Lack of website traffic is one of the most common challenges from business owners. Many report having lost a significant percentage of their search traffic over the past year or two, and are continuously looking for new ways to drive relevant traffic to their site. Here are some attempts to give marketers and business owners a whole battery of straight-to-the-point, actionable tips for getting traffic to your website or blog. While some of these strategies won’t be a quick fix, you may be surprised how quickly many of them start to generate results.

1. Infographics.

An infographic is the presentation of information or data in a visual way. Its name sums it up, info + graphic. Infographics get shared more, viewed more, and loved more than most other content types. They are a powerful way to get your information out there in an explosively visual format. One study found that infographics were liked and shared on social media up to three times more often than other content. The viral potential is there.

2. Consistent blogging.

Regularly writing genuinely helpful, value-packed original blog posts on your business blog is the foundation of any content marketing strategy. Blogging increases website traffic in a number of ways. First, it establishes you as a thought leader. Your customers, leads, and target audience learn to trust you and expect the best from you. On top of that, original and useful blog posts are more likely to be shared socially and they encourage repeat visits, so you get more traffic and start putting prospects through your sales funnel.

3. Mark important industry events.

The easiest way to come up with timely, relevant content is by looking at the world around you. For me, one of the most important events in the startup calendar is the TechCrunch conference. So, here’s a timely piece of content about it. You can do the same in any industry. Let’s say you run a sports company. You know that Olympics is coming up in August, which gives you tons of topics to write about. Mark that date in your calendar, as well as any other major events along the way. Set yourself a reminder a week before each event, and create a piece of content about it. That means you will always have some relevant and newsworthy content ready for the big event. Simple. Easy. This should instantly start filling up your content calendar

4. Focus on long tail keywords.

The days of focusing on a single keyword for each page are long gone. Make sure your posts include all the relevant terms and phrases related to your topic.

5. Memes.

You’ve seen memes. They’re easy to make. They’re viral. They’re hilarious. That’s one of the great benefits of memes, their humor. People love something that they can laugh at, share, and get a kick out of.

A content strategy is still the best (and cheapest) way to drive traffic to your website. But, it isn’t easy. Traffic acquisition takes time, patience, and a schedule. It’s the key to long-term, valuable traffic.

Social media is a key method for encouraging brand engagement, and in an increasingly dense online world, innovative and inventive means are required to generate that engagement. So whether you’re looking to increase brand awareness, build a customer database, or collect rich content, social media contests can be an effective way of achieving your marketing objectives. Here are 12 tips on running a successful social media contest:

1. Appeal to prospective customers, not just entrants.

The first step in creating a profitable social media contest campaign is designing one that’s attractive to your target market. Add labels to your contest copy to address your target audience. Tie your promotion to an event relevant to your target market. Choose prizes of value to your target market.

2. Start with the end in mind.

Before jumping into a social media contest, there are several important questions to ask: What are your marketing objectives? What is your budget? Where are you on the consumer engagement pyramid?

3. Review the terms of service.

Periodically the rules and regulations about contests and other promotions changes. Be sure to check the guidelines page before you launch your contest.

4. Define your goals. What do you want to gain from this contest?

It’s easy to determine what other people will want to win, but the real point of holding a contest is to gain something. Do you want more followers? To grow your email list? To gain more analytics resources to pitch to companies you want to partner with? Pick one or two goals and then build the design of the contest around achieving them. If you fail to do this, it’ll be impossible to determine the true value for your brand of holding a contest, which will reduce the potential benefit in the long run.

5. Considerations for hosting a contest.

When a company wants to host a successful contest, there are several things to consider. Almost all modern businesses can benefit from a well-designed contest, so we encourage everyone to take advantage of this free marketing move with proper preparation and strategy.

