food being the primary aspect.
Overall scores
When we don’t have enough user ratings on different aspects, we will just show an overall score. An overall score is comparable to a score in the primary aspect for a location, like food for restaurants”.
Here’s a more detailed video on how it works.
Google Shopping
Google will see more advertising dollars coming its way with the revamped Google Product Search or, Google Shopping as it will now be called. This new business model throws out free listings with merchants paying for inclusion in their shopping network.
Sameer Samat, vice president of product management for Google Shopping explains,“This is about delivering the best answers for people searching for products and helping connect merchants with the right customers,” said Sameer Samat, vice president of product management for Google Shopping.
The jury is still out on whether merchants will be happy with this change but it will probably lead to better reporting mechanisms, and de-cluttering of shopping results. Others are concerned that smaller retailers will suffer, given the money and time that will be required to manage product listing ads.
Check out this article by Search Engine Land for more details.
That’s it for now. What do you guys think of all these new changes? Will you be using any of these features to promote your business or do you think they’re examples of internet giants being out of touch with the needs of businesses. Let us know.
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