#mindsharemena

Recently, Twitter, created a new feature that allows users to customize their timeline into several lists. Instead of scrolling down to view user tweets, we can now swipe left according to our favorite topics. Tweets become segmented and filtered based on the special topics that other users tweeted about. In other words, if we are interested in Art topics, we can create a list, subscribe to Art accounts/users and read all tweets coming from all those accounts. 

This new feature however, according to Twitter is, “underrated, underused”. Twitter recently acknowledged that they must raise awareness and demonstrate how users can benefit from using the feature accordingly.

In addition to raising awareness, users are having a hard time locating this feature within the Twitter application. According to Twitter, users will have swift access to the feature after its application update.

Twitter lists create opportunities for users that weren’t available before. Customizable lists save user effort and time, hence facilitating Twitter usability simply by swiping left to switch lists. By creating and customizing lists, users can always stay up-to-date on all topics they are interested in. However, the question is: how can Twitter shed light onto this feature and allow its users to fully grasp this feature?

Mindshare experts believe that this new feature can help their brands reach and engage with Twitter followers better than ever. With this feature, brands can ensure that all their tweets are read and are no longer abandoned by users, which is usually the case with excessive scrolling. If brands guide followers in a well thought of strategy on how to use ‘create a list’ and to subscribe to it, brands can guarantee that tweets would reach the right target audience both efficiently and effectively.  

Yasmine Abdallah,

Senior Social Media Executive,

Another day, another newsfeed ranking update from Facebook. Recently, Facebook announced that they’re revamping their newsfeed and making it closer to their users in 2 different ways: prioritizing people whose posts you’d consider seeing in addition to links that you’d be interested in viewing.

“The closer the relationship, the more you see from them” this is the simple formula for the first update. Previously, Facebook used to rank the posts based on predictable signals about the bonds among its users but, as they took on this revamp Facebook surveyed users to be able to improve the accuracy of their assumptions. As they did that, some new patterns were detected such as having common tags in pictures, being at the same places & interacting with the same posts which implies a close relationship between these people. Such patterns will be fed into the algorithm to have more relatable content on users’ newsfeed from the people they want to hear from. So, heads up, you’ll be seeing a lot of posts from your meme buddy!

Moving on to the part that will affect many businesses, links and their relevancy. Aside from the recent updates on their remove, reduce & inform strategy, Facebook also took feedback from their users in order to find out what links interest and relate them to the type of post, who posted it, and the engagement it has received in order to have a better evaluation on this link.

Facebook claims that “these changes aren’t meant to show more or less from Pages or friends. Rather, the Page links that are surfaced to people will be ones they find worth their time.” However, we assume that these changes will have an inevitable effect on the page reach on the long term.

So as businesses and content creators how can we adapt to this change? To begin with we need to have done our consumer homework in order to make sure that the content we’re posting is relevant to them and will make them stop scrolling to check the post out. Also, it’s very important that we avoid having “engagement bait” posts, such as the tagging competitions since we need the users to engage with the post because the content is relevant, inspiring and meaningful to them not because we asked them to.   Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm is changing as we go, and we have to adapt as they do so to make sure that our content will stand out in all settings.

Not long time ago, LinkedIn announced a new feature which enables users to attach documents to direct messages. LinkedIn is expanding its services to include uploading documents to news feed updates directly; in other words: attaching docs or presentations is no longer restricted to direct messages!

Figure 1. reference: SocialMediatoday.com

Allowing direct upload to the platform is hugely beneficial. One advantage of this feature includes creating a professional presence to all users and companies. Moreover, it allows sharing expertise between users and encourages storytelling.

In their blog post, LinkedIn co-authors Margaret Taormina and Steven Chow stated: “Documents and presentations are an impactful way to share knowledge with your community and ignite richer conversations on topics you care about. From conference presentations and whitepapers to case studies and playbooks, sharing presentations is a great way to break down complex ideas, tell stories by combining words and images, and allow you to go deeper.”

Figure 2. reference: SocialMediatoday.com

This update which is currently available through desktop versions only and will soon be available to mobile App users too, will allow users to create a mini-version website of their own, where they can share their portfolio, work samples, presentations, blog posts and projects they worked on.

