The State of Social Media Marketing – May 2014 Edition
Do you get overwhelmed with the constant sea of constant change in social media?
The State of Social Media Marketing will keep you abreast of some of the recent changes that may affect you and your business.
2014 has kicked off with huge changes that will absolutely impact the way you market your business online. The more aware you are of the changes, the more prepared you are to handle them with grace.
Here are the ten most significant recent social media changes that your business should be aware of.
LinkedIn Upgrades Inbox
Last year LinkedIn debuted the new Contacts page and introduced features for keeping track of connections including follow up reminders and notes. Previously, you could only access these features via the profile of any connection.
You can now make notes on your connections and set reminders right inside the inbox without having to go to their profile. This change will shave off some valuable time for any businessperson or professional using LinkedIn for lead generation.
New Twitter Profile Design Overhauls Look
By now you have already seen Twitter’s new profile design. To say the least, it feels a suspiciously familiar but overall the changes look like they will take Twitter to the next step in its evolutionary path.
- Really Big Header Photo. Your profile’s header photo just became the real estate king pin of the block with its new upgrade.
- Pinned Tweets. You can now pin one tweet at a time to the top of your profile page to give more visibility to your important tweets.
- Popular Tweets Spotlight. Your most highly engaged tweets with appear slightly larger on your profile so followers can quickly find the good stuff.
- Profile Tweet Filters. You can now easily look at separate types of tweets when on profile pages including regular tweets, tweets with photos, tweets with videos and replies to other users.
Hide Individual Connections From Your LinkedIn Network
You can now have the choice between hiding or even disconnecting from connections on LinkedIn via the Contacts page.
To hide a LinkedIn contact:
- Move your cursor over Network at the top of your homepage and select Contacts.
- Check the box next to contacts you’d like to hide.
- Click More above your list of contacts and select Hide.
Facebook Organic Reach Still Declining
As page admins across the world continued to begrudgingly accept Facebook’s orchestrated decline of organic reach, well-known social media expert Jay Baer blew the lid off the situation with one chart.
This chart shows the average organic page reach declining while the value of Facebook’s stock price goes up. All this image does is solidify what most of us expected was inevitable: the new era of Facebook is pay-to-play for business owners.
Facebook Anonymous Login Launching
Are you getting annoyed with all the apps that are requiring you to login with your Facebook account and surrender your precious data? You’re not alone. There are many people that get the creeps from every random app wanting to know the personal information embedded in one’s Facebook account.
Facebook’s answer to this problem is Anonymous Login. It allows people to login to apps using their Facebook account without having to share any personal information from Facebook. You’ll be able to decide later if you change your mind once you’ve learned more about the app and feel comfortable with how they use your data.
This feature will be rolling out over the next few months so keep an eye out for it!
Facebook Now Shows You Nearby Friends
Facebook may have scored one for anonymity with the Anonymous Login feature but its other new feature sits on the other end of the spectrum: Nearby Friends. It’s an optional feature that allows you to see anyone on your friends list that is close by and vice versa.
Fortunately, you have total control over this feature. You can choose who will see your location and for how long with the option to disable it at anytime.
New Pinterest Guided Search Launches
Hardcore Pinterest users will be the first to tell you that finding images is barely the beginning of the social network’s larger experience. It actually has a surprisingly visual way of answering regular questions, similar to search engines, except you might like it better for certain inquiries.
Guided Search aims to dive deeper into search results by using the great ideas of other Pinners to steer your search in a new direction. See it in action below.
LinkedIn Kills Products & Services Tabs, Group Polls
LinkedIn giveth and LinkedIn taketh away. The Products and Services tab featured on Company Pages is now officially extinct, along with Group polls. You can request a copy of the recommendations that were present as of March 4, 2014 through customer support until May 30, 2014.
Where should I feature my products and services now? Use Showcase Pages to create a dedicated page for your most prominent products and services and keep your followers engaged with regular Company Updates.
Quite a few people sounded the alarm at this change and asked me if I thought that it was a big deal. Truthfully, there is not a huge loss here whatsoever. Those in my LinkedIn Domination Bootcamp are well aware that the real action happens on personal profiles anyways so don’t get to hung up on changes to Company Pages for now.
LinkedIn Changes Endorsements Feature
If you’ve ever been annoyed when you get endorsed for skills you do not want promoted on your LinkedIn profile, this new change is just for you. You can remove, edit or re-organize any of your endorsements now so you have full control over the way they display on your profile.
Check out this helpful video from Liz Azyan demonstrating how it works:
Facebook Changes Page Admin Roles
About a year ago, Facebook made a change to the way page admins work to allow different team members to collaborate with different levels of access. There are five different “roles” for page admins including: Admin, Editor, Moderator, Advertiser and Analyst.
See the chart below to see exactly what each role can do.
What Social Media Changes Have You Noticed?
Did we miss any of the recent major social media changes? Let us know in the comments below and feel free to share any tips you might have for better leveraging these new features for business.