6. Set a clear goal for the contest.

Companies don’t run giveaways for no reason. There has to be a return on the investment (product or service being given away) for it to make business sense. The first step to hosting a successful contest is to identify the end goal and what the best avenue is for accomplishing that. The goal for many businesses is new followers, more email subscribers, or increased activity on social media sites. Entrepreneurs should also target specific platforms. To get your business noticed on a platform, consider creating a contest geared to those users.

7. Complying with the rules of the platforms.

Where do you want your contest to take place? Each platform has its own set of guidelines regarding contests and promotions. Familiarize yourself with them before making any major plans. One contest isn’t worth getting banned from the network altogether.

8. Choose what type of contest you want to have.

Sweepstakes contests are the easiest to enter, with the lowest barrier of entry. Photo or video contests with fan votes get the most engagement. Caption contests or quiz contests are other options. Winners can be randomly selected, picked by you or a panel of judges you select, or voted on by other readers.

9. Understand your audience.

Your target demographic and their social media behaviour will somewhat dictate their level of activity and engagement, so be sure to understand your audience in order to get the best results.

10. Offer an incentive for social sharing.

A great way to spread the reach of your contest and increase your social media following is through incentivized sharing and liking. The process is simple: give contest entrants an increased chance of winning in return for a share of the contest, a tweet, or a like of your social media page.

11. Consumer engagement model for promotions.

As you move up the pyramid, you’ll see a decrease in the number of participants but a deeper level of engagement and richer content. It’s also important to remember that the number of entries is not a sole benchmark of your promotion’s success. If you run a promotion with public voting, you’re likely to see at least 10 times the number of voters as entrants.

12. Set a S.M.A.R.T. goal.

A S.M.A.R.T. goal is one that’s specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Make sure you clearly define your contest’s goals before you start planning. Do you want to promote a new product? Grow your email list? Perhaps you’re looking to gather a bunch of user-generated content such as photos and videos.

Organizing a successful social media contest involves far more planning than many people realize when they initially decide to undertake such a task. In order to create an event that adds value for your existing audience, brings new people in, and increases your reputation, you’ll need to carefully consider each aspect of the process. Make it a fun, engaging, community building event, with an added bonus of possibly winning an awesome prize at the end, and everyone will walk away a winner.

In an attempt to boost its social media presence as part of a cross-channel campaign. If you are seeking increased engagement, likes, shares, and followers from your social media content, ask yourself what kind of content gives you the most value. By value we mean a return on investment (ROI). In other words, you want to invest in content that will provide a return on the money you spend. Otherwise, there’s little point in investing in social media content or management. Here are the different social media content types to choose from to delight your audience and bring the most value to your business.

1. Interactive content.

People often forget, but social media is two-way form of communication. We have the ability to interact with our followers in several different ways. What’s even more impressive is that within this interaction with our followers, we can gain valuable insight that can help us learn and improve for the future. You can have polls and quizzes as part of it.

2. User generated content.

UGC, also known as User-Generated Content, is a brilliant way to increase engagement and reach. It can also be the source of a warm-welcoming feeling for new and existing followers. Through user-generated content, they’ll see that you care about your audience and engage with them by sharing their created content.

3. Share Videos To Take Your Part Of The 100+ Million Hours Watched On Social Media Every Day.

Facebook users alone watch 100 million hours of video every single day. And 82% of Twitter users watch video on that network. It’s safe to say that sharing videos will help you engage your fans and followers.

4. Visual media.

People engage with visual content better than non-visual content. Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images. Likewise, Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than those without images. It is evident that images receive more likes, shares and comments. You can incorporate images into your social media content calendar. Ensure your images are relevant to your post and always use high-quality images, whether using stock images or your own images. Whether using humorous memes, educational infographics, quirky illustrations, or simply photographs, get creative and experiment with what works best to reflect your brand values and resonate with your audience.

5. Questions are also good.

How do you start conversations in real life? Generally by asking questions. The same works on social media. Keep it business related for the most part, but include some topical questions too.

