Facebook Notes Enhancements: This Week in Social Media

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 Notes Expands, Becomes Highly Customized: “With this update, you can add a cover photo that represents what your note is all about. You can caption and resize photos, and format your text into headers, quotes or bullets.” View an example of the new Notes here.

Facebook updates Notes to make them more customizable.”

Facebook Introduces 360 Video in the News Feed: Facebook announces that “360-degree videos will begin rolling out in News Feed.” Facebook users on the web or on Android will “be able to see 360 videos in News Feed soon.” There are plans to roll out this feature to iOS users in the coming months.

Twitter Redesigns Tweet and Follow Buttons: “Next month the Tweet and follow buttons will switch to a modern, high-contrast design of white text on a dark blue background.”

Twitter is introducing “a new design for Tweet and follow buttons.”

Facebook Enhances Atlas Ad Platform: Facebook’s enhancements to the Atlas platform “will make it easier than ever for clients to perform quality assurance (QA) checks on their actions, performance and placements.”

“New visualizations let clients quickly view activity to ensure newly created actions are working as expected and to monitor performance without running a report.”

Facebook Shares Audience Reactions in Mentions: Facebook added “the ability for journalists and content creators using Mentions to see what people are saying about their articles on Facebook, even if the person doesn’t mention the author by name.”

“As a journalist, you can use this feature in your mentions feed to get a sense of how people are reacting to your articles and connect with them directly.”

Facebook Shares How to Publish Instant Articles With Your Content Management System: “Beyond creating a great experience for readers, [Facebook] designed Instant Articles to make it as easy as possible for publishers to use with their existing Content Management Systems.”

Our Take on Top News This Week

In this blab from Friday, September 25, 2015, Michael Stelzner and guests discuss the top news in social media. Discussion topics include how the industry views and is reacting to ad blocker apps, what Facebook Signal means to business owners, and the rollout of 360-degree video to Instagram and Facebook users. Subscribe to future shows here.

More social media news worth noting:

Instagram Grows to More Than 400 Million Users: Instagram is “thrilled to announce that the Instagram community has grown to more than 400 million strong.”

Facebook Expands Instant Articles: Facebook says “it is ramping up its efforts for its Instant Articles by expanding the number of users who can see them and the number of publishers that can create them.”

Periscope Updates Its iOS App: Periscope released an iOS update that “allows viewers to share screenshots that they take during your stream” and includes a private broadcast feature that “lets you see a list of everyone you follow who follows you back and invite them in a single tap.”

Here are some cool social media tools worth checking out:

Pearltrees Smartcloud Service: An updated version of this bookmarking service allows users to automatically import and organize past tweets and Facebook posts, along with anything stored in Dropbox or Google Drive.

“Import your social networks’ history and your files stored online.”

Filter.ly: This news-reading app scans the Internet to find and deliver the most important information right to your screen and is targeted for online business and content publishers.

Filter.ly promises to “increase user satisfaction, average time on site, user engagement and retention.”

News From a Partner, Simply Measured:

Smart Social Marketers Put Analytics First

For years now, social marketers have prioritized publishing over analytics to increase efficiency in their high-volume roles. This is understandable, but this bias for action causes them to ignore the need for informed decision-making. For marketers to find sustainable success from their social media programs, this has to change. Better social starts by putting analytics first.

Some Interesting Studies to Note:

Social Network Ad Revenues 2015: A new forecast from eMarketer predicts that global social network ad spending will reach $25.14 billion in 2015, higher than the $23.68 billion forecast in April 2015. This rapid growth is specifically attributed to the increase in Facebook’s ad revenue. This year, Facebook will take 64.8% of total social network ad spending worldwide and is expected to capture $16.29 billion in ad revenues worldwide, a jump of 41.8% over 2014.

2015 Recruiter Nation Survey: Findings from Jobvite’s annual social recruiting survey shows that 92% of recruiters use social media to evaluate and engage talent. Not surprising, the top social media network utilized by recruiters is LinkedIn (87%), followed by Facebook (55%) and Twitter (47%). The report also shows that recruiters are open to using new networks like Snapchat (3%), Tumblr and even Periscope to learn about potential job candidates.

2015 Q2 Email Benchmark Report: According to a new report from Experian, email marketing campaigns using the word “choose” or “choice” in the subject line earned 22% higher revenue per email, a 46% increase in transaction rates and a 117% increase in transaction-to-click rates. While email volume rose by 16.1% in Q2 2015 compared to Q2 2014 and response rates stayed fairly constant, 51% of brands claimed to have seen significant year-over-year increases in transaction rates and revenue per email.

Ooyala Q2 Global Video Index: The latest quarterly video study from Ooyala reports that online video viewers using mobile phones spent two-thirds of their viewing time in Q2 2015 with content shorter than 10 minutes’ duration. The report also notes that mobile devices accounted for 44% of video plays in Q2 2015.

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What do you think? Have you experienced 360-degree video on Facebook yet? Please share your comments below.

Facebook Notes Enhancements and other social media news for September 26, 2015.