Group items tagged

we looked at four post types: link posts, video posts, photo posts and status updates. When paid media is applied to an organic post, it can significantly increase Facebook metrics – from impressions (obviously), to conversions – so we removed all posts with paid impressions from the analysis. For both time periods, we took the total reach for each post type and divided it by the total post count for that post type to get the average reach per post type for the given time frame.

As expected, the average reach per post on status updates decreased after the algorithm change. Significantly.

Photo and video posts had no discernible change in reach after the algorithm change as we would expect. This is good news for marketers who already regularly integrate rich media into their post strategies as it is well documented that images and video generate greater fan engagement – and from this research, it looks clear that they will continue to do so.

In 2016, BuzzSumo analyzed more than 800 million Facebook posts. Based on their findings, posts with less than 50 characters “were more engaging than long posts.” According to another, more precise study by Jeff Bullas, posts with 80 characters or less receive 66 percent higher engagement:

Paid posts: 5 to 18 words Every Facebook ad needs three types of content: a Headline, Main Text, and a Description. After analyzing 37,259 Facebook ads, AdEspresso found that ads did best when the copy in each element was clear and concise. According to the data, the ideal length for a: Headline, the first text people read, is 5 words. Main Text, the snippet above your image or video, is 14 words. Description, the text that lives directly below your headline, is 18 words.

Videos: 30 to 60 seconds With video, one of the primary measures of success is how long people watch, also known as your video retention rate. In 2016, Kinetic Social tracked 2 billion social ad impressions and found that 44 percent of 30- to 60-second videos on Facebook were viewed to completion. Meanwhile, videos that ran under 30 seconds or over two minutes saw completion rates of 26 and 31 percent, respectively. A more recent poll, from 2018, showed that 33 percent of Facebook users preferred to watch shorter videos, from 30 to 50 seconds long.

Three main factors determine what you see in your Instagram feed:Interest: How much Instagram predicts you’ll care about a post, with higher ranking for what matters to you, determined by past behavior on similar content and potentially machine vision analyzing the actual content of the post.Recency: How recently the post was shared, with prioritization for timely posts over weeks-old ones.Relationship: How close you are to the person who shared it, with higher ranking for people you’ve interacted with a lot in the past on Instagram, such as by commenting on their posts or being tagged together in photos.

eyond those core factors, three additional signals that influence rankings are:Frequency: How often you open Instagram, as it will try to show you the best posts since your last visit.Following: If you follow a lot of people, Instagram will be picking from a wider breadth of authors so you might see less of any specific person.Usage: How long you spend on Instagram determines if you’re just seeing the best posts during short sessions, or it’s digging deeper into its catalog if you spend more total time browsing.

Instagram is not at this time considering an option to see the old reverse chronological feed because it doesn’t want to add more complexity (users might forget what feed they’re set to), but it is listening to users who dislike the algorithm.Instagram does not hide posts in the feed, and you’ll see everything posted by everyone you follow if you keep scrolling.Feed ranking does not favor the photo or video format universally, but people’s feeds are tuned based on what kind of content they engage with, so if you never stop to watch videos you might see fewer of them.Instagram’s feed doesn’t favor users who use Stories, Live, or other special features of the app.Instagram doesn’t downrank users for posting too frequently or for other specific behaviors, but it might swap in other content in between someone’s if they rapid-fire separate posts.Instagram doesn’t give extra feed presence to personal accounts or business accounts, so switching won’t help your reach.Shadowbanning is not a real thing, and Instagram says it doesn’t hide people’s content for posting too many hashtags or taking other actions.

Want your link to get the most traction on Twitter? Post it on a Monday between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. ET.

he company revealed that posting links to Twitter between the hours of 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. ET (or 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. PT) will give you the highest click rank, especially on days earlier in the week. Meanwhile, sending a tweet with a link after 8:00 p.m. should be avoided — as should posting links after 3:00 p.m. on Fridays.

The half-life of a link posted to Twitter is about 2.8 hours, according to bit.ly.

