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Twitter Updates It’s Ad Centre To Focus More On Brand Analytics

Posted by in Advertising, Internet, Social Media / No Comments

Today, Twitter has changed the Twitter Ads center. Based on feedback from our advertisers, they have created a revamped experience that improves campaign reporting, provides more visibility into campaign performance, analytics and spend, and also makes it easier to manage campaigns in real time.

A major focus of ours is improving campaign analytics. With this in mind, they are now reporting all engagements that Promoted Tweets receive — not just engagements that advertisers pay for, but earned media as well. This change gives marketers more complete insight into the impact Promoted Tweets have in driving engagement and exposure on Twitter.

Additionally, in the updated ads center, they now provide advertisers with more granular breakdowns in campaign reporting. Regardless of how a campaign is set up, advertisers will have a clear understanding of how different targetable audience segments engage with Promoted Tweet and Promoted Account campaigns — by device, location, gender and interest. 

This visibility helps advertisers manage and optimize existing campaigns more effectively. For example, if a brand sees strong engagement on a specific device type, they can target just that device or make edits to other campaigns to maximize performance directly from their analytics dashboard.

Similarly, they now report on earned media to provide insight into secondary interests beyond those that an advertiser has targeted. As a result, we help advertisers unearth learnings about their most engaged audiences, which they can use to refine marketing strategies both on and off of Twitter.

The changes you’ll see today on ads.twitter.com are part of the ongoing mission to give marketers the tools needed to make the best decisions in order to get the most out of Twitter Ads.

LinkedIn Boasts 1 Billion+ Endorsements On the Social Platform [Infographic]

Posted by in Infographics, Internet, Social Media / No Comments

Are you one of the 58 million professionals who have been recognized for their skills and expertise on LinkedIn? Skill endorsements are a great way to help build your professional brand, in fact you’re 4 times more likely to be viewed on LinkedIn if you’ve been endorsed. It’s also an effective tool to recognize the wonderful strengths of your colleagues and peers who you’ve worked with first hand.

In less than six months, 1 billion endorsements have been given out on LinkedIn representing thousands of skills, ranging from Visual C++ to Water Treatment and Creative Writing to Fitness. Did you know giving and receiving endorsements also helps members beef up their profiles? Not only have we seen a 2x weekly increase in recommendations since the launch of endorsements, members are also actively adding new skills to their profiles to showcase their full expertise. Not to mention the many, many coffee dates we know are being scheduled as a result.

We know how important it is for you to showcase your professional best on LinkedIn and LinkedIn has made it easy for you manage what endorsements show up on your profile. This can be handy when someone visits your profile (think recruiter, business partner, or customer), so they can quickly see your top strengths and the diverse skills you bring to the table. With more eyeballs on your profile, you may even want to use the opportunity to spruce up your profile, such as adding a particular project or work experience to go alongside the endorsements you’ve gathered from your peers.

1 billion is a big number to take in, so we’ve pulled together a fun breakdown of the top skills endorsed and who is giving and receiving them on LinkedIn.

1-Billion-Endorsements-Infographic

How To Get More Engagement On LinkedIn Company Pages

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You may have seen that HP recently crossed 1 million followers on LinkedIn, the first company to hit this milestone. You may even be one of them. If you’re not already following a company on LinkedIn, what are you waiting for?

More the merrier

You can follow up to 2.8 million companies on LinkedIn, so why limit yourself to just one or two? Follow companies that span across more than 140 industries, from Bentley Motors to Treasury Wine Estates. Simply go to the search box at the top right of LinkedIn and type in the name of an industry, specialty, company size, or company location. Another way to find companies to follow is to look at what companies your colleagues, future customers, partners or  boss are following, so the next time you meet or end up in the elevator together, you have something other than the weather to talk about.

Stay in the know

So you’re following a company. Now what? Make sure to take a look at the people you know who are also following the company and use it as a way to set up a coffee date. This is a great way to keep in touch as well as seek out potential business or job opportunities. You can also check out active job openings the company has listed either for yourself or to share with your peers who may be looking to make a jump. And don’t forget to check out the news and product updates the company posts, as this information can be a great way to stay ahead of important trends impacting the industries you care about, and provide inside information about a company’s culture or new products in the works.

Sharing is caring

Now that you have access to all this great information about companies you care about, how can you use it to show off your expertise? Perhaps a company you follow just launched a brand new product that has huge impact on your sector or has just released a whitepaper about controversial research. These are great pieces of info to share with your network, so you can be seen as someone with expertise and interest in your chosen industries and topics. Or perhaps you’re just a huge fan of a company and their services. Tell your peers why you love the company and their products. Sharing great companies and products is an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge, and it builds good will with your professional connections who value your opinion as a trusted resource.

We’re growing the number of companies you can follow on LinkedIn every day and we are always looking for more ways to help you find useful and relevant content from companies you care about.

So find some Companies to follow on LinkedIn – we’re confident you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the new jobs, information, insights and opportunities that you and your network will discover in the process. For those of you who are managing a LinkedIn Company Page, check out some tips and tricks.

First published on the LinkedIn blog.

Facebook Likes Reveal Many Things About Your Persona

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Do you like your fries straight or curly? The answer may reveal more about you than you think.

According to a Cambridge University study published Monday looking at how much what people “like” on Facebook can reveal about who they are, people who openly declare their affinity for curly fries on Facebook tend to have higher IQs.

