Below is a look at the last fortnight’s Social Media News, focussing on improvements to social networks that you can use to help grow your business. For help and training on increasing sales, boosting visits to your website and improving customer services, please get in touch to arrange an appointment or book me for a phone call.
Facebook launch new mobile apps – New apps for managing business Pages are now available from the Apple App (iPhone only) and Google Play stores. Named Facebook Pages Manager (aka Pages) the new apps do what they say on the tin but are not even better. A smarter cleaner look and easier access to Admin functions and Insights. Best of all is the ability to edit posts. If you want to make managing your Page easier I’d recommend downloading. Up next – an iPad Facebook Manager app?
Facebook Ads now to be more engaging – Facebook are introducing a new design for their ads on the right hand side in the coming weeks with larger dimensions for the image but now with the same proportions as the News Feed ad image. This means that the same image size can now be used for both with 1200 x 627 pixels recommended. In early tests, Facebook have seen increased engagement of up to 3 times more from people seeing the new design. This is another move by Facebook to make Ads work well for both businesses and users.
Google+ steps back from search result integration – In a blow for Google+ users, Google have announced that the profile photo of authors (those with Google authorship set up) and number of people in their Circles will no longer be displayed in Google Search results against posts they have authored. The author’s byline will still be displayed. This was an important benefit of a Google+ profile. John Mueller, an analyst at the firm states, “…removing the image leaves searchers acting in a “similar” fashion”, so it seems that consistency is the aim of what is sure to be an unpopular change amongst authors and bloggers.
Receive notifications when you’re near a venue you’ve pinned – Android users with the latest Pinterest app (download here) for their phone or wearable can now receive a push notification when they are near a venue they’ve pinned. Handy for planning your holiday or trip to a town or city you haven’t visited before. Just pin the venues you might want to visit to receive notifications on your device when you’re near them. You can then use Google Maps to reach your destination.
Obtain and post new content Daily – Buffer has launched a new app called Daily that present suggestions for you to easily post and tweet. It’s being pitched as ‘Tinder for content’ – swipe left not to post and swipe right to post. Essentially, Buffer have taken their recent ‘suggested content’ feature and turned it into an app. At the moment it’s only available from the Apple Store.