6. Educational content.

A study by BuzzSumo and OkDork discovered that long-form content gets more social shares than short-form. They found that educational content, especially infographics, receive a lot of shares, along with how-to and list-type posts. The New York Times also found that readers were more likely to email longer articles than shorter ones. Types of content you can use include free resources, video training, infographics, FAQs, industry research, case studies, tips and tricks, and how-to posts.

7. Incentive content.

Who doesn’t like free stuff? Incentives are a great way to drive engagement when done right. By offering an incentive in exchange for more engagement, you may not see sales right away, but it is a long-term play. A long-term play where you can get more followers and viewers, which you can sell to later. It also gives the participants a chance to become a true fan of your brand. Some people have great content, but they struggle to distribute. Incentives are a great way to fix this issue and get your content across more eyes. You can use giveaways and contests to go with this one.

8. Podcasts.

Podcasts have been around for a very long time, but recently they’ve gained momentum. Some say they are the new radio (since they are on-demand). Due to how popular they are, and the benefits of doing them, you should focus on marketing your podcast to get more listeners.
9. Tag Your Guest Bloggers Or People You’ve Quoted In Your Social Messages. It’s human nature to want to be recognized for doing something amazing. So tag the peeps you want to recognize in the social messages you write.

10. Datejacking.

Datejacking is a new concept developed by Bowler Hat. Inspired by newsjacking, in which you inject your brand into the day’s news and jump on the popularity of current stories, Datejacking involves creating content that taps into the interest of a given date.
These types of posts will generally help you increase your engagement, no matter how much your spend or don’t spend on advertising on social media. Have you tried any? What works for you?

The wonderful world of Twitter has unlocked business opportunities for almost every type of user – from emerging artists, celebrities, big brands, news sources, and (most importantly for you) B2B marketers. With the mission to give users the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, this social media platform allows B2B marketers to better connect, converse and engage their audiences. Twitter offers B2B marketers the chance to attract prospects, interact and engage with clients, increase brand awareness, better understand their audience and much more. But, what’s the “much more”?

1. Twitter chats.

Networking and speaking with other people from within your respective industry is key for growing your online presence. Twitter chats give you the ability to speak with peers, customers, and thought leaders in an organized way.

2. Share control

One way to ensure a steady flow of messages from your company Twitter account is to employ not one, but multiple users to represent the brand. Doing so extends the amount of content and conversations from one person’s view, to multiple people’s views and ideas. In addition, having multiple people messaging on Twitter will insure an ongoing, steady stream of tweets  in the event a team member transitions to a different role/company.

3. Position your company as a thought leader.

If you have any employees who are considered industry experts, give them some Twitter love when they speak at conferences, publish an article or blog post, or get recognized for an award. Tweet links to current news in your industry. This shows you stay up-to-date and know what’s going on outside your own four walls. Tweet content that makes you look smart and well-connected.

4. Identify and engage influencers.

There are many ways that B2B marketers can use Twitter to find influencers and start interacting with them to establish valuable relationships. Twitter Search has really stepped up its game when it comes to filtering and being able to sort through more than 300 million users. There are also third party tools that you can use to find influences in your industry. Once these influencers are identified, follow them and start getting noticed by liking their tweets and replying to them on a regular basis.

5. Understand your audience.

After identifying your target audience, it’s time to start interacting with them. However to ensure that your efforts are fostering engagement, it’s important you truly understand your audience and create a plan that is focused on content that they want to see.

6. Timing is everything.

Understand the specific days and times your company’s messages are more likely to be read and shared.  If, for instance, analytics indicates that your community tends to retweet and share content more frequently early in the day, or early in the week, time your most compelling content to hit the stream during those times.

All work and no play makes your Twitter feed a dull read. Don’t be afraid to have a little fun. Try a weekly impossible quiz, a photo bomb, employee-of-the-week photo, customer-of-the-week, a weekly poll, fill-in-the-blank, etc. The possibilities are endless. The key is to be consistent. If you start doing a customer-of-the-week recognition tweet, you have to commit to doing it every week. Get creative!