Yasmine Abdallah,

Senior Social Media Executive,

Publications form an important ring in the chain of stakeholders on Facebook, which is why the latter wants them happy and most importantly stay on the platform. But how do you make publishers happy? Make them earn some money to help them keep going. This is exactly what Facebook is trying so hard to accomplish.

A year after first introducing their collaboration with publishers via paywalls in Instant Articles (IA), Facebook is now adding more publications on their list in efforts to further study ways to perfect the process and find middle grounds.

What is the process to subscribe to a publication right now?

If a user (let’s call him Sam) is not subscribed to a publication called Publiky and hits a paywall on an IA, he will get an option to subscribe to obtain full access for all articles from them. From Publiky’s side, it can opt in for either of Facebook’s models: Metered or Freemium. Now if Sam does subscribe, the actual transaction will take place on Publiky’s website with 100% of the revenue going back to them. In return – of course – Publiky will have full control of the pricing mechanism.

Facebook is still looking for more ways to improve the process of getting more publishers on board, saying it has been able to decrease the development time by up to 75% making it easier for publications to opt in.

However, there is one crucial point to be considered, how can users like Sam be retained?

Being the prominent social network that it is, Facebook is testing the following features:

1-      Making publishers able to allow users to insert their email addresses (User database anyone?) to continue reading a certain article

Adding a “Welcoming Screen” which encourages Sam to follow Publiky’s page and stay up-to-date with what they post, with stats indicating that this has resulted in an increase from 54% to 94% of new subscribers following the publisher’s page.

Another new feature under-test is the ability to pay the subscription to the publication directly through Facebook. Even though its elaborate details are still in the hush-hush, this step would for sure highlight the collaboration between the two parties, allowing publishers to grow their business through Facebook instead of depending on other medium to increase website traffic and “reads” basically.

This can be a huge step forward for publications that aspire to grow business-wise and score more exposure, because after all, Facebook is the biggest social platform currently - regardless of its lurking issues - and utilizing this partnership can help them grow to new heights.

Nour El-Hoss, 

Social Media Executive,

You might be one of those few people who witnessed Instagram’s latest timeline update, or NOT!

Here’s what happened in a nutshell: Some users noticed that their timelines were no longer the same. The traditional vertical scrolling was suddenly replaced by a horizontal one; like that of stories.

In the light of the unexpected update, users directly took over Twitter’s news feed to vent out their disappointment. Others were furious to an extent that they even considered deleting the app (see video).

 After the topic went extremely viral and “Instagram update” was trending on Twitter with almost 90% negative sentiments, Instagram spoke up in an official tweet stating that what few users witnessed was a bug, which caused another wave of sarcastic tweets. 

However, what users were not aware of is that the new update was supposed to be tested and later launched, if agreed on, through the explore section and not the timeline. Due to a “bug”, users saw the feature on their timelines rather than the explore section.

Chronological Order, Please!

Following Instagram’s statement, some users took the opportunity to express their wish to have the chronological order back, after Instagram changing its algorithm few months ago.

We cannot ignore the fact that some users were actually happy about the new update. At first sight, you might need some time to adapt to the new layout, however after having a second thought you might like it.

The new layout will allow users more time to absorb the content rather than scrolling fast without giving some posts enough attention. Moreover, instead of tapping “view comments”, users will only have to swipe up to view all comments which is more user friendly.

Aside from beauty brands, this update will be beneficial for brands in the Entertainment industry or even Food and Beverage as their content depends widely on visual elements to capture the attention. But most importantly, users consent to content and the way it’s displayed on social is what counts to make better results.  

Yasmine Abdallah

Senior Social Media Executive

Welcome to the new world of new insights for Facebook events! 

The most successful physical events are the ones that are fully pre-planned and smartly post-analyzed. Same applies for the events created on FB, even if it is only virtual. In fact, a successful event on FB can lead to a great one on the ground. To achieve that, all you have to do is Plan, Launch, Analyze, Learn, Repeat! For the sake of the events  insights update, this article will tackle the analysis and learning sides only.

ANALYZE:

After your FB and actual events have run, prepare your calculator, critical thinking, and some papers (word doc is fine) and let’s get to work.

