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Welcome to our weekly edition of what's hot in social media news.
To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
What's New This Week?
Facebook Launches Ads Manager App: “Whether you want to monitor current ads or create new ones, ads manager app gives marketers more power to manage ads from anywhere.”
LinkedIn Launches Lead Accelerator: LinkedIn's Marketing Solutions Portfolio expands to include Lead Accelerator, a “new lead generation and nurturing product that connects companies to the right professionals with the right content as they make their way through the purchase decision process.”
Twitter Pushes an Official WordPress Plugin: “The Twitter plugin for WordPress optimizes your website for a Twitter audience.”
Google Analytics Offers Instant Activation for Remarketing: “Instead of manually updating all of your site tags, simply use Instant Activation and get started with remarketing in four easy steps.”
Google Introduces Trash Can, Data Recovery in Google Analytics: The new feature, Trash Can, provides “a safety net each time you delete a view, property or account from your Google Analytics account.”
Here are a few cool social media tools worth checking out:
Mediametric: This service helps publishers and marketers measure the social reach of media, writers and articles by measuring shares, comments and citations and compare their stats. It's currently in beta.
SocialRank for Instagram:Â SocialRank is launching Instagram follower analytics and offering early access to those who apply.
LiftMetrix app for Hootsuite: An integration between LiftMetrix and Hootsuite that provides “precise and accessible recommendations for improving engagement and boosting social ROI.”
Picattoo: This service lets you print temporary tattoos from your Facebook and Instagram photos.
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Other social media news worth noting:
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GET THE DETAILSGoogle Introduces YouTube Kids App: YouTube Kids is “a new family-friendly app that makes it easy for kids to explore a vast selection of videos on any topic.”
Facebook Update for iOS Lets You Share Directly on Messenger: “You can now share to Messenger from anywhere on your iPhone and iPad.”
Weekly Video Tip:
How to Use Facebook Ads Manager to Analyze Your Fans' Likes, Interests, Demographics and More
Some interesting studies to note:
Pinterest for Marketers: What You Need to Know: A new report from eMarketer estimates Pinterest's U.S. user base will reach 47.1 million in 2015, up 11.4% year over year, and will account for nearly 30% of all U.S. social network users by 2019. The report analyzes Pinterest along four major categories: usage, marketing, advertising and ecommerce and outlines 16 things marketers should know as Pinterest starts a major advertising push in 2015.
77% of Companies Are Increasing Digital Budgets: The Marketing Budgets 2015 Report, published by Econsultancy in association with Oracle Marketing Cloud, surveyed marketers at over 600 companies between December 2014 and January 2015 on their priorities for the next 12 months. The report found that investment in digital marketing continues to grow, with 77% saying their companies intend to increase budgets in 2015. While 34% currently spend more than half of their marketing budgets on digital, restricted budgets for all types of marketing and a lack of understanding about digital are the top barriers to investing more money.
2015 B2B Technology Content Survey Report: Eccolo Media surveyed 100 influencers and decision makers at B2B companies on their technology buying decisions. Thirty-eight percent say they have not seen any social media content from vendors in the past six months that has influenced a business purchase at their company. More than a third (34%) of respondents recall seeing useful vendor content that assisted with a purchase on Facebook, making Facebook the most influential social network among B2B technology buyers. LinkedIn ranked second most influential (32%), followed by Google+ (28%), YouTube (27%) and Twitter (20%).
Facebook Meets Users' Expectations More Than Any Other Social Network: Brand Keys' 2015 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index examined customers' relationships with 540 brands in 64 industry categories and found that Facebook ranked the highest among social media platforms when it comes to meeting customer expectations. In addition, Facebook's WhatsApp topped the list of messaging applications that also meet customer expectations.
The World's Most Popular and Influential Brands: Social media intelligence company Infegy released a new report, The World's 50 Most Popular Brands of 2014, based on billions of online conversations from 2014.  The report analyzed over 800 brands to determine which brands people discussed the most, overall brand sentiment, levels of positive purchase intent and several other metrics to determine the 50 most popular brands.
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