Tag: Twitter

  • Twitter Opens Analytics to All Users and Facebook Allows Advertisers to Target Mobile Users by Bandwidth

    Twitter

    The micro-blogging site has given all users access to its analytics feature. This was initially limited to advertisers, Twitter Card publishers and verified users only.

    Twitter Analytics provides real time insights into how your tweet is performing by showing you the impressions, clicks, retweets and replies for each tweet. You can also get a report on monthly engagement and engagement rates for your account and download Tweet metrics.

    This has been an eye-opener for many users since they realized that their organic reach and engagement rates are not at par with their expectations. But, in the future, this could be a very useful tool to measure your Twitter campaigns.

    The Analytics feature is available to people who tweet primarily in English, French, Japanese and Spanish and who have had an account for at least two weeks. Twitter is looking out to extend this service to the rest of the users, though the company did not specify a time frame.

    Twitter has become very popular in recent times, for news dissemination, joining forces for a crucial cause and the like. The analytics dashboard will help you gauge the reach and engagement of every tweet. This insight is helpful in making sense of your tweet and its effectiveness amidst all the clutter.

    Better campaign measurement means better planned Twitter campaigns with an increase in ROI. The analytics dashboard can also encourage more marketers to run Twitter campaigns. Real time insight into tweet engagement rates allows you to know how your campaign is running at the moment. If you are running a campaign for a long time and you have periodic milestones during that time, you can check if users are engaging with your tweets the way you expected at those milestones.

    Have you used Twitter’s analytics? What do you think about this update?

    Facebook

    Facebook is now allowing you to target mobile users in the developing world with ads depending on their bandwidth. This way you don’t waste your company’s resources in showing a video ad to somebody who is on a 2G mobile network.

    This has huge implications for digital marketers who want to target mobile internet users. Mobile penetration today around the globe is truly phenomenal. But, this is not backed by robust mobile data network, particularly in the developing countries. Until now, advertisers had no choice but to target all mobile internet users with one strategy irrespective of their data speeds.

    For instance, with this new feature from Facebook, you can target your video ads to only those consumers who have sufficient bandwidth to support live streaming. For other customers with slower connections, you can resort to image or link ads.

    Being able to target users based on their data speeds will help you be more confident that users would have access to technology to support your ad format. Knowledge of user data speeds will also help you plan your ad campaigns better resulting in more ROI since you wouldn’t be wasting valuable creatives and money on advertising to users who will not be able to even view your ad.

    Facebook is a quick learner on leveraging its one billion+ user database to its advantage. First, it gave advertisers the ability to target devices and operating systems. With this new addition, Facebook is all set to give you powers that will help you run better performing, cost effective campaigns.

    Will this new Facebook feature help your brand?

  • Facebook Eliminates Like Gating and Twitter Launches Promoted Video

    Facebook eliminates like gating

    Facebook ‘Like’ Gating

    In a blog post on their Developers’ page, Facebook recently announced that from November 5, 2014, they will be eliminating ‘like gating’ for Facebook pages. In the near future, this might be a setback for brands that relied on fan gating to grow their fan base. However, in the long run, brands can focus on gaining relevant fans who also engage with the brand.

    Brands can run Facebook campaigns that don’t require fans to like their Page in order to participate in the campaign. You may lose out a few likes by doing this, but you will gaining relevant fans who will engage much more with your content. What’s more, when you don’t insist on Page likes, you might gain other valuable information such as email addresses.

    Twitter Promoted Video

    Twitter has launched the Promoted Video feature in beta.

    The Promoted Video feature draws on the Twitter Amplify program and provides quality content producers a set of new video tools. According to Twitter, Promoted videos will help brands upload and share videos on the Twitter platform while also measuring reach and effectiveness better.

    Twitter has also started offering the ability to run ads with a new Cost Per View (CPV) ad buying model. This means that you are charged only when a user starts playing your video. You also have access to robust video analytics including competition percentage and a breakout of organic vs. paid video views.

    Coupled with the traction tweets gain, you can now also garner user attention and engage with them through Twitter videos. Promoted video can be a cost effective tool where you pay only if a user clicks on the video to play it.

    What’s your take on these developments? Let us know…

  • Twitter Launches Objective-based Ads and Pinterest Starts a Messaging Service

    Twitter’s Objective-based Ads

    Twitter has launched objective-based ad campaigns, reporting and pricing in beta. This is aimed at helping marketers run and optimize marketing campaigns while paying only for actions that are related to their marketing objectives.