Click by click, Facebook users are building a surprisingly nuanced picture of themselves, even without filling out their social networking profiles. Researchers published the article online at the Proceedings for the National Academy of the Sciences, showing off how they were able to figure out traits such as gender, personality type, political views and sexual orientation of individuals based on what 58,000 Facebook users decided to “like” on sites around the Web.

All of the information in the study, the report said, was in the public domain.

Researchers found that they could, for example, correctly guess a man’s sexual orientation 88 percent of the time by analyzing the kinds of TV shows and movies he liked. It also found that few gay men — less than 5 percent in the study — identify with groups that openly declare their sexual orientation, so a man’s preference for “Britney Spears” or “Desperate Housewives” was more useful in predictions.

Similarly, the researchers also found that they could figure out if a Facebook user used drugs with about 65 percent accuracy based on their expressed public preferences.

The study even included “like” predictors that could tell whether users’ parents had separated when they were young vs. whether they had not.

Researchers told the British paper that they hope this study raises users’ awareness about the kind of information they may not realize they’re sharing with a wider audience.

In some cases, the study said, this data could be beneficial to help improve marketing recommendations or in psychology research. But the study also raised concerns that it’s too easy to gather telling data about users without obtaining their permission.

“One can imagine situations in which such predictions, even if incorrect, could pose a threat to an individual’s well-being, freedom or even life,” researchers said in the study’s conclusion.

Facebook users can change the privacy settings on what they’ve liked through the sites settings to keep their fry — or any other kind of preference — out of the public’s reach.

Prezi Introduces Voiceovers And Sound Into Interactive Presentations

Posted by in Internet, Social Media / No Comments

If you dont know about prezi, then you should and if you are familiar then you are in for a surprise as now you can upload voiceovers or audio clips and associate them with your path points, or add background music to play throughout your entire presentation. Check out how to make your prezis even more engaging:

Prezi Audio Introduction

Try it out today and let us know your feedback.

How To Increase Traffic On Your Blog/Website Through Facebook

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One of the main priorities of Facebook Page owners is to drive traffic back to their business website/blog.  I know this is obvious– but I mention it because there’s an interesting problem that Pages face regarding link-type posts on Facebook.

Simply put, link posts don’t perform nearly as well as other types of posts on Facebook.  In fact, some research has shown that photo-type posts garner as much as 20x more engagement.  The graph below from TrackSocial gives a good visual for the disparity in engagement between different post types on Facebook.

Source: TrackSocial Blog

Source: TrackSocial Blog

And yes, I am aware that Facebook is making link preview images bigger on the Newsfeed.  And yes, that will probably improve engagement for link-type posts.  But at the same time, let’s be real.  This change isn’t going to overcome the 20-1 engagement ratio cited above.  Maybe photos will only be 10x better for engagement than links after this change– but the problem remains.  Keep in mind,engagement doesn’t only mean likes, comments, and shares– it’s also means [link] clicks.

Creatively Overcoming the Problem

Desperate to increase traffic from the links they post on Facebook, Page owners have ‘hacked up’ a new way of posting to improve performance.  This new way seems to have gained popularity over the past few months, as everyone from big brands to the top minds in social media are using it.  Check it out below:

Posting Links as Images

Posting Links as Images

The ‘hack’ is simple– post a link as an image [from the article] and include the link in the body of the post.  By doing this, Pages benefit from the increased weight factor of Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm (because people freaking love photos) which leads to more reach, more engagement, and ultimately more link clicks.

It’s important to note here that in this case, the photos are not hyper-linked.  In other words, clicking on the photo will not lead a user to your website– but instead to a larger version of the image (as Facebook typically does with images).

While the concept here is incredibly simple and effective, the process is an absolute nightmare.  Here’s the breakdown.

  1. Paste link into post box on Facebook.
  2. Click the ‘x’ to remove the link preview.
  3. Click back to the article in another tab.
  4. Find the image you’d like to use and save it to your computer.
  5. Click back to Facebook.
  6. Click to upload an image.
  7. Find the image on your computer and select it.
  8. Type in the article title manually, along with any other post message.
  9. You’re finally done! Click Post!

I’m excited to share an easier way to do this through PostRocket (try it out now!).  This is what we call SmartLink.  It makes this process so incredibly simple.  When you paste a link into your post box in PostRocket, this is what you see:

PostRocket Link Post

PostRocket Link Post

Between the post box and the link preview, you’ll notice a small section that says ‘Format Post Type’ which is followed by a switch.  The switch can be toggled with a simple click– changing the post type from a link to a photo.  The picture below shows what happens when you click on the switch:

SmartLink Switch Activated

SmartLink Switch Activated

Let me point out a few key things in the picture above that happen as a result of clicking the SmartLink switch.  First, the text in the post box changes– the title of the article is automatically inserted before the link.  Then, the images from the article are shown in a carousel.  You can use any image from the article as the photo for your post, or click to upload your own image [in situations where the article doesn't have any great images].  Note here that you can also click on the photo to add text on it and even add a filter.

Other notes regarding SmartLink

  • We purposely do not use link shorteners in SmartLink, as studies have shown they have a lower CTR (click-thru rate) than full URLS, as many people are hesitant to click them.
  • We don’t recommend using SmartLink for YouTube links.  When these are posted as links, they give the user the ability to play the video on Facebook.  This is a much better experience than posting a photo of the video and forcing the user to click-thru to Youtube to watch the video.

First published on PostRocket