With new technological advances being made every day, and social media platforms constantly evolving, it is sometimes difficult to keep up with the constant changes that we as public relations professionals need to know. Our client
s and companies we represent expect us to be at the forefront of account designs and new platform functionality.
In this week’s PRSA “Friday Five”– an analysis of the week’s biggest public relations and business news and commentary – we share the five important news stories from five major social media platforms. The new Facebook company page design, ads on Pinterest, profile enhancement tips on LinkedIn and monetizing Instagram are all covered in this week’s post. We’ll also discuss Twitter’s purchase of native ad startup, Namo Media.
The New Facebook Page Design Is Coming: What It Means For You (Social Media Today)
Earlier this year, Facebook announced that business pages would get an upgrade this summer, and true to their word, you may have already noticed certain pages have already begun to switch over. With all changes expected to go live by June 13, it’s important that brands to be prepare for what’s new.
The author of the article, Sarah Matista, lays out four steps to prepare your business page for the switch. Among her suggestions: “Decide what your most important tabs are, and reorder them so that they are the first two items after the About tab (which you can’t move). Since you can only show two at a time, it’s going to be even more important to promote your tabs (contests, events, etc.) with visually engaging posts. For even more exposure, promote things like contests on your website and in Facebook ads, too.”
Visit the article read Matista’s three additional suggestions.
Moving Fast To Monetize, Pinterest Debuts Self-Serve Ads (Forbes)
With Pinterest boasting impressive referral metrics, the platform has landed on many brands’ “must-have” lists. A number of companies have been promoting their products via the platform and it has proven to be an effective tool. Now Pinterest is starting to monetize this success with self-service ads.
According to the article, Pinterest seems to be fast-tracking the ad process. “It was nearly two years from the moment Twitter started selling ads until it opened its platform up to small advertisers wanting to buy them on their own. Pinterest covered the same ground in a month. On Thursday, it launched a self-service option allowing small businesses to place Promoted Pins — its first ad product — into the search and category feeds of users.” Read the full story on Forbes.com.
How to Make a Bigger Splash with Your LinkedIn Profile (LinkedIn)
While we (usually) do not hesitate prior to posting to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, there’s something “official” about LinkedIn that makes us think twice before publishing. With LinkedIn debuting its publishing platform in February, many professionals have indicated that they haven’t published on the platform yet because they felt their personal profiles weren’t up to par.
“Some of our members have confided that they’ve been postponing publishing on LinkedIn because they don’t feel like their profiles are up to snuff, and they want to spiff up first,” said Shannon (Stubo) Brayton. “That’s like waiting to plan a great beach vacation until you’ve lost five pounds!”
Visit the article to view Brayton’s top five tips to get your LinkedIn profile in shape in less than ten minutes.
How Vogue is making (a little) money on Instagram (Digiday)
Most communication professionals enjoy Instagram for personal use, but have you considered the photo sharing and editing program to help sell products? Vogue Magazine has proven that it may be as simple as “double tapping” a photo or clicking the heart to indicate a “like.”
The article explains: “The new feature is courtesy of the publication’s partnership with rewardStyle, an ad tech company that specializes in affiliate marketing for fashion publishers. Vogue has integrated rewardStyle’s Like to Know product, a feature that allows Instagram users to buy the items shown in an Instagram photo by simply liking the image. Now, when Instagram users like a Like to Know-enabled post from Vogue, they will receive an email instructing them on how to buy the item.”
Read more about this interesting partnership via the article.
Twitter Buys Mobile Native Ad Startup Namo Media For Around $50M (Tech Crunch)
Like Pinterest, Twitter is expanding its advertising functionality. This week, Twitter purchased Namo Media for (as the article’s author speculates) approximately $50 million. Namo Media creates native ad content with a focus on mobile ads.
According to the author, Ingrid Lunden, users may see a change in how ads appear on Twitter. “The idea of seamless ads fits in with how Twitter has been trying to ramp up its own advertising business both on desktop and mobile versions — eschewing banners and ads in the margins in favour of tweets, and more recently cards, that appear in a user’s Twitter stream in the form of Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts.”
Read more about this major acquisition via the article.