    Objective-based ad campaigns are now available in beta for SMBs and Twitter’s API partners globally. This feature will be rolled out to managed clients on an invitation basis over the next few months.

    Twitter will be providing a customized workflow that is aligned to your campaign’s goals. You can select from a selection of objectives such as, driving Tweet engagement, website clicks or conversions, increase app installs or engagement, adding more followers or gaining more leads. The campaign set up workflow will also recommend the best ad format you can use for your campaign.

    The best part of this feature is that you need to pay only when a user takes an action that is aligned with your campaign’s goals. For example, if your campaign objective is to increase followers on Twitter, you will pay only when users click the ‘Follow’ button and start following your brand on Twitter.

    Campaign measurement is also more relevant and easy since reports will show only those metrics that are important to your campaign and you can download all campaign data into a CSV file. For instance, for a campaign to increase website clicks, reports will show total number of link clicks.

    Being able to create ad campaigns that help achieve specific marketing goals will make it easier for marketers to attain marked goals and measure brand performance better on Twitter. Setting clear campaign objectives will help keep campaigns separate for different goals and avoid situations where investment in a generic campaign did not get the returns you wanted.

    Pinterest Conversations

    If someone sends you a pin, the recent update by Pinterest will now allow you to reply with a message or send a pin back. You can also send messages and pins to multiple people and pull up conversations from your notifications.

    You can save pins directly to a board from the conversation, add it to your favorites’ list and drag and drop pins into the conversation from the home feed.

    Businesses can use this feature to brainstorm ideas within the organization. They can encourage employees to share relevant, engaging pins and discuss about the merit of ideas.

    Another application for businesses is that they can use the Pinterest messaging feature as a customer service platform. This application is only feasible for small businesses, who can have private conversations with their relatively reduced number of customers. This will help them ensure privacy for all customers while bestowing individual attention on every customer.

    Pinterest’s messaging service will also contribute in increasing the engagement levels on Pinterest as users engage more through exchanging pins and messages.

    How do Twitter’s objective-based ads score according to you? Do you think Pinterest’s messaging service will benefit users and businesses?

    Image Source

  • Facebook is Testing ‘Buy’ Button and Twitter Acquires Payments Startup CardSpring

    Facebook

    The social behemoth is testing a new ‘Buy’ button that will let users purchase products without leaving the site. If launched, brands can use this feature to drive sales from News Feed and their Pages.

    Users can now click the ‘Buy’ CTA on ads and Page posts and purchase directly from a brand. Facebook is Testing 'Buy' Button

    Facebook assures users of privacy when using this feature. It says that it will not share with advertisers any of the credit and debit card information users share with Facebook. Users can also select whether they would like to save payment information or not.

    This test is being run with a few small and medium-sized businesses in the US. Facebook says that it will share more information after receiving feedback.

    This feature will allow for more Facebook-driven sales since users don’t have to leave the social network to make purchases. Often, the need to leave the site deters users from purchasing from social networks. If implemented, the ‘Buy’ button can increase sales for brands thereby driving better Facebook ad ROI while making it easier for users to shop on the site.

    Twitter

    The social network is in the news again, this time for the acquisition of payments infrastructure startup, CardSpring.

    This move by Twitter is being seen as an effort to strengthen its e-commerce offerings to increase revenue. CardSpring lets developers build applications for credit cards, discount coupons and other payment systems. Users can collect sales offers, sync them with credit card and collect at stores later.

    CardSpring can help Twitter boost ‘on the spur of the moment’ purchases. As soon as users spot great offers on Tweets, they can immediately purchase with CardSpring’s technology. Along with breathing life into Twitter’s revenue, this technology can also set up Twitter as a name for impulse purchases. This feature will also help users cash in on quick, on the spot deals.

  • Twitter Launches New Analytics Tools

    The micro blogging site is sprucing up its analytics dashboard with the launch of new tools that enable marketers to measure all tweets’ performance in depth, including non-sponsored ones (read organic tweets).

    Marketers can now see the number of tweet impressions, clicks, expands, re-tweets and profile clicks generated. You can also know the number of new followers you have gained through each tweet. The tweet activity dashboard has been launched around the world and is available to all advertisers, Twitter card publishers and verified users.

    Check out the following screenshot that displays the new tools’ capabilities: recent tweets along with impression counts, number of engagements and engagement rate.