First, let’s see how the new events insight page looks like:

In the screenshots shown above, we notice that the page displays a summary of key metrics of all events done in the past customizable period; it gives you the total number of events launched, how many people reached (and growth), the figures for the event responses, and how many clicks the tickets link landed. If the tickets website has a pixel installed (YAY), then the clicks metric comes in handy to keep track of how many users clicked on the link vs. how many claimed/bought or RSVP’d for your event.

The second addition to this page is the active posts tab, which is merely for community management purposes, allowing you to respond to questions, clarifications and reviews from users on the event page.

The third red box to the middle highlights Facebook’s recommended actions for best results. Those can include adding co-hosts in case you have other partners, or collaboration with another brand. The more events you have, the more tailored the recommendations can be.

LEARN:

Instead of just throwing information, we will just list a couple of questions and arguments that can help you come up with valuable learnings and tips for next events on FB:

1-      Was the number of people reached satisfying? If not, try allocating some budget to promote the event and increase visibility.

2-      How many event responses did the event get? Was that number reflected in the on-ground arrangement? Tip: ask attendees to fill in a questionnaire about where they heard about the event from.

3-      Why did some users respond with “Maybe”, while the previous event got a less number? Maybe it is the timing of the event? Creatives in the ad? Different targeting? Obviously, you will find much more options to consider if you dig deeper.

4-      How can I know how many users clicked on the link and took action, and hence were interested in the event? Consider installing an SDK on the checkout step of the website.

Finally, which brands can benefit from those extra metrics in events? LOTS! Here are a few short scenarios: Production house having a movie premiere/album signing, cocktail gathering for an exclusive new product release, new entertainment branch opening, meet and greet event to kick-off the collaboration with a key influencer.… to name a few.  

Nour El-Hoss,

Social Media Executive,

Facebook has sent an important notice to all page managers regarding an update hitting their pages mid-December. The update entails that users will be able to see which countries and how many people per country manage the Facebook page they like. This information is accessible by clicking on the ‘Info And Ads’ tab, which will be showing the below, as per Facebook:

The date the Page was created

The primary country locations where the Page is managed. This applies to all Page roles

The number of people who manage the Page in each country

The Page's previous name changes

Any Page merges that happen on or after September 6, 2018

Also, there’s a possibility that Facebook detects your location wrong, so managers need to turn on Location Services for more accuracy. 

The first thing that comes to mind when you hear of this update is the users reactions when they know that your Saudi brand for example is being managed not only in KSA, but also in Lebanon, UAE, or any other place the page managers are located in.  Another consideration can be driven out of this, which is the prejudice the users will start once they compare the numbers of page managers in x country vs. another. 

But this can be resolved when you submit a request for this information to be hidden here, only then Facebook will be showing it as “Location hidden by Page manager”. In case your brand is international, the fact that your users can see the various locations of page managers shouldn’t be a problem unless you have two of the featured countries are facing political conflicts. Then hiding is the answer. 

For more info about the topic please check Facebook Help page. 

Rayan Sakr,

Social Media Manager,

In efforts to make LinkedIn even more professional, aside from keeping users engaged on the platform, LinkedIn announced in its latest blog post that 1st degree connections can now share a one-time location with peers.

How will this feature benefit LinkedIn users?

This will make it easier for users to arrange in-person meetings whether catching-up with an old colleague, arranging for a corporate meeting, attending a training or even scheduling an interview.

Aside from users’ security concerns that might arise, we cannot neglect that this update will not stop users, co-workers, professionals, and even interviewers from communicating through email or WhatsApp to share location or switch to google maps to search for a location. But the ease of use and the highest likelihood of work-related conversations are usually found on LinkedIn, hence why business meetings can be arranged on the spot with this feature. 

This update is being rolled out gradually to all users including Android and iOS users too.

To send a location to a connection:

The Cherry on Top:

LinkedIn launched mobile posting for business pages after being restricted to desktops for so long. This update will most likely make users’ engagement on the app heavier as it is easy on-the-go. HRs handling careers pages or even content creators, who publish content frequently, will now be able to share updates from their mobiles. Hence, a much easier and faster way to process social posts during weekends or after hours. 

Yasmine Abdallah,

Senior Social Media Executive,