Facebook has come along way since its debut in 2004, especially when it comes to the Facebook Advertising platform. Facebook has almost single-handedly turned paid social media marketing into a cornerstone of modern digital marketing tactics. In the next year to come, all can expect Facebook to evolve in deeper ways. These evolutions include both new features and shifts in the way business will be able to use Facebook ads to reach prospects.
Here are the most important Facebook advertising trends for 2018. With them, you can improve your marketing funnel and hopefully find more leads than ever in the coming year.

1. MOO. The bright Facebook ad design immediately catches people’s attention + the ad’s headline says clearly what it is they’re selling. When creating Facebook ad images, it’s always a good idea to use an original photo or animation, it’s an easy way to catch people’s attention and show off your branding.

2. Create colorful ad images. If you think about the Facebook newsfeed, it’s full on photos and dull ads. Creating a colourful ad that pops into people’s eyes is the best way to earn their attention. Research shows that people make up their minds within 90 seconds of their initial interaction with people or products. About 62‐90% of their assessment is based on colors alone. The New York Times is constantly testing new Facebook ad colours to avoid ad fatigue and appeal to more people. And you don’t even need hardcore Photoshop skills to do it.

3. The importance of video ads. Mobile audiences eat up video more hungrily than ever. Altogether, Facebook users watch over 100 million hours of video a day. As a result of their demand and improvements in video players, there is an explosion in both paid and organic video content. On average, videos on Facebook get 135% more organic reach than photos. Your business can potentially improve both its organic reach and engagement on paid posts by creating more promotional assets as videos. Making the switch does not have to be expensive or painful either. With just a few Facebook video ads, you can improve engagement and prospecting. You also help people remember your messaging since people remember video almost seven-times better than they do text.

4. Pipedrive. The in-image copy makes sure the most important copy gets immediately seen + a CTA button hints people can click on the ad. Pipedrive’s SaaS Facebook ad also makes it easy to understand what product they’re selling, it’s made loud and clear in the ad image, main text, headline, and link description.

5. Use highly contrasted colors. A study by UsabilityTools showed that using highly contrasting landing page call-to-actions resulted in 75% higher click-through rate, compared to a low-contrast CTA. Higher contrasts help to draw more attention to your ad. But sometimes, the contrast you’re looking for isn’t the one between ad elements. You can also create Facebook ads that contrast with the entire newsfeed.

6. Carousel ads can use multiple images, multiple offers, or multiple USPs in one go, providing a richer experience and a more compelling CTA.

7. MindTitan. This ad example uses the carousel format that lets you add up to 10 images into a single ad (the perfect way of showcasing your products / telling a story) + the ad’s design has an eye-catching contrast to it. You can use Facebook carousel ads to tell a story, showcase your products, or list the benefits to customers (as MindTitan’s ad does).

8. Create ads that contrast with the entire newsfeed. Sure, there are other aspects that might have contributed to the light ad’s success. However, as everyone kept using this ad design with new ad copy and CTAs, it returned awesome results for months to come.

9. Slideshow ads use lightweight video to load faster and intrude less on the browsing experience. They can be a great transition for small businesses looking to create more video.

Now, you don’t need to worry about your target audience seeing the same ad design over and over again. They’ll only see each design a couple of times, extending your Facebook campaign’s lifetime by multiple weeks.

Just a few years ago, you could get away with building a social media marketing strategy on the fly. As long as you were present, you were doing more than your competitors–right? Well it’s 2018 and not much of the same logic applies today. Brands must be fully invested in their social media marketing strategies and focus on engagement. Otherwise, you’ll lose out on real customers, which means serious effects on your bottom line. This is not here to scare your brand into the world of social media. Instead, this is to provide your marketing team with the right steps to take toward a successful social strategy so your brand isn’t left in the dust. Here are the some steps to create a winning social media marketing strategy in 2018:

1. Social Media Monitoring and Listening.

Social listening enables social media specialists to track and review the social buzz around your brand, industry or competition. By listening in, you can look for trends in moods and behaviors while also looking for opportunities to promote your product.