    Twitter launches new analytics tools

    Image courtesy: Ad Age

    If you want to view engagement by category, you can click on the numbers, which brings up these details:

    Twitter launches new analytics tools

    Image courtesy: Ad Age

    Effect on marketers

    The launch of these tools helps marketers better understand organic content performance on Twitter. What’s more, if a tweet has gone viral and has been re-tweeted a lot, you will be able to view the performance of that particular tweet with a breakdown of how influential each category has been. Viral tweets contribute to an increase in engagement and consistent viral tweeting also boosts your follower base.

    The capabilities of these tools help marketers in formulating more engaging organic content strategies for Twitter that will get them better ROI.

  • Facebook Acquires LiveRail and Twitter Picks up TapCommerce

    Facebook acquires LiveRail

    Facebook

    The latest addition to Facebook is LiveRail, an online video advertising company that provides premium publishers the technology to sell video inventory across all devices. LiveRail connects publishers to major ad networks, Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs), trading desks and exchanges. It uses a combination of real-time bidding and proprietary market data.

    LiveRail will be functioning as a wholly owned subsidiary of Facebook and will be integrating its data with Facebook’s to improve user targeting and display better ads.

    Video ads’ increasing popularity has propelled marketers to take serious note of it. Now, social platforms are catering to marketers’ video ad requirements. Plus, industry trends are leaning towards programmatic ad buying and Facebook’s acquisition of LiveRail underlines the importance of this trend. With LiveRail’s capabilities, marketers will now be able to harness the power of videos ads and will take Facebook’s user reach and user engagement to a different level.

    Twitter

    Treading on the path of boosting its mobile ad offering, Twitter has announced that it will be acquiring TapCommerce, a leading mobile retargeting and re-engagement advertising company.

    After its acquisition of MoPub, Twitter says it has been working on improving its mobile advertising capabilities. Users are increasingly juggling different media and advertisers are spending to gain new customers. However, reviving inactive customers or retaining current customers is equally critical for good ROI.

    Marketers using Twitter can now retarget and re-engage with users using TapCommerce technology. Twitter will be able to provide better capabilities for app re-engagement, tools and managed service solutions for real-time programmatic buying paired with sophisticated measurement capabilities.

    Used with Twitter’s other ad solutions, marketers will now be able to drive ROI with mobile users both on and off Twitter.

    Social media platforms, especially Facebook and Twitter, are constantly innovating and strategically acquiring smaller, niche companies to build up their arsenal. It will be interesting to see whether marketers can keep up with the ever increasing offerings of these two platforms.

    What do you think of these acquisitions?

  • Animated GIFs, now on Twitter!

    The social media platform recently announced that users will now be able to share and view animated GIFs on the Twitter desktop site and on its Android and iOS apps.

    This move saves users from the round trip they had to take until now, uploading the image on third-party sites like Imgur and then sharing the link on Twitter. Users can now share GIFs directly on the site.

    However, GIFs will not automatically play on Twitter. Each GIF will have a white play button on it, which the user has to click to play the GIF. Share animated GIFs on Twitter

    Changes for Marketers

    Enabling of animated GIFs provides content marketers with more creative avenues for their content marketing efforts.

    GIFs capture attention and engage users more easily. They also help deliver brand messages to customers better through animated visuals. With a 140 character tweet limit, it sometimes would be tough for marketers to convey emotions behind messages. Adding a GIF now makes it easier.

    Let us know if you have anything to add to this…

  • Twitter Offers Mobile Ads Beyond its Site and LinkedIn Shuts Polling in Groups

    Twitter’s Mobile App Install and Engagement Ads

    Post its acquisition of MoPub in 2013, Twitter is expanding its reach by selling ads in mobile apps beyond Twitter. According to Twitter’s blog, “For marketers, this means a rich, native ad unit that combines the best of Twitter Cards and Promoted Tweets. Users can easily install and engage with apps, directly from the Twitter timeline.”

    Through MoPub exchange, you can purchase ads that power mobile app installs and engagement. These apps appear on Twitter as well as thousands of apps on MoPub’s network. Currently in private beta, these ads will be available for purchase in Twitter’s ad auction. You can apply other targeting parameters offered by Twitter for these ads.
    Twitter’s Mobile App Install and Engagement Ads
    You can also participate in real-time bidding to buy mobile app installs and engagement ads programmatically through MoPub within Twitter’s ad system. The ads will appear in the form of banners, interstitials, videos and also in native formats.