Consumers say the types of social content they value most from brands are posts about discounts/sales (72% say so) and posts that showcase new products/services (60%). In contrast, marketers say the types of social content they share most are posts that teach something (61% say so) and posts that tell a story (58%).

There is a significant disconnect between what marketers post to social media and what consumers want brands to post, according to recent research from Sprout Social. The report was based on data from a survey conducted in April and May 2018 among 1,253 consumers and 2,060 social media marketers.

The Facebook news feed algorithm appears to be calculated both per fan and per type of post. That means a person might see Coca-Cola’s photo posts, but not the company’s link posts. There are six post types: a text-only status update, a photo, a link, a video, a platform post, and a question. The first four are the most commonly used.

After some research, its clear that a Facebook page gets more fan engagement from photos than links, statuses, or videos. In fact, photos get as much as twenty times more engagement.

My experiments show that you can get a good amount of clicks on links above photos.

If your brand just posted a status on Facebook, don't waste time waiting to amplify it with an ad buy. If you don't do so within 24 hours, you will lose a great deal of the engagement and viral impressions that would have been generated by posting earlier.

posts that were sponsored in the first 24 hours received 2.6 times more viral impressions and 2.7 times more viral engagements than older promoted posts.

cost-per-click (CPC) is down 2 percent year-over-year and 11 percent quarter-over-quarter, while clickthrough rate (CTR) rose 160 percent YoY and 20 percent QoQ. Facebook ad clicks overall were increased by 70 percent YoY and 48 percent QoQ. Impressions are up 40 percent YoY and 41 percent QoQ.

Comments on ad posts are up 16 percent YoY and 40 percent QoQ; likes are down 4 percent YoY and shares are up 2 percent. Engagement on video is up 25 percent YoY and 58 percent QoQ, showing that auto-play videos haven’t been as toxic as feared. Video plays are up 785 percent YoY and 134 percent QoQ after auto-play videos were implemented in Q4. Nearly 1/4 of all video plays on Facebook happen on Fridays. Posts with images still gain the most engagement, though the percentage of engagement for photo, link and text posts are all down YoY. Posts with links are up 77 percent YoY and 167 percent QoQ, as Facebook has made great strides in making link posts more visual. Most impressions in Q1 came on a Friday, with 15.7 percent of all impressions. Sunday is the least likely day to receive a comment on a post. Facebook referred revenue per visit is up 11 percent year-over-year and 2 percent quarter-over-quarter. Facebook produces 75 percent of traffic to retail sites, up 2 percent year-over-year and 13 percent quarter-over-quarter. Facebook refers 52 percent of social traffic to B2B high tech sites, up 34 percent year-over-year.

Ignite analysts reviewed 689 posts across 21 brand pages (all of significant size, across a variety of industries) and found that, in the week since December 1, organic reach and organic reach percentage have each declined by 44% on average, with some pages seeing declines as high as 88%. Only one page in the analysis had improved reach, which came in at 5.6%.

As reach declined, the raw number of engaged users plunged as well, falling on average by 35%. Some pages saw engaged users fall as much as 76%. Only one page in the data set had an increase in the number of engaged users, coming in at 0.7%.

To add salt to an open wound, current research from Forrester and Wildfire shows that engaged users are a brand’s best customers.  They are more likely to purchase, recommend and prefer brands when they are socially engaged with that brand.  With fewer engaged users (-35%), brands bottom line are further penalized by the recent changes.

Last month the FTC issued warnings to celebrities who plugged products on their Instagram accounts without clearly identifying their relationships with brands. The letters were meant to “educate” the celebrities on how to post without violating the organization’s disclosure guidelines.

The FTC said it sent out similar letters to each influencer to “call attention” to the post in question. Each letter reads: “The FTC’s Endorsement Guides state that if there is a ‘material connection’ between the endorser and the marketer of a product — in other words, a connection that might affect the weight or credibility that consumers give the endorsement — that connection should be clearly and conspicuously disclosed, unless the connection is already clear from the context of the communication containing the endorsement. Material connections could consist of a business or family relationship, monetary payment, or the provision of free products to the endorser.”