2. Identify Business Goals.

Every piece of your social media strategy serves the goals you set. You simply can’t move forward without knowing what you’re working toward. Look closely at your company’s overall needs and decide how you want to use social media to contribute to reaching them. You’ll undoubtedly come up with several personalized goals, but there are a few that all companies should include in their strategy increasing brand awareness, retaining customers and reducing marketing costs are relevant to everyone.

3. Create Social Media Marketing Goals That Solve Your Biggest Challenges.

Understand what you want out of your efforts. Social media marketing isn’t about flipping a switch and calling it a day. Instead, social media planning should be looked at like cooking your favorite dish. Once you have your ingredients, you follow a recipe and presto! But that’s not always the case. What if you have guests and need to feed more people? What if someone is allergic to one of the ingredients? Suddenly, your goal goes from making a meal to ensuring it will feed enough people and be edible by all.

4. Analytics and Reporting.

Your social media tool should enable you to export reports on the data that has been collected. Look for quick reporting and analytics to share with your team or clients. Use reporting to make intelligent, informed decisions about your social media strategy.

5. Assign roles.

Knowing who’s responsible for what increases productivity and avoids confusion and overlapping efforts. Things may be a bit messy in the beginning, but with time team members will know their roles and what daily tasks they’re responsible for. When everyone knows his or her role, it’s time to start planning the execution process. You can either plan daily or weekly. I don’t advise putting a monthly plan together because lots of things will come up and you may end up wasting time adapting to the new changes. You can use tools like Basecamp or ActiveCollab to manage your team and assign tasks to each member. These tools save you tons of time and help you stay organized.

If you work at building lasting relationships, there’s a lot less room for failure with your social media marketing strategy.

Did you know that more than half of the population wants to start their own business, but only 10% try to? More and more people try to make it every year. Owning a startup can be challenging in many ways, especially getting what you want on social media. I´ve been working for startups in social media for some years now, and Facebook should always be a big part of the marketing strategy. A Facebook page is a free marketing tool for businesses. Not only can you list your products and services with it, but it also gives you the opportunity to share links and post images and videos to connect easily to your customers. This is where you can show your company’s humane side and develop your brand identity. Let us see how a startup can leverage Facebook’s reach:

1. How to create a facebook page?

Go to facebook.com. Once you’re there, you’ll see a ‘Sign Up’ button on the upper left corner of the page beside the Facebook logo. Click ‘Sign Up’. Again, you need to have a personal account in order to manage your Facebook page. You can change the privacy settings later so that no else sees your personal account if you’re just looking to market your business page.

2. Create a facebook business page.

Go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php to start creating your own page. Select ‘local business’ or whichever category best fits your company.

3. Fill out business details.

Now, fill out the form with the basic details of your business, read the Facebook Pages Terms and check ‘I agree’, and click the ‘Get Started’ button. You’ll be redirected to another form where you’ll provide additional details about your business. Although it has a ‘Skip’ option, it’s a good idea to fill out these details to make your business page appear more professional. When you choose your business category, more specific subcategories will come up– choose the one that best applies to your business. Don’t forget to fill out all the other details such as the description of your business, and your business website if you have one. Creating a unique Facebook address (URL) is also important! A branded URL will makes it easier for people to find your page. Remember that you can only change it once after this, so make sure to double-check. It’s a good idea to use your business name and to keep it consistent with all your online usernames (consistent branding). Sure, it can take some time to fill in all this stuff, but the more specific it is, the better. Think of each little data-point as an opportunity to optimize your page so it’s easier for you to use, quicker for others to find, and better for your marketing.