    A few brands like Spotify, HotelTonight, Kabam, Deezer, SeatGeek, GREE and GetTaxi have already tested this feature in beta.

    Mobile app installs and engagement ads will work on both, Android and iOS.

    MoPub reaches more than 1 billion unique devices, which is a huge bonus for advertisers in terms of reach. With Twitter being a lead source of engagement, a wide reach can help brands in enriching user experience more.

    LinkedIn Group Polling is Shutting Down

    LinkedIn is closing the Polling feature in Groups. The announcement on its Help Center claims that this update is part of LinkedIn’s bid to build a better product suite.

    As an alternative, brands can continue to engage with fans by:

    • Posting questions to get the Group’s response
    • Sharing an update or
    • Participating in conversations directly on the LinkedIn homepage

    Though this update may not interfere with brand engagement on LinkedIn Groups overtly, it does make a difference where brands will no longer be able to engage through an organized ‘questionnaire’ format that LinkedIn Polling offered.

    Do let us know your opinion on these updates…

    Image Source: Twitter

  • Twitter Releases its First Post-IPO Earnings Report

    Twitter Post IPO

    Image Courtesy: Value Walk

    The results are out! And, it’s been a bittersweet experience for Twitter in the quarter ending December 2013, post its IPO launch in November 2013

    Revenue

    Monetization has been a question that was raised with the launch of all social media platforms’ IPO. But, it looks like Twitter has found the answer with $242.6 million earned as revenue.

    This is the sweet spot.

    So, what is the bitter aftertaste?

    User Growth and Engagement

    The micro blogging site reports current monthly active users to be at 241 million. But user growth has risen only by 4% as compared to the previous quarter. The number of views of Twitter timeline fell by 17% to 148 billion.

    Twitter’s success depends on 2 factors:

    • It’s ability to grow the user base and
    • User engagement

    Currently, both are faltering, which has had a severe impact on its share holdings. Twitter’s stock price fell by 18% after the report was released.

    Conclusion

    Despite the scares, it is important to note that Twitter has succeeded in monetization efforts. However, given its current performance, Twitters’ efforts to build the user base and engagement will be closely watched by the Bull as well as marketers.

    What does this mean for businesses?

    These results may alert brands that are advertising on Twitter to pause and consider the ability of the site to deliver in terms of user reach and engagement. Despite having a large active user base, brands will expect Twitter to project a more promising picture especially after a confident IPO launch.

  • Facebook and Twitter Updates for the Week

    Facebook

    News Reader Service

    According to a Re/Code update, Facebook is going to launch a news reading service, ‘Paper’, by the end of this month.

    ‘Paper’ will reportedly be a Flipboard look-alike in the way it works where it will choose social updates along with news stories from publications that are of interest to a user. As per Re/Code’s update, ‘Paper’ will include Facebook posts.

    During the launch of the new look for the News Feed in March 2013, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had expressed a desire to bring out a ‘personalized newspaper’ and ‘Paper’ seems to be another result of that desire.

    Facebook has declined to comment on this. So, we do not know if ‘Paper’ is going to be a standalone app or if it will be in any other format.

    Keep an eye on this space! We will bring you an update on this once Facebook confirms the news.

    Acquisition of ‘Branch’

    How Branch WorksNew York based start-up ‘Branch’, is the latest addition to Facebook’s arsenal. ‘Branch’, which is into social discussion tools, will form Facebook’s Conversations group and aims to help users connect with other like-minded people. Facebook also gained ‘Potluck’, built by ‘Branch’ in this deal. ‘Potluck’ focuses on content sharing and discussion rather than signs of engagement such as likes.

    The acquisition news was announced through a Facebook post by Branch co-founder Josh Miller. Branch’s capabilities will help in building rich, consistent conversations.

    This looks to be another effort by Facebook to improve the content offered to users.

    Twitter

    Twitters-New-Web-InterfaceTailored Audiences Expanded

    Twitter is partnering with Epsilon to offer marketers new ways of targeting ads through its Tailored Audiences feature.

    Using the SecureConnect technology, marketers can delve into their own audience and zero in on focused segments based on data provided by Epsilon.

    New Web Interface

    Twitter announced the launch of its new web interface through a tweet recently.

    Twitter’s website was behind its iOS and Android sites. With this launch, Twitter is trying to reduce that distance.