The FTC cited cases in which disclosures appeared in captions at the bottom of a post, and were only found if consumers clicked on the “more” button to reveal the full text. Multiple hashtags, tags and links also were frowned upon, as they obscure the disclosure.

Having Google Authorship allows the original author to claim dibs on original content; however, according to Mark Traphagen the acclaimed Google+ guru (he really is), there is nothing in place with Google + right now that protects any writer from content scraping.

it doesn’t prevent someone from copying your content, just wouldn’t allow them to outrank you for it. I suspect we will have to wait for implementation of Author Rank for that to be fully in effect,” said Mark in a Google+ thread with Neal, Frank Strong, and me.

Neal said in a recent G+ thread, ” I still recommend every blogger to at least include one internal link in each of their blog posts so that if their content does get copied, and it’s often copied as part of blogs automatically importing content through RSS feed manipulation, that at least you get a back link.“

If one Page tags a second Page you like or follow, you may see that post in your News Feed even if you don’t like or follow the first Page.

The most important thing for Pages to know about the change is that posting Lolcats-style memes with overlaid text on images might not be the best strategy going forward. I asked whether Facebook’s machine learning algorithm will be able to identify these kind of posts and demote them, and it seems that the answer is ‘yes’.

It is interesting that blog posts shared only on Twitter tended to have 63% more page views than those shared on Facebook and 117% more page views than those not shared at all. 

Sharing your blog posts also dramatically increases the number of inbound links a post will receive. Posts only shared on Twitter had 54% more inbound links than those shared just on Facebook, and 113% more than those not shared at all. 

Create Rich Cards Rich cards are a form of structured data; they give users visually appealing information that is easy to understand and provides a flawless mobile search experience. They are Google’s way of taking advantage of the rise in mobile usages, which has surpassed desktop. They aren’t just easy on the eyes though. Analysts at Google state that Schema markups will become more important when it comes to search ranking as time goes on.

Create Skyscraper Content If you haven’t heard of or don’t use skyscraper content, then you’re missing out on a lot of SEO juice. The term was coined by  Brian Dean, who used it to boost his traffic by 110% in 14 days. Skyscraper content involves finding high performing content in your niche and creating something better, and then shamelessly promoting it.

Take Advantage of High-Performing Posts You know that internal linking is a good SEO practice. But, do you optimize your internal linking for maximum effect? At the beginning of this post, I told you that 73% of users don’t click past the first page. That means that your pages with less authority will be left out in the cold and will receive only the occasional stray or lucky click. You can remedy this pretty quickly. If you have pages with high authority showing up on the first page of the search results, take advantage of this and link to lower ranking posts from these high-performing posts. This strategy can lead to more clicks and higher rankings.

Instagram isn’t quite bringing back the chronological feed, but it will show more new posts and stop suddenly bumping you to the top of the feed while you’re scrolling.

It should be more coherent to browse the app now that you won’t lose your place because your feed randomly refreshes, and there shouldn’t be as many disparate time stamps to juggle. Instead, you’ll be able to manually push a “New Posts” button when you want to refresh the feed.

“Based on your feedback, we’re also making changes to ensure that newer posts are more likely to appear first in feed” the company writes.

“We work very hard to remove illegal content from our platform and are determined to work with others to solve this problem,” the company said in a statement. “As experts have pointed out, this legislation would force private companies rather than the courts to become the judges of what is illegal in Germany.”

Germany officially unveiled a landmark social-media bill Wednesday that could quickly turn this nation into a test case in the effort to combat the spread of fake news and hate speech in the West.

The highly anticipated draft bill is also highly contentious, with critics denouncing it as a curb on free speech. If passed, as now appears likely, the measure would compel large outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to rapidly remove fake news that incites hate, as well as other “criminal” content, or face fines as high as 50 million euros ($53 million). Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet agreed on the draft bill Wednesday, giving it a high chance of approval in the German Parliament before national elections in September. In effect, the move is Germany’s response to a barrage of fake news during last year’s elections in the United States, with officials seeking to prevent a similar onslaught here.