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Built-In Analytics for Facebook, Instagram; Apple’s Podcast Analyltics; and More Social Media News

Built-In Analytics for Facebook, Instagram; Apple’s Podcast Analyltics; and More Social Media News

by | Jun 28, 2017 | Blog, Current Events, Marketing, Social Media

In June’s social media news, more social media platforms are making changes to benefit businesses who advertise.

June has seen a lot of recent changes in big-name platforms, like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, that will directly impact the engagement between businesses and potential customers. The trend is to create apps that work harder for paid advertisers, increasing brand awareness for businesses and proving their worth through built-in tracking.

Apple has also been working overtime to keep their products competing with the big players in the social media game. New analytics and introduction of Business Chat are keeping the fruit relevant.

Facebook Rolls Out Two New Ad Campaign Tools for Marketers

Facebook delivered two new options for helping businesses grow: Valued Optimization and Lookalike Audiences. The first, Valued Optimization, “works by using the purchase values sent from the Facebook pixel to estimate how much a person may spend with your business over a seven-day period. The ad’s bid is then automatically adjusted based on this estimation, allowing campaigns to deliver ads to people likely to spend more with your business at a low cost.” The second, Lookalike Audiences, helps marketers reach people likely to be interested in a business based on people who have visited their site. Read more

Facebook Expands Click to Messenger Ads to Instagram

Facebook continues to expand ways for users to connect directly with businesses. The Click to Messenger ads have been available through Facebook for a while, and now they’re expanding to Instagram. “Instagram Click to Messenger ads let you reach the people you care about on Instagram and engage with them on Messenger.” Read more

Instagram Makes Sponsored Content More Transparent

Last week Instagram introduced a new “paid partnership tag” that will clearly identify sponsored posts on its app. “Partnerships between community creators and businesses are an important part of the Instagram experience, and a healthy community should be open and consistent about paid partnerships.” This new tag will help users determine when posts are influenced by commercial relationships with businesses. Read more

Apple Rolls Out Analytics to Podcast App

During a podcast session at WWDC, the Apple developer conference, Apple announced that its podcast app will now have the ability to give publishers data that tells them just how much of their episodes are actually being listening to. Apple Podcasts app will allow creators to track aggregated data about when users start, stop, and skip within an episode. This data will give podcasts tangible results that were once estimated from the number of downloads a podcast received. Read more

Apple Debuts Business Chat

Business Chat allows real customer service representatives to communicate directly with users through iMessage. According to the Apple Developer site, customers can use this new feature to “find your business and start conversations from Safari, Maps, Spotlight, and Siri.” The Verge reports that “there will be built-in features like Apple Pay and calendar integration, which will allow Business Chat to facilitate purchases without requiring the user to exit the chat.” Read more

Twitter Experiments with New Promotional Features for Sponsored Live Video

After entering into an exclusive partnership with Live Nation, Twitter is experimenting with new features to help promote events featured on LN. New features like an alert that users can set to remind them of the live event or a branded timeline that will put all tweets about the event on one landing page will help strengthen the relationship between Twitter and Live Nation, paving the way for more partnerships with big brands. Read more

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What Is Native Advertising? An Intro for the Supply Chain

What Is Native Advertising? An Intro for the Supply Chain

by | Oct 19, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain

Native advertising is the non-ad-like way to promote your business’ content to users who might be interested in it.

Is your business using native advertising to promote your content with a targeted audience? If not, you’re missing out on one of the biggest upcoming trends in content marketing.

So how can your business use this technique to promote your content and, ultimately, your products and services? Let’s take a look at the basics of native advertising.

What is native advertising?

Native advertising blurs the line between advertising and editorial content. It allows publishers (of content) to get their message to a targeted audience in a format the audience is already using. Think of sponsored updates on LinkedIn, which look just like regular posts, or when a radio DJ promotes a product within the regular broadcast.

Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi defines native advertising with the following three qualities:

  1. “A Directly Paid Opportunity. I hate to bring out the obvious, but native advertising is ‘pay to play.’ If a brand or individual did not pay for the spot, it’s not native advertising.
  2. “Usually Content Based. The information is useful, interesting and highly targeted to the specific readership. So, in all likelihood, it’s not an advertisement promoting the company’s product or service directly.
  3. “Delivered In-Stream. To truly be a native ad, the user experience is not disrupted. The advertising is delivered in a way that does not impede the normal behavior of the user in that particular channel.”

Native advertising is not content marketing…

… But it can be an effective way to promote your content.

Remember, content may be king, but distribution is queen, and she wears the pants. That is to say: Publishing valuable and relevant content in a strategic and consistent manner will create demand for your products and services. But content doesn’t go far — actually it goes nowhere — without distribution.

Native advertising is a paid opportunity to distribute your content to more people. It can be more effective than non-native advertising, like banner ads or commercials, because it does not interrupt the user experience but rather complements it. It doesn’t feel like an ad, even though someone paid to have it appear on your screen.

Social media platforms are offering more and more opportunities for businesses to advertise this way through sponsored posts and updates. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest — you may have noticed that more and more posts from companies you don’t follow appear in your newsfeeds now. These platforms use proprietary algorithms to help businesses target users might be interested in the content they are promoting.

Here’s what a sponsored post on LinkedIn looks like, for example:

linkedin native advertising

The sponsored post from SendGrid looks just like the other posts in my feed. Another important thing: It’s totally relevant for the kind of content I consume. I might even ignore the comma splice and click on it to get the information about email marketing because that’s what I like to read about on LinkedIn.

Some native advertising facts

The use of native advertising is growing among businesses because it is proving to be so effective. Here are some facts that might interest you.

Doing it right

Because native advertising blurs the line between editorial and advertising, some advertisers have gotten in trouble for violating rules of compliance. In response, the FTC has come out with some official guidelines for native ads in order to prevent confusion and to protect consumers. If your business is launching a native advertising campaign, make sure that you are familiar with these rules and best practices.

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