This Month in Social: June 2016

The world of social media is constantly changing – and with so many platforms and algorithms out there, it’s hard to keep up. That’s why we provide our clients and followers with This Month in Social – where we highlight the biggest changes in social media and how we prepare to tackle them.

Facebook Reveals ‘Deep Text’ Engine

Facebook has developed an AI Engine under the name “Deep Text.” The purpose? To understand the meaning and sentiment behind text on the social network. This new technology is hard at work, analyzing every word you share, everything you search for, and everything you interact with. By doing this, it’s pairing you up with other posts similar to what you’ve been talking about. Soon, it will even begin serving you content that mimics your conversation style and wordplay (crazy, right?).

What this means for businesses: Wordplay and sentence structure is crucial. Facebook will begin analyzing every word of a brand’s campaign, and determining who (if any) it should serve to, while prioritizing the posts in corresponding search queries. Anything that sounds too spammy won’t show up, so you’re going to need to be personal and conversational in your posts — think about what your customers would post about and how you’d respond to them, or suggest your product/service; indirectly, of course.

Instagram is Open for Business

While we broke the news last month, it looks like brand profiles and analytics are officially here. Starting this June, users in the US, Australia, and New Zealand will have first access, with profiles going global by the end of 2016.

What this means for businesses: Brands will finally receive data about their audience, what time of day they are online, and how their content is performing. Now, businesses will have a better understanding of what they are doing right (or wrong) on Instagram and can adjust strategy accordingly.

Snapchat: The Next App Run By An Algorithm

Snapchat is reportedly planning to use an algorithm to filter and rank content in app. According to a top publishing source close to Snapchat, “It’s going to be the same model Facebook has: It’s free for everybody to share content, but an algorithm will penalize some people and boost others.”

What this means for businesses: It probably comes as no surprise that yet another social network is experimenting with an algorithm. If and when this algorithm roles out for Snapchat the best content will win, so don’t plan on putting just anything out there with your brand’s name on it.

Pinterest Thinks Global – Renames ‘Pin It’ Button to ‘Save’

Pinterest has always been the save button for the internet – but now it’s official. Pinterest has officially renamed its ‘Pin It’ button to ‘Save’ to help make it more intuitive to new users worldwide.

What this means for businesses: According to Pinterest, changing “Pin It” to “Save” led to an eight percent increase in Pin saves. Having more users worldwide saving ideas to Pinterest means a wider and richer selection of Pins to explore – “more authentic Japanese recipes, more French street styles, more Scandinavian parenting hacks.”

Twitter Rolls Out a Slew of Changes

Usernames, quoted tweets, and media attachments will no longer count towards the 140-character limit. Additionally, Twitter announced that users will be able to re-tweet and quote-tweet themselves, with an added bonus of no longer needing to ‘.@’ users to reach all your followers. Life changing.

What this means for businesses: If your business is using Twitter as a source for publishing content and connecting with your audience, then you are no stranger to spending what could be a ton of time figuring out how to get your message across with only so much space available – but not anymore! As a result of this update, marketers using Twitter will have more room to play with, which should hopefully make creating effective tweets easier for your brand.

Facebook’s New Algorithm Results in Publishers Reaching 42% Fewer People

If you don’t think that reach on Facebook has dropped significantly lately, a recent study proves that in fact, it has been – last month SocialFlow discovered that stories posted to Facebook reached an average of 68,000 people compared to 117,000 in January, a notable drop off for such a short period of time.

What this means for businesses: Facebook’s algorithm is tweaked regularly and each time a new type of content is given priority over another – most recently, native video. That said, don’t be surprised if your Facebook numbers start to fluctuate if they haven’t already (and if they’ve dropped significantly, you should probably give video a shot). Furthermore, as the algorithm continues to change, and with no sign of it slowing down, it also becomes increasingly more important for brands to have a social media expert on hand, as they are the ones that will be most familiar with how to adjust your brand’s strategy accordingly.

Have any questions regarding the above changes and updates? Reach out to one of Ferocious Media’s Social Media Analysts today!

To learn more about our Social Media Marketing Campaigns as well as other services that we offer, explore our website or contact us today!