4. Ensure all business info is complete.

Update your page information. You’ll see this option as you scroll up the page, on the upper right side. Updating your information builds credibility and helps your audience get better acquainted with your brand. There are so many data-points, and if you’re in the initial startup phase you might actually find out some things about your business you didn’t know before through this process. For instance, have you thought about your general business category? Have you ironed out simple things like hours of operation? Do you know your targeted audience? Be thorough.

Creating a local business page on Facebook and listing your products and services can help you generate more leads for your small business. From taking up more space on the search engine results page, to advertising lead magnets to your target audience, understanding how to leverage what Facebook has to offer will greatly enhance your marketing and sales efforts.

From Ariana to Zendaya, we’re all familiar with the names of Instagram’s top millennial female influencers. But the social platform is also home to a huge number of of “micro influencers,” or users who might command just a few thousand followers yet whose style and brand affiliations are closely followed and emulated by their dedicated fans. From Pinterest to Instagram to YouTube, visual platforms continue their deepening influence with consumers. Clique Media Group teamed up with Dash Hudson to find out more about the typical female millennial micro-influencer, and the infographic in this article gives advertisers a glimpse into her world and shows how to make the most of her influence. The research found that female micro-influencers have the most followers on Instagram and spend the most on fashion and that advertisers should harness their audiences on the platform with product blitzes. Here are trends why millennial female continue to embrace visual platforms:

1. Digitally Fluent Millennials Zoom in on Visuals. As Millennials represent the first generation to grow up immersed in social media and online technology, they exhibit true fluency in a host of digital platforms. These Millennial women gravitate toward visual platforms – including Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram – that allow them to share photos and videos.

2. Millennials showcase life experiences via still and video images: More than 60 percent of millennial women strongly agree or agree that they love sharing significant moments in their life on social media channels.In addition, this generation uses today’s visual platforms to provide their communities with a real-time glimpse into their experiences and adventures.

3. Image-focused social platforms spark product discovery: For millennial women, visual channels allow them to discover everything from that just-opened boutique to cool new products. In many ways, Instagram has become this generation’s new blogging platform, allowing millennial women to learn about potential purchases and new retail establishments through compelling images. Along the path to purchase, millennials seek out highly visual elements as they collect insights and information – ranging from must-have tips to styling options – to help them evaluate potential purchases. In fact, 30 percent of millennial women check YouTube multiple times per day, and more than a quarter check Instagram daily.

4. Collection & Creation of Beautiful Content. Millennial women live their lives surrounded by online content – both content they create and content they collect. Yet their goal with online content rarely includes being considered an authority figure or to generate a considerable following – in fact, just 5 percent of Millennial women use social media to establish themselves as an expert. Instead, they post everything from food images from their favorite new restaurant to videos of themselves experiencing their latest consumer find. Moreover, this content helps them to share their experiences with their communities, as well as to make decisions along their path to purchase.

5. Millennials’ embrace of lifestyle sites helps inspire new spends: Lifestyle bloggers and sites continue to resonate with millennial women, as they have become more drawn to visual and video. These sites include pictures, as well as quirky and trendy content, and really focus on the aspirational – how millennial women can envision the life that they want to lead.

From compelling videos to beautiful photos to image-oriented, news-you-can-use, this image-focused content has become a real resource to time-pressed, fact-gathering millennial women consumers who seek out ways to streamline their purchase decision-making process. Visual engagement continues to characterize millennial interactions online.

About three billion users worldwide have at least one account in any social network and the social media users number is growing every day. Let’s consider Instagram as an example: it’s already used by about 700 million of users among them there are famous brands and bloggers, movie stars, popular singers and models and, of course, individual users.  The most common reason to build a presence on Instagram is to gain more popularity and influence on Internet. This way there is a great chance to have an opportunity to make money by promoting multiple products and services, attracting more audience to your account, collaborating with influencers and more. But to succeed on Instagram, you should have a huge number of followers and multiply it every day. The Internet is full of different tips and tricks on how to grow your account and your Instagram community – just use Google search with the query “grow my Instagram account”. It will provide you a plenty of blogs with the advice how you should behave on Instagram. But actually all the methods of growing an account can be associated with organic and automated ways of social media growth.

