Making Your Business Stand Out When Social Media Starts Blending Together
The social media game is all about accurately representing your business to current customers while branching out to grow new audiences. This week, we’re looking at changes to how you connect with your communities on Facebook and LinkedIn. Meanwhile, Twitter’s newest Fleet features are giving us another example of an evolving trend: Social media companies are abandoning their niches to compete for the largest audience.
Facebook Insists Gathering User Data Is Necessary to Promote Small Business
Following its State of Small Business report, Facebook has turned its attention to highlighting how personalized ads promote small businesses. In its new initiative, Good Ideas Deserve to Be Found, Facebook showcases small businesses that have successfully used its personalized ads tools for an affordable, effective way to reach new people. The initiative also includes more information about privacy protections – including that your personal information, such as your name or contact information, will never be available to advertisers. In addition, Facebook continues to show its support for small businesses by simplifying its ads manager, waiving fees, and adding new features for restaurants to list dining options.
Facebook has taken many steps to assist small businesses facing pandemic-related challenges. However, it’s worth noting the Good Ideas Deserve to Be Found initiative seems to be a direct response to upcoming privacy protections from Apple. Starting this year, Apple’s operating systems will block apps from collecting data about how you use other apps, among other restrictions. Since about 45% of U.S. smartphone users are using iPhones, this presents a significant challenge for Facebook’s ability to gather user data for personalized ads.
What does this mean for Gainesville Businesses?
The Good Ideas Deserve to Be Found initiative is a good reminder that personalized ads can be an effective way of reaching new audiences. If you need to brush up on how these ads work so you can use them, you can read more about Facebook advertising or how personalized ads are chosen. However, the audiences that these ads are able to reach might be changing soon. We’ll have to circle back later to see how the situation between Facebook and Apple shakes out.
LinkedIn Launches 3 New Business-Focused Features
The professional social media platform is no longer just for finding a job: LinkedIn is increasing its value by providing new ways for businesses to represent themselves and connect with their audiences. The first of these, the My Company tab, focuses on your employees. Page admins will be able to recommend articles to their organization and verify the employees that work for them. This comes during a time when many more people are working remotely, as a way to encourage teams to interact with each other apart from Zoom meetings and project updates.
Product pages, which were announced in December, are being upgraded to produce leads for your company. These pages are a space for people to discuss your product, whether they’re sharing their experience or asking questions that you can answer. Now, when someone visits one of your product pages, they’ll have the option to submit an auto-filled form indicating their interest to you. This new feature, called Lead Gen Forms, will give you a list of people who want to hear more about your product.
Finally, LinkedIn is expanding its stories to businesses with Stories for Pages. You’ll be able to post stories as a business to engage your followers, remind them of upcoming events, or whatever you’d like! These stories will be an interesting new way to drive conversions among a professional-focused community, with all Stories for Pages having the option to include a “swipe up” link.
What does this mean for Gainesville Businesses?
Let’s break it down by feature. The My Company tab that allows you to share articles with your employees gives you a new way to connect with them, but we urge you to explore other ways of connecting with remote employees as well. LinkedIn has identified a problem, but it’s not one that will necessarily be fixed by the My Company tab. We’ll be interested to see if LinkedIn expands the functionality of the My Company tab in the future – This might be the first step of bringing workplace culture to LinkedIn.
Leads from product pages are a huge boon for B2B companies. After you set up your product pages, you’ll be able to generate high-value leads with minimal involvement. We recommend checking this out and trying out your first product page if you haven’t already. And last but not least, Stories for Pages is the latest take on social media stories. These make the most sense for B2B companies that are interacting with professionals on LinkedIn often. If you’d like to try these out, take a minute to shout out your next event, record a video of an employee giving tips related to your services, or show a behind-the-scenes look at your process to humanize your business.
Getting Déjà Vu? Upcoming Fleet Features Remind Us How Social Media Is Changing
Twitter is releasing new features for Fleets starting in Japan. Stickers and “Twemojis” (we didn’t make that up), were added last week to spice up Fleets. We’re expecting to see this change rolled out to more countries over time, but it’s putting a spotlight on a recurring theme in the social media scene.
A few years ago, social media companies were happy to do one thing well. Twitter was all about snappy one-liners, Instagram was a visual diary, and Snapchat was the place for disappearing stories. Now, social media platforms want to be a one-stop-shop. Social media companies are quick to compete with one another by adding new formats to their platforms. We saw this clearly when Instagram introduced Reels during uncertainty about TikTok’s future in the U.S. We’re seeing it again as Twitter ramps up its visual story game to compete with Instagram and Snapchat, while also discouraging new competition from Clubhouse with its new Spaces feature. Social media platforms are becoming complicated quickly by trying to keep up with each other rather than exploring what they do best.
What does this mean for Gainesville Businesses?
Our recommendation is not to get bogged down in every new feature on each platform. We encourage you to keep your eyes open, evaluate whether features would be beneficial for your specific business, and test them out as needed. When it comes to your social strategy, remember what each platform specializes in. The audiences that are present on each social medium are different – remember that who you’re talking to changes from platform to platform. And finally, make note of platform-specific trends, such as the rise of content focused on well-being and positivity on Twitter.
With these factors in mind, you can create content specifically for a certain platform, or create content and then decide which platforms fit it best. For example, if you’ve created a short-form video meant for a middle-aged audience, you might decide that Instagram Reels is a better place for it to premiere than TikTok. You don’t have to post every message everywhere, but you should assess where a piece of content will have the maximum impact.
Ok, now what?
Now that you’re up to date with the latest industry news, it’s time to invest in a team that specializes in all things social media and digital marketing. We can help! Liquid Creative is a full-service marketing agency ready to help your business operate to its fullest potential without missing a beat.
