The Scoop on Social Media Marketing

Facebook Marketplace or Facebook Black Market?

Just earlier this month Facebook introduced a new way to help people make more connections. They announced the latest feature of Facebook called “Marketplace, a convenient destination to discover, buy and sell items with people in your community. Marketplace makes it easy to find new things you’ll love, and find a new home for the things you’re ready to part with.” 

Marketplace can be accessed at the bottom of the Facebook. This feature displays photos of items that people list near you for sale. Facebook gives the option to browse for specific categories such as household, electronics and apparel. Once you’ve found something you like, you can make an offer to the seller and can work out the details of how the payment and meeting will take place. Facebook doesn’t provide a tool for the payment or delivery process. 

Facebook Marketplace is allowed for anyone 18 years or older and living the the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand via the Facebook app. This is appealing for small business owners because Facebook Marketplace does not take a chunk of your profits like other sites such as Ebay and Etsy do. 

There has been a lot of backfire with this new option from Facebook because this is competing with other social media sites such as Ebay, Etsy, and Craigslist. Also, with the release of the new option, Facebook users have been taking advantage of it in inappropriate ways through selling guns, babies, and hedgehogs. 

I am curious and interested to see the innovations Facebook makes to the Facebook Marketplace with time. I’d like to hear your thoughts on whether or not you would use this option to sell your goods and why. 

Sources: http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/10/introducing-marketplace-buy-and-sell-with-your-local-community/

Instagram Business

Instagram is a prime social channel to build up a social following and grow your business. According to wired magazine, “Instagram has launched three new tools to help it’s 200,000 advertisers stand out, with business profiles, analytics and the ability to promote posts...”

The new business profile feature on Instagram has a ‘connect’ button so potential customers can contact the company via phone, text, or email. After conducting hundreds of interviews with businesses, Instagram learned the “three key needs became clear - stand out, get insights and find new customers.” 

Many businesses voiced that it was more efficient to answer client questions through email or the phone rather than scrolling through the comments to respond. 

The new Instagram Business Tools offers three new services:

1. Business profiles - A free feature for accounts to be recognized as business and gives the option of how the customer can get in touch with them: call, text, or email. 

2. Insights - Provides information to the business about who their followers are and which posts have a higher response. The demographic and behavior of the clients allows for relevant content to be posted.

3. Promote - This feature allows for the business page to turn strong performing posts into ads. 

I think this is a new big step for Instagram. The feature of the connect button to allow the consumer to efficiently contact the business is convenient. My only concern is, will Instagram Business become similar to Facebook business pages and their limited audience reach since it’s all one big company now?

For social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram to thrive, participation is essential. “Lurkers” or “passive participants” create a roadblock when they choose not to engage with posts on social media. According to Tuten and Solomon (2015), “The remaining 90% just observe what’s on the site, so they don’t add a lot of value...” 

To increase the participation level on social media platforms there are 3 techniques that work:

1. Know your audience. The first priorities are to figure out who you are reaching out to and how you want them to engage. A social media team is key here as they can create the segmentation and targeting for social media marketing.

2. Relationship Status: Married. Whether you are offering ideas, products, or services, it’s important that what you are offering will travel in the online community. Having a core group that stands behind your social media platform is gold. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful influences. Give all users the chance to share what you offer in a fun and interactive way. This will give the opportunity for the audience to come to you.

3. Have a call to action. What ever service, product, or idea that you are promoting, you want to know that it’s being shared and people are reacting. The best way to do that is to have a call to action. For example, whether it’s tagging friends in a social media campaign or using specific hashtags, keeping track of the responses to your call of action is key to see how effective the message is. 

Grow Your Social Media Following Via Facebook Live

When Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will now offer the option of live streaming for Facebook users he made a strong point that he sees live video “as a way for people to have a more authentic and intimate experience sharing about their lives…”

If you are a blogger or business owner, Facebook live should be a major wake up call for a new and powerful social media marketing tool. According to newsroom.fb.com, “People spend more than 3x more time watching a Facebook Live video on average compared to a video that’s no longer live.” The big question is why? The obvious answer is that people are more attracted to watching someone or something in the moment.

There are three major reasons why using Facebook live is an advantage that sets the business owner or blogger ahead of the game:

Live broadcasts are associated with higher algorithm.

Increased engagement among users.

Followers get to see the “real” you.

Facebook is constantly changing their algorithm. As a business owner it feels like a cat and mouse game of you the business owner being the cat, trying to figure out what pleases the Facebook algorithm that day to catch the mouse. When Facebook is pleased with the user nailing the algorithm on the head, the user gets greatly rewarded by earning a higher ranking on the newsfeed. Coming up at the top of the newsfeed brings greater relevancy which results in higher engagement.

Also, using Facebook live is a good implementation of the LARA Framework. During Facebook live, the user should mention from the start that there will be a Q & A session at the end. This helps facilitate the points to listen to customer feedback and also go back to the customer conversations in the comments section to relate the information with the enterprise system as well as act on customer conversations.

We are in a revolutionary time of constant technological evolution. Who are you going to choose to be on Everett Rogers model Diffusion of Innovations?

Photo Credit: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2016/04/26/facebook-live-everything-you-need-to-know/#1df1679d7a82