The Social Media Rundown: Search Overtakes Social, Facebook Blocks Third-Party Data Ad Targeting

With a Facebook News Feed algorithm change and few other factors listed below, search is now driving more traffic than social. And in an apparent effort to make some positive changes at the company, Facebook announced it will no longer allow ad targeting based on relationship status. Plus, be sure to check out this week’s learning section for tips on beating Twitter’s algorithm and how you can better protect yourself online.

Social Media News:

The SEO versus Social Battle Has a New Winner (Convince & Convert). Takeaways from Jay Baer on why search is sending more traffic: Less use of social overall, social algorithms showing fewer posts from companies, fewer links in social posts, more social indexed in search engines. If you have an extra minute, definitely watch Jay’s LinkedIn video explaining this trend.

Search vs. Social: Share of Visits Chart — Shareaholic Data Report: Pinterest, Google, & Instagram big winners as Facebook share of visits falls 8% in 2017

Facebook Will No Longer Allow Third-Party Data for Targeting Ads (The Verge). The company is disabling a form of ad targeting called Partner Categories, which allowed prominent third-party data aggregators like Experian and Acxiom to provide clients with offline data like purchasing activity to inform ad targeting.
Facebook Quietly Removes Ad Filter to Target Users Based on Their Relationship Preferences (Marketing Land). The decision to remove the ‘interested in’ filter from its ad platform was based on feedback from outside experts. The decision could prevent malicious behavior targeting the LGBTQ community.

Learn:

Cracking The Twitter Algorithm: 11 Brilliant Ways to Outsmart the Timeline (Sprout Social). This thoughtful post from Sprout Social outlines several ways to increase your organic reach on Twitter, such as tweet consistently, run twitter ads, use twitter video, re-share your top tweets, engage when people mention you, make timely tweets, use emotional trigger words, and several more tips worth considering.
Facebook Isn’t the Only One Tracking You. Here Are 5 Ways to Protect Yourself (Digital Trends). With all the heat Facebook is taking for allegedly abusing data as part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, now might be a good time to consider how you can keep your personal data private online. This article has five helpful tools.

By the way, I share most of the social media news articles and learnings that I come across throughout the week on my Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. Feel free to follow me to keep up. And of course, if you see something interesting in the news, please share.

The Social Media Rundown: Southwest for the PR Win, Zuck Confesses

Southwest Airlines has made a big splash through stellar customer service once again. Recently, when a customer paid for Wi-Fi only to find out she couldn’t get her game to stream, Southwest made it up to her in a big way. Instead of the typical “Sorry to hear you’re frustrated. Please DM us with details,” tweet coming from most any other airline, a guy named Mike at Southwest live-tweeted the second half of the Xavier vs. Florida State tourney game. Now perhaps Mike was just trying to work in some March Madness viewing into his work day, but either way, this landed Southwest some fantastic PR.

Social Media News:

Mark Zuckerberg says he’s ‘open’ to testifying to Congress, fixes will cost ‘many millions’ and he ‘feels really bad’ (Recode). Zuckerberg admits Facebook may have made mistakes in opening up its network so much a decade ago. Also, here’s a nice summary of the whole Cambridge Analytica debacle.
The Atlantic’s new family section is built for the post-news feed era (Digiday). Another publisher creates a Facebook group. This is an indication of The Atlantic’s recent push to connect directly with readers as it looks to grow revenue by boosting subscriptions.
Another Social Network is Here. What Exactly Is It? (Marketing & Growth Hacking). I don’t normally share news of a new social networking site or app on the market as they’re usually unable to compete with Facebook. But this one is interesting because it’s entirely audio-based. Can you imagine people walking around sending voice memos to their public profiles all day? I can’t, but this aligns with the recent boom in podcasts. People would rather listen then read.
Instagram will show more recent posts due to algorithm backlash (TechCrunch). This should be a welcome change to anyone using the platform.

Learn:

Twitter Timeline Algorithm Explained. This post not only has a thorough breakdown of the Twitter algorithm, it’s also full of solid tips for increasing your reach. From using hashtags strategically to how to promote tweets, this post has it all.
5 Instagram Pro Tips You Probably Didn’t Know About. I use Instagram everyday, and almost all of these tips were new to me. You can hide Stories from people, delete sent direct messages, and add gradient text coloring in Stories. The one I knew about is probably the most important: You can turn on post notifications from people and business accounts.

What’s the big news to you this week? What have you learned?

Introducing: The Weekly Social Media Rundown

It’s been a long, unnecessary hiatus from writing in my blog. And well, I guess I got tired of seeing Puppymonkeybaby as my most recent blog post. So here I present you with a few social media news items worthy of your precious time.

I share the following as part of a weekly social media newsletter I send out internally at NEJM Group, as part of my role as Content Engagement Manager. My goal with the newsletter is to share a few of the most important news items of the past week (the ‘Social Media News’ section) and to also provide a few educational items (the ‘Learn’ section) so we can all be better social media marketers. If you have thoughts on the listed items or if you know of some big news I may have missed, please let me know in the comments.

Read the full blog post on Buffer. — A practical quote from the Buffer App blog post, “The New Facebook Algorithm: Secrets Behind How It Works and What You Can Do To Succeed.”

Social Media News:

Twitter Is Experimenting With A Way To Show You Even More Breaking News Tweets (Buzzfeed News). A new, algorithmically curated timeline of news tweets may soon be shown at the top of your feed.
Snapchat Launches ‘True Crime/Uncovered’ Series From Condé Nast Entertainment (Variety). As much as I love Snapchat, I have my doubts that a five-minute long TV show in a vertical, mobile-only presentation will be successful. But then again, Snapchat’s numbers continue to surprise me. For example, NBC News’ “Stay Tuned” is apparently getting 33 million viewers per month.
After Facebook news-feed changes, publishers look hopefully to Pinterest (Digiday). The online scrapbooking platform represented nearly 8 percent of publishers’ social traffic in the second half of 2017, up from 4.5 percent in the first half of 2016.

Learn:

The New Facebook Algorithm: Secrets Behind How It Works and What You Can Do To Succeed (Buffer App). This blog post breaks down the recent news feed changes as explained in a recent webinar hosted by Facebook. The news feed algorithm is broken down into four main components: inventory, signals, predictions, and overall score.
How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile for Better Visibility (Social Media Examiner). If you need to spruce up your personal LinkedIn profile, this is a great rundown of everything you need to know to make it happen.