What is an organic growth?

What is supposed by the term “organic method of growth”? It means that you behave naturally on the social network and your actions draw other users to follow you. The natural behavior may include: posting the photos and videos, creating an unified theme for your posts, use of the popular and niche hashtags, organization of the contests and surely the engagement. As Instagram is all about social communication you should take part in making likes, comments, follows which are required to attract more users to like and follow you back. This way your account grows organically — so only your Instagram actions matter.

What is an automated growth?

They will engage other users instead of you: your task is just to target the specific hashtags, geotags or users otherwise this method won’t bring you your target audience but just random users and the bots will like posts, comment them and follow/unfollow users on behalf of your account. This method helps you to save much time and effort and obtain a larger exposure so real people will follow you on Instagram.

What are other strategies for instagram account growth?

You can use the most general one: follow a specific user on Instagram and see in your following feed how many likes, comments and follows he makes regularly. This way is the most well-known but indeed has a lot of flaws: you need to spend much efforts and time to highlight the activity of a certain user, and even if you succeed the results won’t be accurate as Instagram following feed algorithm doesn’t display all the user actions.

The both ways have their pros and cons and it’s always up to you to decide which of them will be useful for your engagement strategy meanwhile automated or bot-driven growth considered a grey scheme by many social media experts.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recently announced changes to the company’s news feed have the potential to dramatically affect how people interact on the social network. Over the next few weeks, Facebook’s news feed will start showing fewer news articles, and less marketing content and ads, Zuckerberg wrote. Instead, users should start seeing more vacation videos from their friends, photos of their nephew’s college graduation, and other more family-friendly posts about the people they know. It’s a major change for Facebook, which over the years has shifted from being a social networking service connecting friends and family to one of the world’s biggest distributors of news and online ads. Here’s what you need to know about Facebook’s big news feed change:

1. Facebook will be prioritizing news from trustworthy sources, news that is informative, and news that is relevant to one’s local community.  According to Mark Zuckerberg, “news will always be a critical way for people to start conversations on important topics”. So the team at Facebook is making another major update to make sure that news on the News Feed is of high quality. Specifically, they will be prioritizing the following types of news:

• News from publications that the community rates as trustworthy
• News that people find informative
• News that is relevant to people’s local community

Facebook has been surveying users to help determine the trustworthiness of publications and informativeness of news.

2. In this newest update, Publishers and marketers may find themselves rethinking their social strategy or scale it back altogether. Mark Zuckerberg stated, “I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.” His statement coincides with this new update that will diminish posts from brands, publishers, marketers, and news stories. Facebook is concerned about providing a quality experience that will promote a user’s well-being. Their studies have shown that genuine interactions between friends is what promotes a strong well-being. Publishers and marketers should look to create posts that will generate back-and-forth discussion among Facebook users, such as Oprah’s recent speech at the Golden Globes or local events that may excite a community.

3. Messenger Ads are now Available Worldwide. Initially tested in Australia and Thailand, brands can now reach Facebook users (all 10 billion of them!) directly through their Facebook messenger app. These ads will appear in a user’s inbox, according to Facebook, based on “how many threads a user has, the size of their phone’s physical screen and the pixel density of the display.” Messenger ads come with a “sponsored” label in the home tab of the Messenger app. They are formatted to look like a typical newsfeed ad, including the headline, copy, image, and calls to action. Users can then click through to any website or destination you select when setting up the promotion. If you’re on the receiving side of a Messenger ad, there’s no way to permanently turn off ads, but a user can tap the downward arrow in the bottom right of an ad and see options to report or hide it.

One of the most important thing, marketers must do is stay up-to-date with every algorithm change. What worked in the past does not necessarily work now, and what works now may not work in the future. Stay current on how social media evolves and be prepared to evolve with it.