We’ve sorted through the week’s social media news and curated a handful of stories that your business should know about; plus a little fun and/or interesting things we found along the way.
In this week’s report, we’re looking at the continued growth of video, especially on Facebook and mobile, Twitter’s evolution as a marketing channel, what ‘content recommendation’ means for businesses, and the latest in what businesses should know about employees’ rights on social media.
SOCIAL STATUS
Facebook Adds View Counts to Videos
by David Cohen, AllFacebook
Facebook announced this week that they’re getting more than 1 billion video views per day since June, with 65% on mobile … for businesses, video is a great way to showcase your products and with the auto-play feature, users are engaging significantly more. As videos become more popular on Facebook, developing a video strategy becomes increasingly important.
“Busy day today between Apple & NYFW: @impossiblecool: pic.twitter.com/spJeWUagMW”
— Josephine Home (@JosephineHome) September 9, 2014
Twitter Testing a Buy Button
by Vindu Goel, New York Times
As Twitter continues to transform itself to be more attractive to users and also to marketers, they’re testing out a way for users to buy products with a click, directly in the Twitter stream. This would allow businesses to promote items from their website as well as other social media sites, on Twitter, providing the opportunity for instant purchase. While it’s unknown at this time, the businesses that will be participating in the initial testing, local businesses should at least consider beefing up their Twitter presence in preparation, so if it becomes available more broadly, local merchants will have an engaged following to market to.
Facebook May Start ‘Recommending’ Posts
by Lucia Moses, Digiday
Content Recommendations are the latest thing, as Yahoo and Google are working on their own versions, with Facebook now possibly getting in the mix. For businesses, this means the potential opportunity to pay in order to have your content ‘recommended.’ While this function is similar to paid advertising, it provides an added layer of ‘native-ness’ by tapping into users who are already viewing something related or relevant to your promotion. This type of functionality seems to favor content creators who want to get their stories in front of a captive audience, however if Facebook allows advertisers to target based on this recommendation platform, it could be a deeper level of advertising for businesses to reach their core demographics.
When Employees Knock Their Bosses on Social Media
by Adriana Gardella, New York Times
As social media makes the line between personal and work increasingly gray, employers “may have less authority than you think.” Recent cases have found that what employees say on social media may not be grounds for termination. This article discusses in more detail, the precedent set by this case and general guidance for employers trying to do the right thing.
GOOD READ
What to Do on Your First Day Back from Vacation
by Peter Bregman, Harvard Business Review
“You come back from vacation and start your game of catch-up. This is an especially challenging game if you’re a senior leader. You have hundreds, maybe thousands of emails, a backlog of voicemails, and a to-do list that doubled or tripled in length while you were away. You need to respond to the pent-up needs of clients, managers, colleagues, employees, and vendors. You need to fight fires. You need to regain control.”
GOOD NEWS
The World’s First Computer Mouse
by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings
“The mouse, with its ability to click on specific parts of a document, was the device that made hypertext possible. Without hypertext, there would be no links, and without links, no web. The first computer mouse, held by its inventor, Douglas Engelbart, in 1963 …”
so cool. RT @brainpicker The world’s first computer mouse, held by its inventor in 1963 http://t.co/4WAhule2fJ pic.twitter.com/aZA3dUMDqX
— Chau Tu (@chaubtu) September 10, 2014
That’s what we have this week (so far). Stay tuned to our Twitter to keep up to date on the latest developments to make sure your business is plugged in.
